Luohan Quan

[RenDaHai]

When I meet with Yan Zhuang shifu again I'll find out as much as I can about it.

THis luohan quan is definately not from Degen da shi. Its not the 18 luohan, it uses different basics. But it is an awesome form.

He said er lo has 108 movements and yi lu is short. I'll find out more and see if I cant study all 3. I have a suspicion that his er lo may be the long set in the encyclopedia (deqian).

[Sal Canzonieri]

When I meet with Yan Zhuang shifu again I'll find out as much as I can about it.

THis luohan quan is definately not from Degen da shi. Its not the 18 luohan, it uses different basics. But it is an awesome form.

He said er lo has 108 movements and yi lu is short. I'll find out more and see if I cant study all 3. I have a suspicion that his er lo may be the long set in the encyclopedia (deqian).

Hmm, that long set in the encyclopedia is pretty short compared to Liu Zhen Hai's Luohan Quan, that's 108 postures and many more sub-movements within the postures.
Time and again, Liu Zhenhai's sets turn out to be the most complete and detailed.

There's only three classic Luohan Quan sets (not counting the 18 hands sets and the various lesser known sets scattered through the volumes) in the Shaolin Encyclopedia:

There's a short Luohan Quan set (doesn't match anything else seen on videos)
and a longer Luohan Quan set (this one matches Shi Degen's Yi Lu set)
in the older versions of the books.
The new version has the Er Lu Luohan Quan set that everybody does now (that one you said is a modernized set).

The real 108 Da Luohan is not shown.

[RenDaHai]

@Sal

Hey! I have found our Luohan Quan san lo set.

I am preparing to meet Yan Zhuang to learn that san lu luohan quan in yongxins yellow book, I'm quite familiar with the form now.

If you have the liuzhenhai performance VCD, put in disc A and look at his Luohan QUan 6 lu...... ITS the SAME form!!

Not quite, shorter, but with so many moves in roughly the same sequence that it must come from the same set.

Once again LiuZhenHai has everything. The more i see his luohan quan sets, the more moves from the other sets I see included.

[Sal Canzonieri]

@Sal

Hey! I have found our Luohan Quan san lo set.

I am preparing to meet Yan Zhuang to learn that san lu luohan quan in yongxins yellow book, I'm quite familiar with the form now.

If you have the liuzhenhai performance VCD, put in disc A and look at his Luohan QUan 6 lu...... ITS the SAME form!!

Not quite, shorter, but with so many moves in roughly the same sequence that it must come from the same set.

Once again LiuZhenHai has everything. The more i see his luohan quan sets, the more moves from the other sets I see included.

That's great. The yellow book is good preparation before getting the actual hands on lessons.

I don't have the Liu zhenhai performance VCD, do you mean the one that shows all his vcds on one performance VCD? I haven't been able to find a copy of it in the USA.
But, I have almost all of his VCDs anyways.
So, I can check the Luohan #6 VCD and see.

I was, when I felt better and had more time, going to review all 7 of his Luohan VCDs and post about it here on which routines they are in comparison to everyone else's videos.

Thanks for the tip!

There are two other sets that Liu Zhenhai has that he never made VCDs of that are very interesting and rare.
One is the Shaolin Ape-Monkey set, which is very much like his Rou Quan set VCD and one is the Shaolin 5 Elements Linking Fist set!
That set is really crazy and interesting, it is only 18 postures.
It repeats itself halfway through.

It really looks like a Shaolin version of the Xingyi Five Elements Linking form set!
Which is nuts! Can it be that shaolin had this set first and Xingyi founders borrowed from this set?
It is just about all the movements, just done with a total Shaolin way of doing the moves, much more primitive and ancient compare to how Xingyi Quan has further developed it.

[RenDaHai]

A shaolin Wu xing lian huan quan??

That would be really fascinating...

How did you find out about this, is there a book?

I'd love to know more about it. Wuxing is almost a complete system in its own right.


