Info on Wudang

[dre_doggX]

Does anybody know this. Some day I want to try. Its said to be the ancestor of all internal martial arts, (forerunner to Tai Chi and stuff). anyone know more about it?

[Crimson Phoenix]

wudang quan or wudang neijia quan is quite nice...give it a try, definitely...
Don't believe too much in Zhang San Feng and "Wudang is the ancestor of all internal styles" stuffs though :-)

[GeneChing]

..and some skillful warriors are starting to come down off that mountain.Wudang sources

[Shaolin Master]

It has gained alot more since the 'crouching tiger funny dragon' epic of Ang Lee. Changed alot since the years past I was there, alot more Masters appearing in the area, many young ones teaching anything and everything. Not to mention new styles being made up as well.

However there are some excellent Qigong teachers in the area and the feeling is wonderful. Cool(and COOOOld at the moment) atmosphere. China has an abundance of nice mountains.

BTW, the capital of Hubei, Wuhan is an excellent city and many martial arts teachers are also establishing themselves there.

However, try to find a specific system. Many people know 'Wudang' it is just like 'Shaolin' a name ....so make sure they are specific.

Cheers.

[TaiChiStorm]

A friend told me that it is possible (since one year or so) to train in th Wudang monastry as in Shaolin. I know in Shaolin there are only schools around the temple and that they are HELL expensive.
How is it in Wudang?

[Hebrew Hammer]

Lads,

I'm looking for some recommendations on Wudang...books, websites, youtube...etc. I'm did a base search and keep getting lots of martial tourist sites. I'm interested in Daoism and the Internal Martial side of things...I don't know much about it other than than its a Mountain Side martial arts school that was known for its swordsmanship...and focused on Xing Yi, Bagua, Tai Chi and Daoist thought. I'm also am pretty ignorant about those styles as well.

Were they monks like Shaolin? Is it one place or several places like Shaolin? Were they rivals? Why was it founded? What were the weapons they used? Did they practice a particular style of Tai Chi....yadda yadda yadda.

Any insight would be appreciated.

[bawang]

taichi, xingyi, and bagua did not come from wudang. many wudang schools teach it just to make money.

wudang has genuine sword and meditation tradition, but no bare hand fighting.


wudang shaolin rivalry started when some guy learned kung fu from shaolin temple, left because of politics, then talked trash about shaolin and made up his own style, attributing it to wudang.

[David Jamieson]

I often see it as shaolin redressed in many respects.

I think that what we see as "wudang" nowadays is mostly shaolin with some of the three internal arts worked in with it.

But yes, I understand they have Taoist meditations and a sword practice all their own.

I am not really aware of it being a long unbroken lineage or an organized system across borders or any of that.

But I do think it is heavily flavoured with shaolin kung fu.

[Hebrew Hammer]

Good to know...I didn't think they developed those martial arts there, just that they specialized in or taught them. So it is tourist trap...*******s.

From the pics I've seen, the place is gorgeous...I used to live in Tahoe for a couple of years...so always had an affinity for the mountains.

[bawang]

some guy who teaches here and went to wudang told me he paid 300 dollars an hour to learn qigong.

i learned the same thing from ymca. just giving you a heads up.




just to clear up any confusion, the correct terms for warrior monks, taoist or buddhist are monk soldiers. monk soldiers were famous for having unbreakable morale. where normal soldiers break and run when one third or half is dead, monk soldiers will fight to the last man. it has nothing to with fighting skill.

[wenshu]

Bing Shifu here in L.A. comes recommended. Maybe not good enough to charge you $300/hour. . .

http://www.kungfumagazine.com/magazi...hp?article=809

[Hebrew Hammer]

some guy who teaches here and went to wudang told me he paid 300 dollars an hour to learn qigong.

i learned the same thing from ymca. just giving you a heads up.




just to clear up any confusion, the correct terms for warrior monks, taoist or buddhist are monk soldiers. monk soldiers were famous for having unbreakable morale. where normal soldiers break and run when one third or half is dead, monk soldiers will fight to the last man. it has nothing to with fighting skill.

LOL, well I'm not going anytime soon, if I did it would be as a tourist or for fun. I'm looking for start some internal style stuff here locally next month...I came across Bagua and Xing Yi, Wudang in my search of Tai Chi...just peaked my curiosity.

Thanks for the info Bawang.

Didn't Shaolin's Monk Soldiers study both Buddhist and Taoist thought? Or did certain schools teach one or the other? It would be very interesting to see Monk Soldiers fighting in mass formations...in the movies its usually just a one or a handful of them fighting together.

