I have heard he was both,but first a Shaolin Chan Buddist Monk,then after the temple burned he retired to a daoist temple.Even though there have been drawings of him in daoist robes the Monks that passed on his art were Shaolin.Maybe it was a cool place for him to hang out in his old age?,maybe the robes felt good and silkie?I don’t know,I wasen’t there,Chinese history is so full of folklore its hard to put a finger on it,My Bai Mai Sifu says he was Shaolin,other Bai Mai schools say he was daoist,will the real Bai Mei please stand up?,love to hear some feedback from other Bai Mai/Bak Mai/Pak Mai schools,my mind is open
shaolin or o’mei?
what i was told is …
after the burning of shaolin bak mei travelled to the kwong wai temple & redeveloped his system.
so is there two “bak mei systems”? the original shaolin, & the redeveloped o’mei?? which one is the one we practise today?
i have an old article from inside kungfu on fut gar bak mei, which is buddhist.
remember cheung lai chung learnt from monk chuk fut wan, left him, then redeveloped it again, calling it bak mei pai…
will we ever find out?
peace
All of the oral tradition I’ve ever been privy to is the same as what FT has related.
It is my understanding that what matriculated in the Kwong Wai temple is a Taoist system w/Buddhist roots. But as for how much internal or external is at play seems to largely be up to the practicioner…I’ve seen some very fluid Bak Mei and I’ve seen some very rigid Bak Mei.
Popular legend has bak mei as a taoist priest. But can we be sure? Difficult to say for sure.
Can he be buddhist? also difficult to prove.
hi everyone
i know that talking religon is sometimes a bad thing, but can a devoted buddhist such as bak mei was (hopefully) training at sil lum jee for what 20 yrs or more- ill say 20 minimum.
just disrobe and become daoist and bat for the other side! did he do this to escape capture or to revenge the sil lum jee. some say he was kicked out for many reasons but its hard to see a buddhist become a taoist. buddhist and taoist are similar but different. bak mei could have doubted his buddhist beliefs and changed over to daoist, or was it more a infighting person thing he had against the sil lum jee.
remember the tai chi master also was a sil lum disciple and left to the daoist side.
something to think about- nice thread 
peace
I can see a Buddhist/Shil Lum exponent modifying his art using Taoist principles. There are other historical examples of this. If the White Eyebrow monk was exposed to Taoist martial systems, and then chose to “internalize” his own Shil Lum art based on these principles, his art has succesfully become Taoist, whether he himself has undergone any conversion is another story…
just a personal observation,
chan/zen buddhism (ie. the type that was a shaolin) has a lot of similarities to taoism, more so than other schools of buddhism…so perhaps the change wouldn’t be so radical.
The way I heard it…
The way I heard it this Bak Mei was the teacher of Ma Fu Yi–the one they called Atsat–the one who turned the temple over to the Chings. I also heard thae Bak Mei killed Gee Sim, the teacher of Hung Hei Kwan.
I don’t know if this is true or legend or what, but I am quite certain that while Cha’n was accepted more readily by the Chinese because its precepts were translated in Taoist terms, the two are still very different belief systems and not at all compatable. In fact the Taoists felt threatened by the incursions of the “foreign” religion.
If this guy changed from Buddhism to Taoism then it was a big change and there very well could have been political reasons.
:rolleyes:
If we accept the legend that bai mei was a buddhist monk and then he killed Gee Sim; then wouldn’t that cause a buddhist (a devoted monastic religion with a clear code of behavior) to become a taoist (a more secular philosophy/religion). Kinda like Christian story, of Man’s fall from Grace.
Again we have no histrorical proof of either. Just b/c we know he learned at shaolin does not mean he is monk. He could very well be taoist or even regular person.
Shaolin
Saw a pic of Cheung Beng Fatt(CLC’s son),in the background there is a scroll that says “Monk Bai Mei comes from Buddist Shaolin”,if he was Buddist why would he change to Daoist??,I’ll get a scanner in a few weeks and post the pic.
who knows
maybe the 2 factions joined together when the ching came in. buddhist where being slaughtered and they became daoist to hide from the authorities.
so they went to the kwong wai temple, bak mei and fung do duk. 
peace
How do you know for sure bai mei is buddhist?
As i say again some ppl. now say he was not even a real person.
I think Pak Mei is more popularly known as a Taoist in terms of legendary stories. Often my friends that are Chinese will ask me about the kung fu style that I am doing and when I say that its Pak Mei, they would nod their head and say, “Oh thats Pak Mei Tao Yan’s style” (in Cantonese it means White Eyebrow Taoist man). And I am talking about Chinese that doesn’t know much about martial arts but have watched quite a few Chinese martial arts movies.
leaves me wondering kull,were any of the other “five elders” real?? I mean its hard for me to buy the story that Nun Ng Mui (Wu Mei) developed Wing Chun from watching a fox and a crane fight(or was it a klingon and a vulcan).I’ve seen the Wu Mei people and they look NOTHING like the Wingtsun/Wing Chun I’ve seen.And they claim to come from the Nun,why so differant?
tnwingtsun
hi there!
wu mei is plum flower style, i think wing chun was made by a student of ng wing chun. this person named it after her teacher, well thats what i have read… i dont know if that is correct? i dont do wing chun.
