"A BODY IN MOTION STAY'S IN MOTION, A BODY AT REST STAY'S AT REST"
"A BODY IN MOTION STAY'S IN MOTION, A BODY AT REST STAY'S AT REST"
China, like India, has been the nurturing spot for numerous martial art forms. While some of these arts were actually initiated in China, many were brought in from other countries and so Sinicized after centuries of practice in China that today they appear to be of Chinese inspiration. It is difficult, even with access to reams of statistical data, to determine bases or patterns for behavior, and the task is enormously amplified when the behavioral patterns were established hundreds of years in the past. For this reason, it cannot be authoritatively determined why the earliest ch'iian fa schools were so secretive that it was considered a capital offense to display the techniques to the uninitiated. This particular behavior pattern has made extremely difficult the task of the historian studying Chinese weaponless martial arts. In the field of weaponless combat, China undoubtedly was the catalyst in producing the techniques that have eventually come to be called karate. While the major Chinese precursor of karate is ch'iian fa in Mandarin Chinese, it is more popularly known as kung-fu [pronounced "gung-foo"]. Although we call ch'iian fa a Chinese art, it is doubtful that it is wholly a product of Chinese genius. From the foregoing, it can be seen why the recent opening of Milan ch'iian fa doors to Westerners has met with such opposition from certain ch'uanfa societies. Of course, the who have taken the step usually claim that they teach non-Chinese participants only a watered-down version the true art, and that the "secrets" have never be< divulged to the Western world. So, though it appears thail kung-fu (the common term for ch'iian fa in the West) a becoming a universal art along with the other karate-like styles of self-defense, it is possible that we will never see ill practiced as it once was in the fabled temples of Shaolin.