Southern Shaolin Monastery
A number of traditions make reference to a Southern Shaolin Monastery located in Fujian province. Associated with stories of the supposed burning of Shaolin by the Qing government and with the tales of the Five Elders, this temple, sometimes known by the name Changlin, is often claimed to have been either the target of Qing forces or a place of refuge for monks displaced by attacks on the Shaolin Monastery in Henan. Besides the debate over the historicity of the Qing-era destruction, it is currently unknown whether there was a true southern temple, with several locations in Fujian given as the location for the monastery. Fujian does have a historic monastery called Changlin, and a monastery referred to as a "Shaolin cloister" has existed in Fuqing, Fujian, since the Song Dynasty, but whether these have an actual connection to the Henan monastery or a martial tradition is still unknown. The Southern Temple has been a popular subject of wuxia fiction, first appearing in the 1893 novel Shengchao Ding Sheng Wannian Qing, where it is attacked by the Qianlong Emperor with the help of the White Eyebrow Taoist.
Read more about this topic: Shaolin Monastery
Famous quotes containing the word southern:
“I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous ... as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)