A well-known saying about the Shaolin Temple is: 拳以寺名，寺以武 (Quan yi si ming, si yi wu xian), which can be translated as: “Kung Fu takes its name from the temple; the temple takes its eminence from Kung Fu.’
Shaolin Temple is not as famous for its Chan Buddhism as it is for its Kung Fu. Before the development of this martial art, the temple was similar to other Buddhist temples in China, where the main task was to translate Indian scriptures into the native language in order to spread Buddhist teachings.
Why, then, did peaceful monks begin to practice martial arts?
When the Indian monk, Bodhidharma, settled in Shaolin in Henan Province after coming to China to preach Buddhism in about 527 AD, he developed a series of exercises designed to promote health and fitness and to improve the practice of meditation. It is thought that some of these forms were the foundation of Yijingjing and Xisuijing, both highly advanced forms of Shaolin Kung Fu.
Because of constant attacks waged on Shaolin Temple by bandits, wild animals, and others, the monks evolved these exercises into a method of self-defense. At the same time, other martial art practitioners came to Shaolin and became monks to avoid persecution. They brought with them advanced fighting skills that were incorporated into the Shaolin form of Kung Fu, furthering its development.
It was during the Tang Dynasty (618–906) that the form of Kung Fu practiced by the Shaolin monks gained fame. In the final stage of the transition from the Sui to the Tang Dynasty, the latter controlled all of China except for the city of Luoyang which was still occupied by the Sui warlord Wang Shichong. Li Shimin, son of Emperor Li Yuan, was captured in Luoyang in a scouting expedition. When the news reached Shaolin Temple, thirteen monks were dispatched to Luoyang to rescue the prince. After the rescue, the monks helped Li Shimin to take over the city. Once the prince became emperor, he rewarded the monks in many ways: giving them land, presenting them with a tablet immortalizing the story, and giving the temple permission to train an additional five hundred warrior monks so they could be summoned if the country was in danger. During the Tang Dynasty, the warrior monks fought in battlefields using the Kung Fu they practiced in the Temple, because the forms and movements were suited to actual combat.
During the Song Dynasty (960-1279), Shaolin Kung Fu was favoured and consequently flourished well. Zhao Kuangyin, who later became Emperor Song Taizu, trained at the Shaolin Temple when he was young, and so he realized the value and importance of Kung Fu. Once he rose to power, he encouraged the practice of Kung Fu all over China. In order to increase its development, he ordered many famous masters throughout China to come to Shaolin Temple, where they stayed for many years, sharing skills and further enriching the theories and practice of Shaolin’s martial arts. The support of the emperor was very important, and as homage to him, the monks named a form they had created using various fighting techniques derived from 18 different Kung Fu lineages after him: Taizu Chang Quan. The art of Kung Fu grew a lot during the Song Dynasty and many different aspects of it became highly developed, including the internal and external practices.
The Song Dynasty ended when the Mongolian emperor, Kublai Khan (the grandson of Genghis Khan), took control of China and established himself as the first emperor of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). In order to pacify the entire country, the emperor was eager to recruit someone to a key government position who had knowledge of both political and military affairs. One of his ministers, Ye Lü Chu Cai, recommended a monk named Fu Yu, who was the leader of the Caodong sect of Chan Buddhism. After some years of Fu Yu’s service to the emperor, various conflicts subsided and China was finally pacified.
The emperor appointed Fu Yu to the position of abbot of Shaolin Temple and head of all Buddhist temples across China. Fu Yu made great contributions to Buddhism and managed the temples well. He instigated the creation of five branches of Shaolin Temple in other provinces. He also wanted to extend the same method of Buddhist study used in Shaolin to all Buddhist temples in China: a method of practice that centered primarily on the master/disciple relationship. To clarify his concept he wrote a poem assigning names to future Caodong Shaolin generations (the vast majority of Shaolin monks have always belonged to the Caodong sect) in order to easily identify every monk’s lineage. Since then, Shaolin Temple has used this poem to classify the different generations of monks. For example, ’Su’, as in ’Su Xi’, represents the 30th generation. The name of the monk, Shi De Chan, who was in charge of the Scripture Depository before the fire of 1928, includes the word "De", which represents the 31st generation.
During Fu Yu’s years of leadership at Shaolin Temple, the monks continued to train in Kung Fu and the martial art remained an integral part of their Buddhist practice. After Fu Yu’s death in 1312, he was given the title of Jing Guo Gong – the highest honor in the Empire – by the fourth emperor of the Yuan Dynasty. He was the only monk ever to receive this honor.
