Whitecrane has many different styles most of them originating in Southern China.
To understand the history of Whitecrane Kung Fu it is necessary to understand the geography of China;  To the west of the country lie the Himalayan mountain range, flowing from these mountains to the east of the country is the Yellow and Yangtse rivers, along with many other rivers as a result of the melting snow.

Generally Chinese Martial arts can be divided from those north and south of the Yellow river.  To the north the land is dry and flat and to the south there are a lot of rivers and lakes.

As a result the northern plains were used to plant crops like wheat as a food source and in the South the water was used to grow rice as the main food source.  As a result of the geography the diets of the northern and southern people differ greatly.  According to recent reports the more wheat you eat the taller you may grow, also those who eat rice tend to be shorter.

If you are taller and have long legs you can take advantage of this and use this attribute in a fight.  Therefore to the north the long range Kicking and punching styles developed. One such style is Shaolin Longfist.

In the south the fighting styles emphasising short range hand techniques developed.

A common saying is “Nan Quan” is southern fist and “Bei Tui” is Northern Leg.

As mentioned in our Longfist page the distance between the two fighters determine the best tools to use in a fight. 

As the Whitecrane is used for close range fighting you can see that hand strikes, wrestling and joint locking are all important aspects.  In this range it is important not to fall so a fighter must have good stability and rooting.  One of the keys to this rooting is to keep the waist area soft so is to help adapt to pressures during the fighting rather than tensing up. This also allows for the generation of martial power (Jin).

Also worth noting is the location of the Shaolin temple, this is between the two rivers mentioned above and as a result both northern and southern styles developed here.

Some people say White Crane began 300 years ago but this is not true. Its origins can be traced back more than 1,000 years to the time of Jueyuan and Bai, Yu-feng, who produced the Essence of the Five animal fist at the Shaolin Temple.

White Crane was later passed to Tibet by a Monk called Xinglong.  He was sent to Tibet to study Buddhism by the Shaolin Monks.  He was an expert in White Crane and passed on the white crane style to Tibet.  Tibet has a northern White Crane style commonly called La Ma, a long range fighting style.  Southern White Crane is especially from the Qing Dynasty which came from Manchuria who conquered China about 400 years ago by crossing the great wall and destroying the Shaolin Temples.  The Shaolin Monks left the temples and went south hiding themselves in society and continued to rebel against the Qing Dynasty.   When the monks moved South slowly the styles that were created in the Shaolin Temples were modified.  For example White Crane when it moved to the South was modified and became Southern White Crane.  Today after 300-400 years there are probably four well known white crane styles.  The first one is Pecking style which uses the beak of the crane to attack which is a special characteristic of this style which gives it is name (Eating Crane).  The second style is called Ancestor crane with 'sleeping' being the major characteristic sleeping means using defence as the offence. Another of the styles is Jumping or Flying crane and finally the most internal of the white crane styles is the Shouting crane.  Although there are four major styles, it does not mean they are divided clearly, there are elements of each of the styles in all the Whitecrane styles, this means Ancestor crane also uses pecking, but also has jumping and uses shouting, essentially they all share the same techniques.  At YMAA the style of Whitecrane trained is Ancestoral white crane.