Da/XiaoHong Chuen

[Sal Canzonieri]

(semantics? I'm a research writer for a living!)

Anyways.
Yeah, in the Shaolin Encyc there are the Xiao and Da Tong Bei forms and
erh lu for them too.

So, yes there are 5 hong quan forms in the Shaolin encyc, 2 Xiao forms and 3 Da Forms.

You can for sure see that the Xiao Hong Quan form is different and older from the Da Hong Quan forms documented.
The Xiao form is a lot more like Tai Tzu Chang Quan (32 move version), which it should since it is related to it,
and that places the form to around about 1000-1100 years ago.

The Da Hong Quan shown is very different from both Tai Tzu Quan and Xiao Hong Quan.

The story is that some Hong Quan forms are forms from the Tai Tzu style.

Other Hong Quan forms supposedly came from Li Shou when he and Bai Yu Feng came to Shaolin at the behest of Monk Yuan and reordered the Lohan forms.

I wonder were these 3 Da Hong Quan forms that Shaolin has document come from?

I have documentation for a totally different, Da Hong Quan form from Shaolin.
I will check if it similar to Xiao Hong Quan or Tai Tzu Quan, if it is, then it is the really old Da Hong Quan that Doc mentioned earlier in previous posts.

(of course, the local long fist style from Henan and Shanxi provinces have their own Hong Quan forms, with their own Xiao and Da Hong Quan forms, but right now I am looking at only the official Shaolin forms of the same name. These other forms might be a root to the Shaolin ones, and that is kinda easy to investigate.)

By the way, when I do research into KF forms, I have a Behavioral Science degree and 1/3 of that is Anthropology, I use research techniques from Anthropology that trace what was taught where and who taught whom at what time, while looking for signature moves and ideas. Doing this you can see the evolution of forms over time and from one place to another. I was able to trace many things that explained why one form was so much like another form in another place.

[shaolinstylee]

(of course, the local long fist style from Henan and Shanxi provinces have their own Hong Quan forms, with their own Xiao and Da Hong Quan forms, but right now I am looking at only the official Shaolin forms of the same name. These other forms might be a root to the Shaolin ones, and that is kinda easy to investigate.)

Thats why I said what I did...

There is a whole family of these forms...

some seem to be more related than others, but I don't know much else. It is possible that there can be a lot of influence here via the folk masters in the area, as I'm sure a number of the monks who do traditional have interacted with these guys, especially in the last 50 years.

Thanks for the info Sal....

[Sal Canzonieri]

ok, checked out the Red Fist style from Shanxi province.
I looked at their Xiao Hong Quan form, it is very long!
Well it is nothing like the Shaolin Xiao Hong Quan form.
This form is very soft like Rou Quan and is way more similar
to Tong Bei like styles like Fan tzi, Sun Bin Quan.

Shaolin Xiao Hong for sure shares many moves with the Shaolin Tai Tzu Quan form, which
should make the form from around 940 to 960 AD.
This Shanzi Province form shares nothing with the Shaolin one that I can see.
So, that is a dead end.

(but, since most of the Shanxi province Hong Quan forms are named after the Hawk, it
does resemble Xin Yi Quan from Shanxi Provice, so I can further investigate that route).

So, apprantly, the Shaolin Xiao Hong Quan form is distinctly different from this other Red Fist style's Xiao Hong Quan.
Since it is closer to Tai Tzu Quan, it should share many moves with Chen and Yang Tai Chi, which it very obviously does. So that answers that for me, Shaolin Xiao Hong Quan and Shaolin Tao Tzu Chang Quan come from the same root, from roughly the same time period, after doing a move by move analysis of the forms.

Also, I reviewed a long, with FOUR sections, Shaolin Da Hong Quan form that is totally different from the Shaolin Da Hong Quan that is familiar to most people.
Now this long form looks very old and shared many moves with Xiao Hong Quan, Tai Tzu Quan, and also Chen Tai Chi, so maybe this is the older Da Hong Quan that Doc was talking about. Looks like it is.
The Chen style says they had a long lost Yi, Erh, San and Shu Hong Quan, could it be that these are the four sections of this Shaolin Da Hong Quan? The moves seem to share a lot with Chen tai chi, a real lot.

So, where does the current Shaolin Dao Hong Quan come from?
It doesn't seem related to all these other forms at all, really.

