Pre-1928 photos?

[Judge Pen]

http://x.russbo.com/photopost/showgallery.php/cat/3004/page/1

Anybody know anything about him and these photos?

[GeneChing]

But if you're interested in the 1928 Shaolin photos, your source shouldn't be Doc. It should be Uwe Schenk. He's posted a nice gallery (http://72arts.com/v-web/gallery/Shaolin-Kloster) of these photos online.

[Judge Pen]

But if you're interested in the 1928 Shaolin photos, your source shouldn't be Doc. It should be Uwe Schenk. He's posted a nice gallery (http://72arts.com/v-web/gallery/Shaolin-Kloster) of these photos online.

Those are the same ones. Know anything about him and these photos?

[Shaolinlueb]

those are some pretty cool photo's
http://72arts.com/v-web/gallery/Shaolin-Kloster/Shaolin_vor_1928_0026
but this one looks like "i'm gonna sneak up on you and kill you!"

[MasterKiller]

He has some pretty neat manuscripts he put together in PDF format abotu Shaolin history and kung fu training. I think you can download them from doc's site.

[GeneChing]

According to Mr. Schwenk (and I've only corresponded with him via email so I don't really know him) he received the photos, some 300 total, in 1971. I've asked him if he would reveal the source, and he said he would talk to him about it, but never got back to me on it. I'm still dying to know, just for my own curiousity. He promised to preserve those photos, which is what he is doing. He had given them to aboutshaolin.com to publish on the net, but they modified them which Mr. Schwenk felt was inappropriate, so he tried to retract them. I'm not sure what's happened with their presence on that site, nor do I know the details about what kind of agreement Doc might have struck with Mr. Schwenk about using them. We had discussed reprinting them in our magazine, but now that Mr. Schwenk has done such a marvelous job on his own site, it seems a little redundant.

As I reported in our Shaolin Special 2005 (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=590) on page 26 of my article, Shaolin Temple Reincarnated: New Highway, New Entrance, New Halls, New Loti, a collection of photos alledgedly from a Japanese photo study done in 1922 resurfaced recently. It is supposed to be the basis of the recent reconstruction of Shaolin Temple (as discussed in that article). Anyone who had been to Shaolin Temple prior to 2005 knows that the bulk of the side halls had been reconstructed from the period of the mid-eighties until the mid-nineties. These were demolished and new buildings have already been erected, based upon these photos.

Mr. Schwenk's collection certainly fits the description of these Japanese photos and it is a truly magnificent find. I thought we discussed them before here somewhere, but don't have the energy to go digging for that original post at this moment.

[YuanZhideDiZhen]

The Zhong Lao Bell Tower supposedly held the magic ghost hunting bells of the demon slayer Zhong Jia. elsewhere at that temple the magic shackles also existed, supposedly, along with some of his relics.

but all this is folk lore from the area and dubious at best.

[Golden Tiger]

That one is kind of interesting.........

As is the translation :eek:

[snakebyte8]

Nothing to add, besides, AWESOME! :D

[richard sloan]

Uwe trained with Shi Wan Heng.

[David Jamieson]

That one is kind of interesting.........

As is the translation :eek:

care to lay the translation on us non chinese readers/speakers?

i'll give you a piece of gum! :p (the chewing kind, not gold)

[MasterKiller]

care to lay the translation on us non chinese readers/speakers?

"Sin The' was here."

[GeneChing]

It says that it's the main stone column in Chu Zu An, which is the nunnery, half way up the trail to Bodhidharma's cave. That's an ancient column, quite venerated because of it's age, but few tourists have actually seen it because it's off the beaten path. The nunnery isn't as open to the public as the main temple.

I like that gum that cleans you teeth. ;)

[Judge Pen]

So that column still exists? Have you seen it Gene?

[Golden Tiger]

care to lay the translation on us non chinese readers/speakers?

i'll give you a piece of gum! :p (the chewing kind, not gold)

I give up on this chinese language translation stuff....its more confusing than ...chinese arithmatic.... :D

I asked a friend to translate the caption....I got "first/original.....grandparent/elder......nunnery/hall.....stone.....pillar"

Then I ask another one to translate it....I got " Chu Zu An (first 3 char. together)....hall (next 2)...stone pillar (last 2).

I go back and ask the first....their are like "oh, I thought you wanted a litteral translation of the characters.....doh!!!!!

Anyway, I did ask if the figure on the pillar resembles any ghost/demon/whatever and both said no. You have to admit it looks a lot like...a hairy guy.....

Any help on that Gene? You seemed to hope over that part above....

[mickey]

Greetings,

Those are some great photos. They really convey the sacredness of shaolin moreso than any recently published book. I hope Mr. Schwenk will put all 300+ of those photos into a book.

Thank you for sharing,

mickey

[Shaolinlueb]

Anyway, I did ask if the figure on the pillar resembles any ghost/demon/whatever and both said no. You have to admit it looks a lot like...a hairy guy.....


as for the hairy guy. i swear i have no experience with time travel....

yet ;)

[MasterKiller]

as for the hairy guy. i swear i have no experience with time travel....

yet ;)

Luebie, you don't have to travel in time. Kung fu makes people precognitive, so it's likely they just had future visions of you in all your splendor and made a monument to glorify you.