On the shaolin sets, i watched them all a lot. They are all short, the 'san lo' in the books is mainly liuzhenhais 6lo with some moves from 4 and 5.

[Sal Canzonieri]

A shaolin Wu xing lian huan quan??

That would be really fascinating...

How did you find out about this, is there a book?

I'd love to know more about it. Wuxing is almost a complete system in its own right.


On the shaolin sets, i watched them all a lot. They are all short, the 'san lo' in the books is mainly liuzhenhais 6lo with some moves from 4 and 5.

Yeah, when you see this set, you realize some things:
1 - Pi Quan / Split / Metal = Tongbi Quan
2 - Heng Quan / Horizontal / Earth = Hong Quan
3 - Pao Quan / Explode / Fire = Pao Quan (naturally)

In this set, what Shaolin styles Beng Quan (shoot / wood) and Zhuan Quan (drill /Water) correlate to I am still pondering.
They are found in the set though.

Strangely, I have seen two different versions of Xingyi Wuxing Lianhuan Quan and one of them is very much like this Shaolin set instead of the standard way of doing it like the modern Hebei practitioners.

[LFJ]

If you have the liuzhenhai performance VCD, put in disc A and look at his Luohan QUan 6 lu...... ITS the SAME form!!

just had a look at those sets again, and noticed the luohanquan 7 lu is basically the same as the dameihuaquan set that everyone does. have a look at the moves and sequences. its the same, but has different moves at the end, and doesnt do the "coffee grinder" sweep. actually it ends short before all of that stuff in meihuaquan.

[Sal Canzonieri]

just had a look at those sets again, and noticed the luohanquan 7 lu is basically the same as the dameihuaquan set that everyone does. have a look at the moves and sequences. its the same, but has different moves at the end, and doesnt do the "coffee grinder" sweep. actually it ends short before all of that stuff in meihuaquan.

ha, that's funny. I didn't think that set looked like standard Luohan and I ignored watching it to the end.

Well, in doing my research for my book, I came across a lot of history on the Meihua Zhuang style.
it was developed outside of Shaolin. Meihua Zhuang first started out as folk Muslim Chinese martial arts from the region where Shandong, Henan, and Hebei all intersect. At some point, they had merged with practitioners of Shaolin Wu Quan system, which includes Luohan Quan in it, TZ Chang Quan, Hong Quan. Thus, Meihua Zhuang become an internal martial art.
By the 1600s, the style was incorporated back into Shaolin, where they adopted a lot of its ideas to develop their Shaolin Liu He Quan style, Shaolin Mei Hua and also the use of poles to stand on when practicing routines for advanced training.

So, in a convoluted way, Mei Hua Quan is very much related to Luohan Quan.
Perhaps, Liu Zhenhai has an early version of this set, before it became merged with Mei Hua Quan? The Da Mei Hua Quan set was developed during the Qing Dynasty, hundreds of years after Luohan Quan was created.

[Sal Canzonieri]

By the way, speaking of weird Luohan Quan:

Liu Zhenhai and others in Dengfeng area have a very rare to see WEIRD Luohan 18 Hands set, which they said came direct from Li Sou. It is 18 postures long, with 44 movements (counting the opening and closing postures).
It is not like anything I have ever seen before. It has finger poking movements, foot poking movements, throws, takedowns, trips, and strange postures.

[RenDaHai]

Hmm? That luohan 18 shou sounds interesting....

Yeah I noticed that 7lo is the first part of meihua quan. Funnily enough if you look at the Da luohan in tagous books, the long one, the very last section with phoenix spreads its wings-yaobu-housaotui-3 pixinzhang-xuanfengjiao This whole little section is from meihua quan.

I assume like sal that this may be a luohan quan thing and that it was later incorperated or named Meihua quan. The strange thing is is that shaolin Meihua men is actually a large menpai system, All i have ever seen are the two dengfeng forms, the one mentioned and another set that is mainly ditang moves, sweeps and such. I think there must be many more forms of Meihua we don't get to see and perhaps this set is a fill i...

