Excellent Book for Kung Fu history buffs and scholars.

[Light in the Dark]

The Fall of the Southern Shaolin Temple and the Rise of the Ten Tigers of Canton  by Paul Burkinshaw

Man oh man, I've looked for a book of this magnitude for a long, long time.  I was always pointed in the direction of --look for the "Evergreen" books or "The Qianlong Emperor Inspects Southern China".   Well, good luck finding a copy in English.   But here it is all in one book and easy to read about the facts and myths surrounding the  "Shaolin Cycle" stories and the "Ten Tigers of Canton."  

[Chu Liu Hsiang]

Free extract sent to my kindle, thanks for the clue!

[whitesnake]

Thank you for the info.  It's a very recent publication (2019) and available on Amazon, so I've just ordered this title along with The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts (2008) by Meir Shahar, and Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: A Retro Journey Back to the 1970s (April 2020) by Steve Kerridge. 

[Light in the Dark]

10 minutes ago, whitesnake said:

Thank you for the info.  It's a very recent publication (2019) and available on Amazon, so I've just ordered this title

Glad I can help.  I've looked for a book on this topic for over 20 years, so thought I would pass this discovery along.    I ended up buying both the  physical and kindle version cause I couldn't wait on the physical book to arrive in the mail.   It is truly a great source.  Really broadens the scope on The Shaolin Temple Order as well.

[whitesnake]

Fall of the Southern Shaolin Temple is Amazon print-on-demand.  The date you order the physical book is inside the back cover.  The book includes lots of interesting legends of the Shaolin heroes.  I wonder if the Chinese novel, Evergreen, is the same as "The Qianlong Emperor Inspects Southern China".  The silhouettes on the cover of the book have the Ten Tigers dressed as if they lived the Jianghu lifestyle, which most of them did for awhile, according to the book.  But with those hairstyles (I don't see a single queue in silhouette), they'd have been beheaded by the Qing authorities for sure.