Legendary Moves

Bow Sim Mark’s legacy lives on 50 years after founding Chinese Wushu Research Institute

In Boston’s Chinatown, the name Bow Sim Mark is almost synonymous with “Chinese martial arts.”

For those who don’t know, Bow Sim Mark is kind of a local martial arts legend. She arrived to Massachusetts from Hong Kong with her family in 1976, and in the following decades built a legacy as an influential expert in tai chi, wushu and other so-called internal Chinese arts. Her school, the Chinese Wushu Research Institute (CWRI), would teach many new masters – among them her son, Donnie Yen, who would go on to star in scores of action films including “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny.” She would be named “Woman of the Year” twice by Inside Kung Fu magazine in the 1990s, and in 1995 named Black Belt magazine’s kung fu artist of the year.

But Mark was at first discouraged from ever learning the defensive arts. She told the Sampan in a 1996 interview that her father did not want Mark to pursue tai chi as a child. He said these were the activities of boys and that girls who learned them would be viewed suspiciously. And in Boston, she would indeed become a rarity: a female martial artist who started teaching in an era when hardly any Chinese martial arts schools existed in the United States. Mark would, however, bring tai chi, baguazhang, xingyiquan and other Chinese martial arts to Boston.

This year, Chinese Wushu Research Institute (CWRI) celebrates its 50th anniversary. Sampan sat down with Bow Sim Mark’s daughter Chris Yen, who’s the Chinese Wushu Research Institute’s current heritage manager. She told the story of her aging mother — now in her early 80s — and of this cultural heritage now spanning half a century.

BEST DEFENSE: Bow Sim Mark in 1996; Sampan file photo by Robert O'Malley

From Guangzhou to Boston

Bow Sim Mark, says Yen, was likely the first Chinese woman to establish a Chinese martial arts school in the United States. When Mark arrived in the U.S., the general public’s understanding of Chinese martial arts was mostly limited to the "kung fu" fight scenes in television and movies. Karate, a Japanese style of martial arts, had only recently begun to become popular in the States, and fighting arts icon Bruce Lee had just released his classic, “Enter the Dragon.”

But Bow Sim Mark’s experience is completely different from the stereotype of the defensive arts portrayed in action movies, says her daughter. She received systematic training in Guangzhou, studied under renowned masters, and later went to Hong Kong to become a co-founder of the first martial arts school in Hong Kong led by women. Chris Yen notes that her mother’s ability to break through the gender and identity barriers of the time was largely due to her personality.

“She’s barely five feet tall, with very delicate features — you’d never expect that behind that package, she had such high-level skills. She trained with opponents who were twice her size, and her masters were all men. She was chosen, outside the family bloodline, to be a disciple and inherit everything the master passed down. Back then, especially in China, it was a privilege to be chosen as a disciple by that kind of master — and if you weren’t part of the family bloodline, it was very rare to be able to absorb all of that knowledge and skill,” she says.

Yen said that although her and her action hero brother went on to build careers in very different fields, their experiences and the family’s legacy have always remained closely intertwined.

HALF CENTURY CELEBRATION: Top from left is Klysler Yen (also sometimes referred to as Klyster), Chris Yen, Hubert Young (Chris' husband); bottom row, from left Mary Chin (of Asian American Civic Assoc., publisher of Sampan), Bik-Fung Ng, Mr. Jicheng. Courtesy photo.

The Four Core Points

During her interview with Sampan, Yen raises four points that she felt were most important for understanding the full weight of her mother’s legacy:

First, she did much more than teach combat. Yen emphasizes that her mother is not a traditional martial artist whose core purpose is “fighting.”

“She didn’t just teach martial arts or fighting — she taught and transmitted a culture: its philosophy, discipline, and also an artistic form of expression.”

Second, Mark specialized in martial arts, learning, as she says, entire systems. But her

contributions go beyond this, according to Yen. She was the first to advocate for bringing Chinese martial arts into the academic system of American colleges and universities. She gave lectures at institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — although she could barely speak English at the time, and the lectures had to rely on translation, according to Yen.

