In These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World, a new book from Mondo Books, the publishing arm of the pop-culture-friendly art brand, authors Grady Hendrix and ...

Fighters aren’t usually the blushing type. But Xu Xiaodong can’t hide his embarrassment when asked about his latest battle scar, a three-inch crimson railroad track that snakes over his right eyebrow.

This story appears in the March 2011 issue of National Geographic magazine. The master spent his last day of life wrapped in a quilt stitched by his wife, his rasping, irregular breaths filling the ...