Real shaolin monks are a thing of the past. Comunist governments dont like religions and traditions and usually these are the first thing the wipe out or alter in a suitable way.
No, not that you are seeking. you can find all kinds of people that do demo's dressed like the old days. but are far from the real deal. If there is one he/she is a family member and only practices within that family.
there is a temple that teaches shaolin kung fu still in china. one of the older temples . i watched a documentry on it i downloaded from shareaza.com from national geographic. they eat basic buddhist foods still like rice/bean shoots, excersize daily, practice daily ect. they also study qi'gong and all the traditional conditioning methods. it was very interesting. the students learned the animal forms, not wu shu and qi gong.
I saw that same show you speak of ,although it looked pretty good and realistic ,it was still Wu Shu with some basic applications thrown in. Most Wu Shu is being taught with basic applications these days. jeff
A little known fact of the real shaolin monks of back then is that they used to have their "enlightment rank" or "martial rank," call it what you will--burned in their head with an incence stick. If you think whatever monks you saw on tv are real or not look at their heads, the older monks should have a series of spots on their heads.
Do more research. Seriously. The place has been checked out by numerous martial scholars and they all come back with the same thing: 1. They practice modified Govermenet Wu Shu 2. Other than form government sources no one can verify the Shaolin lineage 3. This is simply a tourist/cultural commodity for China. The previous posts are right. True Shaolin, in its originial form, has been dead for generations in China. - Matt
None, since the obect cannot be moved and the force cannot be stopped. So that means you have a net force, and this cancels the unstoppable force effect.
immovable object, since the reaction force of the unstoppable force cancels the force out, because a force is a force, no matter how great the magnitude. But u cant really say it wins, there not like fighting.
the streanghth, breathing excersizes, and regular excersizes were not wu shu. the qi'gong the children practice were not wu shu. the iron palm training was not wu shu. they also study and learn the weapon forms and animal forms. though often in non competing combat methods. maybe its modern shaolin due to communist pressures were if you fight a comradde, you get your head cut off during early communism. thats why they started wu shu to not hurt eachother.
I think what Matt is trying to say is(sorry if im wrong mate, dont show up at my door for a challenge ) that whatever they are doing is not the real thing. Wusu is not only the funny dancing thing you see in the states it also encopases the altering of most styles to reduce effectiveness. The styles are have their power generation methods taken away(styles who draw power from waist motion have no waist motion and so on) but the style still holds some resemblance to its counterparts.
No they started Wu Shu because the government realized that Kung Fu was a cultural commodity that could generate $'s and power for China. And they also realized that China had a strong tradition in part from Shaolin of Chinese Boxers rebelling against the government (Boxer's Rebellions anyone). And so they created a form of "Martial Arts" that had the "Martial" removed from it. IT ISN'T SHAOLIN NO MATTER WHAT THE CHINESE GOVERNEMENT TRIES TO PASS OFF. To put it another way, Lincoln had a question he used to ask people: "If you called a tail a leg, how many legs would a dog have?" People would respond "5." Lincoln would quickly respond "4. Just because you call a tail a leg doesn't make it one." "Shaolin" in China only exists because the governement allows it to. And they're not teaching traditional material (though they claim to be). However, feel free to go on embracing romantic notions like Shaolin exists above ground in China, that TKD is 2000 years old, and that Yellow Bamboo people can knock people out at a distance with Chi. Don't let reality interupt fantasy. Spot on Cyber by the way. - Matt
matt, study communism, china, and kung fu history in the early 20th century, then go back and rethink that post through. when the communists took over they saw most kung fu artists as a threat against them. they outlawed kungfu practice publicly, teaching privately, sparring, and whatnot. If you were caught fighting with another person the punishment was public decapitation. if you were taught teaching ect it has similiar consequences. so what did they do? instead of doing sparring ect, they moved to wu shu which allowed them to continue martial arts but not cause damage to eachother. so it moved from a group/sparring thing to something you could do on your own more arobicly. even this was hard to practice in the early communist era. later after the 60's kung fu became a commercial and hollywood item. so they went and started to relax their rules and laws and even fund old programs they destroy 20 years earlier like the shaolin. this goes beyond kungfu. this happend on anything that could be tied to culture, religion, or anything that would organize people into a group or club. anything that isn't a group or club for communism was not seen important and considered a threat. for 20 years or so they burned down villages, temples, shrines, houses, cultural relics, statues, monuments ect anything that would pose a threat to communism. one of these was the kung fu monks 0.o sadly it was the monks who taught the revolters of the chinese boxxer revolution in the 1800's over throwing an evil dynasty. this helped the communist take power... and in the next few years killed over 60 million people in a civil war between communist war lords. don't smoke opium, don't join a military communist club, and don't go breaking stuff hehe.
