Is Shaolin-Do for real?

[oldmonkey]

MK, you say "probably destroyed"....?

When you have to qualify your opinion with words like "probably" your argument flies out the window. Probability has nothing to do with it.

What YOU think happened is limited by your imagination and your personal bias.

You don't like it. That's the sum total of your opinion. That your are suspicious only reveals that you have a suspicious nature.

It's o.k., you don't have to like it...but your hypothesis is meaningless.

[MasterKiller]

Originally posted by oldmonkey
MK, you say "probably destroyed"....?

When you have to qualify your opinion with words like "probably" your argument flies out the window. Probability has nothing to do with it.

I said "Probably" because there is no physical evidence it even existed. Consentual history places it's destruction around 1647, but since there is no physical evidence, it can't be nailed down exactly.

At any rate, SD's claim that it was destroyed circa 1890 should be more easily verifiable...So where's the ruins...?

[Starchaser107]

what!!!?!

[MasterKiller]

That your are suspicious only reveals that you have a suspicious nature.

Yeah, riiiiiight. No one outside of SD circles lends any credence to the bull**** history you try to pass off as fact. Even the REAL history about the Indonsian law banning Chinese arts doesn't fit into the SD version of the account by about 50 years or so. Every piece of history that comes out of your organization is laughable. And you wonder why people are suspicious? Maybe you're just too gullible. Or stupid. Or both.

[Judge Pen]

Wasn't there an article in KFM a few years back regarding the archeological evidence of a southern temple in Fujian? I saw a reference to that article on this forum once, but never got to read the article myself.

Also, isn't there speculation that there may have been more than one temple in Fujian?

Oldmonkey, I understood why MK qualified his statement. Several styles claim lineage to a Southern temple that may or may not have existed. Most, if not all, have the destruction of that temple occurring well before SD's history claims.

[MasterKiller]

Originally posted by Judge Pen
Wasn't there an article in KFM a few years back regarding the archeological evidence of a southern temple in Fujian? I saw a reference to that article on this forum once, but never got to read the article myself.

Not everyone agrees that the ruins in question are indeed the fabled Fukien Temple. Some people have been very eager to jump on the claim. Others are being more reserved until all the facts are in. At any rate, the destruction of those ruins is placed well before the SD timeline.

Also, isn't there speculation that there may have been more than one temple in Fujian?

There seems to be evidence that there were several smaller adjunct temples. None of them were destroyed anywhere near the timeframe SD claims, as far as I know. Whether or not they had a martial legacy is a different can of worms altogether.

[Judge Pen]

Originally posted by MasterKiller
Even the REAL history about the Indonsian law banning Chinese arts doesn't fit into the SD version of the account by about 50 years or so.

My e-mail correspondence with Dr. Davies who authored the article that MK keeps referring to:

From: Philip Davies
[mailto:Philip.Davies@brunel.ac.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2004 7:29 AM
To:[Judge Pen's private e-mail account]
Subject: FW: Kung Fu, Kung Tao, and Shaolin-Do

Dear [Judge Pen]

Thank you for your letter. I have seen some published materials about and by Mr. Sin, but can't speak with any direct knowledge of its art and its antecedents. I have, however, lived and worked in Singapore, Malaysia and spent time in Java researching the kuntao tradition in which I have trained (and have also dealt extensively with the International Pencak Silat Federation in Jakarta who are the main martial arts body in Indonesia).

First off, let me say a couple of things to give some wider context. A lot of the Indonesian systems brought to the west have 'nebulous'
histories, as
do arts practiced commonly in Southeast Asia today.
Some schools are
very
systematic about tracking their linneage (Cimande in West Java can trace every single teacher back to 'Mbah Khair c.1750) while other arts like Matjan Putih (White Tiger Silat) are recent recombinations of skills in which sometimes even the teacher has lost track of what he learned from whom. Indonesians and Malays view their systems as 'living arts' in which new schools, permutations and combinations come into existence while others die out. They are also less concerned with exact genealogies than East Asian traditions. And this will undoubtedly have influenced the Indonesianised 'peranakan' Chinese, as will the tendency to permutate and combine rather than preserve in aspic as it were. As a result, just about every art that came west with the post-revolutionary diaspora has some nebulosity in its background; the Kuntao Matjan of my own tradition, Carel Faulhaber (via Paatje Richard Kudding), Willem de Thouars Kuntao-Silat, the late Willem Reeders 'Royal Family' Kuntao, the late Willi Wetzel's regrettably spelled '****ao' (part of his effective but idiosyncratic 'pukulan cimande chuan fa') and even the de Thouars version of Serak all have patchy and incomplete histories, and mostly oral rather than documentary history to work from at that. This is no criticism; matters aren't a lot different in Southeast Asia either. So the Shaolin do/Sin Kwang The' situation is pretty consistent with the broader field of kuntao.