i heard wu mei is quite good, has plum flower poles and other stuff. i read an old article that ken lo i think he was the master in the uk at the time in combat magazine.
c ya 
peace
Hiya Tiger,I’ve got a tape that has Ken Lo on it,I’ll put that in the box for ya too,my friend who gave me the tape said that there is another Wu Mei org. that looks nothing like Ken’s Wu Mei,I belive Ken says in the tape that Wu Mei is another name for the Nun Ng Mui(the Shaolin Nun that trained Wing Chun),I’ll watch it again, peace bro
Wu Mei is the Mandarin pronounciation of the Cantonese Ng Mui. There appears to be two different ways to write the name. In both, Wu (Ng) means the number 5. Mei (Mui) is written as either “plums” or “branches” depending on the Chinese ideogram. The other organization you are referring to most likely belongs to the late Wai Ming Chau who was Ken Lo’s school brother. Both studied under Grandmaster Pang Hop (Peng Hsieh in Mandarin).
Are the five elders real? I don’t know for certain. I don’t know of any historical records, of reliablility that mentions them. But also written chinese records rarely have to do with martial art history. If there are any can someone tell me about it. I would definately like to know.
…Of the important masters, there were 5 altogether that escaped the razing of Fukien Shil Lum. They didn’t escape together, with the exception of Fung Do duk and Bak Mei. There were NO “5-Elders” and they never gigged clubs together and were never a real group.
To the extent that they can be crossreferenced and are held by lineages that claim them, they have reality and these people may be the only ones rightfully concerned…
Chan Monk White Eyebrow Part 1
Current writters and website operators mistakenly identify our founder as a Taoist prist.As a result Bai-Mei has been called a taoist system.
From the perspective of Chinese culture and the history of Chinese religions,most writers who presented Bai Mei the Chan Monk as a taoist priest overlooked the an important distinction between the taoist as a philosopheror the man of tao who practices the way of tao and the taoist priest who practices the religion.(religious taoism).
Modern Bai Mei Shaolin started with CLC.Hence the ultimate authory on the orgin of our system rests with him.He,his children and his disciple Chan Suey Dor(also known as Chan Dor) of New York all agreed on one thing,that Bai Mei is a Shaolin system.This statment is supported with the following discovery:Chang’s oldest son Beng Lum produced a book,Bai Mei,Chang Lai Chuen in 1989.On the first page we find a pic of CLC sitting with the background of a Chinese word for longevity flanked with two colums of characters.On the next page another shows his son Chang Beng Lum sitting against another frame of writting,but flanked with the same colum of charactures.The right one says:Bai Mei transmits the true superior art.The left one says:Inside the halls of Siu-sud(as apart of Mt.Song,being another way of referring to the Shoalin Monastery)are exhibited the results of wonder.There is a pic of Chang Beng-Fatt,it shows him under a colored banner bering this message: "Bai Mei came from Chan Buddhism"It evolved from Shoalin’s martial arts inside the Shaolin Monastery of Den-feng, Mountain Song in Henan.However how did the notion taoist religion creep into the history of Bai Mei?
HB Un’s book has a photostat copy of a drawing of a person in taoist robes was represented as the "portrat of White Eyebrow"The chinese statemaent stated that this was the "genuine of Bai Mei,the spirtualy real person(ibid)“Pointedly,the next two pics contain a caption under the pics stating:“the monk Chuk Fat Wan, the teacher of GM CLC in chan buddest garb and GM CLC in taoist robes.The author apparently could not discern the difference between buddhist and taoist ones.Most amusedly,both Chuk Fat Wan and Chang Lai Chuen actually had buddist robes.
Third the book,Emperor Chen Toured Southern china(Shortened as Emperor Chen-Lun) that was written about 150 tears ago described the fight between Bai Mei and Ji-sin.There is not much significant difference between the two versions(Hung-ga’s),except(1)that in this version of the story Bai Mei and his students are the good ones,and Ji-sins students are the abusers of the martial arts.Ji-sin was supposedly guilty of spoiling his students
(2) Bai Mei and his students were authorized to capture those abusers who had mudered some innocent people
(3) that although the two versions agree that that Bai Mei and Ji-sin were both members of the five elders of the Shaolin system,in the book Emperor Chen-lun,our founder the Chan Monk Bai Mei was addressed sometimes as a man of Tao,sometimes as old Monk(pg.189).It is self-evident that any elders of the Shoalin Temple must be buddhist,and as abbots of temples they were most certainly Chan Buddhist Monks,not priests of the taoist religion.
Evidently,the writer used the word “Tao” in a dual sence.Thus,man of"Tao” can be interpreeted to mean both the taoist religion practitioner and also to whoever pursues his spiritual path in a taoist way,He not only used “men of tao” to cover both Ji-sin and Bai Mei,but also to identify Ji-sin’s(Gee-Shin)students.To futher substantiate this point,consider the following points.On page 182,Ji-sin was reported to say"because they(Bai Mei and his disciples) do not treat us as fellow men of the same school and the same tao”. Next the writer describes the situation immediately before the fight saying…“We see two men of tao,hurriedly entering reporting to Ji-sin,Sifu,really bad news”
The religion of Chan Monk Ji-sin has never been qustioned.Thus,the religion of his colleague of the same school and of the same tao,should not be questioned and most certainly not called a practitioner of the Taoist religion/Taoist Priest