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Chapter 4
Staff Legends
The staff was not the only weapon Ming period Shaolin monks used.
Contemporary literature alludes to other Shaolin arms and fighting meth-
ods. Wu Shu’s Arm Exercises includes a spear manual attributed to the Shaolin
monk Hongzhuan, Tang Shunzhi alludes to Shaolin unarmed hand combat
(quan), and Zheng Ruoceng notes that in addition to staffs, Shaolin monks
carried to battle steel tridents and hooked spears. Even the greatest advocate
of the Shaolin staff, Cheng Zongyou, acknowledges that by the early seven-
teenth century, Shaolin monks began practicing empty-handed combat.^1
Still, even authors who attribute weapons other than the staff to Shaolin
leave no doubt that the monks specialized in it. Wu Shu criticizes Shaolin cler-
ics for applying the techniques of the staff to spear fighting, and Zheng
Ruoceng’s illustrations of their deftness invariably concern staffs or stafflike
weapons. In one anecdote, he celebrates the skills of Tianyuan, who employed
a door bar as an improvised staff, and in another, he tells of monk Guzhou,
who used a real staff to beat up eight assailants. The second story features the
military official Wan Biao, who initiated the mobilization of Shaolin monks
against the pirates:
The three provincial officers (sansi) mocked Luyuan [Wan Biao]:
“Monks are useless,” they said. “Why do you honor them so?” Luyuan
told them of the cultural and military accomplishments of some monks.
The three provincial officers suggested they bet wine on it, so Luyuan
arranged a banquet at the Yong jin Gate [in Hangzhou]. The three
provincial officers came, and secretly ordered eight military instructors
to lie in ambush. They urged Luyuan to invite an eminent monk to fight
them. Luyuan invited Guzhou, who didn’t know what it was all about
and happily came.
When Guzhou arrived, the eight military instructors, each armed