In order to check the spread of Chinese martial arts in Brazil, teachers pioneers who immigrated from China bringing in the Kung Fu were interviewed By making this choice in our dissertation, we contact an instrumental which is the use of interviews in the perspective of Oral History. Rummaging memory, accepting the silences, respecting knowledge built and deconstructing others may be considered as a very arduous task. Listen to these masters took us, even superficially, to try to understand some aspects of Chinese culture which the masters and Kung Fu itself is based on. Understand the gaps, difficulties and possibilities of the use of oral history as a methodological tool is what we seek in this article, in order to contribute to similar analyzes, either of martial practices or even to other perspectives on Chinese culture. Therefore, we aimed to point out and discuss the methodology of oral history and its relevance to the study of martial practices from the use of interviews. The results of the present discussion suggest that the Oral History is a useful instrument for the discussion of martial practices, notably considering the pertinence and specificity for the proper use of this research methodology.
Oral history; Kung Fu; Chinese culture