A Taoist monk?

[baddax]

First of all, I'd introduce myself a bit to avoid a lot challenges that might come in later without this. I'm a Chinese, living in Hong Kong SAR, a small but one of the most populated city with 95% population being Chinese.

Most non-Chinese would have a lot misunderstanding when Chinese originated words and phrases are translated into English. First of all, from a Chinese perspective, those who follow Taoism are never called "monks". You can call them "Dao Shi", a direct translation from Chinese, or rather loosely translated as "Taoist priests" most of the time. "Monks" are more strictly directed to Buddhist followers or similar type of religious followers.

A lot non-Chinese (A Chinese here refers to someone who speaks Chinese and knows Chinese history well here, an American who's grown up in a Chinese family in China might qualify for this, but not a lot American born Chinese running around out there) got a simple word translation from Chinese to English and always take that word as full and correct. Give you a simple example; everyone heard that Chinese got "dragons", right? But do you guys know the way most Western people understand "dragons" are totally different from the "dragon" Chinese have in mind? They're two different creatures. The Chinese community always has a petition to properly translate the "Chinese dragon" to "Long", because "Long" and "dragon" are two totally different things. This is like when you guys see a man walking around and he looks like a monkey, then you start to think that's a new type of monkey.

To conclude this, "Long" is different from "dragon" as much as "Dao Shi" is different from "monk". No matter how you guys search through the internet filled with English words or a few Chinese characters doesn't make this right, because the whole thing started off false translation. Maybe that was because the English speaking people are too proud of themselves and never tried to understand other cultures. Though I do notice there’s a trend of more Chinese words translated into English with the best effort of expressing the original meanings recently. Some universities even have new courses called “Guanxi”, commonly translated as “connections” and “relationships” back then.

Back to the topic of Taoism and Tai Chi. Taoism has been there for a long time, at least longer before Buddhism, Christian and a lot other religions. Zhang San Feng, a known figure who's referred to the person that developed the Tai Chi martial arts theory was a Taoist Dao Shi. From the novels, it's said that he was in Shaolin temple when he was little and later dug into the Taoist theories and developed the Tai Chi martial arts, including "Quan" and sword. Please be noted, the Tai Chi martial arts are different from the Shaolin temple martial arts, the theories and all that are different. Zhang San Feng “was” a monk at one time, but for the rest of his life, he’s a Taoist and that’s when his well-known martial arts were developed. All his students were supposed to be Taoist who attained the Tai Chi martial art skills. In the later series of the novel, it’s described that a deep understanding and following of Taoist believes favor the Tai Chi martial arts.

I don’t want to get too deep into this subject, or have links up full of Chinese characters, as it’ll be rather hard to explain something originated from Chinese in English. I tried to put it simple and explained the way most can understand. If any of you is really interested deep in “Long” & “dragon”, “Dao Shi” & “monk”, as well as how “Tai Chi” related to “Taoism”, I’m glad to share with you. Just remember one thing, a lot stuff you’re told are not correct, especially when it’s from another culture.

excellent post rep for you!

[baddax]

I understand what you are saying. The issue is many people including americans have a superficial idea/mentality of the world around them. Me for example, i have really no knowledge beyond the most cursory about Real Monks. You obviously have a much greater knowledge. Obviously the person you were grouped with had less knowledge than you and maybe got upset and left for whatever reason. The point is someone who had little knowledge of a way and culture may have ben receptive to learning more about an intersting culturture. What might have been an interesting run for him and possibly you turned into a "X drops group".

[Cedrica-the-Bard]

Wow... I actually got a negative rep from one of my posts in this thread. LMAO

So, being that I haven't gotten negative rep yet (or much positive for that matter, lol) I went back and read my posts and I'm having a hard time seeing how they were offensive when I was simply trying to understand... Oh well, my apologies if my curiousity offended someone.