If you often watch Hong Kong and Taiwan action movies, you will not be unfamiliar with the following names.
Huang Feihong, Ryazan, Ip Man, Bruce Lee...
They are highly skilled in martial arts, have national righteousness, have patriotic feelings, and can be called a generation of martial arts masters. Happily, they are not fictional film and television characters, but martial arts masters who have existed alive in history.
Huang Feihong, a martial artist of the Republic of China at the end of the Qing Dynasty, was the head coach of the Guangdong Militia League; Ryazan, a famous martial artist of the late Qing Dynasty, who set up a museum in Foshan to accumulate strength for the anti-Qing restoration; Ip Man practiced Wing Chun boxing all his life and taught apprenticeship in Hong Kong; Bruce Lee's name is even greater, the founder of Trunct Boxing, a Chinese martial arts film actor, the first global promoter of Chinese kung fu, and the first Chinese protagonist in Hollywood.
These people all have one thing in common, that is, their ancestral home and teacher lineage are in Foshan.
It is no accident that Foshan intersects with many martial artists. In reality, Foshan is a "martial arts city", and the roots of the widely popular Hong Quan, Wing Chun and Cai Li Fo Quan are in Foshan.
As we all know, the shaping of a famous cultural city is not an overnight thing, and it is often a deep historical accumulation behind it. This is especially true for Foshan and its martial arts.
Prosperous business economy
Foshan, located in the hinterland of the Pearl River Delta, is located in the central part of Guangdong Province, east of Guangzhou, south of Zhongshan, Jiangmen, west of Zhaoqing, Yunfu, is one of the four famous towns in China in history.
The Four Gatherings here are Qing Dynasty sayings, specifically referring to the four most important commercial centers of the time. In north China there is Beijing, in east China there is Suzhou, in China there is Wuhan, and in south China there is Foshan. It can be seen that Foshan's commercial status.
However, Foshan's prosperity did not happen overnight. During the Wei and Jin dynasties and the Southern Song Dynasty, three large-scale migrations of northerners moved southward, bringing a large number of people and technology to the south, especially Lingnan.
During the Tang and Song dynasties, Foshan's handicraft industry and commerce were already very prosperous; in the Ming and Qing dynasties, Foshan had become an important town in Lingnan with developed industry and commerce, merchants gathered, logistics were developed, and it was one of the four famous towns in the country; at the end of the Qing Dynasty, Foshan was even more popular, taking the lead in developing modern national industries, and further accelerating its own prosperity.
The prosperity of the economy has attracted a large number of outstanding talents to foshan to develop, including some people with high martial arts, or escorting goods for darts, or opening martial arts halls to create sects, forming various martial arts schools.
Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, there have been many martial arts celebrities in the Foshan area, and the martial arts halls they once founded can still be seen on the streets of Foshan. The existing Hong, Liu, Cai, Li, Mojiaquan and Cai Li Buddha fists and Wing Chun fists that appeared in foshan in the late Qing Dynasty are full of shadows of the fusion of north and south, and also help Foshan form a complete martial arts system.
The Shangwu gene carved in the bones
Foshan is the main transportation route in the southwest of Guangzhou, and has always been a place where soldiers and families must fight. In peacetime, it can promote the prosperity of commerce, and in times of turmoil, it will become the focus of various power competitions. In this regard, Foshan people have long responded.
Foshan's terrain is flat, the natural defense conditions are obviously inferior to the mountainous areas, and the Foshan people spontaneously formed a tradition of learning martial defense out of the need for self-protection. In this context, after long-term practice, many "strangers" have a skill, protect their homes, and even become elite soldiers who go into battle to kill the enemy.
Speaking of which, we must mention a historical event in the mid-15th century.
During the Orthodox years of the Ming Dynasty, floods occurred in the Guangdong region, and the farmland was lost and deserted, but the taxes of the imperial court did not decrease. The people struggled, and finally led to a local civil unrest. There was a man named Huang Xiaoyang who went to prison for something. Soon, Huang Xiaoyang organized more than 100 people from prison to escape from prison successfully, and then gathered a crowd to revolt, and the team once reached 100,000 people.
Huang Xiaoyang deployed the main force to attack Guangzhou, and also sent troops to attack Foshan. In Foshan, the squires led by Liang Guang organized the township to bravely resist the enemy. Without any reinforcements, they killed thousands of enemies and held foshan for 15 days.
The "Foshan Zhongyi Township Chronicle" records that most of the villagers in foshan are brave and brave, so they can effectively cope with the attack of Huang Xiaoyang's army.
For a long time, Foshan people have become popular for self-defense. In fact, the Foshan area has become a famous birthplace of martial arts in the Ming Dynasty, and its development during the Qing Dynasty is even worse, so that it was later valued by anti-Qing zhishi and became one of the important bases of the Tiandihui. It can be seen that the martial arts of Foshan flourished during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The spirit of Foshan martial arts under the great national righteousness
The great hero is for the country and the people. Jin Yong's Guo Jing hero, in the face of the oppression of the strong, stubbornly defended Xiangyang City, which was awe-inspiring. The martial arts of Foshan and the martial arts are not branded with the times, expressing the feelings of national righteousness.
In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, when the Western powers opened the door of the country with strong boats, the ancestors of the coastal areas, especially the elite of the study and martial arts in Guangdong, did not struggle for the humiliation of the "sick man of East Asia", or out of self-preservation, or straightened the backbone for the people of the country.
When Lin ZexuHumen sold cigarettes, Chen Xiang, the founder of Cai Li Fo Quan, helped the imperial court train volunteer sailors; after the opium war broke out, Chen Xiang led his disciples to join the Guangzhou Humen Water Master Yamen and participated in the battle against The British; when Hong Kong was ceded, Chen Xiang and others were distraught, and when they were disappointed, they actively planned the "Hongsheng" martial arts hall to wait for the opportunity to fight again.
In Guangdong, especially in Foshan, there are not a few martial artists like Chen Xiang. They have done a lot in resisting foreign enemies, overthrowing the feudal monarchy, and even promoting Chinese culture. Ip Man and others we mentioned at the beginning are representatives of this.
There was such a saying about Foshan, "A city of humanistic allusions, a thousand years of charm of the commercial port." "Foshan is commercially developed and humanities are gathered. If you want to paint the color of Foshan's history and culture, then martial arts must be an indispensable background. Foshan is currently the only city in China to receive the title of "City of Chinese Martial Arts". To inherit martial arts skills and carry forward the spirit of martial arts, we may wish to start with "Foshan Kung Fu".