Zhong Gau

two statements and a question: if someone lives thier life according to a governing principle imposed upon them by societal institutions and enculturation then that principle can be culled a religeon. if the determination of what is religeon is determined by a specific ethnocentric point of view no other point of view which fits some of the definition will be considered relevant or applicable by the culture which sets the definition. this is the question and i expect it will generate a heated discussion: it is phrased as a statement for discussion purposes and is not intended to flame you. Buddism predates Christianity by some 450years and some wandering jew encounters certain elements of it and incorporates it into his mystical philosophy. he goes back home and says "behold". in his experience he illustrates certain principles which are alluded to in his native tradition but are more expounded upon in another culture's verbose experience. he apologises (or translates) the new cultural information into terms his neighbors will understand, maybe even having a dynamic flair or palatial appeal due to the degredation of his native society and it's yearning for revenge and justice and self rule. for people moderately edjucated in the institutions of his society this seems like a temporary fix and a much needed opiate. to the people not edjucated in the tradition of responsibility the new information appears to cast significant doubt upon the validity of the societal institutions which maintain order of which there are two: one foreign one domestic. this new organisation represents a third government or governing body with its own rules and order or ascention not endorsed by the other two societal institutions. the third organisation essentially picks up the disaffected and fringe element populations and empowers them to freedom from responsibility by joining an ashram. to the disaffected and low this is very appealing and very threatening to the other two orgs. the indigenous org decides the new group is a threat to everyone's very existence and proceeds to hunt them like diseased rodents. eventually the indigenous body politic decides to poison thier water. so they stage a conversion and have a lead member tell the new body politic how to be responsible in terms they would understand, ineffect translating the indigenous institution into third party jargon. the plan succeeds over time as most of the followers adhere to the apologised pleadings of the traditional indigenous way.

i was merely curious about how p'hoe-nix became associated with it in its name?

try using wrapable weights on yourt arms and legs. they're only five pounds each. after you get good and fast with those move up to 10 pound hexhead dumbells. don't ever go over 15 or 20 lbs. and increase your practice wieghts very slowly or you'll cause serious damage to yourself.

this is directed primarily at the Lau Gar practicioners in england: could you put together a vhs tape or dvd of several of your open hand, staff and double broadsword/butterfly sword forms? I'm particularly interested in seeing the lunging chasing explosive leopard technique and that technique in different poses and changing of direction, possibly even in a side to side forward weave and side to side backwards weave. this would be for my personal consumption and not for marketing purposes. i guess i would like to see five open hand forms: two of simple to moderately complex effective techniques, three of long routines and or difficult techniques. I would preferr it to just be a wide angle demonstration video and not a teaching video. please let me know about costs. thanks.

wow, neat story. i'm curious how the celestial destructive creature became associated with a healing so powerful? are you associated with that hard iron palm coconut guy?

BakfuPaiguy: i've heard that origins story before, too, but from Jason Lau. So i think it might be the rarified version iyip taught in his latter days. what i want to know is what he taught in his early days...? then we can compare the two and the other versions.

i, too, have heard most of what you said elsewhere. and i agree that our dogmas should be peserved. but also that ethohistory should be performed on our knowledge such that some reconcilable truth may be established. in our/my tradition Pak Mei Pai was attributed to a monk who lived to be in his thirties. not the same guy who is from the hung gar line, but a contemporary of his and not from the same temple. his student, Pak Mei, refined it into Pak Mei Pai. another story from the same teacher indicates Pak Mei Pai and the iron thread techniques tradition to wc are parallel developments. thus the various systems that look like wing.

are they the ritualistic animist taoists that dress in yellow robes and have claims to a hang gung technique? and make videos in the robes which end up obscuring the view so you don't really learn anything?

