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Shaolin arts have quite a diversity of short-range weapons, but also train in
long-pole weapons, though not to a greater extent.
The Northern Shaolin Temple is now a tourist attraction in Henan
province, China. The Southern Shaolin Temple was located in what is now
Putian County in the Fujian province, and went by the name Lingquanyuan
Temple. The other temples that called themselves Shaolin were in Wudang,
Guangdong, and Er Mei (also spelled Emei), each with its own unique
brand and flavor of martial art culture and discipline. Yang Jwing-Ming
and Jeffery Bolt in their traditionally based brief history of the Shaolin systems
set the number at ten.
At certain times in the history of China, various emperors called upon
the monks to defend the state against foreign incursion. One spectacular
event is a well-chronicled one, in which a group of monks went to the aid
of the Tang emperor Li Shimin (A.D. 600–649), also known as Emperor
Taizong. Although the narratives of Li Shimin have been submitted to the
distortions of oral tradition and popular vernacular literature (telling of intervention
by celestial dragons, for example), the traditions surrounding his
reign chronicle events in which thirteen monks helped to save his life. He
tried to reward them with official court posts, probably in an effort to keep
them under his surveillance and control. They decided to refuse the honor,
but the emperor authorized them to build a force of warrior monks in case
their services were needed again.
According to the legends of the Hong League (better known as the
Triad Society) summarized by Fei-ling Davis in Primitive Revolutionaries
of China, in the late seventeenth century (around 1674) the Shaolin monks
of Fujian Monastery were called upon by the Qing emperor Kangxi
(1664–1722) to defend against invading tribes of Eleuths. According to
some sources, a former Ming patriot named Cheng Wan Tat led the monks.
They were successful in their mission, and again they were offered high
court postings, which they politely refused. This was a major mistake, for
the emperor’s ears were filled with the idea that such a group, so small yet
so powerful, must pose a threat to national security. As a result, the emperor
ordered the Shaolin Temples razed and all in them slaughtered.
Luckily efforts to exterminate the monks were unsuccessful. According
to legend, five survived, which hardly seems a large enough number to
have perpetuated the Shaolin arts, but this aspect of the story is far more
credible than the magical yellow clouds, grass sandals turning into boats,
and wooden swords sprouting from the ground that permitted the successful
flight (Davis 1977, 62–64).
The vested interest of the anti-Qing/pro-Ming secret societies in
Shaolin traditions becomes apparent in the narrative of the subsequent exploits
of the Five Ancestors (as the fugitives came to be called). Many of the
Boxing, Chinese Shaolin Styles 39