Honoring Fang Shipei: A Zong He White Crane Tradition in Taiwan

Every year, practitioners from Master Hong's Zong He White Crane lineage gather to commemorate Fang Shipei (方世培), remembered within the tradition as the founder of Zong He Quan (縱鶴拳), or Vibrating/Raising Crane.

I attended one of these gatherings on October 7. What follows is not intended as a description of how all White Crane schools commemorate their predecessors. It is simply a record of one living Zong He White Crane tradition as I experienced it in Taiwan.

Fang Shipei and Zong He White Crane

According to the history transmitted within the Zong He tradition, Fang Shipei developed his approach to White Crane during the nineteenth century after years of martial-arts training.

The tradition particularly associates his method with the observation of natural vibration—the shaking and oscillating movements seen in animals, plants and other natural phenomena. These observations became connected with the distinctive power-generation methods for which Zong He later became known.

Some of Fang Shipei's martial descendants eventually transmitted the system to Taiwan, where several branches of Zong He White Crane continue to be practiced today.

The precise early history of the system deserves separate treatment. Some details preserved within martial lineages are difficult to verify independently and should therefore be distinguished from documented historical evidence.

For this article, however, the important point is not reconstructing the nineteenth century. It is seeing how the tradition is preserved by practitioners today.

The Annual Gathering

The gathering brought together several generations of practitioners connected with Master Hong's lineage.

Among those attending were Master Hong's kung fu brothers, who had trained alongside him, experienced practitioners who had completed substantial study of the system under him, and current students.

The atmosphere was therefore quite different from an ordinary training session. It was simultaneously a reunion, a commemoration and an opportunity for different generations of the lineage to practice together.

The ceremony began with incense and offerings placed before a small altar dedicated to Fang Shipei.

After the commemorative ceremony, participants demonstrated different parts of the Zong He White Crane system.

This was particularly interesting because a martial tradition does not exist only in forms, techniques or written lineage charts. It exists in people.

Seeing practitioners from different generations together provides a glimpse of how knowledge passes from teacher to student and then continues through subsequent generations.

At the end of the gathering, Master Hong presented each participant with a small gift.

More Than Techniques

Events like this illustrate an aspect of traditional Chinese martial arts that can easily disappear when Kung Fu is viewed simply as a collection of fighting techniques.

A traditional martial lineage is also a community.

Teachers grow older. Students eventually become teachers themselves. Some practitioners continue training for decades, while others leave and later return. Yet memories of earlier teachers and practitioners remain part of the identity of the group.

Ceremonies commemorating predecessors can therefore serve several functions at once. They preserve historical memory, reinforce relationships between generations of practitioners and remind current students that the system they practice did not begin with them.

That does not mean every story preserved by a lineage should automatically be accepted as historical fact.

Respecting a tradition and critically examining its history are not contradictory.

One concerns our relationship with the people who transmitted the art. The other concerns our responsibility to understand its history as accurately as possible.

For me, this gathering was an opportunity to experience both sides of that tradition: practicing Zong He White Crane while seeing how a living martial community in Taiwan preserves the memory of the people through whom the art was transmitted.

Zong He White Crane practitioners commemorating Fang Shipei in Taiwan