---
title: Cheng Zongyou (程宗猷, 1561 – after 1636) — who put the Shaolin staff in print
---

**Cheng Zongyou** (**程宗猷 / Chéng Zōngyóu**, 1561 – after 1636), courtesy name **沖斗 (Chongdou)**, was the Ming gentleman-martialist who spent more than a decade at the **Shaolin Temple** and then did what no monk had: he **wrote the temple's staff method down and printed it**. At a time when Shaolin was famous for its **staff**, not its boxing, Cheng's illustrated treatises are the single most important documentary record of late-Ming Shaolin weapons — and the reason that method survives in a fixed, studyable form at all.

## Life

Born into a well-off family of **休寧, 徽州 (Xiuning, Huizhou prefecture, in modern Anhui)** — a region that produced an unusual number of literate martial enthusiasts — Cheng travelled to the **Shaolin Temple** as a young man and studied its staff method reportedly for **more than ten years**, under the temple's recognized staff masters of the day (the monk **洪轉 Hongzhuan** among the names his prefaces honor). He went on to study the spear and other weapons with non-Shaolin masters, becoming a rounded weapons specialist rather than a pure temple disciple.

In later life he assembled his learning into an illustrated compendium, **《耕餘剩技》("Techniques Surplus to Farming")**, printed around **1621**.

## What he gave the martial arts — the compendium

*Geng Yu Sheng Ji* gathers four illustrated weapons treatises that together form a Ming arsenal in print:

- **少林棍法闡宗 (Shaolin Staff Method Exposition)** — the foundational text of Shaolin staff, with stance-by-stance illustrations and a question-and-answer exposition of principle. *The* source for late-Ming Shaolin staff.
- **單刀法選 (Selected Single-Saber Methods)** — a long, two-handed saber method showing clear **Japanese** influence (the *wokou* blade that Qi Jiguang's soldiers had faced), adapted to Chinese use.
- **長槍法選 (Selected Spear Methods)** — the spear, the "king of weapons."
- **蹶張心法** — a method for the foot-drawn crossbow.

<Callout type="info">
  **Why the staff, not boxing?** In the late Ming, Shaolin's martial fame rested on the **staff** — Cheng's contemporary Mao Yuanyi wrote that "of staff methods, none is more famous than Shaolin's." Shaolin *boxing* rose to prominence later. Cheng's treatise captures the temple at the height of its **staff** reputation, which is what makes it such a valuable dated snapshot.
</Callout>

The codex holds the **National Library of China woodblock scans** of *少林棍法闡宗*, the saber *少林刀法闡宗 / 單刀法選*, in `Sources/taiji-manuals/` and `Sources/northern-kungfu-manuals/`.

## Place in the record

Cheng Zongyou sits beside [**Qi Jiguang**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/qi-jiguang) and **Mao Yuanyi** (whose vast *武備志 Wubei Zhi* of 1621 reproduced much of this material) as one of the three great **late-Ming documentarians** who fixed the oral martial arts in printed, illustrated form just before the dynasty fell. Where Qi recorded **boxing**, Cheng recorded the **Shaolin staff and the long saber** — and between them they preserve the Ming weapons world.

## See also

<PageRef space="notes" slug="shaolin-staff-method" text="Shaolin Staff Method (少林棍法闡宗) — Cheng's foundational staff treatise, in detail" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="long-saber-method" text="The Long Saber (單刀法選) — Cheng's Japanese-influenced two-handed saber" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="qi-jiguang" text="Qi Jiguang (戚繼光) — the contemporary who documented Ming boxing" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="shaolin-kung-fu" text="Shaolin Kung Fu — the temple whose staff Cheng recorded" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="history" text="A Short History of Chinese Martial Arts — the Ming military roots" />

## Sources

**[1]** *Cheng Zongyou*, Wikipedia ([en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheng\_Zongyou](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheng_Zongyou)) and the Chinese Wikipedia counterpart — biography, the Shaolin study, the *Geng Yu Sheng Ji* compendium.

**[2]** 程宗猷 《少林棍法闡宗》 and 《單刀法選》 — National Library of China woodblock scans, public domain (compiled c. 1610s, printed 1621). Held in the codex.

**[3]** 茅元儀 《武備志》 (Mao Yuanyi, *Treatise on Military Preparedness*, 1621) — the great Ming military encyclopedia that reproduced much of Cheng's weapons material; the corroborating contemporary source.