[Sal Canzonieri]

Hmm? That luohan 18 shou sounds interesting....

Yeah I noticed that 7lo is the first part of meihua quan. Funnily enough if you look at the Da luohan in tagous books, the long one, the very last section with phoenix spreads its wings-yaobu-housaotui-3 pixinzhang-xuanfengjiao This whole little section is from meihua quan.

I assume like sal that this may be a luohan quan thing and that it was later incorperated or named Meihua quan. The strange thing is is that shaolin Meihua men is actually a large menpai system, All i have ever seen are the two dengfeng forms, the one mentioned and another set that is mainly ditang moves, sweeps and such. I think there must be many more forms of Meihua we don't get to see and perhaps this set is a fill i...

I think that we have two things going on here as Shaolin Meihua is concerned.

1 - There is the Shaolin Meihua Quan (Xiao and Da) that was developed during the later Qing Dynasty as part of the "Classic" 10 (or so) sets of Shaolin Quan.
In this case, Meihua Quan simple means Five Flowers of Boxing, and the sets are composed of movements from Luohan, Hong, Pao, Tongbi, and Chang Quan. This includes the very similar Zhao Yang and Chao Yang Quan sets.

2 - Then there is more ancient Meihua Zhuang style and its absorption into Shaolin before the 1600s or much earlier. This corpus of material is extensive.


The Ditang Meihua Quan is historically interesting, in that folk Meihua has ditang as part of their routines. AND< this comes from it's merger with Shaolin Wu Quan, as bai Yufeng has developed a series of ditang five animals sets (which I have section about in my forthcoming book) and these sets have been discussed previously in this forum between me and "R. Shaolin" or Rik Zak.

[LFJ]

here is a version of the set done a bit differently than how most people do it. there are many familiar luohanquan postures, as well as paoquan and taizu changquan techniques in it.
http://u.youku.com/user_show/id_UMTU2NTAwMjg4.html

this person also has a taizu changquan video there, and a zhaoyangquan. the zhaoyang set is the same set but done quite a bit differently than master deyang's.

have a look.

[Sal Canzonieri]

here is a version of the set done a bit differently than how most people do it. there are many familiar luohanquan postures, as well as paoquan and taizu changquan techniques in it.
http://u.youku.com/user_show/id_UMTU2NTAwMjg4.html

this person also has a taizu changquan video there, and a zhaoyangquan. the zhaoyang set is the same set but done quite a bit differently than master deyang's.

have a look.

Oh this guy, I just found his TZ video two days ago on the net.

It seems he's a student, he still has some rough spots and is doing some parts too externally (especially in his TZ Chang set).

AND< as you say, HOW he is doing the forms is interesting and pretty cool.
I wonder who his teacher is? Whoever he is, his teacher taught him a distinct way of doing the postures and movements.

But, Here he is doing a modern wushu long fist set, not traditional at all: 少林三路长拳
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTE5OTE3NTgw.html

Hmm, would be weird if he is doing wushu versions of the sets and they look more "traditional" than some people's traditional????

[LFJ]

was just reading the old encyclopedia on the xiao and da meihuaquan sets.

the history on the xiaomeihuaquan set tells a story of abbot fuju's disciple jueda (觉大) in the song dynasty practicing luohan shibashou in front of a winter blossom tree before the abbot's chamber. then fuju explained to him allegorically how a gongfu practitioner should be like the blossom.

after listening jueda stood contemplating for a while until he was fired up with inspiration and began training extra hard but not following any of the previous boxing sets he had studied with his shifu. instead he just let it flow.

another monk saw him training and asked what it was called. jueda thought for a moment then said it should be called "meihuaquan" (plum blossom boxing). and so jueda's boxing set was then named shaolin meihuaquan, or jueda meihuaquan.

originally it had 96 postures, but in the yuan dynasty it was simplified into 29 postures by jinnaluowang, and then called "xiaomeihuaquan".

the set was written down following the demonstration of shi yongyang.

