Defending the Nation 61
world of martial arts: one of competing schools, each professing to be the sole
inheritor of the same original teaching. The rivalry between martial experts
all claiming possession of the authentic Shaolin teaching is most apparent in
the “Questions and Answers” section of the Shaolin Staff Method, where Cheng
addresses the following query, posed by a hypothetical questioner:
Fig. 10. Practice sequence from Cheng Zongyou’s 1621 Shaolin Staff Method.