"Every age has its hero."
The next major figure in kungfu history after Bodhidharma is Chang San-feng, founder of the Wutang school.
In the history of Chinese martial arts, the Wutang school is Shaolin Temple's only rival, and the two seem to make up something of a pair. Shaolin is Buddhist; Wutang is Taoist. Shaolin stresses speed and tough ness; Wutang, stillness and breathing. Shaolin's kungfu is external; Wutang's, internal.
But in discussing the schools' origins, Wutang loses some of its stature.
Chang San-feng, it is said, entered Shaolin Temple as a youngster and took as his master a temple cook who pretended to know nothing about kungfu, although in fact he was marvellously proficient. The secret got out, and the cook, facing punishment for his deception, took off down the mountain, carrying Chang away in an empty barrel. Because of this episode, whenever Chang went up to the temple in later days, he was still treated like a Shaolin disciple.
"This story has very little credibility," Liu Yun-ch'iao, an elderly kungfu expert, says. "Taoism and Buddhism had rather deep differences in earlier times, and a Taoist priest like Chang would hardly go to a Buddhist temple. And judging from the history books, Chang probably didn't know any kungfu at all."
The Ming dynasty history describes Chang San-feng as an unconventional figure who always dressed in patched clothes and a coat made of palm leaves, no matter what the weather; who could go for days or even months at a time without eating; who laughed and cursed as though no one were there; and who hung out with his disciples on Wutang Mountain in Hupei province. "Ragtag" Chang was his other name, it says.
Chang became famous because the Ming emperor Ch'eng Tsu sent his minister Hu Ying to find him. That the emperor would send a top official running all over the country in search of one man led the people to call him "Taoist Immortal" Chang.
In fact, historians tell us, the search was just a pretext. Actually, the emperor was trying to find his nephew Hui Ti, whose throne he had usurped, so he could kill him. The seven voyages of the eunuch Cheng Ho were made with the same purpose. Hu Ying searched for the emperor's nephew for 14 years in all, without result.
So by just this quirk of fate, Chang Feng-san came to be known as "Taoist Immortal" Chang.
"The idea that Chang San-feng founded the Wutang school got started after the Republic," Liu Yun-ch'iao, now 76, says. "Before the 1930's, I never heard anybody in martial arts mention Chang San-feng."
The idea that Chang San-feng studied at Shaolin may be related to t'aichi ch'uan, or Chinese shadow boxing. T'aichi, one of the characteristic styles of the Wutang school, has many affinities with Taoism, with its emphasis on breath control and on yin and yang.
T'aichi's predecessor was the "t'aitsu ch'ang ch'uan" style, founded by and named after the Sung emperor T'ai Tsu (r. 976--998). After he became emperor, to prevent rebellion, T'ai Tsu had all the books in the empire on martial arts collected and sealed up in Shaolin Temple, including those on his own style. Because of this, Shaolin Temple became known as "the world treasury of martial arts," leading to the mistaken idea that the Wutang school originated at Shaolin.
To train his troops, T'ai Tsu's successor later had the books taken out again. It is not known how the t'aitsu ch'ang ch'uan style was passed on after this, but at the beginning of the Ching dynasty in Honan province a man named Chen Chia-kou practiced a style of kungfu called t'aichi ch'uan which was similar in many movements as well as in name to t'aitsu ch'ang ch'uan.
Although Chen's t'aichi was based on the theory of "using the gentle to overcome the strong," many of its movements were still rather violent. The slow and gentle t'aichi that we mostly see today was created by Yang Lu-ch'an and is called Yang family t'aichi.
Yang, who lived in the mid-19th century, heard about the Chen family's t'aichi and went to Honan to learn it. But the Chens had never revealed their secrets to outsiders, and Yang had to pass himself off as a servant, trying to learn and practice the movements on the sly, until the elder Chen, moved by his diligence and ambition, decided to break precedent and teach him all the secrets of the art.
After he had mastered the style, Yang went to Peking, where, because of his success in defeating much larger opponents, he became much sought after as a kungfu teacher by the rich and powerful of the capital. Because his upper class students were mostly older and lacked the determination to train hard, Yang taught a softer, gentler version of the style, eliminating difficult movements and changing the purpose from a martial art to a healthy exercise.
There may have been another reason at work, too. When someone asked Yang's son, a t'aichi master in his own right, why he and his father had taken all the toughness out of the style and left only the softer qualities, the younger Yang only smiled. Pressed to reply, he answered, "The rich folks in the capital are just out to have a good time. And besides, the Manchu bannermen aren't real Chinese anyway, are they?"
The Yangs could scarcely have imagined how, in today's world, t'aichi shadow boxing would become the most popular Chinese martial art, a favorite exercise of millions.
"Every age has its hero."
How many are due just to a quirk of fate? And how many are the genuine article?
[Picture Caption]
"Ragtag" Chang San-feng has been called the founder of both the Wutang school of kungfu and of t'aichi. Is this true?
The Taoist temple on Wutang Mountain in Hupei province is reputed to be the birthplace of the Wutang school of kungfu. (From Chin Yang's Yi Tien Tu Lung Chi)
Wang Yen-nien, vice chairman of the World Association of Chinese T'aichi Ch'uan, is one of the ROC's t'aichi masters.
A bird applies a downwards force to take off. A t'aichi expert can relax the muscles in his palm so that the bird can't fly away.
The Taoist temple on Wutang Mountain in Hupei province is reputed to be the birthplace of the Wutang school of kungfu. （From Chin Yang's Yi Tien Tu Lung Chi）
Wang Yen-nien, vice chairman of the World Association of Chinese T'aichi Ch'uan, is one of the ROC's t'aichi masters.
A bird applies a downwards force to take off. A t'aichi expert can relax the muscles in his palm so that the bird can't fly away.
