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While kungfu was developed as an external, combative form of physical discipline, Zhang San-feng(living sometime in the perod 960-1279 AD) was creating a twechnique that would make him a legendary patriarch of latter-day Tai Chi Chuan.
He is often attributed to the time of Song Dynasty,
though the most |
reliable and accepted evidence indicates that Zhang San-feng was the former magistrate and scholar of Confucianism for Chung Shan County, and was a native from Yi Zhou in today's east Liaoning Province. According to this evidence, he was born on the ninth day of the fourth moon of 1247 AD, in the Yuan Dynasty (1206-1368AD).
His fame became established after he had completed a ten-year devotion at the Shaolin Manastery where, besides studying the Chinese Buddhist doctrines, he learned the " exoteric martial arts," wai kung . Zhang San-feng went on to study Taoism at the K'o Hung Mountain Monastery, which led him to wander as a hermit until he reached the Taoist enclave at Wudang Shan, sometimes referred to found in Hubei Province. Here he founded the first major esoteric of internal
school, nei kung , of martial arts.....(MORE>>) |
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Wudang Gongfu is regarded as an important school of Chinese Wushu, enjoying an equal fame as Shaolin. There is a saying that the North advocates Shaolin, as the South respect Wudang.
Tradition has it that the founder of Wudang Gongfu is Zhang Sanfeng, a legendary Taoist priest. Considerable discrepancies have been discovered in varied historical records about Zhang Sanfeng it of is written in Ci Yuan (a dictionary specially recording the origins of Chinese words) "Zhang Sanfeng 1) A specialist of the art of attack and defence in wushu in the Song Dynasty, also a Wudang alchemist of making pills of immortality, who was expert at Chinese boxing. 2) A Taoist priest of the Ming Dynasty, from Yizhou of Liaoning once lived in Mt. Wudang." The two Zhang Sanfeng leave people a puzzle. Were the Zhang Sanfeng in the Song Dynasty and the Zhang Sanfeng in the Ming Dynasty the same person? Or could it be said that Zhang Sanfeng kept alive till the Ming Dynasty. But accoding to the law of the biological genetics, this is impossible. Thus, it is much reasonable that there once were two Zhang Sanfeng. The two had the same name, believed in the same religion, practices austerities at the same place, skilled in the same martial art ad enjoyed the same fame, which was inconsistent with Chinese habits in giving names and also did not agree with traditional taboo. Therefore, the issue about Zhang Sanfeng and his life has always been a hotspot drawing great concern in the historiography circles....(MORE>>) |
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