Shaolin Shows in SF Bay Area
There's a Shaolin Kung Fu exhibition coming to Flint Center on 7/23/05. I can't resist their press promo copy:
Quote:
Shaolin Kung-Fu - Chinese martial arts exhibition -
The culture of Yan Emperor and Huang Emperor is abundant of source flows; Chinese martial arts are famous, broad and profound in the world. Chinese traditional martial arts still occupy the prominent position in the world of Kung Fu with its rich cultural content. Each Chinese Kung Fu parties flows and becomes a strange view in Chinese civilization history with unusually brilliant results.
I'm not going because I'll be at Taiji Legacy that weekend. I heard that it is lead by a Shaolin wuseng and has nine performers.
There are so many Shaolin tours that come through our area, I thought I'd start to document them here, just for fun. There was a tour that just came through a few months back - it was rather controversial:
3/5/2005: Masonic Auditorium .
Flint Center has hosted Shaolin performances before:
3/17/2002: Wheel of Life
2/23/2003: Wheel of Life
no offense taken, Pk_StyLeZ...
...but we're all still wondering where Xingwei will pop up.
I found out a little more about the Flint Center show this weekend. Apparently it comes from some Henan organization - something to do with a society for Henan people abroad or something. I'm completely unclear on the amount of monks and such now, but I hear there are also acrobats and dancers involved. I've also heard that there is some sort of free show in SF on Friday, then the show at the Flint the next day. I was just asked if I want tickets, but of course, I'll be at Taiji Legacy.
Well, they are performance monks...
See, that was part of the point of that article. There is a new generation of monks that I've dubbed the Second Wave - these are wuseng that have only been indoctrinated for a performance tour, then they leave the order immediately after. Many, like these two, did the bulk of their training outside of Shaolin. The two featured in this article were Chen Fei (who took the name Yanfei) and Ben Zhang (who took the name Xingzhen). They were working together for a short peroid, then Chen Fei split off to join CPAA as their Assistent Wushu Director (he was with my master Sifu Tony Chen and the O-Mei Kung Fu Academies prior to going to Ben). Ironically, CPAA has some connection to IntMAT. Anyway since then, Chen Fei has split off again to form his own school, which I know I have the contact info for somewhere on this chaotic mess I call a work desk, but I can't find it just now.
Maybe now you get a little taste of the crazy Shaolin environment we have here in the SF Bay Area. And this is just the Songshan Shaolin circles. It gets even nuttier when you look at the traditional circles and the wushu circles...
Shaolin at the Flint center
So I got one report this morning. Apparently the show was disappointing. The head monk was Shi Yansen, who is a head wuseng coach at Shaolin Temple apparently. He lead a group of a dozen monks, including a big older guy that I only know as Zhou Laoshi (teacher Zhou). It's unclear if they were there in 'official capacity' (meaning Abbot approved). But the show was only partly Shaolin monks - there was a lot of music and dance and acrobats. The Shaolin performance was only two small portions of the show, less than half an hour sum told, so the people who went to see Shaolin kung fu were sorely disappointed. What they got was mostly wushu and only a few minutes of traditional (but your often lucky to see any traditional at all). It's too bad really, since it again sullies the Shaolin name in the eyes of the general public...