Great Kung Fu Masters From Chinese History: Sun Lutang

China has multiple styles of martial arts from Shaolin to wuang to the southern stars that spread amongst the people through secret socities these martial arts can broadly be classified into two categories Wen or external Styles like the Arts of Shaolin that rely more on physical strength and fitness in their training and nen or internal styles that exercise relaxation and rely on the body's energy or Chi to deliver power the internal styles are derived from dowst cultivation practices and are arguably the most powerful Styles in all of kung fu when practiced at a high level of all the styles that claim to be internal there are only really Three core internal styles that can claim to be 100% nen and those areen or form intent boxing which is an aggressive Style based on the theory of the five elements it moves in straight lines the shortest distance between two points will always be a straet line it never Retreats and claims the legendary Chinese General UFA as its founder UFA is said to have created the style based on the movements of the spere and you can still see that in the open-handed forms next is bwaa or the eight trigrs Palm derived from the Dows theories of the eight trigrams in the eing or book of changes it is a style that uses Circle walking as its primary footwork and Training Method and it relies mostly on Palm strikes not clenched fists its founder dongran supposedly learned it from a DST sage in the mountains before teaching it in Beijing in the 1800s and then we have taien which traces its lineage back to the DST immortal Jang San Fung who created the art taii is heavily associated with wuang mountain and also the Chen Family Village it is an incredibly soft style and is practiced in slow motion to achieve relaxation but in combat uses explosive power referred to as fire very few people become masters of all three internal Arts but one man did succeed and that man was sun and this is his story sunlu hang was born in 1861 in a village in h Province his original name was sun fuen he was born into the family of a poor farmer in his youth he showed promise and his father found a tutor to teach him the Confucian Classics however when sun was around 9 years old his father who had gotten into debt went bankrupt and had to sell the farm and eventually the stress from the situation led to his father's death sun and his mother now had no money so his mother arranged for him to work as a servant at the house of a wealthy local man in exchange for room and board but no salary however this man and his son who was 2 years older than Sun were cruel and they beat and bullied Sun then one day sunlu hang was out in a field watching the Sheep he saw a Kung Fu class being taught in the countryside he went over and asked the teacher to teach him this was a Shaolin Kung Fu class and Sun picked it up very quickly as soon as he started learning but he knew he had to keep it a secret from his boss this went on for some time but eventually the boss's son found out and taunted him demanding that sun fight his cousin who was 8 years older and practiced sha or Chinese wrestling the cousin threw sun to the floor a couple of times and this made Sun crack he punched the cousin in the solar plexus so hard it made him throw up the son then reported on him to his father sunlu Tang's boss and he came over and threatened to kill sun mutang with a stick Sun ran away and that was the end of his job after that sun was so depressed that he decided to hang himself and end it all but it seems the universe had other plans for sunlu hang a few seconds after he started hanging there dangling from a tree by the side of the road struggling to breathe two strangers came along and cut him down they brought him back to his mother and she explained the situation these two strangers wanted to help and said that they would transport sun to stay with his uncle in another town something Sun's mom had wanted to do origin but didn't have the money to make the trip so sun goes to stay with his uncle who has a shop selling calligraphy brushes so he's working at this calligraphy brush shop and Sun starts writing with the brushes the uncle recognizes Sun's talent and first sends sun to a teacher to study the Confucian Classics now this teacher has a friend who is a martial artist and one day he comes over and soon shows that he knows some Kung Fu too this martial artist is a man named Lee quen who is not this mathematics professor from the unity of West Florida but instead a teacher of singen and we don't have a photo of him so let's just make the math professor black and white and put him in a Kung Fu outfit Lee agrees to teach so this is the first of the three internal styles that sun learns and here are actual photos of sun lutang standing in Santi the core training posture of s soon learns from Lee for three years and in that time actually surpasses Lee's skill level so Lee says to Sun that there is no more that he can teach him and that he should go to learn from Lee's teacher gu yunen who there is actually a photo of so he goes to learn from G who at first thinks sun is a bit skinny and not a good Prospect but because of the introduction from Lee he gives him a chance now guun Shin is a big deal he is known as the number one shichen fighter of his time he is known for his legendary buen or crushing fist technique which is one of the five core techniques ofen which is based on the Chinese theory of the five elements there is a story about how gu realizes sun is special and takes him as a formal disciple one day gu asks sun to prepare one horse for a trip to a nearby Village for a meeting since there is just one horse it is only gu that rides it and sun is expected to run behind and keep up Gore keeps whipping the horse to go faster and faster and soon keeps up eventually it does go too fast and Sun uses his skill to jump on the back of the Horse Without War realizing when they get to the destination Village Gore looks back and Sun immediately jumps down off the horse at least this is the way that Sun's granddaughter tells the story in a Chinese documentary on Kung Fu some people say he just kept up with the horse either way they then enter the Village and both of them sit down for a rest and Gore says okay it's time to go home Sun then reminds his teacher that he has a meeting to attend but Gore just laughs there was no meeting the whole thing was a test and the two walk back next to the horse and Gore tells Sun that he will formally accept him as a disciple but he must be by his side at all times Sun agrees and becomes a formal disciple and Gore makes him do nothing else than just stand in Santi for a whole year this gives Sun a BAS of internal power and he goes on to study with gu for seven or eight years depending on who is telling the story he Masters the style after these years gu then recommends Sun study with ch ining and Sun's collection