If not Choy Fook then who was he?
Maybe his own person. It was documented that Choy Fook was nicknamed Rotten Head Monk as his head was burnt in the fire that destroyed the temple. Just recently the Chan Family finds a paper saying Choy Fook was the Green Grass Monk. Come on, isn’t this awfully convenient. Why not quash the whole GGM story years ago?
They have just as many holes in their stories as the hung sing & buck sing side.
I dislike politics. I’m not sure if there is any “perfect” recording of CLF history. It seems everyone has a different version. . . .
I agree with CLFNole, each version has holes.
I dislike politics as well; however there is nothing wrong with discussion of history in a friendly manner. There is nothing political about knowing where you come from; however finding that out can be difficult to say the least.
Peace.
Baaaaah! :mad: :rolleyes:
sounds like it’s time for some rooftop fights!
winner gets to write the history as he sees fit. 
That’s the problem with so many so called Traditional Chinese Martial Arts. Look at the holes in Choy Lay Fut…Look at the arguments within Hung Gar…then not to mention my style of Black Tiger :rolleyes:
Like my sifu says all the time who really knows ,if any of this stuff is true?
It was so long ago that there’s noone left alive to base anything on. Even then ppl will still find ways to debate everything you say. There is just no way to know who’s legit and who’s not in some cases, because you never know who taught who or exchanged info with who.
Black Tiger is said to have been the highest level of Shaolin training at one time, how many other arts claim that same title?!?!
It was only taught to Monks at one point, how many arts claim that title also?!?!
At one time there was only two known Black Tiger styles Haak Fu Muhn and Shantung Black Tiger (Northern and Southern) How many Black Tiger styles are around now, atleast four i can think up off the top of my head.
So, there’s somethings that we’ll never know the answer to.
Was there ever a Southern Shaolin Temple?
Some say yes some say no
My lineage says yes because it was created by Su Hak Fu from Sil Lum Fu Jow (Shaolin Tiger Claw) the same Tige Claw style that bore Hung Gar, so if it’s a lie, then both Haak Fu Muhn and Hung Gar along with other styles that were bore from them must be fake right?!?!
Who knows?
jeff:)
I think we can accept most of what’s been said to be the truth. If not where does that leave us when it comes to ancient history ancient history in general. it’s just that kung fu allows people to do incredible things.
I have to disagree on this Vasquez.
I think everything should be questioned when it is put forth as a principle or known truth. It is critical to finding the truth of a given thing. So acceptance of what has been said is almost on par with acceptance fo the reality of the tooth fairy. After all, it wasn’t so long ago in school that we were taught taht the Egyptian pyramids were made by Hebrew slaves. This of course is not even one iota close to what the archaeological record shows, or for that matter, the written records and sites uncovered in the last 20 years. So, Shaolin certainly needs some scrutiny when you have all sorts of tales and legends and myths all stired together in one pot and offered as bonafide. It behooves scholars to investigate.
Also, I agree, Kungfu allows or rather when achieved makes it so that you are able to do things with your body that your average joe cannot. But then there are levels and degrees to that as well. I know kungfu people who are many years of practice and cannot contort like the 14 year old wushu athletes, but then, everyone’s kungfu is their own. Depends on the focus.
And what if your Kungfu was to be the ultimate in the societal norm.
It is diligent practice that brings the practitioner to succeeding and attaining Kungfu. The “kungfu” doesn’t really do anything. 
That’s why it helps to go to a traditional school. The full style and histroy is passed on to its rightful inheritor. As long as they maintain the traditional way of teaching the chain would not be broken and all the knowledge is passed down intact.
There is both correct and incorrect in this as well.
Traditional afterall is only being taught in the manner and fashion that your teacher was taught and how his teacher was taught and so on.
So, if a half truth or a lie slipped in 5 generations ago, it is grown and embellished to the point of now where it is almost irrepairable.
Definitely something worth considering. Even some of the most so called traditionalists have murky lineages, backgrounds and questionable histories. That much has been shown again and again.
What’s important most to me in a school is:
- is the result seeable and achieveable
- Is the result effective
- Is their benefit to oneself on the whole in regards to health and self defense
If those are there, then for me, the connections to the past are inconsequential.
There are many practitioners out there who have fine lineages but the kungfu they propogate is incomplete, watered down and in some cases wholly ineffective in combat both sportive and for real.
In other words, my yard stick for good martial arts doesn’t include the presumption of those three things based on a lot of tradition.
Besides, while many take for granted the shaolin heritage of their style, few consider the huge gap of some 60 - 80 years in the Shaolin heritage and how it has mosty been brought back by folk masters and government wushu sponsorship.
Not to mention the animosity between KMT background clubs (of which there are many connections to those shaolin based styles that came out after the late 20’s) and the same PRC driven interests and not to mention teh kungfu that kept going in China and in some cases is still quite obscure.
Things are not soi cut and dried for me anymore and I am not one to take another persons word on something because of their status or fame in such an often closed community.
