PDA

View Full Version : ching or ming dynasty!!



fiercest tiger
12-12-2000, 03:48 AM
hi everyone!

a lot of good systems and great masters where in the ching era, revolutionaries and societies where developed at this time.

but.....

do you think the ming era had good or better fighters and systems?

are many of these styles around or were lots wiped out lost or forgotten?

thanks :D

peace

bakmeimonk@hotmail.com

Tekarius
12-12-2000, 05:11 AM
I think Hsing I chuang was made in the Ming Dynasty by Gerneral Gnoak Fei or Yuan Fei in manderine. But Im not too sure dude.

Kung Lek
12-12-2000, 06:48 PM
It is said that the Ming dynasty encouraged the greatest growth in all arts and sciences when compared to other dynasties of china.

The Ming dynasty was considered the "Golden" age.
Everything from painting and music to martial arts in the temples and philosophical thought were brought to a zenith in this era.

The ching came after and saught more of a militaristic control over the peoples so much of the cultural growth that occured in the Ming dynasty was lost during the ching dynasty.

There has been and probably always be an element of martial arts as a culturally ingrained aspect of the chinese peoples.

The ming were very tolerant to new ideas, the ching were not.

peace

Kung Lek

MoQ
12-12-2000, 07:57 PM
that chided the Ming to get down and martialize the populace.
Destroy the Ching!
Restore the Ming!
Destroy the Ching!
Restore the Ming!
Destroy the Ching!
Restore the Ming!

Kung Lek
12-12-2000, 09:27 PM
true.

The Ching were also not from the ancestral lines of the chinese rulers.
Their incursion into China brought many martial arts to the average citizen that would have otherwise be stored in the life of a monk in a temple far from the cities and common folk.

It was indeed the goal of the Shaolin (who suffered the destruction of their temple under the ching) to kick the ching out and restore the Ming who supported the temple and in fact made it quite wealthy and an incredible repository of knowledge of many things from agriculture and astronomy to philosophy and the martial arts.
The same was true of other temples be they Taoist or "other" ha ha.

also, legend has it, it is with this ching takeover where the Lion Dance became connected with martial arts practice. Truly an interesting story there.
The casting out of the greens is in direct relation to casting out the ching. The Lion would tear up the greens (choi chiang) chiang and ching sound similar, ching transliterates to green, and spit them away. Thereby representing the prosperity and luck of the Lion to be the casting out of the Ching!

peace

Kung Lek

Paul Skrypichayko
12-13-2000, 07:00 AM
Ngok Fei / Yue Fei was from the time of the southern Song dynasty. This was also the beginning of the Yuan dynasty.

Ben Gash
12-13-2000, 05:19 PM
The Ming dynasty was the golden age of the northern arts, while the Ching saw the proliferation of southern styles.
During the Ming Dynasty there was the creation of such styles as the shaolin 5 animals fist, Zhaquan, Praying Mantis, Faantze Yingjow, Baji, and other lesser known northen styles. The Ching came from the north, meaning that those fleeing had to go south, which led to the rise of the south as a hotbed of revolutionary activity and martial arts development.

"Weapons are the embodiments of fear,
the wise use them only when they have no choice"
Lao Tzu

sifuchuck
12-23-2000, 09:52 AM
A common saying during the end-days of many Chinese Dynasties when they became weak militarily and leaders spent more time in liesurly pursuits and debauchery. I think this happened to the Mings as well. Internal collapse and open rebellion is what led to the Manchu incursion.

After that, Ming loyalists never did overcome the Chings. I think the Tang Dynasty had some of the strongest and most courageous fighters.

Turiyan
01-19-2001, 02:24 AM
What a joke. This was a *******ization of the chinese saying:

Unable to distingish between ching and wu (something like that). There is a muddy river and a clear river in china.

And a modification of "overthrow the darkness and overthrow the light".

Many of these "rebel" or "freedom fighter" societys were in fact classified as worse than "barbarians" from the north.

And even the rulers/king the imfamous martial arts hero's of lore PAID TRIBUTE to the Mongol or Manchu or Hun empires.

This includes the Trang dynasty and other adjacent non-chinese dynastys in asia.

Most of these pulp fiction hero's were executed at one time anyways for violation of protocols/treatys of some kind eventually...