OK, now as regards the ban on Chinese arts, technically the legislation after the Generals' Coup prohibited Chinese art and literature and public displays of Chinese culture (lion dance, ghost festival &c). The actual legislation is a matter of public record, and while I do not have the legislative specifics to hand, I am sure you could get the exact legislation from a specialist Indonesianist (perhaps someone like Leo Suryadinata at the National University of Singapore who specialises in the contemporary history of the Indonesian Chinese). You could also find more specific background in my academic article on kuntao which was in the summer 2000 edition of the _Journal of Asian Martial Arts_ (which, unlike KF-QG magazine, has full citations for sources in its articles). The ban on Chinese martial arts was an incidental application of legislation designed to prohibit Chinese publishing and political communication. According to O'ong Maryono, who published a good book on Pencak Silat shortly after my own articles came out, under the ban the Pencak Silat organisation tried to incorporate Chinese kung-fu within silat, but unsuccessfully.
They felt the
Chinese
were too influential within silat, while other Chinese teachers simply refused to cooperate and a lot went underground. A lot did not, however, and a lot of kuntao continued to be practiced as an 'open secret' on the don't-ask'don't-tell kind of principle. To complicate matters, some of the leading pencak silat systems established since the 1940s are openly based on kung-fu, such as Perisai Diri (Surabaya), Persai Sakti
(Semarang) and
Bangau
Putih (Bandung).

I'm not aware of any local prior bans, but it's possible that Chinese martial arts got supressed by the Japanese during their wartime occupation.
From the movements and internal history of arts like Garuda Emas Kuntao (Golden Eagle kuntao in Semarang) and the careers of leading boxers like Liu Song, Lim Tjoei Kang and Lou Ban Tang in Jakarta, Semarang and Solo it looks pretty unlikely that there was much active repression of kuntao apart from the general suppression of the Chinese on racial grounds much as one would have seen in Taiwan or Shanghai. There were, however, intermittent purges, pogroms and persecutions of the ethnic Chinese, most notable being the massacres during the anti-Chinese riots of the 1880s.

All of that being said, however, I don't really think that 'Japananising'
kung fu or calling it Shaolin Do would have deceived anybody in Indonesia.
Chinese boxing is too well known throughout the region, and most silat practitioners I know can spot Chinese styles or Chinese-influenced techniques (many will privately admit they believe Silat derives from kung fu originally), and Shaolin is a very, very well known name. A lot of arts in Java took on Japanese traits during the occupation, and after, when the high degree of Japanese martial arts organisation and the obvious power of arts like Judo and Karate set a kind of standard to which a lot of Indonesians felt they should aspire (hence Japanese-infuenced composite arts like PORBIKAWA). So the Japanisation may have been more a reflection of an endemic eclecticism than any real strategy of concealment.

Just to complicate matters further again, a lot of kuntao arts adopted Japanese characteristics when they began to be taught in the west.
This was
partly because of trying to provide an appearance that Western audiences familiar mainly with Japanese systems could relate to, and partly because Western students responded very poorly to the Indonesian and Chinese approaches to teaching basics. Teachers found westerners more interested in arts with Japanese and Korean style kicks than arcane, close-range handwork, and they found it easier to get westerners to learn long, Japanese forward steps, back-stances, kiba dachi &c than trying to get them to do Chinese horse-training (hours in static postures) or repetitive but complex Indonesian footwork drills. As a result, you find Willem Reeders building a lot of his teaching around a base of ****o Ryo karate and pictures of Kuntao Matjan students in Holland (where Japanisation was even more pronounced because of the central national role of the Judokwai) doing forward stances with Japanese-style high blocks (neither of which occur in the traditional form of the art).

I don't know if this helps at all,

Best regards,

Philip H.J. Davies

[Judge Pen]

Originally posted by MasterKiller
Not everyone agrees that the ruins in question are indeed the fabled Fukien Temple. Some people have been very eager to jump on the claim. Others are being more reserved until all the facts are in. At any rate, the destruction of those ruins is placed well before the SD timeline.

There seems to be evidence that there were several smaller adjunct temples. None of them were destroyed anywhere near the timeframe SD claims, as far as I know. Whether or not they had a martial legacy is a different can of worms altogether.

Lot's of room for error and interpretation in what we do know of the southern temples. In short, it proves and "disproves" nothing.

[MasterKiller]

All of that being said, however, I don't really think that 'Japananising' kung fu or calling it Shaolin Do would have deceived anybody in Indonesia. Chinese boxing is too well known throughout the region, and most silat practitioners I know can spot Chinese styles or Chinese-influenced techniques (many will privately admit they believe Silat derives from kung fu originally), and Shaolin is a very, very well known name.

I wondered why you never posted his email...until now.

[Judge Pen]

Nah, what he said was what several, including themeecer have argued was part of the gi wearing thing (convenience and familiarity for Americans). Again, I don't try to get too caught up in the history or lineage part of SD. It's unverifiable by any independent sources. If I wanted to delete that portion of the e-mail, I could have and no one but me and Dr. Davies would have known the difference. I had actually lost that e-mail and asked Radhotni to forward it to me since I had forwarded it to him. He recently did that and I posted it once the topic came back around.