Didn't your teacher ever tell you "through kung fu, things you will see. Other places. The future... the past. Old friends long gone."?

Mine used to tell me that all the time before he dissappeared right in front of me!

[GeneChing]

Chu Zu An is named after our first ancestor, so that's the source of the literal translation. It's dedicated to Huike, Bodhidharma's disciple. The column still exists and is in good shape. I'll have to dig through my books to find out more about it - if memory serves, it was significant for some reason... I think because it was so old. I think the image one the pillar is a Buddhist guardian, not Zhong Kuei (http://www.martialartsmart.net/95-010.html).

In 2001, I had the unique opportunity to train in the nunnery. It happened in this very odd way. I was with my master, Shi Decheng and we decided it would be better to do my lesson somewhere on the mountain, somewhere natural and scenic. We started hiking and after a while, he asked me if I knew a place to go. I said no, figuring he knew where he was going, since he was from there and all. There was a short awkward moment, then we hiked up to the nunnery and he asked permission if we could use their courtyard for a lesson. The nuns and neophytes agreed. They were chanting, burning incense and sweeping up. A few even watched while sweeping. It was very beautiful, very serene, like out of some Shaolin Temple training fantasy. I didn't actually see the column then (and that was the last time I was in the nunnery) but I had seen it during previous years when I stopped in to burn offerings.

[sean_stonehart]

Gene... the nunnery is the the little temple on the traill to the cave isn't it? Not too long before the stairs?

[Golden Tiger]

if memory serves, it was significant for some reason...

Thats what we have been trying to tell you all along...

[GeneChing]

the nunnery is the the little temple on the traill to the cave isn't it? Not too long before the stairs? That's the one. That's Shaolin's nunnery, and houses abotu hald a dozen nuns and a few more disciples.

It's worthy of note that there is another famous nunnery that is a sister temple to Shaolin. That's Yongtai Nunnery, which was founded on the site of the first Buddhist nun of China, Zhuanyun (circa 467 CE). The site was founded by Princess Minglian, the female disciple of Bodhidharma. Yongtai is on the mountainside facing Shaolin valley, in between Shaolin Temple and Dengfeng. It's a bit off the beaten path. The nuns of Yongtai did a small tour in the USA, which I covered in our May June 2004 issue (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=486).

[Vasquez]

For the record, photos might represent the history of shaolin. It was not like this all the time. It's best to keep the teachiungs in the heart not on the film. dong ma?

[Dale Dugas]

No more like the Dung you keep spouting, clown.

What you think you get to walk away unscathed?

Step up, or shut up.

Dale Dugas

[Vasquez]

Dale,

have u suferred some tramutic expereince with an ex-whife or something that you're jealous of other ppl's wife or having a wife for that matter. No I'm gonna keep posting and there's nothin you can do about it.

[Anthony]

Does anyone here have any pro photo experience? If so, what do you think? I looked at the photos and to me, the dark spaces in the backgrounds look a little off. I mean the dark doorways in the background buildings and such. By off I mean that they look colored in rather than dark because of an absense of light.

I'm not saying one way or the other that I think theyre fake but since we don't know their origin and we ARE dealing with a communist govt. I am skeptical.

[Vasquez]

If you go to unofficial sources or shaolins then it could be real photos. anything from the government is diffcult to trust. Shop keepers near the shaolins are the door to some secrets for the public.

[norther practitioner]

MK mentioned that Uwe had posted some essays on Doc's site, I think they were taken off though, as people were copying them or something. I have a copy of all of them though. It's been a while since Uwe has posted anything.

[BM2]

http://72arts.com/v-web/gallery/Shaolin-Kloster?page=6

[Golden Tiger]

http://72arts.com/v-web/gallery/Shaolin-Kloster?page=6


Anything special that we are looking at/for?

[Judge Pen]

Chu Zu An is named after our first ancestor, so that's the source of the literal translation. It's dedicated to Huike, Bodhidharma's disciple. The column still exists and is in good shape. I'll have to dig through my books to find out more about it - if memory serves, it was significant for some reason... I think because it was so old. I think the image one the pillar is a Buddhist guardian, not Zhong Kuei (http://www.martialartsmart.net/95-010.html).


Isn't this a drawing of Huike and Damo?

http://www.shaolin.org.mx/sp/img/damo_y_huike.jpg

Is the image on the pillar just for a generic Buddhist guardian or does the guardian on pillar have a name?

[mickey]

Hi,

Is there a chance that these photos are post Cultural Revolution era? The giveaway is the Shadow stone-- it is the same as the one shown in other Shaolin documentaries. The original was destroyed.

mickey

[Judge Pen]

Hi,

Is there a chance that these photos are post Cultural Revolution era? The giveaway is the Shadow stone-- it is the same as the one shown in other Shaolin documentaries. The original was destroyed.

mickey

Not according to Dr. Schenk. Although he hasn't revealed the source, he indicates that these photos were all pre-1928. Are you saying that shadow-stone was not used before 1928 in China?

