Shaolin Temple Movie - Actor Seminar Shaolin Martial Arts

[Bob]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFg2_af0QfM

Bai Yuan Tong Bei
The gentleman in the clip was an actor in the Shaolin Temple movie and he played the villian. He was from Xi'an at that time and his wife was a contemporary wushu Champion performer.

After the seminar we had dinner with him at Luigi's (Akron, Ohio - old pizza place) and I sat across from him and through a translator he told us about the filming of the Shaolin Temple - he said when they came upon the Temple there were only two gardeners and nothing more - the place was a wreck and he proceeded to tell us there were no original "Shaolin Temple" forms as they all had been reworked along contemporary wushu lines.

Years later, on my first trip to China, we met Wu Bin (Jet Li's coach) in Shanghai and he reiterated that there were no original Shaolins forms and they had all been recreated from the material available and conformed to contemporary wushu.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhF3qWe1QZY

Bai Yuan Tong Bei



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3aUFTNkptI

Laurence & Kane
WuTan Students of Tony Yang and the late Dave Schenk (Kane is his son)

[Trick]

several decades earlier than the making of the Shaolin-temple movie, founder of Shorinji-kenpo and founder of Yiquan had made the same observation, but there was still some monks dwelling around the temple area, one was said to have superficially known some Xinyiba.
Doshin-So the founder of Shorinji-kenpo acknowledge that his boxing was mainly inspired by the murals he saw in the temple.
Those murals show monks in sparring, no 1 man forms/taolu or diagrams of such.
The Shorinji-kenpo organisation was so bold to proclaim they
were the sole inheritors of Shaolin boxing. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why in China in the 80's the hurry to put together a new ”authentic” Shaolin boxing.
Ofcourse the Shaolin-Temple movie was/is pretty cool and made a great impact to inspire the rebuilding of Shaolin, maybe the movie was part of the plan.

[Bob]

Although I can appreciate the skill taught in the seminar, I preferred the basic pigua I learned from the Li Shuwen/Liu Yunqiao line - the younger guys really got into it but I also remember one them, at another qi gong class, taught by a tcm doctor, dressing up as a full bloom shaolin monk, leggings and all - of course he was only fifteen and that was perfectly understandable but the doctor, from Beijing, just amusingly smiled - the next session the youth came dressed in sweat pants LOL (small laugh - the youth was a skilled martial artist and became fairly adept at praying mantis)