66 Systemizing Martial Practice
The Shaolin Monastery has a staff fighting method called “Five Tigers
Interception” (Wuhu lan). “One strike down, one strike up” (yi da yi jie)
is all there is to it. Striking down, the staff should reach the ground;
striking up it should pass one’s head. It is a simple method, and there is
nothing spectacular about it, almost like a farmer hoeing the soil. Still,
by practicing it long enough one attains refinement. “Striking down and
up,” one obtains strength. Even the other Shaolin techniques are all in
awe of this method. It cannot be taken lightly just because it is so
simple.^31Wu Shu highlights the formula “one strike down, one strike up” as char-
acteristic of the “Five Tigers Interception.” The same formula figures promi-
nently in Yu Dayou’s Sword Classic, for which reason it is likely that the method
the general taught is none other than the one Wu Shu describes. If Tang
Hao, who formulated this hypothesis, is correct, then by the late seventeenth
century the Shaolin monks had been engaged in two systems of staff train-
ing, one recorded in Cheng’s Shaolin Staff Method, which predated Yu’s visit to
their monastery, and the other called by Wu Shu “Five Tigers Interception,”
which they learned from the Ming general.^32
Leaving aside the question of Yu Dayou’s precise influence on the Shao-
lin martial arts, his association with the monastery reveals a connection be-
tween two segments of late Ming society, which scholarship tends to regard
as quite distinct: the Buddhist sangha and the military. General Yu treated
Shaolin monks as fellow professionals, with whom he conferred on the tech-
nicalities of his field. His conception of their monastery as a military institu-
tion enriches our understanding of the multifarious roles that Buddhism
played in late Ming society.^33
According to Yu’s account, he instructed the Shaolin monks. In other in-
stances Shaolin monks shared their martial expertise with members of the mili-
tary. The clearest example is that of the mid-sixteenth-century campaign
against piracy, during which military officials in the Jiangnan region called on
the Shaolin monks for help. The monks who responded and joined the war did
not forsake their religious identity. Rather than blending in with the other sol-
diers, they formed their own monastic units. However, at least one cleric was of-
fered a position in the military and consequently returned to the laity. This is
the seventeenth-century Shaolin monk Liu Dechang, who was appointed mo-
bile corps commander (youji jiangjun) in the army. Even after he abandoned
the monastic order in favor of the officer corps, Liu maintained contact with
his Buddhist alma mater, accepting as students Shaolin monks who sought his
instruction in spear fighting.^34
If Shaolin monks conferred with generals, they also associated with the
emerging community of martial artists that did not belong to the military. We
met two literati members of that community, Cheng Zongyou and Wu Shu. A
third one, Cheng Zhenru (fl. ca. 1620), received his military education not at