This short piece by Adrian Chan-Wyles is worth reading:  "Why the Shaolin Temple was Burned in 1928."  I agree with everything he says, but I would add that toward the end of the Qing Dynasty there was a powerful movement to suppress religion.  It was pitched as the movement to replace temples with schools.  That intensified throughout the 20th century until the 1980s when things started to open up.  He also has a page of Shaolin Temple photos taken by Japanese tourists from before 1928.  

Manuals explaining secret martial arts techniques in China written before the 20th Century are rare.  A text translated by Paul Brennan, Explaining Taijiquan Principles, attributed to Yang Banhou [circa 1875] is a particularly interesting one.  But before I get into discussing it, I would like to frame it culturally.  

In China, learning to read and write was preparation for taking an exam that allowed one to become a government official.  Those jobs were extremely competitive and required full-time dedication to study.  It was not unusual for someone to spend forty years studying before getting an appointment, many people never got appointments, yet the possibility of getting one was valuable enough to keep studying.  

Ben Judkins just had my friend Daniel Mroz write a piece on the doing martial arts research, check it out.

My first reaction to the title "Choosing a School: Affinity, Danger and Compliance," is that missing something.  That's because I memorized the Daodejing many years ago.  There is a chapter about the student teacher relationship that I will paraphrase below.

My website is finally up and working!!!  Here is the abstract I'm presenting at the next Martial Arts Studies Conference: Baguazhang:  The martial dance of an angry baby-god.  

And we got some recognition on a list of the best Tai Chi blogs!