Something I've heard

[Shorin Ryuu]

This isn't an attack on martial arts in China, it is just something I've heard from many people who have studied in the East, written books on the subject, etc.

 

At any rate, I have heard from multiple sources that most or a good deal of all good Chinese martial arts is found outside of the Chinese mainland (Taiwan, Hong Kong for these purposes, etc.) due to the Communist influences in promoting some styles (or ways of doing them) and disapproving others. Not that there isn't a good deal to learn on the mainland, but that a large grouping of talent left the mainland in the last century due to communist influences.

 

Has anyone heard anything similar or to the opposite effect?

[Ravencroft]

eh...kind of. thanks to the boxer revolution alot of the combativt chinese styles did leave the mainland and many of the traditional shaolin temples were left burning. however i wouldnt necessarily all of the good styles left i believe that to be a little harsh. they do have contemporary wushu(which is a really cool art just not combatative)as well as various internal arts but i would say a lot of the traditional styles that used to be taught in these temples have left and never really returned.

[Drunken Monkey]

due to the Communist influences in promoting some styles (or ways of doing them) and disapproving others

 

not quite....

 

anything that would promote anything that goes against the communist ideal was banned.

 

religion, martial arts and anything else that could create a 'superior' group or promote a community outside/separate of the communist way was illegal and as you will find out with a little research, punishment was in a lot of the cases, brutal.

 

also, you have to remember that some of the people/names were still very close to the legends/heroes:

 

students of lam sai wing, student of wong fei hung,

 

yip man student of chan wah sum/ng jung so, students of leung jan,

 

the jing woo school was in it's prime and fok yuen gap was still fresh in people's memories.

 

these were 'powerful' people with lots of influence.

 

if they ever decided to fight against the government,

 

the people would no doubt follow them.

 

the government weren't stupid.

 

don't forget, the chinese culture looks deeply into history

 

and the whole boxer rebellion was also still quite fresh.

 

as a result, you could say that the 'educated' were allowed to/persuaded to leave.

 

there was a grace period when people were allowed to leave china for places such as kong kong, tai wan, malaysia etc etc.

 

in most cases, the government even helped with the paper work.

 

the kung fu elite, being high scholars of the classical kind,

 

were not stupid people.

 

besides, the choices were simple.

 

stay and lose everything your family has worked for through the many years/centuries/generations

 

AND

 

lose being able to openly practice and teach your art

 

or

 

leave and be able to continue the tradition.

 

as i said before,

 

a great deal of the major heads of schools left.

 

those that stayed behind didn't get to teach or at least not openly.

 

martial arts were only recently allowed back into the culture being seen as good for moral.

 

during the wars, it was seen that the old performances were good for moral and so a few performers were allowed to travel, putting on shows for the soldiers

 

(of the opera kind, which was kinda ironic given the hung suen history...)

 

even more recently,

 

the govenrment decided to adopt/adapt martial arts, again to help with promoting national identity; after all, it is taken that a lot of martial arts come from china/shaolin.

 

that was when the shaolin temple

 

(which isn't the one of legend - they don't know where that one is although they do have suspicions about a site in fukien)

 

was refurbished and re-opened.

 

what they teach is a bit confusing.

 

a lot of it is traditional shaolin forms but what they do with them is kinda questionable.

 

outside of the temple, the government set up a board for controlling the 'new' national art called 'quo-shu' which was/is the performance based fancy flying about stuff you see (nothing traditional at all....).

 

the name was changed to 'wu-shu' to further remove it from the communist ideas

 

(as it was supposed to be the government showing that it is not bad and still allows people to learn the old stuff.....)

 

the board's job was to collect and 'refine' forms that people could learn and perform and compete in.

 

(remember, the whole quo-shu/wu-shu plan was to increase moral and national identity and pride).

 

what you were left with were forms that bare very little resemblance to the original fighting forms.

 

i.e the drunken form in the wushu syllabus is nothing like the drunken form of legend.

 

the same happened to tai-chi and more recently, as i discovered after watching a god-awful documentary, wu-dang itself.

 

as for where 'true' kung fu masters are.

 

well, currently

 

the head of the chow gar mantis lives in hk (good school in near me in uk).

 

the head of the lau gar eagle claw lives in hk (good school near me in uk).

 

the 'purest' most direct lineage of white eagle lives in malaysia.

 

big time hung gar school in malaysia.

