Keith,
why were the “standard” battlefield weapons of the day not taught?
Look at the two weapons of Wing Chun: double knife and pole. Based on these two weapons, a practitioner can be given a technical understanding of many different types of weapons in a short period of time.
In brief, the double knives contain concepts and movements for: edge weapon tactics such as slice, chop, hack, stab, bash, weapon catch; they also teach paired weapon usage, short weapon length, and light weapons. The long pole contains the movements and concepts for blunt trauma weapons tactics such as thrust, redirect, circle, press, and bar in addition to single weapon usage, long weapon usage, and heavy weapons. Put together, you have a tactical understanding of all possible hand-to-hand weapons except for thrown/projectile weapons and momentum weapons (throwing knife/star, bow/arrow, rope dart, chain whip). Going further, both the knife and pole fit within the constructs of maintaining your own space - to use a throwing weapon or a momentum weapon, I have to go out of my way to kill in the former and maintain a high level of aggression in the latter.
As for the origins of the pole - the Spear was considered the king of the battlefield in ancient times. However, you can’t bring a spear into the temple. When you cut the head off, you ended up with a single headed pole, reminiscent of the Wing Chun gwan. Spear shafts can range from 6’ to 15’ with a median length of 9’ also reminiscent of the Wing Chun gwan. Finally, the military spear makes use of 13 concepts. When you cut off the spear tip, you lose some of the concept as you’ve lost the ability to cut your opponent through changing the weapon from bladed to blunt force trauma. With the collapse of the Ming and the loss of its formal military structures, soldiers and Generals sought refuge to foment revenge. One of those places was the Southern Shaolin Temple. In the early 1600s a General visited the Shaolin and trained the monks in the use of the pole. With the advance of the Qing, some groups fled from the Northern Shaolin to the Southern Shaolin bringing with them knowledge of the pole.
In answer to your question about army training, it is important that the trainers know what they are doing. Hence, use usage of the pole and double-knife to abbreviate the overall training process. Individual groups of soldiers could be taught specific sets of concepts with a specific weapon such as a Kwan Dao in a relatively short period of time. As I stated before, it wasn’t necessary to teach everyone the whole system. Training was strictly based on a ‘need-to-know’ basis.
But the book says that HFY was developed and used to train an entire ARMY to fight against the Qing. Nothing is said about it being limited to just a few small “cells.” Did the book overstate its case?
I think you’re missing the context - an army of anti-revolutionaries trying to maintain secrecy. It seems to me that it would be intuitively obvious that such an army wouldn’t be comprised of 100,000s of people - it would be a much smaller scale - in the 1000s. The Qing very quickly took control of large areas of the China. As they established control, the resistance they met was less in the form of Ming Dynasty fielded armies and more in the form of scattered groups organized around strong personalities. One such group was the Cheung family that controlled Taiwan. They had close to 300 ships in their navy and gave the Qing quite a bit of trouble. It was the defeat of the Cheng family that signaled the consolidation of the Qing in 1683.
Why do we not see remnants or suggestions of HFY left behind by the many members of this army that surely would have continued to practice and possibly teach what they had learned?
I think that is open to debate - what constitutes remnants or suggestions of HFY? There are aspects of body mechanics that are similar throughout the southern styles of Kung Fu. We’re collecting more information in this regard - but in order to establish an evidentiary link, the systems in question have to be mapped out. This takes quite a lot of time and effort and resources are limited. However, I recently had an opportunity to speak with an Ng Jou (Five Ancestor) practitioner and in their Chi Sau they make use of a body structure that could be classified as Yin Line but he wasn’t conscious of why he placed his elbows where he did - he just knew that it was better than other places through 10 years of hard training. His Sifu didn’t make reference of Yin Lines either - but mentioned about placement of the elbow based on experience over time.
other martial arts associated with the rebels were not kept secret.
I’m sure you can appreciate that this is only relevant for other arts, not all. Why and when some arts were made public is not germane, in my opinion, to the time and place of HFY going public. It remains to be see if other arts will come to the public in the future.
I didn’t see anything in “Mastering Kung Fu” to support the theory of WCK as military training for an army as opposed to WCK as self-defense training for a small rebel group.
Look over the context I outlined above and let me know what you think.
Jeremy R.
Actually the 5 Ancester kung fu has there form of chi sau too. So, should we conclude that Yip Man took it from them? Tai chi has something like that too. So, should we conclude that tai chi is related to WCK? Since The VTM is actually doing research on WCK (traveling and asking famous WC Sifus about what they know). Maybe is best asking them what they came up with about the chi sau history.