[GeneChing]

There are a lot of Wudang threads - nearly 500 at this point - so I'm posting this here as it's sort of general info on Wudangshan.

China historic palace site to be elevated
Wang Xiaodong, Asia News Network (China Daily), Hubei, China | Culture | Wed, August 15 2012, 2:52 PM


The gate of Yuzhen Palace will be raised 15 metres to avoid being inundated. (ANN/China Daily/Zhang Jianbo)

A 600-year-old religious building in Central China will be raised 15 meters above ground by the end of the year to keep it from being inundated by a water project.

The Yuzhen Palace, which sits on the edge of the Danjiangkou reservoir in the Wudang Mountains in Hubei province, would be submerged after the dam is made taller.

The South-North Water Diversion Project, the world's largest such undertaking, will bring water from the massive Yangtze River in the south to meet demand in drought-prone cities in the north through three water-diversion routes.

"Elevation started on Aug. 1 and is expected to be completed before the end of the year," said Dai Zhanbiao, a senior engineer of Hebei Academy of Building Research, the project's contractor.

"By the end of the week, a palace gate had been raised 1 meter."

Seventy-two jacks will raise the main gate of the palace and the gates of the east and west palaces, which have a combined weight of 7,000 metric tons, Dai said.

The project also will raise the foundation and dismantle other vestiges of the site at an estimated cost of 200 million yuan (US$31 million), according to Shu Tao, director of Wudang Administration for Cultural Heritage and Religious Affairs.

The other vestiges of the site will be demolished and rebuilt in their original style after the site is elevated, Shu said.

The palace was built in 1412 during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) to commemorate Zhang Sanfeng, a Taoist and tai chi master. Originally a complex with hundreds of palaces and rooms, only several gates and vestiges of walls and palaces remain. A main palace was burned to ashes in 2003 in an accidental fire.

The site was included in the Unesco World Heritage List in 1994.

"The site is as large as 56,780 square meters, so it is too difficult and risky to elevate the whole area," Shu said.

The current elevation plan was chosen after extensive research and debate.

Before the elevation plan was decided upon, experts had proposed two other options for the site. One was to build a **** to separate the palace site from water in the reservoir.

"But the plan was turned down as the site would have been under constant threat from water. Besides, water could have seeped through the **** and damaged the remaining buildings," Shu said.

The other rejected plan called for destroying the current remaining buildings and rebuilding them in their original styles.

"The current plan is the most costly and difficult, but it can best protect the cultural relics," Shu said.

A crucial job for the project is to build new foundations for the existing buildings so the new foundations can serve as platforms that can be raised by jacks underneath them, Dai said.

To protect the buildings from possible damage during elevation, all buildings were reinforced, and the workers will put grout in the new foundation whenever a building is raised 1.5 meters, Dai said.

"Elevating the buildings, the heaviest one weighing more than 4,000 tons, to the equivalent of five floors above their original positions is a huge challenge for us," Dai said.

Wu Hai, a visitor from Wuhan, likes the plan.

"Wudang Mountains are sacred, and I think the world heritage site should be protected," Wu said.

But not everyone agrees.

"It is right to protect cultural relics, but spending 200 million yuan is too expensive, and the amount could have been used to improve the livelihood of the local people," said Yan Chao, a student studying German in Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

This is not the first time in China old buildings have been raised to protect them.

A palace in Nanjing Museum that weighs 7,700 tons was raised 3 meters in 2010 in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu province.

Gu Xiaochi in Wuhan contributed to this story.

[Tea Serpent]

Lads,

I'm looking for some recommendations on Wudang...books, websites, youtube...etc. I'm did a base search and keep getting lots of martial tourist sites. I'm interested in Daoism and the Internal Martial side of things...I don't know much about it other than than its a Mountain Side martial arts school that was known for its swordsmanship...and focused on Xing Yi, Bagua, Tai Chi and Daoist thought. I'm also am pretty ignorant about those styles as well.

Were they monks like Shaolin? Is it one place or several places like Shaolin? Were they rivals? Why was it founded? What were the weapons they used? Did they practice a particular style of Tai Chi....yadda yadda yadda.

Any insight would be appreciated.

Even though this question is years old the thread is still going and nobody has really tried to answer it yet. Plus it's a really good question, in fact those are probably the questions most people have, and in the case of Wudang probably even most people who train there don't even know the answer to many of those questions. So I'll take my best shot.