[GeneChing]

I've heard only one account of the 'shadow' stone being destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and that was from a sketchy source. I've heard a counter account that the stone that was destroyed was a fake, a shadow of the shadow stone, and that was from the same sketchy source. Most accounts say that it was never destroyed to begin with. The stone in Schenk's gallery certainly matches the stone that is currently at Shaolin. I've never seen any evidence that there was another stone.

I've examined the stone quite closely. When I was first going to Shaolin, it was in a rather shoddy glass case that was chipped and stained. At one point, they put up a little diagram to show where the image of Tamo was on the stone, and that diagram didn't match my image of where it was at all. In fact, that diagram looked like some sort of distorted cartoon. The image I see is small - Tamo's face is only a few inches across, not to scale at all. It looks to me like a naturally occuring pattern in the rock, a startling coincidence to whomever discovered it.

[mickey]

Hello Judge Pen,

I never said that the Shadow Stone was not around during pre 1928 China; only that is was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. That one that replaced it was the one in the picture. Gene has politely refuted my statements. All one can say is time will tell.

Another question: if this was pre 1928, where are all the monks?

mickey

[GeneChing]

You know, mickey, now you got me wondering when the stone was discovered. I'll have to look into that a little. I'll put it on my list of research questions to chip at when I get the chance. Note we ran a translation of Tamo's stone poem in our Shaolin special 2000 (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=152). To be honest, I'm not even sure what the source of that poem is, but if it's old, it may help to date it.

As for where the monks are, now this is strictly conjecture on my part. I'm told that a pre-1928 series of photos were taked from a Japanese archive, and this was the basis of Shaolin's 2004 remodelling. Now those pictures were allegedly some sort of effort by the Japanese to document the temple, and if this is true, I'm sure they asked the monks to stand aside whilst they snapped their photographs. Now, I've been assuming that Schenk's collection is in fact, this Japanese collection, but there's an outside chance that it isn't. It just seems highly unlikely that there would be two sets, since cameras weren't readily available and it was a long, lonely mountain road to Shaolin until just the last few decades.

As for the validity of said photos, they seem pretty accurate to me actually. Things seem to match up with what was left, more or less, like that pillar. I suppose if I could look at the whole collection up close, I could tell for sure by looking at tree growth and such. It would seem like a lot of work to forge these photos, and I don't know what anyone would acheive by doing so.

[mickey]

Hi Gene,

For me to call these photos forgeries, I would have to have been there. I am only referring to the time frame "Pre- 1928." The late Nakamura Sensei of the Shotokan JKA made mention of going back to China in 1949 to see the state of martial arts there. It is possible that there were photos taken circa that time; not necessarily taken by Nakamura Sensei, or in that paticular year. That still would not explain the Shadow Stone. Again, time will tell.

I thought alot about my posts on this thread and I have to remind myself that China, especially in its cultural areas, is going through a period of healing. And comments about the authencity of things do not necessarily help in the healing process. The medical world readily acknowledges that placebos work, too, in certain situations. If those photos help Shaolin and the people of China remember their glory, it is cool with me.

Some things are best left to the ancestors to set straight.

mickey

[GeneChing]

The source of the Shaolin stone poem is Xiao Yuanji, who is allegedly a famous Chinese poet, but I have yet to be able to place him. According to one legend, the one published in Tales of the Shaolin Monastery, the stone was chipped out of the rock face across from where Tamo alledgedly sat. That doesn't match with my impression of the stone, since it has a natural shape on the back side. It doesn't look like it's been chipped out of anything. Of course, perhaps the bottom was chipped off. You can't really see the bottom too well. Oh nevermind... :rolleyes:

[GeneChing]

I've been told that there is a reference to Tamo's image being visible on the caves wall in Jin Xie Lin Lang by Du Mu (1459-1525). Du Mu documented his visit to the temple in that book, apparently. So that gives us a date for the stone being at least five centuries old. Of course, we can't be sure if it's the same stone. If I find an older reference, I'll let y'all know.

[Judge Pen]

I've been told that there is a reference to Tamo's image being visible on the caves wall in Jin Xie Lin Lang by Du Mu (1459-1525). Du Mu documented his visit to the temple in that book, apparently. So that gives us a date for the stone being at least five centuries old. Of course, we can't be sure if it's the same stone. If I find an older reference, I'll let y'all know.

Please do, and thanks for keeping this thread alive. :)

[Shaolinlueb]

he who possess the shadow stone with get +5 shaolin intellect. so it is very sought after.

[GeneChing]

I'm not sure, but I think Du Mu might be referring to a reclining figure of Tamo on the stone. Like I said earlier, the figure is difficult to interpret, but it doesn't look like it's reclining either, at least not to me. I'll try to get to the actual Du Mu reference, but that might take a long time, so don't hold your breath. Perhaps some people see a reclining figure. One thing is certain - it's a weird rock, +5 or not.