If you are a traditional Chinese style of martial arts, why do you wear Japanese style gis (uniforms) and belts?
When Grandmaster Ie Chang Ming fled China to Indonesia, he had to disguise his art from the government because of their hatred of the Chinese. Rather than abandon his life practice, he simply adopted Japanese uniforms and belts. He also added the Japanese word Do to Shaolin, which means “The Way of” In fact, the common frog-button style kung-fu uniforms of today were made popular in the 1970’s by Bruce Lee in many of his martial arts movies. Traditional Shaolin monks wore a wrap-around style uniform very similar to the gi’s that we wear today.