Wudang is a small mountain range consisting of 72 peaks surrounding one tallest peak. It is one of those areas that is both very special for it's scenic beauty and for it's biodiversity. There are a lot of springs and streams, forests, and medicinal herbs, So it the type of place that naturally attracts Taoist and Buddhist hermits.

ir had been known as a site that had many hermits for a very long time. I think (if I remember right since I'm too lazy to look it up right now) that the earliest actual Taoist temples were built by the Tang dynasty, although there could have been some earlier.
It was during the Ming dynasty that it became very big and important. The ruling family during the Ming dynasty were major patrons of Taoism and started many hugs building projects creating many palaces, temples, pavilions, etc. Several of which were built specifically so that the emperor or crown prince could go there to stay and worship. So eventually there ended up being something like over 100 temples, and about half a dozen huge "palace" complexes, a bunch of great halls and lots of other monuments.
Also during this period (early 15th century) the emperor passed an edict changing the earthly abode of Zhen Wu (the name of the god Xuan Wu when he is in human shape or being addressed respectfully) from it's ancient home in the Bei Heng Shan mountain range to the Wudang mountain range.
During the Ming dynasty there was some kind of governing organization but even then most of the places did their own thing. Different temples were run by different sects of Taoism, even within a sect there were often different independent or semi independent lineages. Some temples were associated with each other and often the big temples or "palace" temple complexes would oversee several of the smaller ones.
The Majority of Taoist lineages, or at least the majority of Taoist in the Wudang mountains were from the northern schools of Taoism. These schools have been influenced by both Buddhism and Confucian thought, ritual, and practices. Part of the influence of Buddhism was the development of monastic communities which were segregated by sex (also the ban on sex by members of the school). These schools first appeared during the late Southern Song dynasty and by the Yuan Dynasty had grown to be very influential. By that time the biggest sects of these schools had become firmly entrenched in the monastic way of life. The prevalence of the monastic schools of northern Taoism has helped the popularity of Wudang in modern times. Ironically people from the west tend to view these schools as more authentic than the original schools of Taoism. Part of this is the false idea of philosophical Taoism vs. religious Taoism invented by early Christian missionaries. With the schools that have been heavily influenced by Confucian and Buddhist morality, thought, and customs being seen as more in line with the detached philosophical mindset that westerners like to associate with supposedly real Taoism.
Just like in any other temple anywhere in China there were people who practiced martial arts. Also there were temple guards as these temples were located in the mountains and enjoyed patronage by wealthy influential families (when the imperial family start patronizing and publicly worshiping at a place other rich and powerful people usually do to) and often received valuable gifts.
The thing is there were many schools of Taoism, many temples, and many lineages, also Taoists tend to travel around a lot. So there really is no "Wudang style" there were a bunch of styles that were practiced at various temples around Wudang within various lineages. Not to mention that martial arts aren't Taoism so while some may have been passed down or even developed within a certain temple within a lineage of Taoists, they were also passed between Taoist schools and back and forth between Taoists and laymen, travelers, Buddhists, etc.
The weapons used were the same weapons used in all the other schools of martial arts. The idea of Wudang being school specializing in the sword has to do with the famous Wudang Dan Jian school of swordplay. This school was at some point passed to Song Wei Yi in Manchuria by the Wild Crane Taoist. He later passed this school on to several famous master including General Li Jinling A.K.A. Divine Sword Li. This style is made up of six different sections of swordplay which can be strung together into a 132 posture longform. In addition there are also a number of different drills and practices and a two person from. Only a few people learned the whole system however he taught many people the first section or two, including members of both the Chen and Yang Taiji families. Which is why Chen and Yang style swordplay today are basically just a poor copy of the most basic of the 6 forms of Wudang Dan Pai Jianshu, with a couple of movements from their respective styles' hand forms that lent themselves to swordplay. Although I understand that there supposedly is still a sword forms possessed by the Chen taiji people which comes from their own sword tradition before the introduction of the Wudang set.

