ATTN: Sal Canzonieri

[SaekSan]

"the dozen Kan Jia Forms come from this (these are the forms that are no called Northern Shaolin style by many who do 10 of these 12 forms - the Wing Lam / Chan Kwok, etc schools)."

Do you have any more information on this? What are the names of the other two sets? Any lineage info? Any other info about the BSL style in itself?

Thank you.

[Fen]

I think he is going to avoid your question brother...

~Jason

[Sal Canzonieri]

Why would I avoid the question? That was very rude and disrepectful to someone that has been spending much time and money researching Chinese martial arts for 20 years and presenting the information in magazine articles (I wrote many such articles for Wushu Kungfu magazine since 1991) when I could have kept it all to myself. Many great Chinese KF masters know about my work and have supported it. So, I dont deserve your punk comments.

It is COMMON KNOWLEDGE to a lot of people,
just because people in America don't read or don't do their own research doesn't mean the rest don't.

All the info you want about the Kan Jia Shaolin forms, which were developed by Abbott Fu Ju are written about in various books. I have 2 or 3 books on the subject.
The easiest way to find all the info is for you is to get a set of the Shaolin Encyclopedia.

When they first come out and were sold in NYC Chinatown and LA and SF and Seattle Chinatowns, I sold 10 sets of the books myself on the internet to all who asked me to order a set.
Bak Lai Bo (not sure of the spelling) martial arts store owner Kevin, on Mott Street send them out to all who ordered them through me for $300 each set. I do not think he can get more, it is out of print. If you find a copy in these Chinatown book stores, etc, then you are lucky, since its been since 1992 that they were out.


Here's your info:

The English translations of the table of contents.

http://www.shaolins.com/encyclopedia/


Kan Jia 13 forms:

1.the first opening the mountain fist...................925
2.the second facing the door fist...................940
3.the third three recommendation for Zhu Ge...........954
4.the fourth puncture heart hammer...................971
5.the fifth five men palm....................980
6.the sixth Di Pan leg....................989
7.the seventh plum blossom fist...........993
8.the eighth chain hammer...............1000
9.the ninth chain leg.................1006
10.the tenth ambush palm..............1011
11.the eleventh Pu Di sand.............1017
12.the twelvth capture the enemies back to mountain.............1024
13.the thirteen protect yard hammer.........................1031

People from Chan Kwok's School in Brazil and Argentina
have looked at these forms and have confirmed that the first 10 are identical to the ones they have learned, names are a little different.

Sal

[SaekSan]

Sal,

Thank you very much for your reply. I will look into acquiring a copy of the texts, thank you for the link.

I have read many of your articles and would like to thank you for sharing your knowledge, it is greatly appreciated.

Would you have any information or leads on the development of Kuoshu in Taiwan post 1949 (more specifically 1949-1975)I have asked about this before to others and unfortunately have had no success in finding more info.

Once again thank you.

[Sal Canzonieri]

Originally posted by SaekSan
Sal,

Thank you very much for your reply. I will look into acquiring a copy of the texts, thank you for the link.

I have read many of your articles and would like to thank you for sharing your knowledge, it is greatly appreciated.

Would you have any information or leads on the development of Kuoshu in Taiwan post 1949 (more specifically 1949-1975)I have asked about this before to others and unfortunately have had no success in finding more info.

Once again thank you.

My Shuai Jiao teacher, David Chih Young Lin, who is 70 years old, would know the answers, his teachers were the top 10 best Chinese KF masters of the generation before him.
Natural Martial Arts, 320 West 37th St, NYC.

Maybe you can call him and see if he will let you interview him?
Or write a list of specific questions that can be given him.
Where are you located? If near NYC, I can introduce you to him.

Robert Smith's book Masters and Methods would have a lot of information for you and also you can interview him, he lives in Washington DC (he also has praised my work and supported it).

Also, there is another David Lin, my teacher's school brother (they are not related) in Atlanta that studied with some of the same teachers: http://www.combatshuaichiao.com/younglin.html
There is history stuff there on that site too.

Also: http://www.tro-taiwan.roc.org.uk/dc/nsl112003r.htm

Also, Wu Lin magazine has articles on taiwan KF history:
http://www.plumpub.com/sales/lionbks/lb_wulinmag2.htm

Alan Pittman also can help:
http://www.apittman.com/index.html?A...A.html~content

[SaekSan]

Sal,

Thank you very much the leads. I will follow-up once I have the opportunity.

"Where are you located? If near NYC, I can introduce you to him."

