Nar Han Sef (always with the paucal article, invoking the idea of two hands, or a small number is hands) is the martial art taught to New World Order elite boarding school students. The literal meaning of nar Han Sef is 'Chinese Hands'. Nar Han Sef resists easy characterisation, including elements of self defence, an exercise program, and a sport. It is focused on unarmed combat and use of improvised or premodern traditional weapons, with study balanced between striking and blocking, grappling and throws, and weapons.

Unarmed combat gets the strongest emphasis. Weapons training tends to be a secondary focus and shows a clear emphasis on training that is expected to be most useful with common and improvised weapons, like knives and sticks. 

History

Nar Han Sef means "Chinese Hands," but ironically has deep roots in karate and other Japanese martial arts, which had a huge presence globally prior to the Collapse. In a twist on the history of karate in Japan, where its Chinese associations were played down when karate was brought from Okinawa to Japan, early masters of Han Sef played up and invented Chinese associations to make Han Sef acceptable to the New World Order elite given the continued intransigence of Japan towards the Order.

The true early history of Han Sef is likely to be obscured. I learnt it from a master who opened a school teaching professional class children and adults quite close geographically to where the modern art is supposed to have been founded, and he told quite a different story about the origins of Han Sef than what elites of my acquaintance told me they had been taught in school. Lacking reliable historical records, I'll synthesize the hearsay as best as I'm able.

According to the official story, and partially corroborated by the unofficial versions, modern Han Sef was founded by a local Shotokan Karate Sensei, Javier Sullivan, who everyone seems to agree was an exceptional talent, although a polarising personality. Sullivan had long ties to the Seattle-area Globalist movement.

When the first of the elite boarding schools was founded in the area, na Sunato Akkatemi, Sullivan managed to talk his way in, providing a martial arts program which he sold as a way for elite children, valuable to kidnappers and trols, could have a chance to defend themselves in a dangerous situation. 

Sullivan was something of a syncretic practitioner who had studied other marital arts, and sensing some negative reaction to karate as a Japanese art, he came up with the idea of branding his karate, with significant modifications, as something more akin to Kung Fu. Sullivan is credited with being the first to call it Han Sef. Sullivan led the shift away from Japanese terminology like Sensei towards Chinese terms like Sifu, as well significantly Commonising the training vocabulary.

Sullivan's greatest gift may have been in marketing. As other elite boarding schools opened, Sullivan drummed up excitement and mystique around Han Sef by working with content creators and he lobbied successfully to have Han Sef programs started at other schools. 

As Han Sef spread, schools brought in locally available martial artists to staff their programs, causing significant divergence. On Sullivan's death in 2061, his efforts to promote uniformity were increasingly futile and his control was increasingly being flouted.

Sullivan's student, na Majk Li sifu, facing waning interests from the schools that were the art's lifeblood, recognised that major reforms were needed, in particular uniformity across schools in order to revitalise the sport aspect of the art. Li managed to convince the Global Ministry of Education to create a Global Han Sef Academy, na Onpas Akkatemi nar Han Sef (OAHS). In order to avoid the impression of a Cascadian takeover that would have alienated other senior instructors globally, it was founded in Taipei, Taiwan, in close proximity to the Global Military Academy, with the mission of bringing multiple masters together to pay them to do nothing but train and teach, with the Cadets as their captive training audience.

Over time, decisions made by the OAHS were imposed on the individual boarding schools and eventually everyone sent to train students in elite boarding schools were themselves trained at the OAHS. That has led to a very consistent elite art and fairly consistent influences coming from that direction on martial arts in the wider world. 

Characteristics

Han Sef resists simple characterisation. In this section, I will mainly focus on the elite version. Remember that the people teaching elite Han Sef make their entire living from it and are able to spend essentially all their time either teaching or training. On top of that, they may have upwards of 5-6 hours a week, more for top level competitors, with their captive student audience. So there is little need for focus, and streams of martial arts that have traditionally been their own distinct arts, albeit with very widespread cross training between arts, are fully integrated into Han Sef.