[dogchow108]

The Da Hong Quan is really a interesting issue and has been talked about here. Check out the slideshow and video Da Hong Quan threads.

Sometimes, though, i cant help but wonder if all these (Songshan Shaolin) forms are not just new forms invented or horribly ****ed with by the Chinese government. Not to say I dont like the system, though- It is what brought me to KungFu in the first place.

[shaolinstylee]

Isn't there a popular Hong chuan in Henan province also?

[dogchow108]

By the way, Sal, since you mentioned it as Red fist (i dont know why i didnt notice this earlier) you might want to look into the difference between Hong Fist and Red Fist. If I'm not mistaken, the Shaolin Hong Fist should have a different character than "red". I think it's a family name.

[shaolinstylee]

I thought the character had changed over time as well, but that I'm not sure on...

There was one that was the character for flood, or something, there was a good talk on this on the shaolin forum on kungfu magazines board.

[shaolinstylee]

link to search

OK, so I did the search, but I don't have time to search the results... either way, I think there was some decent info strewn about from time to time here.

[arhat]

in our tradition Xiao Hong Chuan is noted as being the mother of 18 other "fists." Da Hong Chuan is the "son," and also contains movements mapped in from monastic duty.

some movements are hugging the moon, and white cloud covering one's head- this one is significant because it comes into the form from Buddhist daily practice.

[Sal Canzonieri]

I did a comparison with the Red Fist of Shanxi Province because both that style and Shaolin have a Xiao Hong Quan and I wanted to see if there was any similarity at all.
There was none (other than seeing elements of Tong Bei in both forms, but there were no signature moves in common at all, not like there is between Shaolin Xiao Hong Quan and Shaolin Tai Tzu Chang Quan, these shared plenty). I just wanted to close that door between Red Fist and Shaolin Hong Quan.

Most Hong Quan forms are said to be local versions of Tai Tzu Quan forms, which were very popular during the Song Dynasty, since the emperor was a ex-Shaolin KF guy.
If you analyze Tai Tzu Quan, it looks like it is derived from mixing Tong Bei and Shaolin, along with some other stuff that he must have picked up along the way in his travels and martial arts education. Many of the moves of Tai Tzu Quan share moves with various forms from Wudang Nei Jia Quan forms, which is most likely why people keep thinking that Yang Tai Chi has moves derived from Wudang forms. But all the Wudang like moves that Yang Tai Chi uses can be found in the Shaolin Tai Tzu Quan form. Chen tai chi also shares many moves with Tai Tzu Quan, but different ones from what the Yang style uses. Why? A matter to investigate.

I have learned another Hong Quan form from Shandong province, and it shares a lot of moves with Tai Tzu Quan and Shaolin Xiao Hong Quan, and also has Yang Tai Chi moves in it. Yang Lu Chan did learn Hong Quan first before learning Chen Tai Chi.
Chen Tai Chi was well has 4 Hong Quan sets as part of their roots.

Which brings us back to the newer Shaolin Da Hong Quan form, it still doesn't seem to share anything with Xiao Hung Quan, not even Tong Bei roots. But the older Da Hong Quan shaolin form I have seen, which is very uncommon, I have only seen it once, does indeed share many moves with both Xiao Hong Quan and Tai Tzu Quan forms of Shaolin.

[hvillarruel]

You are probably right. Tai Tzu Quan looks like tai chi in some way.

[dogchow108]

Sal, just out of curiosity, are you comparing just the forms of particular systems? Or are you also looking into fighting techniques, leverage, power, etc. I can understand how form study could serve a function in distinguishing between CMA- I do it myself. But I'm wondering if there's any other things you've looked into that might be of interest.

[Sal Canzonieri]

Sal, just out of curiosity, are you comparing just the forms of particular systems? Or are you also looking into fighting techniques, leverage, power, etc. I can understand how form study could serve a function in distinguishing between CMA- I do it myself. But I'm wondering if there's any other things you've looked into that might be of interest.

Forms first, then the rest of the things you mentioned.
Also, of course, who taught who what and when, as it travels from one place in China to another.

The moves in the forms are the same in styles and who taught who when and where always bears out why something is similar, but what makes
the same moves different between each style is the theories of that particular style.
Styles borrow or base their moves on other style's moves, but they always add whatever
makes that particular style different from the founding one or any other style.

