History of Kung Fu Fighting

[GrahamB]

Nice video.

https://youtu.be/uSalls_ahcA



As you’ll see, the fantasy of the “Kung Fu Master” doesn’t always match the reality. The one thing it does show is that it doesn’t matter how good you are at forms, iron body demonstrations, push hands and compliant applications, if you want to be able to use your art, you need to spar against resistance. That’s something to never forget.

[zrm]

Nice bit of history.

I will just say this though - the Shaolin temple itself maybe be a tourist trap but there are multiple "Shaolin schools" down the road from the temple that literally have >10,000 students each that train sanshou as well as wushu as the main part of their high school curriculum. Some teach judo and boxing as well because they are Olympic sports. Westerner may come to train at these schools for a few weeks but the kids stay there for their entire high school years and are training kung fu full time. There must be at least 100,000 students in the region. A lot of them end up in the security / police / military.

Essentially if you cause too much trouble at school in China by fighting too much, your parents send you to "Shaolin high school".