She went on to lecture for Asian student associations at Brandeis University, Boston College, Northeastern University, Suffolk University, and Tufts University. She helped introduce Western audiences to the health and artistic value of tai chi and martial arts. She also became the first author to write and publish a bilingual Chinese-English Tai Chi text, Combined Tai Chi — a book later nicknamed the “Tai Chi Bible” by her students. The first English translation and compilation was completed by the bilingual students she had met while lecturing at MIT.

Building on that foundation, Bow Sim Mark went on to teach a for-credit course at Boston University for 17 years, and also taught Tai Chi and internal martial arts at Harvard University.

She became a cultural bridge between East and West. Yen believes that one of the most important contributions of her mother is that she brought traditional Chinese martial arts to Western society without sacrificing the cultural foundation and integrity of this art itself.

Third, says Yen, is Mark was a pioneer of female leadership in the field of martial arts, which has long been dominated by men. Bow Sim Mark broke the gender barrier in an almost “quiet” way, says Yen. She described her mother’s style like this: “She broke barriers in her own quiet way. She didn’t make it a loud message — she just led by example and stayed true to what she was doing, at a very high level.”

Yen also recalls that her mother’s martial arts school was one of the few in Chinatown that truly practiced “education without discrimination.” Bow Sim Mark’s students included lawyers, doctors, scientists, scholars, as well as bartenders, dishwashers, and people from all walks of life. The school thus became the “second home” for many students.

Finally, Mark’s legacy, says Yen, is a living tradition. Over the past 50 years, Bow Sim Mark has cultivated students who have become “like peaches and plums scattered throughout the world.” Yen frankly admitted that it is difficult to count the exact number of students, as many of them have themselves become masters in their respective fields and have formed a teacher-student network spanning several generations.

“She’s now considered a great-grandmaster. That’s how far this lineage has carried on — generation after generation.”

The 50th Anniversary

On a Saturday evening in late July, the 50th anniversary celebration of the Chinese Wushu Research Institute was held in Boston, where mentors and apprentices from different generations gathered.

Before the banquet began, martial arts coach Cecilia Wong led a brief tai chi lesson for some of the guests; many of the returning students naturally followed along and practiced tai chi together. There were also some newcomers who, before they had a chance to take their seats, began to greet and catch up with old classmates they hadn’t seen in years. At the registration desk, student April Welch displayed her meticulously crafted souvenir book — inside were a collection of precious old photos, as well as many handwritten messages of blessings from the students. Welch invited each student who checked into the event to leave a few words for the souvenir book.

That evening, Rick Wong and his son, both students, also attended. Wong has been studying with Bow Sim Mark since 1985, having taken her courses at Boston University, and is one of Bow Sim Mark’s most proud disciples; his son, Chris Wong, later followed in his father's footsteps in martial arts practice. Both father and son performed on stage that night. Now, Rick Wong has opened his own martial arts school in Melrose (Rick Wong’s Martial Arts), offering two to three classes per week, with each class having about a dozen students, continuing the tradition and spirit passed down by Bow Sim Mark.

Chris Yen played a video, and mentioned that she hopes to make a documentary about her mother in the future. She found, however, that a large number of images and photos sat at home, and it was impossible to fit them all into a ten-minute video. She originally planned to edit them into several short clips. She also said she learned more about her mother from stories passed down by students.

April Welch flew back to Boston from Chicago just to attend the celebration. She has been studying with Bow Sim Mark in Tai Tung Village in Chinatown since 1988. She said that the martial arts school is like a home to her, and Bow Sim Mark is like family. Chi Hun, one of the earliest students of the Chinese Wushu Research Institute began to study martial arts with Mark in the 1970s and was also a training partner of Donnie Yen in his early days of martial arts practice.