Really you know there is not that much different between styles when you look at what the actual moves are.
Sure there are about 365 different styles still existing, but 90% of them have moves they borrowed from Shuai Jiao and Tong Bei.
Those two styles are so old that before the Song Dynasty they permiated all martial arts, people just took their favorite moves and gave them a new name, but they are still the same in essence whatever one style calls it.
By the Song Dynasty there was a rennaisance of new martial arts styles, since neccessity is the mother of invention and boredom is the father of invention.
Song Tai Tzu Quan soon spread all over most of China and the local folk styles all over a hong quan form. His forms were made from Shaolin forms, tong bei, and some other stuff.
So all these forms and subsequent derivative styles share many moves, ideas, etc.
And they can be traced because of that.

By the end of the Song dynasty, martial arts forms attributed to Yue Fei (that just means whatever his teacher Monks Zhou Tong taught) spread all over China during that time and the early Yuan Dynasty.
Zhou Tong not only taught Yeu Fei but two of the people listed as the 18 masters that Abbot Fu Ju gathered together to create not only Kan Jia Quan forms but Northern Mantis
as well.
What Zhou Tong taught was essentially Tong Bei and Ba Fan Shan (which is now known as Fan Zi Quan) and some Hammer forms (pao Quan like).
And these forms and their subsequent derivative styles also can be traced.
By the way, Fu Ju didn't do this at Shaolin, that was closed down by then, he did it in Shandong Province. All shandong province based style have signature moves in common with each other.


Then things really died down in the Yuan dynasty, thanks to the Mongols outlawing the Chinese from doing martial arts. Only in what was left of Shaolin did anything happen which was when Jue Yuan rebuild Shaolin from ancient lohan and from the input of Li Shou and Bai Yu Feng.

During the Ming there was a second rennaisance, but this forms were based on the styles that already existed before them, they just really eloborated other styles forms.
In the Ching dynasty, people made new styles by really just refining what they eclectically combined fron other styles.

Sal

[ngokfei]

hey sal

kfm is down so thought I'd post a few questions to you here.

is Zhou Tong the same as the Zhou Tong in the 108 warriors of Liang Sha/water margin.?

if he studied the Yen Ching Fan Tzi is this attributed to Yen Ching of Liang Shan?

who were the 2 individuals of the 18 masters gathered by Fu Ju that Zhou Tong had taught?

sorry to interrup this thread

you can e-mail me directly

ngokfei@juno.com

eric hargrove

[Sal Canzonieri]

Okay, lets' start at beginning.

Somewhere in the Song Dynasty, Zhou Tong (one of many ways to spell his name) learned some material at Shaolin.
At the time he would have been there, the only forms they had were: Lohan, Xin Yi Bar, and maybe some Pao Quan forms.
Combine these with with what else was common at the time, which was Arhery, Sword and Spear for weapons, and Tong Bei (whateve it was called then) and
Ba Shan Fan, and you have Zhou Tong's material that he used as a base to create what he taught to others.
What can be traced to him and is still practiced in the areas of China that he taught is a style called Mandarin Duck, which is essentially Fan Tzi / Chuo Jiao now.
He was said to be Yue Fei's teacher and also he taught leg kicking technique "Mandarin ducks kick " (Yuanyang Jiao) to Master Lin Chong, also also taught Lu-Chun-yi, who was the adopted father of Yan Jing (of Lost Track boxing fame). These three people are among the 18 masters that Northern Mantis is based on.

One of Yue Fei's generals Niu Gao, taught Yue Family style martial arts in the Henan region. His descendent, Niu Xi Xian taught Yue Fei family style to Dai Long Bang and his sons (dai Wen Xiong and Dai Wen Liang) and Guo Waihen, around 1841, while they were working at Dai Long Beng's inn he owned in Shijiadian, Henan province.

okay, so if you look at forms from the style still around that his closest to Zhou Tong's art, called Nine Way Mandarin Duck Linked Kicks (Jiu Zhuan Lian Huan Yuan Yang Tui)
and you look at the oldest style of Xin Yi fron Henan Province they are very similar! They share the Xin Yi bar moves in forms from both styles and they share many moves, like almost all the moves EXCEPT any fancy kicks (the only moves from Mandarin Duck style that are not almost exactly alike the moves in Henan Xin Yi.
Also, there should be such a similarity between Dai Family Xin Yi, especially since it has input from Niu 's Yue Fei, and when you compare these styles they too are very similar.
The one really telling move that is in all these style in their forms is the opening move, where the leg is held in front with the foot up.