Darth J wrote:
Oh, okay. Four decades ago, you took kung fu classes for a few years.
Forty years ago I was 14 years old. I didn't begin training until 1974, and continued through 1979.
Oh, of course. Some of us had to manage with actually really doing it, but how can that compete with reading Black Belt magazine and watching Hong Kong kung fu porn?
Roughly five years, and difficult and spotty sometimes, considering I had to travel from San Diego to L.A. after 1977 to train with my Sifu.
And I still haven't figured out what the "Kung Fu Porn" genre is. I asked you once, but you declined to answer.
No s***. All of this mythology and folk tale stuff about martial arts is conjectural. But to be fair to what you really said, you said it did not exist, based on: you had never heard of it. This merely begs the question of why you should have heard of it.
All of it surely isn't conjectural. For example, while the Song Shan mountain temple still exists (rebuilt several times, of course), the famous Fukien temple, which is the center of so much martial world legend and history, as yet to be archaeologically or historically documented. Its very well attested in oral and written martial arts history, as are a number of its key figures, but while suggestive artifacts have been found in one area, the temple itself (which was supposed to have been destroyed in the early 18th century) has never been conclusively identified.
Right, right. Like asserting that Tang Soo Do is from Okinawa and that Tae Kwon Do and Tang Soo Do don't borrow their hyung from Shotokan karate, and then proving yourself wrong.
What I showed was that the origins of Tang Soo Do are hotly contested, with martial arts historians from both Japan, China, and Okinawa claiming primacy. Shotokan Karate is a young, early 20th century form, and based primarily upon Okinawan Karate which is of southern Shaolin origin, and is like Taekwondo (or the other modern composite Korean styles, such as Hapkido, Hwa Rang Do, and Kuk Sool Won) in fundamental outline and basic techniques, while Taekwondo contains a large number of divergent, alternate elements and approaches (including the very dynamic and articulate kicking techniques). While there may have been some borrowing, Taekwondo is known to have been assembled from earlier Korean forms, now not extent. There were also influences from Judo, other forms of Karate, and Chinese martial arts).
My own experience with Tai Tzu Chang Chuan and My Jong Law Horn (which, in particular, I deeply regret not being able to pursue after the late seventies) gave me an excellent grounding in the core of the traditional Shaolin martial arts (as descended, in the case of My Jong Law Horn, from the Jing Mo (Ching Wu) school), for which I will be grateful my entire life.