(Part 2) Best products from r/kungfu

Oh man, I could recommend so many.

Kung Fu and Taoism:

The Making of a Butterfly is one of my favorite books. It is about a white kid who starts learning Kung Fu out of a Chinese master's basement back in the 70s, well before Kung Fu was popularized in the West.

Chronicles of Tao by Deng Ming Dao is excellent, a narrative perspective of how Taoism intertwines with the life of a Kung Fu practitioner.

American Shaolin by Matthew Polly is an entertaining and illuminating story that disseminates a lot of the mysticism surrounding the Shaolin Temple.

The Crocodile and the Crane is a fun fictional book that is basically about Tai Chi saving the world from a zombie apocalypse.

My next goal is to tackle The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Of course, I highly recommend the Tao Te Ching and the Art of War as well.

Buddhism: I highly recommend anything Thich Nhat Hanh. Anger and Peace is Every Step are two of my favorites.

Karate and Japanese Arts:

Moving Toward Stillness by Dave Lowry is one of my favorite books, taken from his columns in Black Belt Magazine over the years. A really excellent study on Japanese arts and philosophy.

Miyamoto Musashi: His Life and Writings by Kenji Tokitsu is wonderful. It includes the Book of Five Rings as well as some of Musashi's other works, including many of his paintings.

The 47 Ronin, by John Allyn, a dramatization of the Genroku Ako Incident, is still quite poignant in 2016.

I've been practicing martial arts for 10+ years and for the past 3 years I've been vegan (for a variety of reasons). I can easily say that I've never been so powerful, lucid, energetic and fit as I am now. I do not really count calories but I am very careful about how much salt and oil I consume; usually as little as possible, although I do swig on some pickle juice when I feel like I'm a bit sodium deficient. I take a fantastic B12 supplement about once per week (https://www.amazon.com/Jarrow-Formulas-Methylcobalamin-Supports-Lozenges/dp/B0013OQGO6/ref=pd_bxgy_121_img_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=FADXRH9112DBKT73QATT) and consistently out-perform almost every single other practitioner in the gym, regardless of rank. I try not to eat before bed, cook for myself as much as possible, and eat lots of whole foods, either raw or minimally cooked.

Check out http://nutritionfacts.org/ and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGJq0eQZoFSwgcqgxIE9MHw, and feel free to pm me if you have any other questions.

The challenge is that to get what you are looking for, you really need to cross over into academic works. I'd suggest doing some poking around on http://kungfutea.com/ -- it's probably the best well sourced resource for CMA history. And it often has great references to worthy works.

Beyond that you might want to look into more style specific histories like:

• https://www.amazon.com/Shaolin-Monastery-History-Religion-Chinese-ebook/dp/B014N3997O/ref=pd_sim_351_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=3VV36242AXRM210RY5PV&dpID=514WOL2BinL&preST=_SY445_QL70_&dpSrc=detail
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Creation-Wing-Chun-History-Southern-ebook/dp/B011VUM28A/ref=pd_sim_351_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=8M01TJYSC4QBA46ZN9GD

I like the book Warrior Origins but I'm not 100% sure how it is regarded in the academic community. In it, he asserts that Bodhidharma was a Persian prince who probably just passed through India, not an Indian prince as most people say. It has lots of other cute tidbits.

The history of kung fu is a twisty and often overgrown, obscured, or washed-away path. As much as I love the subject, deciding to write a history paper on it sounds like something I'd decide to do in the midst of a bipolar manic high and come to regret as reality sets in.

Your best bet might be to focus on one CMA discipline, either one that is well-documented like shuai jiao or one that is relatively young like Baguazhang. Many books have a little blurb in the beginning on the supposed origins of the art they describe, but oftentimes they contradict the stories given in other books on the same art, because sometimes masters will make sh*t up just to make their art sound cooler than other arts and get more students.

Sorry, I don't know of specific kung fu schools in Taiwan, only that English seems to be more commonly spoken there than on in mainland China (my parents are from Taiwan). If you're going for the cultural experience, though, you might want to stick to China after all, despite the language barrier, as China is a bit different from Taiwan in a number of ways. I've not read this book, but I've heard that American Shaolin is a great read about a guy from Kansas going to a Shaolin temple in China to study martial arts and eventually become recognized as a monk of the temple. It may be interesting to you to read of another's experience with the journey you're looking to take.

Horse stance training! set a timer and hold your stances. Call out the names too. blocks are easy to practice in the air even without contact equipment. This is a pretty good book if you can get your hands on it. it's kind of rare and out of print though.

Source: Choy Li Fut instructor.

The master in that movie, Yu Hai has been in some great movies and tv shows over the years. You might like the Tai Chi Master tv series he was in.
https://www.amazon.com/Tai-Chi-Master-Jacky-Wu/dp/B000929VRC

Some books:

• Jingwu
  
• Chinese martial arts from antiquity
  
• Sword polisher's record
  
• Research of martial arts
  
• Chinese martial arts manuals
  
• The Shaolin Monastery
  
  
  Fairly sure that Qi Magazine can now be accessed online for free, and the Journal of Baguazhang.

Here's the shoes. Amazon lists them as for tai-chi, but honestly they look a little thin soled for that.

I'm not sure what the name of the pants are, but they're the same ones you can get with this monk's robe.

Do you want them for a performance or are you starting on Halloween early?

You might like this book and this book by Raymond Fogg. He studied under Chiu Leun, good lineage.

Tim doing Ba Gua's version of push hands

There are some clips of Tim sparring and competing in the beginning and end of this vid

Tim has been around the chinese internal arts and bjj scene for quite a while. He's known for combining the two. Using internal arts for stand up grappling (he has a fairly well known book on the subject) and bjj for ground work. Here's the episode of Rolled Up with Tim. You might find it interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Shaolin-Workout-Transforming-Warriors/dp/1594864004/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345835126&sr=8-1&keywords=28+shaolin

Start here, best I can offer.

Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century is essential reading for anyone interested in TCMA.