In the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the country returned to the rule of the Han people. The emperors of the Ming Dynasty also regarded Shaolin Kung Fu as an important asset and they often ordered the warrior monks into battle. It was because of these battles that the warrior monks started to become more famous.
Especially celebrated was the monk by the name of Xiao Shan, who was the abbot of the temple from 1557 to 1566. He was sent three times by the emperor to fight off Japanese pirates who invaded China. The years of Xiao Shan’s leadership were extremely prosperous for Shaolin. His pagoda is still standing in the Temple’s Pagoda Forest.
Because of the Shaolin monks’ continuous involvement in battles, the Kung Fu they cultivated continued to grow and become an even more effective fighting too. Many warriors who made great contributions to China during this period became celebrated heroes – for example, Yue Kong and Yu Daqiu. Shaolin Temple blossomed and became known as the “Number One Temple under Heaven.”
The Ming Dynasty was probably the most prosperous period of Shaolin’s history. People of great importance, such as princes, were ordained as monks in Shaolin, and visits by other important people became a common occurrence. Later, during and after the fall of the Ming Dynasty, many orphaned children of important government officials would seek refuge in the Temple.
The Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) was established after the Manchu emperor took control of China. In order to prevent a Han uprising, the emperor suppressed the practice of martial arts by ordinary citizens. The third Qing emperor, Yongzheng (who began his rule in 1722), spent two years studying at Shaolin Temple when he was young. Despite this experience, he was much harsher than previous emperors and extended the suppression of the monks. A possible explanation for this is that while he was at Shaolin, he realized that the monks were a potential menace, because of their martial art skills and because some people at the Temple were still strongly connected to the previous Ming Dynasty. Emperor Yongzheng imposed a ban on Kung Fu that lasted until the fall of the Qing Dynasty, hugely. At this time, traditional Shaolin Kung Fu was at the brink of extinction.
Fortunately, however, a few Shaolin monks continued to practice behind closed doors. In the final years of the Qing Dynasty, a general by the name of Ling Qing, a Shaolin enthusiast, knew that some monks had continued to train in Kung Fu and asked the abbot if he could watch them. The abbot denied his request, but after the general continued to express enthusiasm, he finally gave in and allowed the monks to demonstrate their skills. Soon afterwards, news reached the Temple that the local government was going to investigate the matter. This frightened the monks who were still practicing, so they left the temple. Some returned to a secular life while others went to Shigou Si, a small temple linked to Shaolin, where they worked to preserve Shaolin Kung Fu at its highest level.
Among these monks were Zhan Ju, Zhan Mo, and Ji Qing (also known as Wu Gulun). A few years later, when there was a renewed interest in and acceptance of Kung Fu, a fresco depicting the visit of General Ling Qing was painted on a wall in the Temple. The fresco included portraits of the monks’ actual faces and can be seen in Shaolin to this day.
From the late Qing Dynasty until the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, China was hardly ever at peace. In the turmoil created by battles with foreign powers, internal warlord dissention, and political struggles, coupled with the repression of Kung Fu during the Qing Dynasty, the tradition of Shaolin Kung Fu suffered severely. The monks who were once celebrated national heroes faded into the background.
Perhaps the foremost reason for this was the advent of modern weaponry in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This situation rendered China’s traditionally trained and equipped martial arts army obsolete. Chinese martial art skills ceased to be effective on these new battlefields.
The development of “exhibition” Kung Fu also contributed to the decline of traditional Shaolin Kung Fu. From the Yuan Dynasty onwards, acrobatic performances and shows were very popular in China. These performances integrated some movements drawn from Kung Fu, making them more flashy and flowery, creating an adulterated form of the art. In fact, during the Ming Dynasty, the expression “flowery fists and embroidery kicks” was commonly used to describe these types of movements. Over an extended period of time, a performance-oriented form of Kung Fu developed alongside what we now call traditional Kung Fu.
With the establishment of the Republic of China (1912-1949) by the Kuomintang, martial arts lost their importance in army training. This, coupled with the parallel development of the flowery performance-orientated form of Kung Fu, resulted in a shift in Shaolin Temple. The Temple’s Kung Fu style shifted toward a more modern non-practical form of martial arts self-defense, primarily aimed at physical prowess and dramatic visual appeal.
The state of Shaolin Kung Fu worsened in 1928, when the warlord Shi Yousan set fire to the Temple. Tragically, documents containing information concerning Zhang Sanfeng’s training in the Temple, generally considered as the origin of Tai Chi, were lost. At this time, Shaolin Temple was virtually without Kung Fu masters. Wu Shanlin, the second-born child of Ji Qing (Wu Gulun), was invited to return to the Temple in an effort to restore its original culture and heritage. Over the course of three years, he regularly taught the monks in the Temple. It is safe to say that at least some of the knowledge of people who claim to be inheritors of Shaolin Kung Fu can be traced back to Wu Shanlin.
