Urs Krebs wrote:salcanzonieri wrote:Is anyone interested in the fact that over 80% of the Chen Yi Lu (Lao Jia) is found within the Shaolin Xie Quan form?
Including the signature postures only seen in Chen Lao Jia, which are identical to Shaolin Xie Quan, nowhere else.
Not really. Reading your book was more than enough for me. You're stucked with this idea of Shaolin being the origin. It never came into your mind that it could be the other way round. It's also common knowledge that Shaolin didn't create but integrated from outside, f.e. from the villages around the temple. These were people that were relocated from Shaanxi and Shanxi and brought Hongquan and other CMA with them. There's also no written record about Shaolin Martial Arts before Cheng Zongyou wrote his Shaolin Staff manual. Of course, legends were around all the time,but they are just legends. I respect your dedication to Shaolin though.
ok so:
1 - Shaolin is not the temple, yes it is a place that gathers the local martial arts, that' s the whole point. Shaolin is a set of postural movements that link all the different versions. Without them it is not Shaolin Quan .All the neighboring villages practice Shaolin from different times periods Dengfeng does the forms from 1700s or so. Mugou does them from the 1500s.
2 - MANY researchers in China and in Europe have done extensive research that look at QuanPu books that families have preserved information with dates.
The dates show they were done earlier than Chen.
3 - Back in the 1908s researchers from France published a book with their findings about the Shaolin Xie Quan and how it is practiced in Henan and in Wen County (which Chen village is part of) there are villages that also practice something that looks like Chen Lao Jia form many hundreds of years. They don't call it Taiji, just Wen County MA. This is all well documented in my book, with photos from the French people and what they said in their book. In the book, Origin of Taijiquan...A New Hypothesis, written by T. Dufresne & J. Nguyen (translated from French to English by Pierre Racine), the authors note that the proximity between Chen village and the Shaolin area is very close. Wen Xian is only about 120 km from Song Shan (about 50 miles), a few days walking. The authors made a survey of all existing Shaolin sets that they could find. More than 30-40 techniques share the same name with Chen sets; and also making note that Shaolin Quan contains sets called 'paochui', just as Chen Taiji does, that also share their techniques. Considering that in ancient time’s names of techniques were kept secret, similar names can mean a close relationship existed between their arts.
4 - Chen WangTing has been documented in Chen family papers that have been examined by many that he met up with Li JiYu in MuGou village. According to what people have been able to find "Li Jiyu (李际遇, -1645) led a tax revolt rebellion against the Ming rulers that was successful in killing a corrupt official. Li Yiyu originally from Dengfeng county (Mogou village), was thought to be adept at Shaolin boxing methods. Many local heroes helped with that task and the capable Jiang Fa was one such supporter of Li’s rebellion, becoming one of his officers leading a small battalion of rebels. The central imperial government were sent in to resolve the issues and Li was sought for his crimes. Li disbanded his rebels and told them to enter hiding, whilst Li was later captured and executed. Jiang Fa sought refuge at Chen village where one of his followers/rebel soldiers was from. It is there that Jiang Fa in his late remaining years worked with Chen Wangting to integrate the Chen Family boxing with Jiang’s boxing methods. Jiang Fa had two main disciples, Xing Xihuai (Zhaobao Village) in the early years (est. 1620-1630) and Chen Wanting (Chen Village) in the later years (est. 1645-1655). " After Li massacred the Shaolin Monks, Chen Wangting (only 50 KM away) went to Shaolin and examined their library. Li JiYu showed their village Shaolin Hong Quan and other forms to Chen Wangting. Li JiYu created Shaolin forms that he taught to the Shaolin Monks, before turning against them.
5 - The Shaolin monks were forbidden by the Yuan and the Qing Dynasty rulers to practice martial arts. Thus, they did not let on that they knew MA. They hid the MA in the Qigong forms, such as Chan Yuan Gong and LouHan 13 Postures, you can do these Qigongs as Fighting forms and you can do them with a STAFF, the movements are identical regardless of the applications. So, anyone writing about what Shaolin monks practiced or not in the 1700s is suspect simple because the monks hid their knowledge.