I learned a form from my Shifu, he only called it “Tiger”…I never thought to ask him the Chinese name; now I’ve been out of contact with him for several years.
The form seems to be a modern Songshan form. I found some versions on youtube, it is usually called Wu Xing Ba Fa. I wonder if there isn’t another name for the form, because Wu Xing Ba Fa (5 animals, 8 methods), doesn’t make sense. It is all based on Tiger.
Also the form is the same as the Songshan Wu Xing Ba Fa, except instead of the 5 animal hand techniques it only uses Tiger techniques, besides that the structure is basically identical.
So that makes me wonder, did someone just take the 5 animals version of WXBF and change it all to Tiger Claws to have a “Tiger” form? Or was this the original form and the other 4 animals added to create a 5 animals form?
Does the Tiger version have a poem? I remember Shifu referring to one move as “Tiger breaks ropes,” but I don’t know if there is a proper poem. Do any of you guys know this form? What’s the reason for WXBF and an identical form with just Tiger?
There are several versions of both forms on youtube. There used to be a clip of Shi De Cheng doing the Tiger version, but that got taken down. This video has someone doing the form, along with a little video of Shi De Cheng doing it in the corner.
Wuxing Bafa as done at Shaolin is an incredibly shortened form of a traditional Wuxing Bafa. I have no idea on its relation to Shaolin or why it’s practiced at Shaolin. The traditional Wuxing Bafa is a long taolu and is a complete system unto itself.
[QUOTE=pazman;1193115]Wuxing Bafa as done at Shaolin is an incredibly shortened form of a traditional Wuxing Bafa. I have no idea on its relation to Shaolin or why it’s practiced at Shaolin. The traditional Wuxing Bafa is a long taolu and is a complete system unto itself.
We published a photo essay of the modern form in our Shaolin Special 2007: Shaolin 5 Animals Demonstrated by Shaolin Monk Shi Decheng. Most sources feel that this is a modern form, but it’s still amusing. I learned it back then when I wrote that article, but I let it go. The quanpu are published in that article in English and Chinese. Here is the English, which I can retrieve easily from the original article draft. The Chinese is too troublesome to get because that was in the layout. If you want that, you’ll just have to get the issue.
[QUOTE=GeneChing;1195720]We published a photo essay of the modern form in our Shaolin Special 2007: Shaolin 5 Animals Demonstrated by Shaolin Monk Shi Decheng. Most sources feel that this is a modern form, but it’s still amusing. I learned it back then when I wrote that article, but I let it go. The quanpu are published in that article in English and Chinese. Here is the English, which I can retrieve easily from the original article draft. The Chinese is too troublesome to get because that was in the layout. If you want that, you’ll just have to get the issue. ;)[/QUOTE]
the most famous inheritor of Wu Xing Ba Fa quan in its original form is Qin Qing Feng as far as i know. Wu Xing Ba Fa has been his family style and he has published several books and videos on it. you can find his performance of one Wu Xing Ba Fa form in youtube.
the form that Shi De Cheng and other monks do i don’t know where it comes from. though it is said that the 5 animal kung fu has been developed based on the old version of Luohan quan and has been created by Shaolin masters, it has only been rarely trained in Shaolin area in at least these last centuries. however, the forms that are nowadays trained there by Shi De Cheng, Liu Zhenhai, and others has the same technical and stylistic contents as the form that Qin Qing Feng performs. they are either directly from Qin Qing Feng’s Wu Xing Ba Fa system or are modified versions of it.
I would be very surprised if the Wuxingbafa practiced in Dengfeng now had been a part of traditional Shaolin. If I’m not mistaken, there was a Five Animals style practiced in Ming Dynasty, but that is either lost to history or integrated somehow into the forms we have now. That might be what you are referring to, Shemmati. I learned Shi Decheng’s Wuxingbafa in an afternoon and spent the next few days doing partner drills from it. It’s a cool little form that I think would be fun for kids but doesn’t really fit in with the other things you learn in traditional Songshan Shaolin.