When political stability finally came to China years after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Shaolin Temple, despite the efforts of Wu Shanlin, started practicing Kung Fu as endorsed by the new government, as more of a sport than a way of life. Many martial arts in China at this time in history morphed into sports that were regulated by official organizations. This martial arts sport was quite different from the traditional practice of Kung Fu.
About twenty years after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, a period of struggle within the Communist Party of China marked by extreme turmoil and social uncertainty began. This time is known as the Cultural Revolution (1969-1976) and was characterized by persecution and repression of any form of religious expression and political dissent, carried out by the extremist civilian movement known as the Red Guard. Shaolin Temple was dealt yet another blow as the monks of the temple were accused of being landowners and were paraded through the street and publicly denounced. Shi Su Xi, the previous abbot of the temple, was among those denounced.
Finally, in 1978, the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China guaranteed freedom of religion – albeit with a number of restrictions. After the Cultural Revolution, long-needed stability arrived which led to China’s present economic growth.
Also in 1978, a Hong Kong film director came to Shaolin with the intention of gathering information to make a movie. He encountered a ramshackle temple, poorly maintained and practically falling apart. But among the things that still stood was a carved tablet more than one thousand years old, which gave the account of thirteen monks rescuing an emperor’s son. The result of the film director’s research would be the 1982 film Shaolin Temple, starring a young five-time national martial arts champion named Li Lianjie, who later became known in the West as Jet Li. The film turned out to be hugely popular, reigniting general interest among Chinese in their martial arts tradition and fueling an unprecedented commercialization of martial arts. Dozens of Kung Fu schools opened in the Dengfeng area over the next two decades. Thousands of young people have enrolled at these schools, and growth over the past 10 year has been especially impressive.
Up until 1982, this martial arts sport, which came to be known in Chinese as 武术 (Wushu), had no practical combat form. Then the Chinese government launched an initiative to create a full-contact sport, with rules and regulations that allowed for the creation of fighting competitions that focused on the combative aspect of martial arts, known in Chinese as Sanda. This was mostly created by borrowing techniques from fighting forms such as boxing that are vastly different from the tradition of Kung Fu. Mr. Wei Jizhong, former secretary general of the 2000 Beijing Olympic Games Bidding Committee and currently an international Olympic committee commission member in China, has said "…Sanda mainly uses Western boxing, grappling and kicking techniques, without using many traditional martial art techniques; this makes us somewhat confused as to what Wushu is."
With the monumental development of the Wushu/Sanda tandem, a campaign to list Wushu as an Olympic sport has been gathering much support. This will likely happen in the future.
Today, Kung Fu has become most well known as a form of cultural exhibition. The sport of combat fighting – Wushu/Sanda – is something that people watch, not something which people think about participating in. Increasingly lost behind this flashy artistic show is the Kung Fu lifestyle – a way of being in which combat fighting comprises just one of many components.
The long history and development of Chinese martial arts has reached a point where it is imperative to distinguish between the traditional practices – Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi, Xin Yi, and Bagua – and the modern evolution of that art – present-day Wushu sport – and to acknowledge their differences. Traditional Shaolin Kung Fu, otherwise known as Wugulun Kung Fu, is a practice focused on promoting health and fitness and creating an internal state of meditation, in addition to being an effective combat art. This form is currently practiced by a small group of people from the Shaolin Wugulun lineage, popularized by leading Chan Wu Yi figures such as Master Shi Dejian. The now-popular Wushu is a regulated sport that might one day be accepted as an Olympic sport.
The global popularity of different practices all casually uttered in the same breath as “Shaolin” has made it more difficult to determine what authentic martial arts truly are in their purest form. In the words of Mr. Wei Jizhong: "Kung Fu movies, television shows, performances and opera are very popular in China and overseas. Especially overseas, “Kung Fu”, “Shaolin monk skills” and similar names have gradually taken the place of [Chinese] martial arts. This phenomenon has caused us to take [modern] Wushu as a national tradition and promote it as such to the world. Should this make us happy or worried? I’m afraid that the [Chinese] martial arts community hasn’t taken time to ponder this situation."
Shaolin Wugulun Kung Fu Academy has taken the time to ponder these important questions, and cares about promoting and spreading authentic teachings. The Academy believes that the world today is a place where sharing these skills and imparting this sacred knowledge on an interested global community should be welcomed. The Shaolin Kung Fu lifestyle does not just belong to the Chinese; it belongs to the world. The more people who study traditional martial arts, the better these treasures of human development and ability will be preserved.