Turiyan, Brahmin caste, Ordos clan

The REAL taichi:
http://www.wfdesign.com/tc/
http://www.wustyle.com/108.html

WongFeHung
01-19-2001, 06:05 PM
"most of these 'rebel' or 'freedom fighters' were classified as barbarians by the north"
Gee...ya think? riddle me this, Batman, do you think they celebrate the 4t of July in England? Do you think the Brits look at the colonists as "patriots?" Do Native Americans celebrate Columbus Day", Do nazis recognize the halocaust? Heck, China still refers to Taiwan as " a disobediant stepchild"

Ming Fai
01-22-2001, 05:15 PM
I'm a graduate student of Chinese Translation & Interpreting and furthermore I have been studying Chinese history since the age of 12 (autodidactic). What is really annoying me these couple of years is the misconception, among martial artists in particular, that the Ming was "good" and the Qing was "evil", IT JUST AIN'T TRUE!!!

Kunglek from Winnipeg wrote that the Ming dynasty was considered the Golden Age in Chinese history and that the Qing dynasty was a period of suppression of the Chinese people by the Manchurians. This idea is very common amongst practitioners of Chinese Martial Arts in the West, and ONLY in the West. Everyone who knows Chinese history, like every citizen of the Chinese regions (People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Hongkong and Singapore) where Chinese history is taught at school knows that this is not true.

The Ming dynasty was not a "Golden Age", on the contrary this dynasty is known in Chinese history as the Age of Darkness. Some of the Ming emperors never showed up in the throne hall to discuss political affairs with their ministers during their lives. Because the ministers never saw their monarch, the real power slowly moved into the hands of the eunuchs, who were the personal servants of the emperor. During the reign of the Ming emperors which lasted for 294 years, corrupt eunuchs and spies roamed the land, harrassing and killing innocent citizens or political enemies. Emperor Zhengde, who reigned during 1506-1522, visited the south of China many times. On each visit he and his soldiers raped women, robbed and killed the inhabitants of entire villages. At the end of the Ming dynasty bandits and rebels where rising in every part of the empire. This gave the Manchurians the chance to invade China, but even if the Manchurian invasion did not happened, the Ming dynasty would also have ended and the Chinese empire would have split into many small states battling eachother. It were actually the Manchurians who re-established the social order in China.

In Chinese history there were three Golden Ages: the Han dynasty (BC 206 -AD 220),
the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and the Qing(!) Dynasty (1644-1911). The Qing empire was 3 times bigger than the Ming empire at it's peak. The Manchurians were seen by the Han-Chinese as barbarians, because the Manchurians were not as civilised as the Han-Chinese. But while the Ming emperors were used to luxury, the Qing emperors led simple lives. Here are some statistics:


Number of female servants
(Ming) 9000 (Qing) 134
Number of eunuchs
(Ming) 100.000 (Qing) 500
Daily expenses
(Ming) 10.000 Liang (Qing) 35 Liang

The Ming dynasty had 16 emperors and they were either brutal tyrants or incompetent idiots. The Qing dynasty, on the other hand, had 13 emperors and four of them were the best emperors in China's history while the rest were also quite capable monarchs.
If the Ming dynasty did not collapse and would have lasted till the following centuries than China would have most likely been colonised and divided by Western Imperialism like it happened with Africa. That could have been the end of Chinese culture.

Although at the beginning of the Qing dynasty many martial artists indeed tried to rebel against the Qing government, and they were the founders of many Southern styles of Kungfu, we must understand that they did not had the ability to predict the future and did not know that the Manchurians would led China into a new Golden Era. Our Grandmasters were only aware of the fact that a foreign tribe has conquered their homeland and they indeed had a good reason to rebel. But nowadays we are able to know the entire history of that period and should give credit to those who deserve it. Only because these martial artists founded the kungfu styles that we practice does not mean that their political ideas were right. I am of Han-Chinese origin myself and I think that all Chinese people and practitioners of Chinese martial arts should thank the Manchurians for preserving China's unity and culture.

WongFeHung
01-22-2001, 08:32 PM
Half my family is from Guangdong, they will be the first to tell you that many Cantonese people, for the most part, still refer to themselves as Han, and resent the Mandarin. I'm not saying this is right or wrong, it just is.

Kung Lek
01-22-2001, 10:37 PM
Hi-

Ming Fai, I am inclined to disagree with you.

First of all, Chinese history is now so convoluted that it is very difficult to tell what the truth is about any period in times past.

