The Chinese love 5's - that's why they call their cigarettes 555

The idea of connecting 5 animal frolics with 5 animals kung fu is really enticing, but personally it feels more like both systems are homages to the Chinese 5ophilia than one is to the other. It's like all the other examples of Chiense numerology - 18, 36, 72, 108 etc. - it's really hard to pin down the progenitor.

Actually, the correlation between early qigong systems and martial arts is a fascinating one, one that Dr. Shahar and I have been starting to discuss. Really, when you think about it, that is the break, the origin of CMA as we know it. Every culture has fighting systems, but CMA fused qigong elements and created taolu. This raises a really interesting question - when does taolu first appear?