What forms are in your Shaolin regimen now?

[GeneChing]

That form begins similarly to our qixing tanglang and echoes it until a few moves after the first turn, but it's very very different from the version we do. That's par for the course - there's a lot of variation.

My master Shi Decheng's qixing tanglang is in our current issue (2010 July/August) - see Shaolin Seven Praying Mantis By Scott Jeffrey. I never learned that form from him. I practice a version I learned from Yan Fei. Yan Fei was from Shandong originally, so he has some root mantis in him, plus he's really long and tall, like so many Shandongers. Our new addition, Yantuo, does a qixing tanglang too. I've seen little bits of it as we use a lot of those lines for our jibengong practice, and his is quite different too. Nevertheless, you can see the root is the same. Unlike some of the more core forms of Songshan Shaolin, qixing tanglang seems to have more variation than the others. They all have variation.

I'm told we're keeping Yanchen on our staff at O-Mei Kung Fu. Three monks, baby, THREE! Plus they're all traditionalists. I saw his guai form last night and I'm thinking I should dust off my old tamo zhang and learn his version. Shaolin life is very good at O-Mei now.

[monkeyfoot]

Thanks for the info Gene.

I'm a Qixing TangLang player, so when I saw the Shaolin U.K guys doing a form called Qixing TangLang, I thought 'is this a form from the 7 star mantis style, or is it a shaolin thing', as I've never heard of a form within the 7 star mantis curriculum thats actually called 7 star mantis...

I'm a bit lost with history of it, does the current issue explain this?


C

[wenshu]

'is this a form from the 7 star mantis style, or is it a shaolin thing', as I've never heard of a form within the 7 star mantis curriculum thats actually called 7 star mantis...

It is the Shaolin variant of Beng Bu.

[GeneChing]

Shaolin's relationship with mantis in recent years may well have come out of the 1982 movie Shaolin Temple. Yu Hai, who played the big monk, was from Shandong and brought a lot of mantis forms with him. That might not be the exact origin of qixing tanglang at Shaolin, but it's certainly possible. Read our 2007 January/February cover story The Big Monk of Shaolin Temple: Mantis Grandmaster Yu Hai.

[wenshu]

Yu Hai, who played the big monk, was from Shandong and brought a lot of mantis forms with him. That might not be the exact origin of qixing tanglang at Shaolin, but it's certainly possible.

Yu Hai is pretty 厉害。
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVuiTzJDENs

In the above clip it looks like it might in fact be Beng Bu he is demonstrating. The sequence from 0:19 to 0:21 is distinctly similar to the version we practice.

Our version doesn't utilize the Tang Lang Gou nearly as much as many expect (atleast compared to the wushu biaoyan wuseng mantis stylings).

Would Yu Hai account for the practice of Mei Hua Tang Lang? That seems to be the next step in the Songshan mantis curriculum.

[GeneChing]

That's the form that is discussed in my cover story above. It's a fusion form, something Yu Hai created. Although he says in the article "The form is not Seven Star or Plum Flower", you can see influences. After all, that was his foundation. That form is showcased in the Shaolin Temple films. Yu Hai was there in the early '80s filming that trilogy. He left the form there and it spread. In the mid '90s, it was still popular, but qixing tanglang was on the rise then too. I'm not clear on the exact origin of qixing tanglang, but I'm willing to bet that it was laterally influenced by Yu Hai's presence, along with so many Shandong people that came to Shaolin. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, we have like 40 Shaolin wuseng, and several of them are from Shandong, including my current coach Yan Fei. He's taught that Yu Hai form to some students. He's also the one that taught me the present version of qixing tanglang that I'm practicing. Yantou has a different take on it and I'm trying to pick up his variations.

Many, many years ago, I tried to learn the Yu Hai form a BWT member in a few hours once. It was a silly seminar because the coach (wish I could remember her name) was a wushu superstar and we were all traditional practitioners. Ultimately, it was just a really good workout, as there was nothing I could retain. I learned a bengbu from Wing Lam, who had it as a loose set. Then I learned another version in Jinan.

I have a lot of respect for Yu Hai. I was a little starstruck when I interviewed him, which seldom happens to me. He was so charismatic and open, very charming and friendly. And he still had the juice. I could have talked to him for days.

One of my dearly departed kung fu brothers, Eric Ishii, was a mantis guy (we weren't kung fu brothers under the same master; we were kung fu brothers because we went to China together and stayed good friends). He claimed he had like 50 different versions of bengbu. He was really into that form.

[wenshu]

Thanks for the info Gene. I've admired Yu Hai since I first saw Shaolin Temple. I've always felt that his was the best performance from the scene where Jet sneaks a glimpse of the wuseng practicing.

There is a lot of good stuff in that article.

I especially like the comment from his instructor "if others can be heroes in the sky why can't you be a good man on the ground?".

Furthermore the stuff about 精气神; I think it is one of the main indicators of real Gong Fu. It is something that radiates from true masters when they are practicing that is unmistakable and inimitable.

While anathema to some vocal proponents of the traditional arts, Shaolin not only encourages cross training in various disciplines, it is built upon it. The synthesis of Shaolin Gong Fu was partly a process integration of seemingly disparate disciplines.

Within our temple we have four monks. So we have four different ways to do each form as they all had different masters with Shaolin. I have to alter my practice a little bit depending on who I am demonstrating for each time. When I practice for myself, I'll use whichever method I prefer sometimes mixing these slight variations.