Han Sef does not aim to have a single, coherent goal. People practice it for exercise, for unarmed or improvised weapon self defense, athleticism and competition. Within Han Sef, there are striking and blocking techniques, and a style of competition geared to that type of consensual duel, grappling and throwing techniques and another competition style designed to highlight that aspect, a mixed style, weapon combat focusing on knives and improvised weapons, weapon combat focusing on traditional weapons, and tawlu, or forms, what karate calls kata, in which competitors are rated on the technical virtuosity and correctness of a set routine performance. 

As to whether it's good, I've studied karate in Britain and Han Sef in the New World Order, and yes, it's an effective martial art, and many of its practitioners are very good. However, I would not say it lives up to the legend that has been built around it. 

Han Sef has kept the belt system of progression, with colored belts for beginning students and black belts with numbers levels for advanced students and instructors. The colours used in the elite school system are, in order, yellow, red, orange, green, blue, purple and brown, and then up to ten levels of black belts. True to its origins in karate, practitioners wear white uniforms that are not called gis, but they're definitely gis.

Public Perception

The public perception of Han Sef is considerably hyped up from the reality, which is of a competent if somewhat bureaucratic and uninspired martial art. In popular media, Han Sef practitioners are shown having nearly magical powers. On a serious level, Han Sef is presented as representing the very pinnacle of human martial arts, with its roots in Chinese culture, to which the Globalists are unusually friendly, and people really believe in the superior skills of Han Sef practitioners. Generally, everyone buys the hype. There is general public knowledge that the military and police are trained in Han Sef, which only adds to the cachet.

There are those with a more nuanced view, particularly practitioners of other marital arts, who very much still exist, but generally there is little space for this point of view in the public perception.

Self Perception

Perhaps unfortunately for Han Sef practitioners, they themselves also buy the hype. They're spent their training careers being told that they are practicing a scientific martial art that represents the very pinnacle of development in the martial arts. They are taught to be arrogant, and fully absorb that belief. This can lead those who have studied it to be a little over-confident. 

Training in Han Sef feeds directly into the sense of superiority which is baked into elite youth as part of their education. They take pride in the fact that they trained seriously under the teachers who were taught by the global masters who are considered the best in the world and who are responsible for defining the purity of Han Sef.

Han Sef is sold as the inheritor of the whole lineage of Chinese and other marital arts, and also as an innovator which has taken human martial arts to a new level and a real achievement and point of pride of Globalism.

Varieties

Han Sef is seen as having two main streams, nar Ulua Han Sef, or 'High Chinese Hands', and represents the clear teaching direction of the OAHS, and nar Affe Han Sef, 'Public Chinese Hands', which is not affiliated with OAHS and which is being taught out in the community by people who were trained in the military or the police or who worked in a school and are trying to make a living or maybe just some extra income to support their hobby by teaching the wildly popular Han Sef to the broader community.

From Affe Han Sef, you will get other stories about other contributions to Han Sef and the way that much of its development solidly predates Javier Sullivan and the elite boarding school system. 

Affe Han Sef varies in authentic adherence to OAHS rules, how much of the art is taught based on an instructor's expertise and interests, and how much it draws on other martial arts. It's not unheard of for a completely different martial art background to be taught as Han Sef to try and cash in on the hype.

Generally, even more authentically rooted Affe Han Sef will tend to display divergences from the boarding school version, whether in the type of techniques that are the focus, the techniques themselves, the best system, ranks and terminology, the school rituals, everything.

Similarly, it would be fair to say that ideas from Han Sef have influenced other martial arts, such and the use of Sifu to address teachers, even in traditions that never used to use Chinese terminology. 

In Elite Education

All elite boarding school students have to study Han Sef right from starting school. They have to take at least two or three years, depending on the school. After that, they can choose to cut it completely, although its drills still feature in daily fitness programs, they can continue to take it casually, or, if they are identified as having particular talent and aptitude, they may be trained as an elite athlete and go on to compete intermurally. Given the high cost and inconvenience of travel, it's telling that this is one sport that schools are willing to support travel for competition for.

The reason why elite educators like Han Sef is the perception that it makes students safer and more likely to get out of a dangerous situation, but also how well it lends itself to the mythology they were building about the earned superiority of the Global elite. In turn, the global elites themselves fully buy in to their these narratives and perpetuate them, amongst themselves and to the wide public.