Shaolin kung-fu History

History for me has always been something that you were forced to learn in school. It is only in later years that I have learned to appreciate an old saying, I now like to quote; "appreciate and learn from the past, dream and plan the future and live today!" And this is so very true. So, after years of studying and training Kung Fu I searched for the history of my style only to find . . . not much. This began something that I thought I would never do, research Chinese History and specifically Shaolin Kung Fu. This page is the result of that decision. Life is full of surprises
In no way is this account perfect. It is said that the victors write history, well it is actually written by people who can write, and in China, this was a slim minority. Chinese history also had the added challenge that successive dynasties liked to 're-write' aspects of history to suit them. This is also common in Western and other societies. Finally, each new dynasty removed much of the previous dynasty, to the point of moving its capitol city. The current capitol is Beijing also know as Peking. But there are many other 'former' capitol cities including Nanjing Xi'an and a number of others. All this considered, I believe that it would be difficult to say what actually happened during the 1500 years or so since the first Shaolin temple was built .