Iconic Styles of Kung Fu: White Crane Boxing

There are many styles of kung fu including many styles that are based on the movements of animals like the monkey style, the tiger style or the praying mantis style. Now we have talked about a lot of these styles in past videos but the style I want to talk about today has a unique backstory. You see we often think of Wing Chun kung fu as the only major style created by a woman or you could say two women. The nun Wu Mei taught this unique and simple style to her disciple, Wing Chun, so she could learn it quickly to fight off a guy who wanted to marry her. I mean, she could have just friend zoned him. Now you're in the friend zone. No, no, no, I'm not in the zone. Ross, you're mayor of the zone. But no, this is ancient China. It could never be that simple. There has to be a heroic story of training and mysticism and secret kung fu styles. But anyway, in this video, we are not talking about Wing Chun Kung Fu because there is actually another style that traces its origins to a woman. And it is a style that imitates the movements of a bird, with a variety of wing and pecking style strikes, yet with the grace and elegance of female creativity. This is the story of White Crane Kung Fu. So in China, there have been movements in kung fu and qigong mimicking animals for thousands of years. Like the legendary Chinese doctor from the Three Kingdoms period, Hua Tuo's Wu Qin Xi, or Five Animals Playing. Qigong set, which included movements of the bird, although it doesn't specify what type of bird. But when we talk about what we know today as white crane Kung Fu, what we are normally referring to is white crane boxing or Baihe Quan developed in Fujian province in the Qing dynasty. There is also a Tibetan white crane style, but that evolved completely separately and it won't be covered in this video. So let's talk about the legendary origins of white crane Kung Fu. So like most Southern Kung Fu styles, White Crane Kung Fu's origin story starts with the burning of the Shaolin Temple, because of course it does. If you've watched any of our videos about Southern Kung Fu styles, they always start with the burning of the Shaolin Temple, which no one really knows if it even happened. But anyway, the legend that is told in Kung Fu schools is that at the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, when the Southern Shaolin Temple was And this temple, by the way, it may have been more of a... Ming loyalist anti-Qing hideout rather than an actual temple, but whatever. When it was burned down, in addition to the five elders of Shaolin, who we've covered before, another man escaped, all right, called Fang Zhong. Now, this guy was a practitioner of Shaolin Luo Han Quan, all right, the Luo Han style, also called the 18 Luo Han Hands or Luo Han Shi Ba Shou. And he may have been a member of the Tian Di Hui, or Heaven and Earth Society. And this was a secret society that developed around anti-Qing factions in the south of China and eventually would evolve into the triad societies that exist today and conduct organized crime in Hong Kong and Chinatowns around the world. And since this guy and many other martial artists in the south were all part of these Ming loyalists, anti-Qing secret societies, that is the reason why the history of these martial arts styles in the south is so shady and fragmented, because it was, it was secret, all right? It was passed down secretly through word of mouth. But anyway, we'll tell you what the legend says. So Fang Zhong has a daughter named Fang Qiniang. When she is young, her mother dies, so she's raised by her father, and he teaches her his Shaolin. 18 Lohan Hands kung fu and her skills are pretty good. The pair then meet a guy called Zeng Si who is from Yongchun county in Fujian province. Now this is also known as Wing Chun county in Cantonese and just note the name similarity with Wing Chun as in Wing Chun kung fu but it isn't related to that it's just the name of the county. So anyway Zeng Si spars with both Fang Zhong and Fang Qiniang and discovers that they are both masters. He then formally requests to become a disciple and Fang Zhong says yes. But then at the same time, he also thinks that this guy is pretty good and might be a good match for his daughter. So he arranges for them to be married. This now brings us to some actual recorded history in the book Yongchun Xianzhi or the history of Yongchun County. There is a passage that talks about a couple moving to Yongchun county which is where the husband was from. During the reign of emperor Kangxi, that is the first emperor of the Qing dynasty, okay so this The timing is right, it would be right at the beginning of the Qing where, you know, there was still a lot of tension between the whole anti-Qing factions and everything. So during the reign of Emperor Kangxi, there was someone called Ding Qiniang and her husband. Now, they get the name wrong, okay, it should be Fang Qiniang, but Ding is actually a very similar character to Fang, and this is actually what often happened in ancient books. A lot of the time, some characters were just interchangeable with each other, or they were written wrong or whatever, but scholars do believe that this is talking about her, okay? So Ding Qiniang, or Fang Qiniang and her husband, of committing a crime where they were living, were exiled to Yongchun County. Zheng Li, okay, I don't know who this guy is, but someone called Zheng Li, Zheng Li's father, Zheng Ming, once sparred with Qi Niang, but was no match for her. Then later, he was sick and about to die. His final words were to tell his son to take Qi Niang as his master. His son Li, and then two other people, et cetera, 24 people in total, requested to study with her. Qi Niang felt their sincerity and passed on her martial arts to them. So this actual historical account seems to back up the legend that there really was a female martial artist who came to Yongchun or Wingchun county with her husband during the early Qing dynasty. But then how did she create the crane style? Let's talk about that next. Okay, so we're going back to the legend for this part. Sometime after moving to Yongchun County, Fang Qiniang hears that her father has been killed in a duel. You know, one of those lei tai competitions they used to do in China, which are basically fights to the death. But you've already signed what they call a sheng si zhuang, or a life and death waiver. So it's not like you could report it to the authorities because it was mutually consensual combat with liability waived. So the only way she can avenge her father's death is to go defeat the opponent herself. This then brings us to inspiration from the crane. Now, cranes are symbolically important birds in traditional Chinese culture. They often symbolize immortality and are associated with Taoism. Like here is a painting of a Taoist immortal flying on one's back. And here are four Taoist immortals staring at one. Now, although cranes are more common further north in China, they do sometimes migrate down to Fujian province. Now, one day during the time when she's still thinking about how to defeat this person that killed her father, according to the legend, Qi Niang is washing her clothes by the river and a crane lands next to her. So she picks up a stick to scare it off. But no matter how she tries, every attack she throws at it, the crane is able to either evade or deflect. In another version of the story, she encounters an immortal crane in her dream. And it teaches her its secrets. But no matter how it was, she combines the crane movements with the Luo Han Kung Fu that she knows from her father to create a style that specializes in evading and deflecting the opponent's power and then swooping in with precision strikes to weak points on the opponent's body rather than meeting force with force head on. The crane also has a technique of sticking to an opponent's forearm after blocking and using the sensitivity in the wrists to feel what their next movement is going to be since reactions to touch sensitivity are faster than reactions to sight. You can see here these two practitioners of the style allow their wrists to maintain contact after blocking and feel the next move. The crane style noticeably uses open hand techniques that transform into the shape of a bird's wing when they block as well as hand shapes imitating the beak of the crane used to peck at weak points on the opponent's body. After Fang Qiniang told As I taught it to several people, the crane style then split into various lineages, including the sleeping crane, the chirping crane, eating crane, flying crane, and shaking crane. If you look at various schools of Fujian white crane today, you will see in addition to the open-handed strikes, the imitation of the beak of the crane, there are also various shaking techniques, but it all traces back to one girl An inspiration from one of China's most treasured birds. All right, guys, thanks for watching. That's the video for today. Please leave a comment down below. What do you think of white crane boxing? And if you want to see videos on some other iconic Chinese kung fu styles, do click the links that are on screen now. 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