The Ming was a golden Age, and there is corruption in any Dynasty under any emperor.
There were cultural developments in all eras of history of China.

In the Arts and sciences you cannot deny that there were huge leaps forward in development during the Ming dynasty. With a tremendous drop when the Manchus raided the country and instilled "THEIR" culture. Which was more Mongol than Chinese.

The Ming dynasty was a chief supporter of the Shaolin Temple and with the grants and edicts given too and for Shaolin Temple huge progress was made up until the point of the destruction at the hands of the Ching.

So, in the end, yes, all dynasties had their good points and bad points, but the Ming had some really good points.
I think your "age of darkness" story is likely coming from a PRC interpretation of the history and fed back to the people as gospel and truth.

Personally, PRC chinese history has about as much value to me as a roll of toilet paper.
Now that is corruption and Lies.

If I take a side, it is because I am bound to do so. People in the west are not idiots. The West is in my opinion the current seat of enlightenment despite all the troubles that ensue from exposing the masses to an education that is no longer structured by a scholastic regime.

Information is free flowing and the reader learner must learn to be discerning.

Information in the east is a lot more difficult to come by, especially in the areas as being discussed here.
The last thing the PRC wants it's people to know is how other eras may have been better than communism/socialism.

peace

Kung Lek

fiercest tiger
01-23-2001, 02:17 AM
i love hearing about history of china, is there any good books that give an actual real view of what was really happening in these dynastys?

you guys are giving some good info-thanks!! :D

peace

bakmeimonk@hotmail.com

Ming Fai
01-23-2001, 02:11 PM
Kung Lek,

"I think your "age of darkness" story is likely coming from a PRC interpretation of the history and fed back to the people as gospel and truth."

I was born and raised in Europe but I have lived in Taiwan, Hongkong and Beijing. I can assure that I am not biased towards any side. I base my conclusions on information that I have gathered throughout the years, Chinese material from Hongkong, Taiwan, Singapore and PRC as well as Western material. Some of the Chinese material were written before the Communist regime. Above all, if the PRC wants to feed the people altered history, they would most likely do that with the history of the Nationalist Republic (1912-1949) or the Qing dynasty which lasted till 1911). But why should the Chinese Communists alter the history of the Ming dynasty, a period of 500 years ago? What would be their gain? That's a bit contradictory, isn't it?

"PRC chinese history has about as much value to me as a roll of toilet paper. Now that is corruption and Lies."
I was wondering if you have ever been to China. From what I saw in Bejing and Shanghai the information about the emperial ages of China is fairly accurate. I made a comparison with material from Taiwan and it is almost identical.

"If I take a side, it is because I am bound to do so. People in the west are not idiots. The West is in my opinion the current seat of enlightenment despite all the troubles that ensue from exposing the masses to an education that is no longer structured by a scholastic regime."

Well, Kung Lek, I am no idiot either. I won't believe everything that is told in books. I will compare my information and draw my own conclusions. But if the USA represents the West, then I don't think that they are "enlightened". Americans tend to know everything about their own history but basically nothing about the rest of the world.

"In the Arts and sciences you cannot deny that there were huge leaps forward in development during the Ming dynasty. With a tremendous drop when the Manchus raided the country and instilled "THEIR" culture. Which was more Mongol than Chinese."
Well, I don't know of any leap in arts and sciences during the Ming dynasty except for the development on literature. During the Ming dynasty many great literary works were written, like "Water Margin", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Journey to the West". But this was actually caused by the tyranny of the Ming, many scholars were unhappy about society and began to write novels, dreaming of a better world where heroes would rise against the corrupt government. China always had a head start in the fields of technology and science compared to the rest of the world. It was only when the Ming emperors began the stagnation of the scholastic system that Chinese civilisation began to decline.
The Manchurians didn't had a culture of high standards. When they conquered China, they embraced Chinese culture. The only thing they instilled was the tradition for men to wear their hair in a pig-tail.

If I was not sure about this matter I would not have dared to enter this discussion. Isn't it very common for martial artists to ignore or attack the ones who have different ideas and theories? So don't start about the PRC, look at the people who are around you... are they any better?

I'm not attacking anyone here. I respect every nation in the world. I respect every martial artist and his/her style. But I just think that the knowledge you guys (Kung Lek and the others) have is a bit superficial.

