Shaolin monks fear for their name
p2pnet.net News:- China’s Shaolin monks are fed up because companies in North America, Japan and Europe – and even in China – persist in using the Shaolin name without permission.
Years of protests appear to have fallen on deaf ears, says the China Internet Information Center here, continuing that the monks fear they may eventually find themselves unable to use their own name.
“Now I am worried that we will not be allowed to use the title, ‘Shaolin Kungfu’ when we go abroad for performances,” Master Shi Yongxin, the abbot of Henan Province’s Shaolin Temple, is quoted as saying at the Shaolin Martial Monk Team’s Beijing premiere of its show, Powerful Shaolin.
Miramax, certainly, is extremely sensitive on the subject. Numerous copies of the Miramax / Quentin Tarantino Kill Bill 1 and 2 about a deadly female assassin bent on bloody (very bloody) revenge are on p2p networks.
Of course, she’s been trained by a Shaolin monk. And Miramax recently got uptight about a Chinese movie called Shaolin Soccer.
In the meanwhile, “The abbot said that most trademarks, including such terms as, ‘Shaolin Kungfu, ‘Shaolin Wushu,’ ‘Shaolin Quan’ and ‘Shaolin Kungfu Set,’ have been registered by companies in the US, Japan, and Europe,” says the CIIC.
“A survey of 11 countries on five continents conducted by the China Trademark and Patent Affairs Agency in 2002 uncovered 117 items registered with the name Shaolin. None of the trademark holders had consulted with the temple.”
A lawsuit the monks brought against a food producer for unauthorized use of the name on its sausages was successful.
In a bid to remedy the siutation, the real Shaolin monks are now seeking United Nations recognition. This month, they’ll appply to UNESCO for listing as “an intangible world cultural heritage”.
“Abbot Shi Yongxin says that the commercial exploitation of the Shaolin name is tarnishing an image that should be allowed to gleam,” states the CIIC.
“Shaolin kungfu, he says, represents the spirit of the Chinese nation: just, striving to improve, patriotic and humanitarian. It took more than 1,500 years of painstaking effort to make Shaolin kungfu what it is today, and its unique worth in character shaping and spiritual and moral development are more important than any commercial value, he says.”
June 3rd, 2004 at 1:16 am
I totally agree…and Miramax is unbelievable, oh wait, MPAA…makes sense they think they own everything anyways
November 1st, 2004 at 3:02 am
It’s too bad that the monks of the modern PRC Shaolin are insisting on
misleading the public about the origin of the martial arts they practice. After decades of suppression of tradition martial arts, the present day system was put together from a ‘grab bag’ of reminant folk martial arts after 1980. The majority of sets they practice now were collected from a government run research project called “Shaolin Martial Arts Exhibition for Exchange and Emulation” run in the summer of 1980, in Dengfeng County. These sets came from 12 communes in the region not from the remaining old monks as is claimed. This research effort was one of many that took place after the “Physical Culture and Sports Commission of the People’s Republic of China” issued a document called, “Circular of Unearthing and Establishing Wushu Heritage” in an effort to find and save what was left of tradition CMA.
For the PRC Shaolin organization to now claim to have the only and original Shaolin is laughable. For them to claim to be the owners and sole arbitrators of this ancient culture is as ridiculous as it is dishonest.
April 22nd, 2006 at 2:28 pm
In the Movie Kill Bill : Volume 2, she seemed to be trained by a monk, but I am not sure if the monk was Shaolin. Just before the first scene of her training, there was a story told in front of fire by the flutist (David Karradine) in which a White Buddhist monk and a Shaolin Monk had passed each other on the road. To me, it seems, that she was trained by a White Buddhist monk. A White Buddhist monk could be considered Shaolin, if not for the many historical examples of violent groups who seemed to be trained by the Shaolin, yet were disassociated from the temple and the central stream of Shaolin, the same stream arguing for name recognition. These violent ‘offshoots’ retained much of the knowledge of Shaolin and must have appeared that way, however, the Shaolin remain principled in a philosophical school of thought. This dispute is not just about mainstream popular ‘name-stealing’, it is also asking for recognition of inherently nonviolent values, principles, and beliefs. It seems.