Originally Posted by
r.(shaolin)
Yes there are Hou Quan sets in the Shaolin I practice as well. Our oral tradition say that these were developed at Shaolin. During the Song dynasty, a golden monkey often came to Shaolin Monastery to get food. Encouraged by the abbot, the little monks befriended the animal.
These monkey imitation sets were taught to the young monks at Shaolin
In our lineage we have 4 sets these sets, not called Hou Quan, but rather Yuan Hou:
Two hand sets
小猿猴 Yuan Hou (lian quan jiao)
and two staff sets:
猴子棍 and 五花猴棍
r.
ps
The first hand set is short, the other is long, all are done in a typical Shaolin 'roads' (left to right) fashion. In our case the movements do resemble the actions of the monkeys.
However, having said this, when my treacher first saw the modern 'wushu' monkey when the Bejing wushu team first came to New York in the late '70's(early 1980??), his comments where, "Their monkey looks like monkey form but they have no fighting application." Basically traditional Shaolin monkey sets look like monkey actions but have obvious fighting applications.
In your monkey sets as well there is a number of "- Press down hand and shrink body" movements not unlike what Shi Dejian does in some of his sets.
The legends about our sets suggest that monkey sets have been at Shaolin for a long time and says, " In every dynasty some people learned this style resulting in many sets and names for these techniques." Our tradition says, like Hong Quan Quan, there sets were introduced to Shaolin during the Song period.