Please go and ask a Chinese person who has some knowledge of Chinese history about the Ming and the Qing.

meltdawn
01-23-2001, 07:29 PM
Ming Fai, I take you very seriously. I am aware of how flawed is my own understanding of Chinese civilization. I have not your benefit of experiencing first-hand any other culture in it’s own environment. I thank you deeply for taking the time and effort in writing such a detailed description of the information you have acquired. I’d love to share my own limited point of reference on China as an American capitalist. Maybe some people will agree with my perspective, maybe some will reevaluate their own.

My father flew four tours in Viet Nam. He was stationed throughout Asia, including Japan and the Philippines, as were many officers at that time. Lucky for me, they got all their traveling done before I was born. Note sarcasm. However, they brought back many spoils. I grew up reading Asian fairy tales like "The Littlest Princess" and "The Golden Crane" alongside the collections of Edgar Alan Poe. Next to my Star Wars toys were fully wardrobed geishas with exchangeable wigs for various prescribed social occasions. I had my own kimono and obi at age four and those clunky wooden shoes, complete with toed socks. I was so sad when I outgrew them.

But even then - and I recently pointed this out to my father - 90% of our household came from China. These were things he purchased in other Asian and Pacific Rim nations. That must have been how prevalent Chinese contemporary culture pervaded all but Japan. We had Chinese scrolls, furniture, hand carved chests, bell pulls, mud men, buddhas, porcelain dragons, ivory puzzle balls, jade and metal sculpted trees, silk pillows, wood screens, vases.

In the seventies, the US was heavily influenced by its exchanges with "the Orient". My father loved Japan and taught my family much about it. He imported Asian art, and even brought over a calligrapher and brush painter from Taiwan for exhibition. In the ‘80’s, trade relations with mainland China opened up, the suburban US finally began to get a real taste. Remember the silk pincushions with pony-tailed kids ringing them? Or the tiny pillboxes made of inlaid colored wood? Now we’ve blossomed into a consumer economy not only purchasing Chinese trinkets, but "Made in China" clothing, cups, staplers, scissors, calculators, eyeglasses, telephones… look around where you are sitting right now and read the labels on everything. Search trade and shipping on the internet and you will discover how enmeshed China is in our economy. Never has another country outside of Colonialist England been so pervasive, and none more silently and steadfastly so. How many Japantowns do you know? Germantowns?

Our recent generations have, broadly speaking, only governmentally based knowledge of China. We watched Mao Tse Dong and Tiananmin Square. We saw Nixon get off a plane, and Bill shaking hands with a monk. We cannot, as a society, continue to confuse China with it’s government. One out of every four humans ever born are Chinese, very few of them governors. Even the Catholic church has begun teaching history from the ground up: a society is not regarded as evolving down from her king, but up from her people.

I now am fortunate to spend a great amount of time with a Cantonese/HK family. They’ve been in this country many years. The youngest are their first generation of American-born citizens. They love America. They say everyone wants to come here. But China is where they want to be buried. So I heed example and I listen. I ask respectful questions and my knowledge of a fascinating culture so different from my own grows. And they learn about USA from me. I try to be as unbiased as I can, and the more I tell, the more I learn about my own country. When China’s people had issues between her ethnicities, there was war. The subjugated evolved within the victor’s ethnic imposition, yet maintained vehemently their own identity. It is the same for Chinese in America today. With the undercurrent of intolerance in this country so obvious to the Chinese and so self-blinded to us, I wonder about our solution.

I have asked my master about Mao's revolution. Tonight, after I take the kids to a lion dance, I think I will ask him about the Ming and Ching.

China is like water. It flows through dynasties, cultural revolutions, religious revolutions, invasions, acquisitions. And still it grows, broadens, deepens. It does not stand up and say "Look at me! I have color TV!" It quietly listens, learns and unobtrusively flows on.

"Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors. They are the oldest civilized people on earth. Their civilization passes through phases but its basic characteristics remain the same. They yield, they bend to the wind, but they never break."
Pearl S. Buck, 1972

"Waiting is bad." - Musashi

Ming Fai
01-25-2001, 11:23 AM
Thanks Meltdown for your story, very inspiring! I'm not pretending to be a "Chinese-Know-It-All" around here, I have so many things to learn and understand. I've been to China and I think the Chinese have lots to learn from the West too (Ever sat in a cab where the taxi-driver spits a mouthfull of *YUK* on the window of another car?).

Happy Chinese New Year!