Topic: Shaolin Kung Fu

A few weeks back I started a martial class in town dedicated to the practice of Shaolin Kung Fu.
It's been an amazing experience, I've already had a chance to do a special class taught by the Grandmaster.
Which was Entwine the Dragon Straightsword, in a hot gym for twelve hours.

At the moment I'm a yellow belt. Someone is going to say it so I should mention that if you were to train in Mainland China it would either be Wushu-a flowery art that's purely performance based and devoid of martial intent-or Sanda which is Chinese kickboxing. Tai Chi is technically a martial art but it's meditational for many Chinese.

This is the real deal as far as I can tell, and the use of the Japanese belt system is because the martial artists of China fled to Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan because of the Communist party. In Indonesia it was illegal to practice Chinese martial arts so they adopted Japanese habits to avoid all that. Such as uniform and belt levels.

If you get a chance train at a Chinese Shaolin Center, which only has one school outside of the States in Ireland.

Along with the standard Kung Fu it also includes a Tai Chi class including the martial application.

I'm thinking about taking some form of martial arts in college this year. I need to take a physical education course, so I figure it's either going to be martial arts, rifelry, or fencing.

What system are you learning? The only one I've heard of is called the "Five (might be four...) Animal" technique.

Five Animal is in multiple martial arts. It's a form, a series of movements from a style. I know Hungar's version from a previous style.

The style is Shaolin-Do, we cover multiple styles.
Entwine the Dragon Straightsword is Xingyiquan for example, which was developed by General Yue Fei outside of Shaolin, the monks would later practice the style however.

So it isn't just Tiger or just bird or a specific Drunken Immortal.

Our Tai Chi class is strictly 24 Combined Postures at the moment though with Ch'i Kung postures at the beginning. I'm not sure if I'd have to take a special class to learn another Tai Chi form or style.

cool, i've always wanted to do a martial arts class but never got to.

Very impressive, I 've practiced Tae Kwon Do myself for about 6-7 years.

Today I went to "Technical Punching and Kicking w/ Weapons Defense"

There is nothing like getting wailed on by a black belt through a shield, if I'm not sore later it's a bad sign.

Weapons defense was fun, we did guns, knives, and baseball bats. At the end was a sparring portion where the one with the knife went full speed. I didn't get the knife out of his hand but I still managed to "survive" the encounter.

I did Okinawa-Do karate for about 5-6 years. I got to brown belt (in this case, right before black belt) before i quit like a moron. I was actually the sensei's best student (not trying to be cocky, he said so himself). I also did a year of fencing which was fun, but i'd rather do longsword.

I used to take Karate, and then my instructor just up and stopped teaching.
I'm not sure what to think about it.