 

yip man's top students are in hk (as are his sons)

 

but there are still quite a few 'true' door-keepers still in china

 

(a lot did move back once china started to be more welcoming/open).

 

from wing chun, yuen kay shan and pan nam have their bases in china.

 

the big lee gar school is in china.

 

jing woo is still thriving in china (but i'm not sure if they still teach the fok gar kuen of legend...).

 

but generally, the way things happened, i still say the best kung fu teachers are going to be found outside of china.

 

please note, this is a very brief and over-simplified description of things.

 

much of this is from memory and if i have missed any names of styles/schools that should have been mentioned, i apologise.

[Shorin Ryuu]

Thanks for the info. You were able to explain it better than I, as that is similar to what I have read or people have explained to me elsewhere.

[Radok]

I know an extremely traditional kung fu master, and he says most of the high level masters have immigrated to the states.

[aefibird]

Great history lesson, DM!

 

Very informative, thanks.

[Drunken Monkey]

I know an extremely traditional kung fu master, and he says most of the high level masters have immigrated to the states

 

not quite.....

 

however, a lot of the second gen guys from the original 'migration' (as it were..) have since moved to the united states.

 

choy li fut sems to be bigger in the u.s than here in the uk.

 

one of the most direct 'pure' lineages of wing chun is in the u.s.

 

i should say that my knowledge of chinese arts in the u.s is rather limited and what i do know is purely second-third hand.

 

Great history lesson, DM!

 

Very informative, thanks

 

whoa....

 

just a very, very rough outline of events and a little insight into how the chinese culture 'sees' things.

 

there are lots of holes in what i have stated above,

 

a lot of them cos i don't know how to fill them.

 

this one of them things that i am trying very hard to learn more about.

 

so much of it happened in a relatively short amount of time.

 

anti-ching movement, red junk, boxer rebellion, civl war, fleeing to hk, 1997.....

[Shorin Ryuu]

I was thinking about stuff more like the Cultural Revolution, and the Great Leap Forward (Plus the whole takeover in '49)

[aefibird]

whoa....

 

just a very, very rough outline of events and a little insight into how the chinese culture 'sees' things.

 

there are lots of holes in what i have stated above,

 

a lot of them cos i don't know how to fill them.

 

Ah, but you have less 'holes' in your knowlegde than I do... so you filled in quite a few of them for me...

[Drunken Monkey]

well, yeah, that's what i mean.

 

in that very short time period of 150-200 years, everything shifted more than once

 

and in more ways than one.

 

i use the anti-ching as a starting point as it is un-doubtedly the starting point of modern chinese martial arts

 

as well as being the point where history can be reliably traced, and confirmed.

 

however, there is still a lot of mixed up 'truths' out there.

 

also, it's where the schools/styles started to really get noticed.

 

the big five families gained attention during this period

 

as did wing chun, tai chi, choy li fut, mantis, white eyebrow and eagle claw.

 

this flowed (almost) into the boxer rebellion.

 

and with the chinese obsession with history, legends and what-not,

 

things get very muddled, very quickly.

 

during this period, martial arts in china were divided between the performers who may or may not have known 'real' fighting arts, and the likes of wong fei hung and leung jan.

 

after this the whole cultural revolution began and this is where old traditions were being persecuted

 

and things moved on, physically as well as culturally... (although one thing the government couldn't repress was the old chinese tradition of legends and stories)

 

once again, remember that characters such as wong fei hung, leung ja, tit kiu sam, so hut yee, fok yuen gap etc etc, were less than 50-60 years previosly.

 

they could ban the arts but they couldn't ban the knowledge of them.

 

so yeah, a lot of people moved.

 

but a lot did stay behind.

 

leung jan had a lot of good students in the canton region that had no need or want to leave.

 

wong fei hung's students didn't leave and his wife still ran the school until long after his death (although none of his sons were taught kung fu after a little incident...)

 

as i said before, the jing woo school was still present throughout the whole revolution and takeover (as shown in the movies fist of fury/legend....)

 

so yeah, don't discount what you can find in china.

 

it's just that the majority of schools you come across are either going to be wu-shu schools, or well, 'performance' schools....

 

and like i said earlier, it's getting more depressing as the old 'rarer' styles such as bagua, wu-dang, and even mantis, seem to be the latest victims of the "let's make a pretty form to show people and call this kung fu", craze.