here's the only video i've seen of it:
http://www.56.com/u71/v_MTQ3MTkwMjg.html

dameihuaquan,

for this set, the encyclopedia reads:
"大梅花拳是清末民初的少林寺僧会司恒林大和尚，在原小梅花拳的基础上，结合攻防的须要增编而创，共54势 ，比小梅花拳多了二十五势"

it says abbot henglin in the early 1900's combined attack and defense skills based on the xiaomeihuaquan set to expand it into a larger set of 54 postures, 24 more than the xiaomeihuaquan set. this new set was named dameihuaquan.

so according to the encyclopedia, dameihuaquan is abbot henglin's creation, and not actually an older set.

its interesting then why liu zhenhai's 7 road luohanquan has this dameihuaquan as the 7th set, grouped with and called luohanquan. that is if the encyclopedia is to be trusted about henglin's hand in the set's creation.

[Sal Canzonieri]

was just reading the old encyclopedia on the xiao and da meihuaquan sets.

the history on the xiaomeihuaquan set tells a story of abbot fuju's disciple jueda (觉大) in the song dynasty practicing luohan shibashou in front of a winter blossom tree before the abbot's chamber. then fuju explained to him allegorically how a gongfu practitioner should be like the blossom.

after listening jueda stood contemplating for a while until he was fired up with inspiration and began training extra hard but not following any of the previous boxing sets he had studied with his shifu. instead he just let it flow.

another monk saw him training and asked what it was called. jueda thought for a moment then said it should be called "meihuaquan" (plum blossom boxing). and so jueda's boxing set was then named shaolin meihuaquan, or jueda meihuaquan.

originally it had 96 postures, but in the yuan dynasty it was simplified into 29 postures by jinnaluowang, and then called "xiaomeihuaquan".

the set was written down following the demonstration of shi yongyang.

here's the only video i've seen of it:
http://www.56.com/u71/v_MTQ3MTkwMjg.html

dameihuaquan,

for this set, the encyclopedia reads:
"大梅花拳是清末民初的少林寺僧会司恒林大和尚，在原小梅花拳的基础上，结合攻防的须要增编而创，共54势 ，比小梅花拳多了二十五势"

it says abbot henglin in the early 1900's combined attack and defense skills based on the xiaomeihuaquan set to expand it into a larger set of 54 postures, 24 more than the xiaomeihuaquan set. this new set was named dameihuaquan.

so according to the encyclopedia, dameihuaquan is abbot henglin's creation, and not actually an older set.

its interesting then why liu zhenhai's 7 road luohanquan has this dameihuaquan as the 7th set, grouped with and called luohanquan. that is if the encyclopedia is to be trusted about henglin's hand in the set's creation.

Agreed, that's really strange.
Thanks for bringing this up and doing a further investigation into this. Much appreciated!

I knew that Da Meihua Quan was a late Qing creation.

I haven't read through those books since I first got them, except recently to compare routines with Tagou books and videos.

All research shows that the 18 Luohan Hands existed before Luohan Quan developed, which is to say that it was the material that Jue Yuan worked from during his "experiments" with Bai Yufeng and Li Sou.
So, I would think that, though "free form", 18 Luohan was still one of the base materials that Xiao Meihua Quan was developed from.

But, Da Meihua is essentially according to this, an expanded version of Xiao Meihua Quan.

Maybe Liu Zhehai just made a mistake? Or, he felt that there was so much Luohan Quan in the Da Meihua Quan set that it might as well be considered a Luohan Quan set in the long run?
Wow, what a question to be able to ask Liu Zhenhai somehow.

I have each version of the Shaolin Encyclopedia, I can, when I get the chance, see if this text has changed or not in the later two editions.

Hmm, still, neither Xiao nor Da Meihua Quan is much like the Meihua Zhuang style that Shaolin also practiced by the 1600s, with much different sets. They are entirely unrelated except in name only (tons of other unrelated styles do sets named Meihua Quan too).