Can Be the Shaolin Temple’s Original 5 Animals quan??!!!
yeah pazman, i feel the same as you do. the Wu Xing Ba Fa 5 animals (dragon, tiger, leopard, crane, snake) kung fu that we know does not fit in the traditional Songshan Shaolin system. either it is not the same traditional Shaolin 5 animal system at all or has been excessively modified. it has actually nothing in common with Shaolin. even i mostly think it is a copy of the southern Wu Xing quan. btw, though having some technical differences, the obvious fact is that either this is a modified copy of that or that’s a modified copy of this! and i have some reasons that let me think that Wu Xing Ba Fa quan comes as a copy of the southern Wu Xing quan and not from Shaolin.
unlike Wu Xing Ba Fa, this Wu Xing quan is obviously a subform of the traditional Luohan quan of Shaolin temple (Shaolin temple’s Traditional Luohan quan: 1 & 2 (youtube)) so that the postures seem very close to the Luohan statue postures of the traditional Luohan system. BUT the animals are different here(!!!), they are: the peck of the rooster, the kick of the horse, the crouch of the tiger, the jump of the rabbit, and the twist of the dragon. the techniques of this form are obviously those of Luohan quan but slightly modified to the way the animals do them. the form is really traditional-looking, very very traditional (at least it looks so). if so, the most interesting things could be the original early versions of Rooster techniques that we see them as a well-developed system in Qi Xing (could be also called Ji Xing: Rooster) quan, and also tiger and other animal techniques. if this form is the same as i think, then it’s older than Qi Xing quan and so Qi xing quan has been created based on the Rooster techniques of this form; the same for other animals! this is vitally interesting.
can this from with the mentioned charateristics be really a form of the lost 5 animal system of traditional Shaolin kung fu?
I wouldn’t go that far with it! I don’t think this is a great set, and I’m not personally a fan of this series. First of all, the traditional sets are done very sloppily, but many others look made up just for the VCDs yet purposefully made to look traditional by drawing from several traditional sets, like RDH noted with the stick set in the other thread. This set looks to be the same thing to me.
We know different eras for Luohanquan, Bai Yufeng’s “5 fists”, and Ji Longfeng’s “rooster”. This set combines clear postures and sequences from them just as they are done today but lacks any real logic or depth overall.
don’t take it so serious LFJ, it’s a radical guess by a beginner! and beginners have many such radicalisms!
not only that Shi De Ci’s series, almost every video series has a bad problem. of course that Shi De Ci’s set is the worst for its terrible performance. but putting all those series together will definitely result in valuable points.
i have a question, is there any explicit historical piece on what have been those 5 animals of that ancient Shaolin system? I ask this because those 5 animals of Wu Xing Ba Fa (dragon, tiger, leopard, crane, snake) mostly taste a southern choice. Shaolin monks have almost never been that intemperate to use so many claws and finger strikes in that careless manner against opponents that every kick by them can break their fingers. such a fantastical radicalism can only arise from south China, Emei, and some other regions, but not definitely from the ancient Shaolin temple! a Shaolin monk has never been that irrational to, for example, lock his hand in snake gesture in a fight with an opponent whose kick can crack a stone slab! (though such hand gestures are deadly with well-trained fingers and Shaolin system has many such types of strike, they are not anyway safe, even for so-called iron-fingered men, except in the short moment before the strike is done.) btw, we don’t see such rationalism in neither Wu Xing Ba Fa nor its southern counterpart. on the other hand, the choice of the animals doesn’t fit to other pieces of traditional Shaolin literature. in Shaolin nomenclature we mostly see golden rooster, kicking horse, head-shaking lion, leaning dragon, hungry tiger, shrinking monkey… . this taste seems to me different from those in Wu Xing Ba Fa.
Most animal styles associated with Shaolin are ultimately attributed to Bai Yufeng from the late Ming Dynasty, who along with monk Jueyuan developed a system called Wuquan (five fists). This incorporated the classic five animals (dragon, tiger, leopard, snake, crane), but also drew from the older material in Shaolin at the time, such as Hongquan, Rouquan, and most importantly other Neigong material.
