(edited)

All three of those books are available as reprints from Lion Books here in Taiwan.
(逸文出版)
http://www.lionbooks.com.tw/

If you need to do your business in english, Plum Publishers (who are great folks by the way) is the way to go:
http://www.plumpub.com/sales/lion_books.htm

For an outstanding book about these books consider:
http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Martial-Arts...9726&sr=1-1

Actually that is not very modest!, my wife and I wrote that book, but it is a good book.
Let me know if you have any questions or need any other help.
Take care,
Brian

To honest, there really is no point.
Of the hundreds of martial artist I know including dozens of masters, I can count on one hand those who can actually read those manuals in context and understand them correctly. Most martial artists are not linguists or historians. Most historians only dabbles in martial arts with an elementary level understanding. And both groups lacks the holistic understanding of martial arts terminology and applications.

Thank you for your reply Mr. Kennedy; it is from your book "Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals" which I heard about those that I listed, a stunning book by the way.

Wujiang, I think the lack of historical insight is the biggest problem in Chinese martial arts today. Because of this, it has passed into a fantasy realm of Daoist immortals, magic swords, boxers with bodies impervious to bullets, etc., so that now people disesteem them and have modified them into performance or health-cultivating arts. Chinese martial arts, gongfu, wushu, wuyi - whatever you want to call it - should return to its military origins. Weapons training needs to be re-assessed by handling accurate reconstructions of weapons and armour from the late imperial ages; full-contact sparring with padded weapons; test-cutting with live blades; and interpreting literature and artwork from the period. On top of this, an eclectic approach needs to be taken in studying the methods of a wide variety of styles existing today and putting them to the test.

Reprinting, distributing and studying historical manuals is of great importance to modern day martial artists. The historical manuals provide a solid link to our past and provide a way to separate the nonsense from the reality.

Historical training manuals can provide modern day practitioners with a great source of inspiration and most fundamentally, at least for me, I simply really, really enjoy seeing and reading about how it was back in the day.

There are fine translations of historical manuals into english being done by such people as Andrea Falk and Tim Cartmell. Mr. Cartmell has done outstanding translations of historical manuals. Mr. Cartmell’s translation are both accurate and informative. Ms. Falk focuses on more modern works and like Mr. Cartmell her translations are accurate and well informed.

I also think very highly of the owner of Lion Books for making the effort to buy up and reprint Chinese historical training manuals.

Now I would agree that translations can have problems. See this article for my thoughts on that.
http://ejmas.com/jalt/jaltart_kennedy_0202.htm


This is me in a former lifetime when I starred in my own training manual! (just kidding)


take care,
Brian

Another good translators are Douglas Wile and Joseph Crandall.

Based on my understanding of internal martial arts, Mr. Wile has done a good job in translating some old material from the Yang Style Taiji group. Concurrently Mr. Crandall has translated four books on XingYi and over 12 books on Baguazhang.

You can find Wiles books at your on-line book vendors or any Crandall books at SmilingTiger.net or PlumFlower Press

Agreed with Wujiang that most ppl lack the intellectual capacity and the martial arts fundamentals to understand the book. However it is important that the information is not lost to present generation of martial arts newbies.

Except for my copy of Zhang Liang Comprehensive Book on Strategy. No one but my section is going to see it.

This is not a bona fide training manual, but cigarette cards circa 1845-1933

I was not sure where to post this.







There are about 36 individual cards each with a brief description of the move .


go to MingHua's post:

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php...c=19644&hl=

The pics are on pages 120-123

At one time of my life, I tried to learn martial art by following some of these kinds of pictures (as shown by kaiselin), but I decided the best ways to learn martial arts is still learning from the real martial art masters.

I could not agree with you more.
Just thought it might be cool to see and older type manual.

I would agree with you, in fact what is known as TCMA or traditional Chinese martial arts has degenerated to what you have discribe. One of the main reason is because people find it no longer practical plus the role that tcma once played has now disappeared. During the time of my master and grand master tcma was part of the community. Martial art schools were directly involved in community policing they were the militia. Training was about preparing for actual battle and combat. TCMA training in its fullness is a boot camp comparable to what is now the Special Forces of the military. It requires the development of the human body to make it a deadly weapon. Conditioning start from the head to foot, the use of actual combat weapons was and is still being use by some surviving tcma schools.

What is happening now is that martial art in general is about sport, physical fitness & preserving the history of martial art. Sport sparring is as close as we can get in simulating martial fighting in a safe environment.

Some examples of traditional martial skills that are no longer being practice and develop is the technique of the finger thrust, smashing of the human skull with one blow, immidiate joint breaking or the conditioning of the fist, forearm and shin. Most students will not have the time or interest to train in all of that what interest them most is the short and fast way to learn and that is to box, kick and grapple that's about it. The use of wu shu type weapons (soft flexible steel) is actually a demonstration of what a good martial fighter can do with an actual combat steel.

In weapons, Japanese martial organization they were able to preserve the sword tradition and kept it sacred, unfortuantely kung fu was not able to do the same maybe it is because kung fu China got caught up with so much political instability and disunity.

There are still some tcma that practice kung fu in its pure form maybe not 100% but close to 55% pure most of them have small student population.

ANother thing that is also part of tcma training is bone setting or healing and treating wounds. It is expected that in battle fighters will get wounded this mean they must be able to treat themselves and or their comrades in recovering from their wounds and injuries.

While it is true to understand our roots. The ancient training manuals were probably written in a different context. Anyway I'm sure there would be problems since most of the ancient masters were illiterate

I agree and think traditional martial arts have been degenerating for hundred of years. I doubt the martial arts that was practing during the Warring State period resemble much to the martial arts practiced when China was at long intervals of peace.