About 1,500 years ago the Emperor of the Great Tong Dynasty sent monks of Shaolin temple which is believed to be the origin or birth place of the Chinese Kong fu to travel to the south-east part of main land China to build a branch of the Famous Southern Shaolin Temple and train local people with the secrets of Shaolin Kong Fu to fight the pirates who were harassing the coast line, ever since then, the secrets of Chinese martial arts has rooted in the Southern part of China and trained many of the martial artists who were later famous for their animal mimicking styles. However, in the late 17 century, the southern Shaolin Temple was oppressed by the authority because it didn’t recognize the ruling emperor of the Ching Dynasty and out of rage, the emperor sent out an army to destroy it. After a ferocious fight, only five masters fled and they guarded the secrets of Kong Fu with them. Later they changed their names and hind in secrecy, the masters taught their Shaolin Kong fu to few chosen ones in the hope to rebel someday and rebuild the Great Shaolin Temple. And the Founding Master of my system was the direct descent of one of the five masters who fled the destruction of the Temple. And I am the certified master of the Seventh generation of our system. We have the most authentic secrets of Kong fu and we are the one true way for you to become a master.
Kinda cool! right?
There are a few questions I would like to encourage you to ask me though. The first one is, despite being a foreigner and don’t know much about the Chinese history, still you might happen to know that China has a much longer history than 1,500 years and what were the skills the people use to fight each other before the establishment of Shaolin Temple? Hmmm…probably not Shaolin Kong Fu. And the second question is that since the Chinese people in the north has been fighting the people in the south since very much the beginning of time, you should really wonder how could people in the south defend themselves from the northern army before the Shaolin temple decided to franchise it in the south?
But if you keep asking questions like these and Google a little more about Chinese history, I assume you will get your ass kicked by your master soon.
Chinese people have been doing a lot of fighting since very long time ago (Most of the Chinese Historian will agree that there was one hell of war in about 4,200 years ago when the southern tribal leader raged his army thousands of kilometers across China to the north for the control of China). The recent archeology excavation showed an ancient well balanced double edged bronze sword dated almost 2,200 years ago, still sharp and has elegant markings on it.
And throughout the history, The kings and emperors of China kept fighting to each other, The fighters, warriors and solders actually mixed each other’s styles and make it more suitable for their own preferences when they found anything useful. If you can recognize this fact, you will see that there is no pure breed of fighting style and anyone claims to be the pure descendant of some system is very suspicious. He or She is either weak like most of the pure breeds do or just being naïve.
Kong Fu is a living thing, not some archeology subject that the older is the better. You do not see a scientist hold on to the ancient Greeks’ theories and refuse to explore; you do not see a sprint runner refuse to adopt the latest training program and diet; you do not see an army general refuse to equip his men with better and innovative gears. Why would you insist on finding the most ancient and old heritage of Kong Fu if you want to learn it and use it?
The recent Chinese history is chaotic and tragic, two world wars killed almost 70 million people in China and the consequent famine and civil war killed even more. Many kong fu masters were killed, or lost in the long line of the refugee camps. Whoever survived were not necessarily the best masters but merely the luckiest ones. The China government seized all martial arts during the Culture Revolution in the 1970’s, it search and killed the remaining masters as many as it could. The modern day Shaolin Temple is only a tool of getting tourist money and satisfying the shallow curiosity towards the Ancient Orient. And just in case you don’t know, The Shaolin Temple is going to have an IPO in the stock market and welcome for franchise.
Being a kong fu instructor, I have no interest at the tall tells and heritages that may make me more presentable or prestigious. I am more concerned about the reasons and logics of the moves I learned from my master and how should I pass them to my students. I am devoting my time to make them more powerful and efficient. And I study other styles, practice with different doctrines such as Ju-Do, Brazilian Jit Jusu, boxing…etc and I respect all the people who are committed in all kinds of martial arts. I want to restore the glory of Kong Fu not by telling you fancy stories of the past but by showing you the punches and kicks that works now.
Being a Kong Fu student, I urge you to do the same.
Coming up next: Ch.6 MMA?
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