Students of Bai Yufeng, Jueyuan, and old man Li (Li Sou, who brought another Hongquan, stick fighting, and qinna material to Shaolin) who practiced this Wuquan divided into several different branches which spread to different areas in China. Shaolin eventually lost the sets, but got some back in the 1980’s and many of these are recorded in the Shaolin Encyclopedia. However, only the dragon, tiger, leopard, and snake sets still exist, while the crane is lost. It may have spread to places like Fujian where they practice crane styles and have connections to Shaolin.
One branch came from Yi Guan who was a student of Bai Yufeng and Jueyuan and travelled south where he crossed with a Ming general surnamed Cai (Canto: Choi) who was an uncle of the Ming emperor, and became the founder of Caijiaquan (Choi-ga-kyun) and influenced Cailifo (Choi-lei-faht).
These southern animal styles preserve the Wuquan material, but their sets have of course changed over time to fit with existing principles of local southern styles. But they may still be a good look at what the original Shaolin five animals were like.
The Wuquan material mixed with or to create still many other well-known styles, in Shaolin and throughout China. Wuxing Bafa comes from another branch that merged their five animals sets and do one very long set. Shaolin now does an abridged version of this.
[QUOTE=LFJ;1196585]…Wuxing Bafa comes from another branch that merged their five animals sets and do one very long set.[/QUOTE]
website chinafrominside.com writes in description of Qin Qing Feng’s WuXing BaFa videos that:
“Shaolin Five Animals Eight Methods Boxing was created in 17th century by merging famous Shaolin Five Animals (Dragon, Tiger, Leopard, Snake and Crane) Boxing with Large Vajra Boxing (Da Jingang Quan). For centuries it has been transmitted only within Qin family and has preserved the essence of traditional Northern* Shaolin martial arts.”
(* notice that northern Shaolin is not SongShan Shaolin kung fu. it’s a collection of later developed northern styles that they call Shaolin, like the southern styles that they call Shaolin. these are different from original Shaolin kung fu of SongShan Shaolin temple.)
these exactly confirm what you said about WuXing BaFa LFJ. albeit i’m skeptical the rest of Qin Qing Feng’s claim that WuXing BaFa is only a substyle of Da Jingang quan and that its main inheritor is Qin Qing Feng’s family. since many people know WuXing BaFa and its strange if only Qin family has made and preserved it. but these don’t matter for me, because WuXing BaFa is far from Shaolin kung fu spirit and principles and i’ve given up studying it since years ago!
in parallel with Qing Feng’s style and its related stories, there’s a similar WuXing quan form taught by Liu Zhen Hai. His son relates this form to SongShan Shaolin kung fu and mentions Shi De Gen. i don’t know Chinese, but seemingly he ascribes this form to Shi De Gen’s lineage or something similar:
[QUOTE=SHemmati;1197931]website chinafrominside.com writes in description of Qin Qing Feng’s WuXing BaFa videos that:
“Shaolin Five Animals Eight Methods Boxing was created in 17th century by merging famous Shaolin Five Animals (Dragon, Tiger, Leopard, Snake and Crane) Boxing with Large Vajra Boxing (Da Jingang Quan). For centuries it has been transmitted only within Qin family and has preserved the essence of traditional Northern Shaolin martial arts.”
these exactly confirm what you said about WuXing BaFa LFJ. albeit i’m skeptical the rest of Qin Qing Feng’s claim that WuXing BaFa is only a substyle of Da Jingang quan and that its main inheritor is Qin Qing Feng’s family. since many people know WuXing BaFa and its strange if only Qin family has made and preserved it. but these don’t matter for me, because WuXing BaFa is far from Shaolin kung fu spirit and principles and i’ve given up studying it since years ago![/QUOTE]
There was another branch that is sometimes called Jingangquan which preserved a serious of animal sets and has a very long 13 Claws set, but this is a separate branch from the Wuxingbafa.
[QUOTE=Kellen Bassette;1193100]I learned a form from my Shifu, he only called it “Tiger”…I never thought to ask him the Chinese name; now I’ve been out of contact with him for several years.