You either got it in your hands, or you don’t got it in other words. Games of face don’t fit with my world view and for the most part I eschew them.
anyway, that’s my point of view. A method can be sound without all the superfluous trappings of cultural tradition, not that there is anything wrong with cultural tradition, but I have to remain pluralist for the most part and carry on.
It’s not to say that a kung fu style is without flaws. It’s to say that we don’t train enough these days to begin to understand where the flaws are. That’s why the traition way is used to pass down the knowledge intact from generation to generation. If we meddle with the ‘recording’ we not only distort the learning of the present generation but also the learning of future generations.
The knowledge isn’t passed down intact though from generation to generation.
In fact, there is no line of kungfu that is taught in the same method as it’s first master taught it unless the style is very very young.
As for training, when it comes to something like kungfu, how much is enough? How much training is not enough? If you train, you train in my opinion. One doesn’t have to be doing 6 hours of athletics to get prepared for a continuous stream of combat matches to say they are training kungfu.
If you train everyday, in some aspect of your kungfu, then you are training. If you train once a week, although you are slacking, you are training.
Each and every teacher puts their own experience and their own flavour into the kungfu they teach. Is this “meddling”? Transmission is never, ever perfect is my point and as well, there is no kungfu today that is the same as what was once and that which was then, is not necessarily as good, or any worse than what is now.
Kungfu isn’t about some old man 100 yeasr ago who could jump 20feet and kill 10 men with his bare hands. It’s not about the temple and it’s woes or it’s heyday, it’s not even about the wanting to be able to do things that you thought were only myths.
Kungfu is about you, working on you, to be a capable and understanding human being, who doesn’t have to be affected the demons that would inhabit you otherwise, like self doubt, fear, greed, anger and so on.
Once you have mastered yourself in context to your understanding of your self on all levels, physically and mentally and emotionally, and once you have mastered yourself in context to the world around you and others so that you can funtion optimally in your relationships and in whatever you may encounter by chance, then you’ve achieved kungfu.
fighting becomes the smallest part of it when you go down the path long enough.
The path being you of course.
A point I find lacking in most of the arguments of historical or systemic clarity on this board is the fact that one should not have to rely on someone to define what is or is not correct historically or principly when that job clearly falls on the system itself. This does not happen by accident but is diliberate there are diamonds and there are gems that look like diamonds only when we know what it is that makes a daimond a diamond can we distinguish between the two. As long as your idea of something comes from a source outside of yourself no certainty of that idea will ever exist. As for Shaolin as was stated earlier if you know what Shaolin is you can actually answer the question of are you training Shaolin The answered is inherent in the system and if it is not there is a reason for that as well.
I know that transmission is not perfect, that’s why we have to make sure its as good as possible. A student may not be good at kung fu, and the inheritor may not be as good as his sifu - but at least if ther forms can be passed on as intect as possible, someone in the future would understand what’s going on.
it’s possible I suppose. But there are differences in intact forms passed along from one school to the next and each claims possession of the real transmission. The idea of possession is where the quality and value of the system is lost imo.
One school executes technique differently than another and this may or may not dilute the riginal intention of a given series. In teh end, form is just shape. What’s in the shape is as you say, up to that someone to figure out how to make it effective. If that person cannot find a way, then it may only be kept as a shape or a shadow of what it is intended to be while emphasis is placed on those aspects that can be made effective by the individual.
that’s the way it is. In my opinion, it is the principles and the kinetics of them in practice that has more importance. Also, I feel this is why the shape of kungfu changes as time passes. In many cases, that which is old becomes new again and is rediscovered. Sometimes, this is mistakenly thought of as new and original, but that’s neither here nor there.
But like anything, there is good and bad in the traditional ways of transmission as tehre is in the modern methods. Seems that this is the nature of things.
what about dim isn’t most of that lost?
By “dim” are you referring to dim mak?
yes I meant dim mak - chinese pressure point strikes, like in eagle claw or mantis fist.
I don’t think it is “lost” so much as it has been grossly misinterpreted and misrepresented via movies, misunderstanding and embellished transmission of what it is.
For instance, the movie crouching tiger hidden dragon shows a person being paralyzed by a series of strikes to points on the meridians around teh spinal column.
This in turn leads people to think that this is doable. This misinterpretation is common in martial arts particularly in movies where actuality is blurred with fantasy.
The thing about the “truth” of any matter is that once the mystique is removed, in peoples minds interest is lost because they can now in their minds move on to the next thing that is shrouded in mystique.
Maintaining mystique is a vehicle for maintaining peoples interests as well. Dim mak definitely fits in this category. As does a lot of Kungfu or martial arts practice in general. The mystique is also a vehicle to ridicule something such as you see in the chest banging that goes on between some people who are into mma vs some people who are into traditional method of kungfu development. the mma set ridicules the tarditional practices and the traditional people minimize the value of mma fighting sometimes diminishing it to nothing more than barbarism.
This of course is all something that takes place in their own minds and has nothing to do with the actual reality of it. The actual reality of it can only be succinctly gained through ones own practice and experience. IMO, if one hasn’t taken a kickj at both, then they have no place commenting on the differences between either.