[Tea Serpent]

As far as the XingYi Bagua Taiji Thing goes. XingYi and Bagua have absolutely no relationship to Wudang. The relationship of Taiji to Wudang is doubtful at best. We do know that several major martial artist visited there in the twenties and thirties and passed Taiji to various priests at Wudang. The majority of ancient "Wudang Taiji appears to a blend of Yang, Chen, Wu, or Zhaobao with various other martial arts. From what I have heard many of the older priests most of whom are dead now basically confirmed that their Taiji styles were basically a mixture of the various Taiji styles brought there in the early 20th century.
To understand this you need to go back the Yang family. It was the group surrounding the Yang family who first began to clain that Taiji was originated by Zhang SanFeng in the Wudang mountains. This claim was spread and given credence by Sun Lutang who was also responsible for spreading the ridiculous notion of "internal" martial versus "external" martial arts. In his book he also made the then more ridiculous claim that XingYi, Bagua, and Taiji were all related and constitute the "internal School" which originates from Wudang, as opposed to all the other styles which are from the "External School" and originate from Shaolin.
Unfortunately he was able to pass himself off as a scholar which helped people to more readily accept what was basically a book that should have rightfully been called "My Style Is Better Than Yours".
Because of the popularity of the book he was put in charge of organizing the central Guoshu institute at Nanjing. So right away he split the school into a "Wudang Section" for "Internal Styles" and a "Shaolin Section" for "External Styles"
after about 2 years he was fired because of this and other issues and his system of segregation was abolished, unfortunately the damage had already been done.
But because of the increasing popularity of his books many masters of XingYi, Bagua and Taiji went to Wudang to learn about the supposed roots of their arts. While there they usually ended up exchanging knowledge with the monks. However these people generally stayed for a very short time. What resulted usually was these masters learning some basic breathing and meditation techniques that they would try to integrate into their art under the false assumption that that stuff was the basis of their style. While the monks at Wudang would end up learning a Taiji, or XingYi or Bagua form or part of a form without learning or understanding the actual system or any of the finer points. So they too would integrate that knowledge in with the arts they had already learned.
While that doesn't mean that there isn't a Wudang Taiji form that is actually a traditionally Wudang form predating the introduction of the major Taiji styles in the early 20th century. But I can pretty much guarantee that most of their forms are just a mix of Yang or Chen or Wu style with some other random stuff.
However there are actual Wudang martial arts that have survived, although they are all on the edge of extinction, mostly thanks to the Wudang management.
The problem is that Wudang is a mountain range with many temples and lineages and many unrelated styles of kungfu. There has never been any "Wudang Style" all the different arts are unique and don't necessarily have anything to do with each other. It's not like Shaolin where even though there are different branches some of which have been separated for hundreds of years, all of them are still recognizably Shaolin, Wudang was never like that.
What the modern Wudang schools have done is to gather up forms from various old Wudang styles, pick out the ones that fits with their idea of what people want Wudang to be then jumble them up into on curriculum. Then on top of these they add Bagua, XingYi, and Taiji because ever since Sun Lutang's Books those are what people associate with Wudang. To be fair those arts have all been practiced there for at least the past 80 years, along with Baji which is also part of their curriculum. However Zhong Yun Long's Wudang Taoist Association's claims that these are all the original forms of these styles and that they all originated on Wudang are ridiculous lies to increase tourist revenue. If you want to learn the real original forms of Wudang Bagua, XingYi, or Baji, I would suggest going to Beijing because if you trace their lineages far enough back you will find some priest who spent a few weeks or months with a real master from Beijing or Tianjin.
I'm not saying that the people at Wudang aren't highly skilled, because they are. However what they practice and teach is a blend of basic Taoist meditation, Taoist health preserving skills, modern performing versions of various kungfu forms, with each person having learned forms from at least a dozen different styles, usually with some basic knowledge of some of the major applications from each form, a modified "Wudang" version of SanDa, and usually a few special skills such as some hard QiGong or some flexibility tricks. Basically your average Wudang "Taoist priest" isn't any different from your average Shaolin "Buddhist monk".
But don't kid yourself that you are learning real traditional Wudang martial arts. There is a reason that all of the forms have that certain "Wudang" look. It the exact same reason that all the forms a modern performance Wushu player performs have that Wushu look. Because they are taught a variety of basic skills and moves. Then they take that basic repertoire of moves and gestures and apply it to a bunch of different forms from different schools which are memorized one after the other.
Well, I've probably said enough to **** a lot of people off. But I have to say I am very interested in the different martial traditions and religious traditions of the Wudang mountains and I very much hope they survive despite the actions of the WTA and other schools doing everything they can to destroy them in the name of cash.
If you want to find real Wudang martial arts some of the styles do still exist intact or somewhat intact. However if you go on the Shaolin forum and hear the people there discuss their problems in finding a teacher who both knows and transmits purely traditional Shaolin martial arts then multiply that a few dozen times and you might get an idea of the difficulty of what you are facing.