Julu Qi Jia Quan comes from Dahanzhai village in Julu county, Xingtai prefecture, Hebei province.
The Qi Jia Quan tradition of Dahanzhai village traces it's origins to the San Guan Shrine formerly located on the western outskirts of the village. (the San Guan Shrine was formerly a large shrine of great local importance. However it was burned during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom uprising of the mid 19th century.)
During the late Ming dynasty a number of the monks of the San Guan Shrine became ill with a deadly sickness.
An older woman within the village who was known as a skilled doctor came to the temple and provided free treatment for the sick monks. Among them was an unordained monastic* living in a small building within the temple complex who went by the monastic name of Wuzhen (comprehending reality)**. This woman treated Wuzhen and helped care for him until he regained his strength.
Wuzhen had fought against Wokou in his native Zhejiang and Fujian under general Qi Jiguang. When general Qi went north taking his army with him to defend the great wall Wuzhen had followed. Eventually he left the military and became a monastic worker ending up in the San Guan temple.
The monk Wuzhen wanted to thank the old woman. However the only thing of value he owned were the skills he had learned from having served in the army. So had told the woman that he would take her son on as his first disciple and teach him the full martial tradition.
The woman's son impressed Wuzhen with his dedication and ability to learn the full body of skills. After that Wuzhen proclaimed that as further thanks to the people of the village he would begin teaching classes and accept any of the young men of Dahanzhai as students as long as they were willing to learn.
In the generations following the temple yard where Wuzhen had taught became the traditional site of martial practice for the men of the village.
Qi Jia Quan is a martial art that traces it's origins to the Ming dynasty general Qi Ji-Guang 1528-1588 A.D.
Qi JiGuang is known for his campaigns against the Wokou (Japanese pirates) occupying the southeastern coast of China. After that he served on the northern border retraining the troops there to effectively guard against invasion. He was known for his effective strategies and for systematizing the training of the troops. He introduced new weapons and equipment to the army and created his own set of boxing by taking what he considered to be the best points of the styles of his time and combining them. He then trained the troops under him in his new style and the use of the new types of weapons he introduced. Later in life he wrote several books. His book Ji Xiao Xin Shu (New Record of Effective Techniques), as well as the techniques spread by his soldiers, went on to become hugely influential in the development of the martial arts of China and Korea.
*dealing with the various "monks" described in both oral traditions and written sources on the history of Chinese martial arts is very tricky.
In some of the things I have read Wuzhen is described as a "fake monk".
However it is hard to say exactly what this means.
I wrote a huge thing on the difficulty of dealing with accounts of so called "monks" in both oral and written historical sources relating to martial traditions. But it was way too long to fit.
So I'll just say that most likely he was one of a group of fake monks who often begged for alms for a living. Many of these were criminals or military deserters.
Medium and large temples had many unordained monastic workers (Seng Bing monastic soldiers / so called "martial monks like at Shaolin generally fit in this category.)
Sometimes fake monks would arrive at big temples and live there as part of the monastic workers. Wuzhen was probably one of these.
The monk Wuzhen is only attested to in village traditions. However there is one scrap of circumstantial evidence regarding his possible historicity and links with Qi's army.
During most of his time fighting Wokou in southern China Qi maintained his military headquarters in Taizhou. These headquarters were located within the fortified part of old Taizhou city and adjacent to them was a small street named "Wuzhen alley".
It is possible that after leaving the army and putting on fake monastic robes that Wuzhen gave himself that monastic name in remembrance of his time in Qi's army.