The form seems to be a modern Songshan form. I found some versions on youtube, it is usually called Wu Xing Ba Fa. I wonder if there isn’t another name for the form, because Wu Xing Ba Fa (5 animals, 8 methods), doesn’t make sense. It is all based on Tiger.
Also the form is the same as the Songshan Wu Xing Ba Fa, except instead of the 5 animal hand techniques it only uses Tiger techniques, besides that the structure is basically identical.
So that makes me wonder, did someone just take the 5 animals version of WXBF and change it all to Tiger Claws to have a “Tiger” form? Or was this the original form and the other 4 animals added to create a 5 animals form?
Does the Tiger version have a poem? I remember Shifu referring to one move as “Tiger breaks ropes,” but I don’t know if there is a proper poem. Do any of you guys know this form? What’s the reason for WXBF and an identical form with just Tiger?
There are several versions of both forms on youtube. There used to be a clip of Shi De Cheng doing the Tiger version, but that got taken down. This video has someone doing the form, along with a little video of Shi De Cheng doing it in the corner.
[QUOTE=pazman;1193115]Wuxing Bafa as done at Shaolin is an incredibly shortened form of a traditional Wuxing Bafa. I have no idea on its relation to Shaolin or why it’s practiced at Shaolin. The traditional Wuxing Bafa is a long taolu and is a complete system unto itself.
Interestingly this form also has a 108 move version.
Much longer than the long version even. The one he does in his instructional vcd, there is a longer one still. Has many more repeated movements and a better symmetry, though I suspect it is a little too long to be ‘performed’, I would kind of like to know this version for completeion;
My Shaolin Kung Fu master in Greece is a Shaolin Monk from Dengfeng.His Name is Shi Miao Dian.He is a student of Shi Heng Jun.He told me that there are 18 different Wuxing Bafa forms existing.I know 3 different forms.One is the common form that knows everyone, the second is a form that shows Shi de Yang at the end of a Dvd from him with his students.I think it is the Basics of Shaolin Dvd.This form is called Nanyuan Wuxing Bafa and includes Crane, Tiger, Leopard, Snake and representative for the Dragon are Mantis and Eagle together.There is no real Dragon existing.But this 2 Animals represent the Dragon because the Dragon is a philosophical Animal and not a true Animal.And the 3rd form that i know is that form that you have posted here with a link from youtube with the Name Wuxing Quan.The Dragon begins the Movements.But there are also Mantis and Eagle incoporated.
Historical accuracy on these kinds of things is pretty much a pipe dream. WuXingQuan as I learned is one of the original two systems taught at Shaolin and it’s roots are about 1500 years old. That’s as much history as I’ve ever gotten from a monk. It’s always surprising when I see people posting these long factoids about this stuff.
WuXingBaFa that DeCheng is doing is the demo version and represents about the first half of the form I learned.
As ever, each monk teaching it will change moves as he sees fit but you can almost always recognize the form. I learned it one way and then a year down the line my teacher changed a couple of the moves. I assume it was to look better. Also, if you demonstrate good skill with the form, he would do things like replace the low sweep kick with a three kick combo- spinning sweep kick, spinning hook kick, jump spin hook-kick. It’s at that halfway point so the cardio requirements for the form jump up dramatically.
I was fortunate enough to be able to learn/afford the form privately so I learned all of the applications for the moves. It’s worth investing in.
If your teacher is incorporating Mantis and Eagle it’s definitely for modern flavor but that’s ok, because who doesn’t want to learn those styles? heheh:)
talking about the ‘roots’ is itself inaccurate! 1500 years is referring to formation of Shaolin temple itself, when its kungfu has been at an embryonic stage! kungfu was practiced in china even much before Shaolin temple was formed, i can refer to those pre-Shaolin eras and add a few more thousand years to the age of the ‘roots!’ this, though not wrong, is unacceptable.
WuXing quan, as practiced nowadays in Shaolin comes from some sources. the original one (which is generally believed to have been lost) comes from Bai Yufeng, who, at most, has lived something less than 700 years ago! other systems, like southern WuXing and northern WuXing BaFa, are much newer.