of teachers really starts to read like a who's who of internal martial arts Chun Kinga was a student of dongran the man who had learned B Jang from a mystical DST in the mountains and moved to Beijing to popularize the style B Jang is based on the book of changes or eing and has circular movements with circle walking as its basic training like gu before him making Sun stand in stiu for a whole year Chena had sun do nothing else but Circle walking for the first year of training basically this exercise that is being demonstrated by this student of sunlu Tang's granddaughter even though Sun wasn't taught anything else in the first year he used to practice his Baga hand strikes against heavy iron cannons until he discovered that he could move them after a year he had basically grasped the essence of the art even though Chung had only taught him to walk in a circle then one day a challenger came from the south to challenge Chung tingua several of his students tried to fight the man but lost then Sun stepped up and said that he would take the man on he knocked the Challenger out of the door with one move Chun Kinga was amazed at how much sun had improved even though he only taught him to walk in a circle and he then went on to teach Sun the whole system it is also at this time that CH gave Sun the name luang while learning bang Sun enlightened to the fact that the book of changes or eing could explain not just all of bang but also all of singi too he writes in the preface to his book on the usefulness of the book of changes is Broad and profound this made Sun delve deeper into dais cultivation and starting in 1885 he goes on a journey learning from dsts in the mountains of suan Province and also spent time on wudang Mountain after this he heads back to Beijing where he meets the teacher of the last of China's three internal Styles Tai so taii or taii as we often call it in English which is not just some exercise for old people in the park was founded by the legendary DST Immortal Jang San Fung it then spread to the Chen Family Village now those guys didn't teach Outsiders but then a man named Yang Lan he went to the village and tried to get them to teach him after much effort he does manage to learn taii in the Chen village now there's a little bit of controversy in some circles here to the story as to whether he learned it from the Chen family or another person in Jung San Fung's lineage who visited the village and the Chen family don't even now recognize Jang San Fung as the founder but anyway we won't get into that that's topic for another video but Yang luchan was the person who brought taii out of the Chen Village to baiting and popularized the art among the people he became known as Yang woodi or Yang the Invincible and he does look pretty scary he then taught wuang who to me just looks like a stereotypical Chinese villain from a Disney movie or something anyway he mastered Yang's style and came up with his own the woo style and he taught that to his nephew who then taught it to hawe jent who I don't know there's something stereotyp typical about him too he's kind of like a Chinese Monopoly man anyway he mastered the style but later Hal fell ill on a trip to Beijing and ended up staying in a hotel to try and recover sunlu hang hears about this he hears that there's a great martial artist has fallen ill in Beijing and he's holding up in a hotel Sun personally gets a doctor to come to the hotel and treat how and nurse him back to health how then repays Sun by teaching him his style of taii which soon then combines with what he's learned from B Jang and shingi to form his own style the sun style and here it is being demonstrated by his granddaughter now there may be some controversy in some circles about this two altering what jungsan Fang taught first to the wo style and then changing it to the sunn style that's a topic for another video but this style was accepted by all of the other taii families as one of the five family style styles of taii that were derived from what Jang San Fung originally taught now that sun had mastered all three styles of China's or internal kungu and he did not do what other martial artists have done and only teach a small group of disciples or use it in the bodyguarding industry and keep the secrets of the Arts hidden no he felt he had a larger Mission he recognized the health benefits of all three arts and wanted to teach them on a large scale to steal and strengthen the population in 1915 he started publishing books and put out a book on each of the three internal Arts with multiple photos these were the first books ever published on these Arts he briefly taught at the National guu Institute but left because he wanted to teach on a larger scale and have it benefit the population as a whole and that is basically what Sun did for the remaining years of his life returning to teach in Beijing in 1931 in his senior years sunu hang got so good understanding the eing that he used it to predict the exact date and time of his death he went back home to his village in December 1933 and went into a continual state of DST meditation and on December 16th the date that he had predicted he passed away sun was buried with a precious sword and was hailed by his contemporaries as the greatest martial artist for 300 years whether this is true or not would be hard to know but Sun's contribution to the martial arts was massive and along with teaching fighting and health Improvement he also emphasized the link between martial skill and martial morality or Marshal virtue Wu writing in his books these are highlevel skills it is important to cultivate one's morality if they are not supported by one's morality then it is just a waste of effort to try to learn them one thing that is probably true is that sunlu Tang made perhaps the greatest contribution to popularizing the internal martial arts by any one person in all of Chinese history all right guys that is the video for today if you want to see Chinese culture brought to life on stage do check out shenyun Performing Arts the world's number one Chinese classical Dance Company classical Chinese dance comes from the same route as the Chinese martial arts and many of the moves are very similar they're just starting their 2025 World Tour and my co-host on this channel is touring with shenyun as the MC for one of their eight companies click the link below to check out the trailer and if you do go on to buy tickets you can get your booking fee waved on all US tour dates by using our code LCN 2025 if you're interested in the origin stories of the three internal Arts we have videos on Don Tran the founder of B Jang jangan of Tai and of course the legendary General UFA who is said to have created Shen I'll put all of those on screen now feel free to click in and check them out please subscribe to the channel if you're new for more Chinese history and martial arts knowledge we'll see you in the next one bye-bye