Hun recalled that his master was extremely strict in teaching and had a serious attitude. If any student on the stage made a slight movement during practice, it would not escape her eyes. Bow Sim Mark always kept her word. Yen’s aunt said that when she was young and practicing, her master was very strict — a single bowing movement often had to be practiced countless times. If the movement was not done correctly, her master would use a ruler to hit her palm, which made her once doubt whether she was really practicing Tai Chi.

Bow Sim Mark’s student Cecilia Wong also took the stage to share her story at the reunion. She recalled that 47 years ago, she and her friend Linda visited almost all the martial arts schools in Chinatown before finally deciding to join the Chinese Wushu Research Institute.

“Linda and I visited every martial arts school in Boston before deciding to join CWRI.”

Cecilia Wong originally thought that studying tai chi for 10 years would be enough, but in the end, she continued to learn from her master until 2005 when Mark retired — spanning a total of 26 years. She mentioned that her master often said: “Tai chi is a long-life study.”

Cecilia Wong said that during the process of sorting out the invitation list for this celebration, she realized how many people had silently contributed to the Chinese Wushu Research Institute over the years — some participated in translating the master’s works, and some have been responsible for the arrangement of performances for many years. She also mentioned the master’s husband, saying that he had been silently recording and photographing, fully assisting the master in completing her career.

'No Choice' to 'Full Circle'

Chris Yen said that she started practicing martial arts at the age of four, it was not out of her own choice, but rather that “the trajectory of life had already been arranged.”

“When I was a kid, I really didn’t have a choice. We trained as if we were going to the Olympics.”

Her childhood was spent commuting between Newton and Chinatown — she attended school in Newton during the day, being the only Chinese girl in her class; after school, her father would drive her to Chinatown to continue her training at her mother’s martial arts school in Tai Tung Village. Her mother also sent her back to China twice for summer training camps.

As a teenager, Yen began to question the purpose of such intense training and drifted away from martial arts for a time, trying to live a more “normal” adolescence. But she eventually found her way back.

“What is meant for you will eventually happen. If you have a strong foundation like this, at some point you'll come full circle — you’ll come back to where you’re meant to be.”

Yen says she never had a direct conversation with her mother about whether she is willing to learn martial arts. Her understanding of her mother is largely pieced together through interviews with her mother’s students, reviewing historical materials, and looking through video records. She attributes this to her mother’s naturally reserved and rarely expressive character, coupled with her mother’s current decline in cognitive ability and her current residence in a nursing home. The mother-daughter relationship was not one that would proactively ask such questions, she said. Nevertheless, Yen believes that taking on the role of heritage management is a way of responding to her mother’s unspoken expectations in another form.

Memory to Public Archive

Chris Yen revealed that she plans to donate relevant literature and materials about her mother to the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University, which is an important step in the preservation work. In addition to written materials, she also is preserving a large number of physical cultural relics—weapons, props, and costumes, as well as the audio-visual materials recorded over the years by her father, Klyster Yen (former head of the Boston branch of Sing Tao Daily).

Chris Yen said the next goal is to place these collections in a museum, whether it is the proposed Asian American History Museum that may be established, or other institutions that specialize in collecting martial arts history or the achievements of female pioneers. She also mentioned that she is preparing a documentary project about her mother’s life.

“As generations go by, the gap grows wider — people get older, memories fade, we move on to different parts of life. That’s why it’s so important that this person’s work, what they did and achieved, is preserved — so that a hundred years from now, people will still know there was such a person, and that these things were created out of someone’s body of work.”

At the end of the interview, Mark’s daughter offered some reflections for younger Chinese Americans: “Everyone is going to have regrets — that’s inevitable. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone has highs and lows. But on either end of that spectrum, I think the most important thing is not to lose sight of reality. Life is real, and what we have is what we have — we may not have it forever. Think about what you have now that’s valuable to you, and imagine yourself 20 years from now, looking at that same thing. Would you still be able to cherish it?”

This story was funded in part by Boston 250, a public-private partnership between the City of Boston and private sector partners, including Meet Boston, State Street, The Boston Foundation, John Hancock, Eastern Bank, Liberty Mutual, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and PNC Bank. Learn more at boston250.org.