World of White Crane is
disappearing quickly in Taiwan and seems no one cares about it. South of Taiwan
is the repository of many old and unknown Fujian styles, many of them older
than popular styles like Tai Chi or Wing Chun by far, and definitely more
significant historically culturally and
technically. These styles, practiced traditionally for centuries, pretty much without
contact with other styles still keep original technical content, language,
mythology, oral histories even some aspect of religion. Traditionally, in
Taiwan, particular kung fu style is practiced only by family members or the members of the community
(village). Styles were not secret in a sense that they were hidden behind closed
doors but they were almost never taught to outsiders. This tradition is very much alive today and it
is one of the reasons why all these styles are on brink of extinction. Vast
majority of these are some form of White Crane. Many styles are pure Crane
styles while others have been mixed with styles sometime in the past but Crane flavor
is still prevalent. Many of these Crane
styles are far older that better known White Cranes like Yong Chun Bai He fist,
Shihe, Suhe, Zonghe…
Having in mind that
strong tradition prevents masters to teach people outside their community or family
and that majority of these styles concentrated on the south part of Taiwan, endangeres
the survival of these styles. For decades young people for the south ,
especially from villages, migrate to the north, to big economical centres in
serach for better jobs and better life. It came to the point that many schools
in far south had tobe closed because there are no more kids. Young people leave
early, in search for better education that will give them better oppurtunities
later in life and there is no time for the masters to pass the complete styles
to next generations. On the other hand , young generation do not show much
interest for kung fu. Baseball and tennis are much more popular than any other
sport or activity. In Taiwan, kung fu is a thing of old people, those who want
to keep and preserve the tradition, but there is not many of them.
Another reason for
declining interest in kung fu is rasining popularty of MMA and asscoated arts. Kung
Fu in general didn’t
show well in full contact fighting and that is one more reason for declining interest
in it. Thai Boxing and MMA gyms have much more students in Taiwan than average kung
fu club.
Having all this in mind
we can see that extinction process of kung fu is at the point that simply
cannot be reversed. Many interesting Crane styles (and other kung fu styles)
simply disappeard in the last few decades. The rest will probably disappear with
last masters of those arts in the next decade or so.
Disappearing of these old
styles will be irreplaceable loss for traditional Chinese cultural heritage. People’s Republic of China started a project of
documenting rare and disappearing Kung Fu styles,which will be preserved at least in digital formand
could be revived some time in the future with some effort. If nothing else,
preserveing Kung Fu in this format can be valuable source for all kinds of research
in the future. Bottom line, these styles won’t be alive but they would not disappear
completely. Unfortunately, In Taiwan such a project is not even
considered.There were few tryes done by a private researches and kung fu
pracitioners, but they simply lack resources to complete such a big project.
To conclude this article, chances are that we will have accept the fact that allthese beautiful old styles will disappear in the future, leaving an enormous gap in traditional kung fu heritage.
