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The transition towards wushu

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  • The transition towards wushu

    I spent a day with the Shaolin temple wushu guan performance team the other day. It was an interesting experience.

    Most of these guys are in their mid to late teens, which, by definition, as I've heard it, are too young to be "monks", ie, take the vows of "Taking refuge". They do have monk names however, which, is a fairly common thing now in many of these gong fu schools and such. Their abilities were just incredible; their mastery of their forms was absolutely perfect.

    In fact, too perfect.

    For the one thing that I noticed that day, was the fact that each of these guys, actually knew little gong fu. True, they all have the basics down pat (the jibengong), and they all know some traditional forms (though, watching them go through something very basic and very traditional, such as Shao Hong Chuan, was interesting, as they all took their time going through it, step by step, trying to remember how the form progressed). All knew small traditional forms such as Tong Bei Chuan, and, one or two others, but, basically, two to four traditional forms was their entire traditional armamentarium. As for wushu, basically, each team member knew two or three forms; generally one animal form and one weapon form. Sometimes a team member knew a third contemporary form. And, they knew those perfectly. Absolutely perfectly. The other team members generally did not know all of what their colleagues did; in this way, the team maximized the number of wushu forms it knew, with the least amount of team members.

    Team members gererally practice their three contemporary forms six days a week. They generally don't practice the little traditional forms that they've learned in school.

    I've seen this phenomena, as I've said before, predominantly in the Xing, Yan, Heng, and other generations of monks. The De generations of monks, having had Su generation masters, and generally having really lived in the Shaolin temple with those masters, before the advent of popular wushu, tend to know far more traditional forms (and, interestingly enough, far less modern wushu). It's a troubling site, to see these younger monks teaching predominantly contemporary forms, to students around the world. One can only wonder where the future for the real traditional Shaolin gong fu lies.
    Experienced Community organizer. Yeah, let's choose him to run the free world. It will be historic. What could possibly go wrong...

    "You're just a jaded cynical mother****er...." Jeffpeg

    (more comments in my User Profile)
    russbo.com



  • #2
    thats a sad thing

    dave
    simple and natural is my method,
    true and sincere is my principle --Tse Sigung

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    • #3
      That is kind of sad, the de generation teaching however does have some traditional students, whom I hope keep the traditional alive.
      practice wu de

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      • #4
        My master told me that in 10-20 years, a lot -if not all- of the 'original' shaolin gongfu will be lost. He gave me the example of the 'horses'....like 100 years ago, people used horses for transport, working on the (battle)field, etc. Now, they only use them for 'sport'......
        Nobody want to practice like they did 100 years ago. Most of the people those day's had a good reason to train that hard...

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        • #5
          mostly...

          ...as the old masters pass, outside of China...

          Shi Wan Heng is already teaching in Vienna.

          That's a very good thing.
          "Arhat, I am your father..."
          -the Dark Lord Cod

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          • #6
            armamentarium
            "I'm like Tupac: Who can stop me?"

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            • #7
              Interesting observation today.

              It appears that the reason wushu is becoming predominant, is partly or mainly because Chinese "taste" has changed.

              The judges in these competitions, as many of the Chinese people, feel that gong fu is really well performed if it is done very quickly, and very powerfully. I've been told, for example, that if Shi De Cheng, an older, more traditional gong fu oriented master, was being tested against his disciple, Shi Xing Wei, a younger, more contemporary trained monk, people would like Xingwei's performance more, because Xingwei can get through his wushu forms much faster and much more powerfully than Decheng can get through is older, more traditional forms. It's the nature of the forms, more than anything else.

              So, Chinese martial artists are leaning more towards contemporary forms, for that is what enables them to be judged best. The "Chinese Wushu Association", that judges these people and assigns them the "dan" ranking, apparently has more taste for speed and power than they do knowledge of older traditional forms.
              Experienced Community organizer. Yeah, let's choose him to run the free world. It will be historic. What could possibly go wrong...

