Bao wrote:salcanzonieri wrote: ... if there is any historical proof other than the Li documents from the Ming dynasty that they wrote about.
I would like to know that for myself as well.
As you asked about it, you could read: Chen Style Taijiquan Collected Masterworks: The History of a Martial Art
https://www.amazon.com/Chen-Style-Taiji ... 1623173930
Here the problem is summed up pretty well, maybe better than in any other of the texts I’ve read. It explains how the name of the Qianzai temple in the Li manuscripts probably comes from a mistake, a misreading from an inscription from the preserved stone tablet (what is left of it is not much, but the inscription as a whole has been copied and preserved in a local gazetteer.)
Yep, I have that book and read that. But that makes further questions, a mistaken name, is there some other place that has the correct name?
Maybe, horrors (!) you can talk to Dr. Stephan Yan and ask him to show proof that QianZhi temple existed outside of the Li documents (which do have a connection to Chang style of Henan and thus to Xinyi Quan)
Anyways, looks like the Li cousins connection enters into Chen arts twice. Here during this time period and later in Moghou with rebel Li Jiyu, who is an expert in Shaolin Quan (500 years ago).
Here Li JiYu's Shaolin input and with it the Jiang Fa story arises, who was said to be part of the rebel group.
Then we have Zhaobao village claiming that Jiang Fa learned an art from Wang ZhongYue.
Both the Shaolin Xia Quan form and the Zhaobao TJQ does not have punches in the same place during the forms.
Chen added it in at a later time.