Thank you very much for the kind invitation, unfortunately I live in Wisconsin. I do go to the east coast once a year (for the USCKF event) so perhaps this could come to fruition in the near future.

Thank you kindly for all your help.

Sincerely,

Nelson

[Fen]

Why would I avoid the question? That was very rude and disrepectful to someone that has been spending much time and money researching Chinese martial arts for 20 years and presenting the information in magazine articles (I wrote many such articles for Wushu Kungfu magazine since 1991) when I could have kept it all to myself. Many great Chinese KF masters know about my work and have supported it. So, I dont deserve your punk comments.

Sorry, Sorry. Sorry!!!
I will not give you a excuse becase I was wrong. My sincerest apologies.

I hope you have a good CNY Brother Sal.

~Jason

[r.(shaolin)]

It is my belief that this encyclopedia, is a collection of forms from various lay traditions practiced in the Dengfeng region and not a tome of direct lineage material from the last surviving Shaolin monks. In the summer of 1980 an event was put together, specifically to collect and systematize what remained of Shaolin culture. This event was called "Shaolin Martial Arts Exhibition for Exchange and Emulation". Twelve different communes were part of this effort with one hundred and twenty nine martial artists from the region, plus a number of invited Shaolin experts from different parts of China, participated. As a result 249 traditional bare hand and weapons sets were recorded. I strongly suspect that many, if not most, of the sets in these books came from this collection.

It is my view that the material collected however is substantially incomplete because the material is not representative of any one lineage. Much had been lost in the previous 30 years. You'll notice for example, although there are many single sets collected there very very few contacts sets.
It is also my opinion that very few forms are from the old monks - Shi Su Xi ,Shi Su Yun, Shi Xing Zhen. etc.

I doubt the editor, De Qian, learn the 300+ sets in his encyclopedia from his two monk teachers. At first, in the early 1980's 'modern wushu' champions such as Lu Xiaolin of Beijing University were assigned by the Chinese government to go to Shaolin and help re-establish the ancient kung-fu training program there. What really happened how this curriculum was put together and who else was involved is at this point not clear and not accessible but there is good reason to question the rather strange lack of transparency and the fantastical appearance of 300 sets. I have a hunch that the numbers of set will keep growing :-)))) One individual that was reasonable close the source in the mid '80's, did tell me however that "many laymen teachers gave the knowledge back to some of the monks in the temple."
....................................
Sal wrote:
Chan Kwok's School in Brazil and Argentina have looked at these forms and have confirmed that the first 10 are identical to the ones they have learned, names are a little different.
....................................
It would interesting to know where these sets came from. I would hazard a guess not from any of the old monks.

r.

[Sal Canzonieri]

Haven spoken ten years ago once to the person that compiled the books, Shi De Qian, via an interpretor, I was told this:

the forms and the material in the 4 volumes were taken from what's left of books of Shaolin that were saved before the fires of the 1920s gutted the temple.
These forms were copied from the original hand written books.
I was shown photos of Shi De Qian at Shaolin with hundreds of such books around him and with the pages open to show the original drawings. That's where almost all the 300+ forms came from.
Shi De Qian was the First Abbot (head abbot) at Shaolin and while he was such, he worked hard to collect the info from the books and give it to the world so that it would not be lost.
Since he actually stayed at and headed Shaolin martial monks, he would have the access to the material. He worked with one of the very old monks that had actually helped grab all the books so that they would not be burned up back in the 1920s.
Doc from Russbo.com has learned many very ancient sets from these people, including Shi De Qian, and brings back info about sets from him that he gets personally.

The reason some forms are missing, the book tells you the names and the moves of all the forms that they are missing the images for, is that they haven't been found in the Shaolin library yet. Either they were burned or they are buried under all the other books.

I have compared the forms to other books and tapes I have and they match.

Also, I have almost the whole series of forms that were taped in 1983 from all over China, they compare pretty well.
I also have tapes of the old monks teaching forms, and yes there are more forms not shown in the 4 volumes (yet).


By the way:
I've been told that they read my articles in the early issues of Wusu KF, when it was called KF Chi Gung magazine about the history of Shaolin and that they even added a form to the books after reading one of my articles that they had forgotten about.
The magazines were confiscated from one westerner who was one of the earliest people from the west to start studying at Shaolin because the Chinese Gov't was upset that my articles told the truth about Damo not existing and so on, they were afraid that tourists would stop coming there.

