To celebrate the release of her new book, The Verifiers, Jane Pek reflects on her journey to feel as empowered as the Chinese heroes of her childhood.
author Jane Pek reflects on her journey to feel as empowered as the Chinese heroes of her childhood.I was on my back being strangled by a very sweaty 250-pound man. I knew what I had to do: loosen his grip around my throat by snatching away one of his hands, bridge onto one shoulder to roll him over, end up with him on the floor and me rising up from one knee to deliver a series of debilitating kicks . Unfortunately, I was failing miserably at all of the above.
That, at least, was my takeaway from a dreamy, impressionable childhood in Singapore spent captivated by thedramas that ran endlessly on TV, a mix of Hong Kong imports and local productions, adaptations of popular novels, as well as original scripts. Wuxia taps into a deep-seated fantasy of ours—that we can keep ourselves safe out in the world, and look badass while doing so. And although much ofmay be supreme wish fulfillment, there is a tether to reality.
In college, I discovered capoeira, and I knew I had found my dream martial art. Forget the skeptics who dismissed it as dance-fighting, or questioned the utility of breaking into aduring a street fight—look at all the YouTube videos of capoeiristas executing flying kicks with lethal speed and force, then taking each other down with backflip-scissor maneuvers. Capoeira could be dazzling the way duels induels, here were actual people doing these things to each other.
I couldn’t stay away from martial arts for long though. I tried yoga and Pilates, where my subpar reflexes and utter lack of killer instinct weren’t impediments to progress. But I missed the dynamism and camaraderie of martial arts, the ways it taught me to interact with and respond to other people, and also the idea, dimmer now but still persistent, it could be my armor against the world.
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