Well, I'd love to travel around the country and the world seeking out martial arts teachers, and I'd love to learn from Hung Sing, too. If I were single I would actually consider taking trips like that, since I would be spending all my money and time on martial arts rather than on homemaking with the wife
. For now, it's just practicing what I already know and supplement with personal research, there's actually a lot to work on. Thank you for the offer, though.
The shaolin do history story is mostly a fable, it isn't real. We were taught that it came from the southern shaolin temple, but they got it confused with the destruction of the northern temple in 1928. Several other things they teach as history are also incorrect for one reason or another, or just plain legend. The fact is, no one really knows where it came from before Indonesia, and researching anything more is pretty much impossible without Sin The's cooperation. Based on studying different types of Chinese martial arts, northern and southern, and having practiced karate for most of my life, and researching into the martial arts of Java and Indonesia, I have come to the conclusion for myself that there is actual Chinese martial arts there. I believe it is a mixture of northern and southern styles maybe even blended with some Indonesian methods. The basic line exercises taught, that we called short forms or lohan, are northern style longfist, what exactly I couldn't say. Some of the unique forms are a blend of fujian styles like white crane and northern styles. I believe Sin The's family is from Fujian, they speak the Min dialect of that province I think, that is the language most of the material is presented in. The information about the types of Chinese martial arts found in western Java from Donn Draeger's book corroborates that observation, as he mentions fukien styles and shandong styles as well as the internal styles all coexisting in this area of Indonesia. While SD may have been poor instruction in some cases, there was something Chinese from Indonesia that was being taught, alongside some things which Sin The probably learned from books or videos and then taught as his own.
I don't know why they used Japanese terms for ranks and exercises when he started in Kentucky, since there is nothing of karate in there, at least from my experience with Okinawan karate (which I have been practicing for over 20 years). The school I joined in Colorado didn't use Japanese words for anything, it was all Chinese, though they still had the uniforms.
Karate doesn't use the term "smash kick" either, it is also a crescent kick, hangestsu geri. That is something Sin The made up, I think.
I know you're not the only one who thinks SD looks more karate than kung fu, but the people who say that mostly don't seem to know karate very well. I would have known immediately if what I was learning was just karate with a different name. There are no karate techniques there. It may be more stiff, more rigid than Chinese martial arts are usually performed. Not enough connection between lower body and upper body, no good flow. That is indication to me that Sin The may not have had the level of skill that he claims to, or he wasn't a very good teacher that his students never got past a very beginner stage of performance. Of course, they did a lot of conditioning and heavy sparring, not so much focus on forms, and were tough fighters in their own manner, so how skilled and successfull he was as a teacher is up for debate on that front. But based on talking with some of the guys who were students back in the 60's, it seems that tradition and lineage were not their focus, it was fighting, and as the years went on and he wanted to reach a bigger audience than just a few guys who liked to brawl, he had to start looking for other things to teach (more forms), and started telling this whole history to play on people's fantasy about the shaolin temple and Chinese martial arts. Then the stiff beginner level of basics just got applied to every form that he learned and taught, and that is why everything looks the way it does. Not because it is karate, but because there were never the correct fundamentals to perform those forms correctly.
I know CMA people tend to have a poor view of karate, and vice versa. I find that this opinion usually is not based on actual experience, but generalizations and stereotypes. Bad kung fu does not equal karate, it is just bad kung fu. Maybe bad karate and bad kung fu are more similar, because they are both usually missing a method of moving the body in a connected way.
I can understand feeling disturbed at seeing someone perform a form you are familiar with in a strange or incorrect way. I have never had the familial sense of ownership of my martial arts as you do, the styles I have learned are all so widespread that the specific kata can't be said to belong to just one lineage or family. The Okinawan kata are spread all over several karate styles, so if I see one of my kata being mangled, all I can really do is shake my head, since it doesn't belong only to my school, and I'm not Okinawan.