As I always say about Japanese Budo:
we have the history of each Ryuha, we have the Densho, the scrolls, and we have the Menkyo certification system, the Sokes and the Shihans, and then we have the modern belt grading system, the Dans, the new Modern ranks, and the Traditional ranks
Other countries do not have the same concise system as Japan, they do not have exact ranks relating to their systems
The worst for this is Modern systems of Kung Fu which are supposed to be passed down from Traditional systems such as Wu Tang and Shaolin
Modern Kung fu systems that give coloured "Sashes" are meaningless - they are just marketing hype and a way to make money from Westerners paying for something that isn't real
Here's some facts:
Shaolin Temple was burned down 400 years ago
the Shaolin Temple is gone
then in 1983 China was opened up to Westerners
everybody kept going "hey where's the Shaolin Temple"
Chinese are replying "you know there's no Shaolin Temple they burn down 400 years ago"
then they reconstructed a replica in 1983 and they had towns folk dress as Shaolin monks for tourism
around 85 they started having actual kung-fu people portray the Shaolin monks
then Westerners kept coming in there going we want to learn from the Shaolin monks
so they started teaching these Western people
and these Chinese people are not connected to the Shaolin monks
saying you were taught by a Shaolin monk is the equivalent of saying I was taught by a knight of the round table
same time period
you know how ridiculous that would sound
these new people have nothing to do with the Shaolin monks that were destroyed long time ago
this was something that was resurrected later in the 80s
So yes, family systems of Kung Fu do exist and are passed down through the Generations, and they are genuine, and some teachers do open schools and teach Westerners
There are also plenty of schools that choose their members carefully and remain "underground"
which is essentially what STMA do
But there are no "SIFU" or "Teachers" who had Shaolin Kung Fu passed down to them from the original Monks that are teaching today - and the new replica of the Shaolin Temple is just that, a replica, and the Kung Fu you can learn there is not passed down from the Shaolin monks
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Regarding Wing Chun and Pak Mei they are examples of systems that were supposed to be passed down from "surviving masters" of the Shaolin Temple
Though they are both good systems, the Shaolin bit is nonsense
after all, why would each "Monk" have a system so different from each other - Pak Mei and Wing Chun would be almost identical if the two monks had trained at the Temple and escaped when it was torched
Even Lethwei and Muay Thai are similar - and they are from different neighbouring countries - consider that
Also the Yip Man idea that there are two different versions of Wing Chun and only he learnt both of them so you can only learn WC from him - ignore that
Same for his first gen students all claiming they are the "only one" who learnt the real complete system and are the new real "grandmaster"
Ego and money - as always
