In my country there is a great regard for history and tradition. The annual Tai Chi Caledonia event is set in the "Braveheart Country" of Stirling, over-shadowed by the neo-Gothic Wallace Monument. At the 7th Caledonia, Bruce Frantzis remarked to me how taken he was by the beauty of this splendid edifice erected in memory of one of our great tragic heroes. I told him we also have the battle-axe of our great king, Robert the Bruce. In the year 1314, before the climactic battle at Bannockburn began, the English champion, Henry de Bohun, charged him with his lance only for Bruce to kill de Bohun with one blow of his battle-axe. We still have the axe, only the haft has been changed four times and the head twice. That is tradition.
In 2001, I went with Pamela Teubig from Bremen, Claire Sheehy from Dublin and Torben Rif from Denmark to revisit Wudang Mountain and the Northern Shaolin Temple at Songshan.
We climbed the Sky Pillar Peak and visited the major temples as I have done with others so many times before. We did manage to visit a shrine on Jade Void Cliff, which has only recently been opened to the public for the first time It was quite a hike to get there too involving crossing a swaying rope bridge and scampering over what was not quite a trail. The shrine itself was evidently in active use as a place of worship and had a more genuine feel to it than some of the restored temples further up the mountain.
After some days on the mountain we went down to Wudang town passing by some of the numerous Wudang Quan martial arts schools teaching traditional Wudang Quan. None of these existed when I first visited the mountain in 1984, so the tradition is not long. Based on what I have seen on this and previous visits, what is being practiced is a mixture of modern wushu and kickboxing. That said, since the students train full time, all day and everyday they have some good athletes. Wudang town does have a saving grace, which is the small museum in what used to be a temple. Inside there is a painting in four sections from the late Qing dynasty showing the temples shrines and mountain in all their glory. What is more interesting is that the most important area on the painting is now many fathoms deep, in the middle of a reservoir constructed by the comrades in the 1950s and thus changing the whole focus of the mountain.
After this, we went to Zhengzhou and then by bus to the Shaolin Temple at Songshan. I had read in a French current affairs magazine about riots in the vicinity of the temple over land rights and I inquired about this amongst the townfolk. What I was told basically corroborated what I had read. A new abbot had moved into the temple and in collaboration with the local authorities had announced that the temple was a place of peace and contemplation, that traditionally all the land around the temple belonged to the Shaolin Temple. So all the land that had been occupied for generations by the townfolk, all the restaurants, shops and houses were bulldozed into the ground and taken by the Temple to lease out to 10 wushu schools, situated in the same road as the temple, which paid also for the right to use the name "Shaolin Temple". Hence the riots. Townfolk spoke to me of their hatred of the monks of how they had beaten them with fists and sticks and stoned them until the cops and the soldiers were called in "to re-establish the rule of law".
It is necessary to buy a ticket to enter the road of the 10 wushu schools and as in other theme parks the ticket gets clipped as you visit the other attractions such as the cinema and museum (both new), the temple graveyard and Boddidharma¹s cave, which is on a hill behind the temple.
The 10 wushu schools have a total enrolment in excess of 10000 students, each shaven-headed and dressed in the uniform peculiar to his school. As for the method of training and instruction, they train in platoons, the coaches (I use the term advisedly) blow whistles and shout orders; the platoons march, halt, horse-stance, punch, kick or somersault. The method of training in the wuguan (martial arts schools) on Wudang Mountain is almost identical and of course one is as traditional as the other.
There are plenty of shops and restaurants in the road all operated by or paying a fee to the temple and selling swords and other items at a considerably higher price than you would pay outside; all for the magic term "Shaolin Temple" written on them.
When I visited the Shaolin Temple in 1984, there were no monks there and no shops inside; it was a ruin, but renovations had just started. Now it has become a temple not to Buddha, but to the dollar. So now when people tell you they have trained in the Shaolin Temple or on Wudang Mountain you will perhaps understand the reality.
Bruce Frantzis did not know that Wu Jian-chuan trained inter alia with Song Shu-ming, he did not know that the Yang family in Yongnian practice the Wu Yu-xiang long form.
As for the monument to William Wallace in Stirling, as I told Bruce, the city fathers built it in 1867, nearly 600 years after Wallace's death (he was captured by the English and hung drawn and quartered in London in 1305). It is as meaningful and genuine as that battle-axe. It is not just the Chinese who can submerge history and tradition in a reservoir.