[norther practitioner]

At first, in the early 1980's 'modern wushu' champions such as Lu Xiaolin of Beijing University were assigned by the Chinese government to go to Shaolin and help re-establish the ancient kung-fu training program there.

well, not that you aren't saying anything that I haven't heard, or read etc. The one thing that I'd like to add though is that modern wushu of 1980 looked much more like traditional long fist than it does now.

[Sal Canzonieri]

Originally posted by norther practitioner
well, not that you aren't saying anything that I haven't heard, or read etc. The one thing that I'd like to add though is that modern wushu of 1980 looked much more like traditional long fist than it does now.

True, most of the early long fist forms were developed by Cai Longyin and he is an excellent traditional Shaolin and Hua Quan master.

[r.(shaolin)]

Sal

I appreciate your candor and the time you have taken to respond.

It does further confirm my suspicions.

...........................
I was shown photos of Shi De Qian at Shaolin with hundreds of such books around him and with the pages open to show the original drawings. That's where almost all the 300+ forms came from.
...........................

I fully believe that you saw photos of Shi De Qian with these books with the pages open showing the original drawings. The books the encyclopedia were copied from, were modern. The conventions used throughout this entire encyclopedia simply did not exist in pre-modern times. These drawing (mostly badly drawn) are western and modern, sequenced and notated in a manner commonly used from the 1950's onward in mainland China. Being a small 'e' expert in this history of notation and illustration of movement and the problems of conveying ideas and information about movement in images - a subject I teach- I can state with reasonable confidence, the way these illustration are done and shown, did not exist in China in the 1800's let alone the 1700's or earlier. Chinese style notations and illustration of movement in ancient times were nothing like this. There is absolutely no way one could take historical Chinese martial instructional material and translated them this way.

r.

[Sal Canzonieri]

Indeed that sounds right.
I do have some very ancient copies of books and the drawings
are super primitive.
But, from what I heard from others, because lots of people were asking how did the drawings get done, that the texts and simple primitive drawings were what they had to work from and
they compliled drawings, commission new drawings, etc from this source material, but had it done so that it was clear how to do the movements.

In other words, the drawings were newly done to illustrate how to do the forms, they aren't the original ancient drawings, but
the new drawings were based on what the ancient books said the moves were.

[GeneChing]

I was fixated on trying to make a connection between Songshan Shaolin and BSL for years - the closest one would be Kan Jia. However I'm rather astonished to hear that Chan Kwok Wai's students claim that the first 10 Kan Jia sets are identical to their BSL system. GM Chan is Wing Lam's shixiong - I've seen video of their versions of most of the BSL forms and they are not too different than what we practice. However, Kan Jia from Deqian's works are pretty different. In fact, the only really parallel - the keystone to the argument - is within BSL #4 and Kan Jia #4 you see the same 'strike to the heart' pose, what I nickname the 'up yours in horse stance' posture (BSL people will get that, I'm sure). I'm constantly vaccilating on my opinion of the Kan Jia/BSL connection. Really, it boils down to #4 and a few parallel names. When I first ran across it, I was more enthusiastic. BTW, Kan Jia is still practiced at Shaolin.

I interviewed Shi Deqian in 2003 and have an article in the queue on him. First of all, he was never 'abbot' - He may have been one of the honorary abbots, but he was never formally called 'abbot'. He is one of the better known Shaolin masters, mostly because of his extensive work publishing books. He is no longer a monk officially. He is married and runs his own school on the outskirts of Dengfeng. The encyclopedia's source was a large collection of handcopied books, done by another monk prior to the 1928 burning of Shaolin. It represents the largest example of preserved works from Shaolin's legendary library. But it is only a portion, and a modern copy of a hand copied version. So that explains the artisitic anomalies that bother r.(shaolin) so. Deqian didn't really work hard to collect these books. They were handed off to him. He did work very hard to bring them to print today, but the collection was already together. The encyclopedia not a scholarly work. Nor would I say that it is some grand reconstructionalist ploy. It's more anecdotal, and interesting record of Shaolin, with a very skewed sourcepoint.

[Shaolinlueb]

nice post guys

Originally posted by Sal Canzonieri
By the way:
I've been told that they read my articles in the early issues of Wusu KF, when it was called KF Chi Gung magazine about the history of Shaolin and that they even added a form to the books after reading one of my articles that they had forgotten about.
The magazines were confiscated from one westerner who was one of the earliest people from the west to start studying at Shaolin because the Chinese Gov't was upset that my articles told the truth about Damo not existing and so on, they were afraid that tourists would stop coming there.

wait, so damo didnt exist?