Shaolin Tao form?

[Firbolg]

First post here so first of all - Hello! Looks like a great place!

Anyway, long long ago in my youth (20 years ago) I studied 'shaolin wushu' in england with a chinese master from malaysia.. trained for about 2 years and got to brown belt before dropping out for various reasons (the chinese master left the country for one thing)..

Now I am trying to remember all the forms that I learned back then and can only remember the first 3 more or less.. however in the list of forms I saw here I don't recognize any of the names besides lohan.. wondering if what I was taught were just made up/modified for us ignorant westerners or if they are forms that came out of malaysia in particular or from some other style or whatever..

"Shaolin Tao" was one of the forms.. in my club it was actually split into three parts and we learned one part for each grade.. sadly I can only remember part one now but would like to re-learn the rest.. Does anyone know of this form or where I might find more info?

Even more sadly I can't remember the name even of the last and most advanced form I learned.. it was something like "chi kan chan" but thats probably not even close.. does it ring any bells for anyone here?

[dogchow108]

You know, if you mess with the information you gave here just enough, it almost sounds like you studied wing chun.

Perhaps the first form's name is Siu Nim Tao (corrections on my abbhorent Cantonese are welcome).

Also, if you were learning WC, then it would make sense that you can only remember three forms.

Did you move about a lot in your system or did you kind of stay fixed for close-combat fighting with lots of pivot-type actions?

If you did learn WingChun, dont worry. it IS a shaolin style, and a very reputable and useful one at that. The fact that you learned it from a Master from Malaysia, probably through a lineage that escaped the Red Guard, would make it all that much more exciting.


Anyway, that was my 2 cents.

BTW- this is all assuming that you weren't conned, which is entirely likely and has actually happened to me with WingChun.

[Firbolg]

Well I doubt it was a con although anything is possible but he was seriously good at kung fu.

Also the other instructors at the club he had 'recruited' from other martial arts - 2 were black belt (3rd or 4th dan I think) in karate and 3 were british thai boxing champions so I would think that between them they'd know if he was the real thing or not..

As for wing chun while I have never seen wing chun forms I have seen some of the training techniques and there seems to be little resemblance although I have not seem them doing full contact so I don't really know about that.

The style of fighting we did was full contact and quite similar in fact to thai boxing although we were not allowed to use knees & elbows on each other in full contact (but we were taught them). Kicks were the main 'weapon' even though boxing techniques were used extensively also.

The fighting stance was the typical boxing stance, low kicks were of course most often used in full contact but in semi-contact we used all sorts of cool kicks and things however none of the backflips or flying through the air stuff that seems popular in 'modern wushu'.

There were certainly more than 3 forms in all.. the first form was very basic and he did actually say it was not a real/established form.. he just made something simple for learning a few basic stances, blocks and punches that wouldn't scare new students away..

The second form taught was lohan (which he said was normally the first form as he was taught) although not the same as some others I have seen.. I saw something very similar once at a class for another kung fu style (don't remember the name, maybe hung gar?) - it was not identical but it was certainly recognizable as being lohan and they also called it lohan.

After that was shaolin tao split into 3 parts.. then it was chi kan chuan (or something like that) which was for 2nd brown and after that there were others for 3rd brown and black which I have not seen.. no idea what came after that but weapons were only taught to black belts and above so perhaps forms involving weapons were taught then also.. but thats just a guess. His 'speciality' in terms of weapons were short staff and long staff.. I don't know if he knew or taught any others.