Been there, done that. And have talked with other people who have studied this matter pretty deeply. And your post supports it. True Kung Fu was banned and Monks were killed. Period. End of story. Most fled the country, to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Vietnam, or hid in Villages remote enough that they were beyond Mao's eye. But do you honestly think the people on the run suddenly buddy buddy'd up to the Communists after they were like "oh, hey, that cultural revolution thing... big mistake. The gang of four... those rascals sure were mischevious. Sorry about the temple and all the persecution." Wu Shu was created by the governement pulling together a number of sympathetic masters and gymnasts. "Contemporary Wushu, is based on traditional Chinese martial arts. However, Modern Wushu was not created until the 1950s. Chairman Mao directed that the old should serve the new and instructed leading traditional Wushu masters to create a new sport for a modern, socialist society." source: http://www.martialarts.com/martial-arts-articles/liuyu.htm And while China does have a performance Martial Arts tradition, for example the Chinese Opera, there was always a clear distinction between performance Martial Arts and fighting arts. The problem was that the governement is pushing Wu Shu as true Chinese Martial Arts. And Wu Shu has totally neutered the hips and many other aspects of power generation from the forms. It also has removed any sense of reality from the forms. What remains is arm/leg strength and acrobatics. None of that were ever the foundations of the Shaolin arts. Compare the modern Shaolin being taught at the temple to ex patriot's Shaolin arts and you'll see only a surface resemblance. In fact Wu Shu is so neutered that they had to create an entire fighting art Sanshou which bears far more resemblence to Muay Thai and kick boxing that to anything Shaolin derived (or Contemporary Wu Shu for that matter). [Note: I do understand that SanShou is more of a name for a sport than a specific system, but people often use it as a system name]. Stuffs being taught at the temple. But it isn't Shaolin. And to claim a connection to it is like saying that Modern TKD is rooted in Tae Kyun, ignorning the fact that it's based on Shotokan. Contemporary Shaolin's base draws far more from Wu Shu concepts than Shaolin. - Matt
I have been reading a little bit of Chinese History recently, thoguh not enough to pretend that I have any level of authority. Apparantly in the Ming Dynasty - I forget when exactly - the Emperor presented the Shaolin temple wiith a jade triangle representing heaven, earth and man. When the Ming Dynasty fell and the the temple got drawn into the conflict that followed the jade triangle became a rallying symbol and the resistance fighters thus became known as Triads. Eventually routed, unemployed and in foreign lands their skills got put to use in criminal enterprise. If something survived in the world of crime then maybe something more survived elsewhere, who knows? As for buddying up with the Communist government, it is possible from what little I know of Budhism I believe I can say that they are rather keen on forgiveness. What say you guys, any truth in this?
It's true that the Triads started as a revolutionary organization and evolved into a criminal group. The same, as memory serves, was true for the Yakuza and other such groups. Buddists are big on forgiveness. At the same time, they're not blindly stupid. The Dali Lama (a good measure) isn't planning on setting foot into Tibet until the Chinese are out. Even if they said to him "Dali, check it out, we promise to end the oppressions and live happily with you folks... just not pull our troops out. Why dontcha come back." I have a feeling he'd decline. Forgiveness is one thing. Forgetting is another. And karma or not only fools forget. - Matt
