History of Shao Lin Kung Fu 

In the year 525 AD, a Buddhist monk named Bodhidama trekked through thousands of miles from India to China.  He eventually found his way to a monastery deep in a green young forest.  Because the monastery was set in the midst of the woods, it was unsurprisingly given the name Shao Lin that means young forest 

When Bodhidama started instructing the monks of the Shao Lin monastery he was appalled at how weak they were physically. He then proceeded to prescribe exercises for the passive and apathetic monks. These were composed of special hand movement’s body positions and breathing exercises. These turned out to be the rudiments of a self-defence technique.

Through hard training and extremely hard moral discipline, the inmates of the monastery    

were able to develop these exercises into a more refined hand-to-hand combat. The final result was a technique with faster and more efficient movements aimed at achieving maximum effect on the opponent with minimal effort.

These new concepts in fighting were not confined to the green forest of Honan but were propagated to all parts within the boundaries of the Middle Kingdom

(China) The most popular techniques became progressively more prominent reaching its peak during the Chin Dynasty when China was under the Manchu oppressors

The Shao Lin masters (Sifu) were passionately anti Manchu and the loyalists of the toppled Ming Dynasty sought refuge in many of the Shao Lin martial arts school all over China. Two of the most prominent exponents of the Stork and Crane Fists and the Tiger Claw were Fang She-yl and Hung Hai Kuan respectively

A treacherous Ming official sympathetic to the Manchu aliens infiltrated into the monastery and consequently the Manchus knew the plans of a rebellion the monastery was attacked. Its inmates and some of its master were slaughtered and finally the monastery was razed

A number of masters and their loyal students escaped hunted by the Manchu pursuers Chinese peasants long oppressed by the Manchus gave them shelter and the fighting techniques soon were secretly learned and again and again by the Chinese loyalist of the Ming Dynasty.