              "You're just a jaded cynical mother****er...." Jeffpeg

              (more comments in my User Profile)
              russbo.com


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              • #8
                Now is there any traditionalist body that is taking active steps to assure preservation for the future? Or at least planning to? Because at the rate it's going, give it a few decades and the amount of traditional knowledge will be zip...
                Attached Files

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                • #9
                  I don't think it will take decades. It's happening pretty fast from what I can tell.

                  Sad, truly sad.
                  Experienced Community organizer. Yeah, let's choose him to run the free world. It will be historic. What could possibly go wrong...

                  "You're just a jaded cynical mother****er...." Jeffpeg

                  (more comments in my User Profile)
                  russbo.com


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                  • #10
                    There was a brief stretch wher it looked like the old school was coming back. At least from here it seemed that way
                    "I'm like Tupac: Who can stop me?"

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                    • #11
                      Yeah it is sad what happening to the traditional martial arts these days. Maybe its something intrinsic in human nature in this modern environment. Hell I've noticed even when I'm training by myself, I tend to unconsciously slip out of slow internal taijiquan movements into faster, more muscular wushu-esque movements all the time. But then it seems to all balance out, and I realize that these are just manifestations of yin and yang in my training. Maybe this degeneration into wushu is simply because I watch too many jet li movies, who knows.

                      What i do know is that the bastardization of shaolin gongfu is happening in a slightly different manner to wudan gongfu as well. Too many people in this country are teaching taijiquan as if it weren't a even a martial art, but simply a wei dan qigong form for promoting health. And worse they arent even teaching it properly for the promotion of health. (the fools dont teach normal abdominal breathing and nei dan meditation with the peking form) While it is true that it is effective in this regard (as wei dan qigong, promoting health), by treating taiji as simply an excercise and by the fact that people who have by no means mastered or even understood taiji teaching most of the taiji classes in the U.S., the traditional martial art is slipping away all the same. Hell if I had a dollar for every student in a tai chi class in this country who has never heard of abdominal breathing I'd be a sad yet rich man.

                      But it's not all lost. There are some really good masters out there who're making a point of spending their last days educating the poor fools of our generation. And frankly it's our duty to learn everything we can from them. So study with Yang Jwing Ming, go to las vegas and train traditional forms with Shi Ding Cheng, bust your ass to get to that Wong Kiew Kit clinic if its within 1000 miles of your home. It's up to our generation to learn the traditional arts before they become the lost ancient arts.
                      Show me a man who has forgotten words, so that I can have a word with him.

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                      • #12
                        Money is a great motivator. I was thinking the other day about why PRIDE is usually better than Kings of the Cage. Well, there's way more money involved. There is a staggering amount of talent in Japan. There is what is looking like a golden age for NHB fighting, but this could change quickly if the mainstream audience moves on.


                        wushu = communism + capitalism
                        "I'm like Tupac: Who can stop me?"

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                        • #13
                          I remember 15 years ago Taijiquan was declining. Ask somebody what style they did they'd tell you: the slow kind. It was a geriatric exercise, laughed at if you told people it was a martial art, even people who studied it had no idea how to use it in combat. I found the best teachers were the ones with out schools, you had to be in the martial arts community to hear about them.

                          People in the West want things fast, learn the form & they can say, "I know taiji!" They also want to be healthy and taiji IS good exercise & that is all many people want from the art.

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                          • #14
                            I would avoid WKK like the freakin' plague.

                            .
                            "Arhat, I am your father..."
                            -the Dark Lord Cod

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                            • #15
                              Arhat what's wrong with WKK? Has he made any rediculous false claims like Dr. YanXin about being able to change the half life of isotopes with his qi?(that claim being made all the more hillarious by the fact that the chinese university YanXin claimed to do this at had refused to allow him entry into their labs)

                              Or is he just a bit too "out there" with his qigong for your tastes?
                              Show me a man who has forgotten words, so that I can have a word with him.

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