Sorry MK, I've nothing to hide.

[MasterKiller]

Originally posted by Judge Pen
Nah, what he said was what several, including themeecer have argued was part of the gi wearing thing (convenience and familiarity for Americans). Again, I don't try to get too caught up in the history or lineage part of SD. It's unverifiable by any independent sources. If I wanted to delete that portion of the e-mail, I could have and no one but me and Dr. Davies would have known the difference. I had actually lost that e-mail and asked Radhotni to forward it to me since I had forwarded it to him. He recently did that and I posted it once the topic came back around.

Sorry MK, I've nothing to hide.

So who came up with the lamo story about Ie changing everything to Japanese to fool the Indonesians, then? If you guys tell a different story internally, that it was for Western convienence, why does SD tell a different story externally, that it's to honor Ie's struggle to maintain the Shaolin arts while being persecuted?

And BTW, that whole email pretty much rips the SD claim of original transmission to shreds, not just the paragraph I quoted. It lends more credence to what we've said all along--It's a hodgepodge of other styles.

[Judge Pen]

Originally posted by MasterKiller
So who came up with the lamo story about Ie changing everything to Japanese to fool the Indonesians, then? If you guys tell a different story internally, that it was for Western convienence, why does SD tell a different story externally, that it's to honor Ie's struggle to maintain the Shaolin arts while being persecuted?

And BTW, that whole email pretty much rips the SD claim of original transmission to shreds, not just the paragraph I quoted. It lends more credence to what we've said all along--It's a hodgepodge of other styles.

The e-mail doesn't comment on SD as a style specifically MK, just the general state of martial arts in Indonesia. Having said that, everyone who studies SD admits it's a patchwork art comprising several styles of CMA. If it was mixed with Japanese techniques no one in the art is saying it. I don't know; I'm nobody in SD, but I am a student who asks questions. Maybe SD mixed karate into it, maybe it only borrowed some of the trappings. No doubt it's history is nebelous which isn't uncommon with any martial art that came through Indonesia.

"First off, let me say a couple of things to give some wider context. A lot of the Indonesian systems brought to the west have 'nebulous'
histories, as
do arts practiced commonly in Southeast Asia today."

As for the bans:

"I'm not aware of any local prior bans, but it's possible that Chinese martial arts got supressed by the Japanese during their wartime occupation"

And for SD's official story regarding hiding the arts:

"According to O'ong Maryono, who published a good book on Pencak Silat shortly after my own articles came out, under the ban the Pencak Silat organisation tried to incorporate Chinese kung-fu within silat, but unsuccessfully.
They felt the
Chinese
were too influential within silat, while other Chinese teachers simply refused to cooperate and a lot went underground. A lot did not, however, and a lot of kuntao continued to be practiced as an 'open secret' on the don't-ask'don't-tell kind of principle."

Maybe it didn't fool anyone like it's said today. Maybe the officials didn't care, but Master Ie thought they did. I don't know. I prefer to talk about technique because much of this stuff is unprovable one way or the other.

[MasterKiller]

Originally posted by Judge Pen
"First off, let me say a couple of things to give some wider context. A lot of the Indonesian systems brought to the west have 'nebulous' histories, as do arts practiced commonly in Southeast Asia today."

You left off the good part:

while other arts like Matjan Putih (White Tiger Silat) are recent recombinations of skills in which sometimes even the teacher has lost track of what he learned from whom. Indonesians and Malays view their systems as 'living arts' in which new schools, permutations and combinations come into existence while others die out. They are also less concerned with exact genealogies than East Asian traditions. And this will undoubtedly have influenced the Indonesianised 'peranakan' Chinese, as will the tendency to permutate and combine rather than preserve in aspic as it were.

Which would explain why it appears Sin The' keeps adding new forms to the curriculum that more than likely weren't there when he was originially training (24-step Yang is obvious, but I have a feeling he's been adding a whole lot more than he lets on or you guys are willing to admit.) It also implies the "900 forms" thing is just a pretty convenient cover story to mask this practice.

Which shoots a big hole in the "original transmission" theory as well.

[Judge Pen]

I didn't leave off anything MK. I pasted the e-mail in it's entirety!

No one denies that Yang 24 was picked up and taught to SDs students because Sin The wanted us to know the most popular form of Tai Chi. GT said that he was there when Sin The first taught it out. (Again you keep accusing us of hiding stuff that we are not).

As for other stuff, it's been mentioned before: there were several teachers other than Ie Chang Ming. We don't know who taught what in Indonesia. We don't know what, if anything, was picked up later. I don't know and you don't know.

[Judge Pen]

Originally posted by MasterKiller
I have a feeling he's been adding a whole lot more than he lets on or you guys are willing to admit.

No offense, but your feelings aren't a big concern of mine. I like you logicial arguments though.