It was ref'd as a 'legend' when i was instructed because of it's massive failure in the boxer rebellion...but that wasn't even animal calling that was an iron shirt belief and failure, wasn't it? i may have used the wrong word in calling the four things 'legends'. they probably would be better called 'magics' of shamanistic nature. but of course they wouldn't work in the boxer rebellion: what animal wants to get shot? or perhaps they moved too fast for thier human to follow...

sorry jules, much respect in other areas and willing to defer often to your encyclopedic knowledge of printed vs oral traditions: but i heard it this way from several in the Hung Gar, Fut Gar, Hung Fot arenas. indeed, she has the credit of it and that helped draw female recruits to her temple, but the other systems did not train in it either. or feel the need to.

i think its a china chinese film. the film quality was b&w and small lensed, filmed by a hand held on a tripod. on loc at emei. in the ironthread form there are eight maneuvers in the last third of the form where it starts to look like a hand form instead of a qi form. Ali has posted a vid of it in another stream. from what i understood from my teachers of tiger styles, mok-lau systems were used instead of hung gar sys to stylise the manuevers for small statured women whom would benefit more from an angular tiger than a circular one. isn't that why wing chun is a principle and not a style, per se? have you seen mok gar and who learned it to you?

i was just comparing it to two other staff forms i know: looks like one worth knowing!

that 'ten animal' form keeps popping up: hsing-i, hung gar, hung fot...where will i see it next? maybe my little brother will take it upon himself to 'modernize' it....

As up to speed as DM is on most origin mythos... i was under the impression that the emei mountain temple was assaulted and the women killed except for one who was considered the weakest and fairest by the attackers, whom returned periodically for several months to 'visit' her. preceeding this, the bandits had been raiding the villages surrounding the temple and would not leave the peasants alone after several attempts to get them to, including copulating them into submission. one night the women of the temple raided the bandits and reduced thier numbers to about a third, leaving about fourty alive. the fourty raided the temple. A famous Hung Gar Master, who only lived to be in his thirties, was escorted to the temple by an abbot and (based on the simple moves in Iron Thread) taught the survivor a Mok Gar style form which became known as Wing Chun. the two men stayed at the temple with the woman and helped put it back together. eventually the bandits came back and were beaten by the three. the hung gar master killed most of the bandits single handedly. the abbot stayed for some time to help emei get back on its feet with reguards to new recruits. the abbot left when the survivor woman was ready to become abbot and resume the emei woman's temple structure. he became a wandering monk. this i got grom a chinese film called "Emei Mountain in the Time of Troubles" and was produced around '47 or '48. but for the thirty year old HG guy to be involved places it in 1837 at the latest. some accounts say he died in 1832, five years after the day of the battle he faught against the bandits.

i'm kind of surprised this style still exists. While it attributed itself to the triads (because a small han sent members to other places to learn and they meshed the three styles and four legends they learned: hence the primary reason 'cafeteria method' is not widely practiced) the powerful tongs and triads used tiger systems like hung gar and lau gar. both of my big named fathers thought the style no longer existed. so, if you are into *preserving* things... feel free to make some videos of what you learn i'm sure some other experts would like to see this some of this old beast...before it goes away.

Most of it looks like an opinion that appeared one afternoon on IRC #Christian in the mid ninties. the statement about 'okinawan' is just this editor's view to encapsulate the rest as his own. everything that was typed on the IRC is stored in government files, including the user names and profiles. he should be more careful.

as i'm basically ignorant to wing chun, why is it not a good idea to take the cafeteria approach? If, as the previous post asserts, chi sau is just a drill could it not be cut-and-pasted into another system?

Our Choy system is not QiSau intensive. I was under the impression that qisau was more of an individual's capability than a trainable skill, although if an individual has the ability it certainly could be improved through repitition. as that it's kinda like 'leading', right? or are you reffering to 'external' qisau? like gripping and hooking?

Thanks, I have never seen The Five Brothers School Style before. nice display of hard iron whip. I do it as 'soft iron whip'. does anyone see a WC predecessor in there or am i just seeing things? the Five Brothers Eight Trigrams staff looks comparable to Nine Provinces and Chen Short Whip Staff. Thanks for the posts.

the first one looks like one of i'Yip Mann's WC instructional sets ( I have seen several of i'yip's students do that specific routine with thier students). Very Good! the third one illustrates why even WC practice needs to be fluid as the very tight muscled guy was about to get a lazy boy ride home!

oops! the general information posted above is pretty good. of the early tiger systems, Mok Gar was the hardest, and is extinct (i think). one of its surviving techniques is a forward-water-wheel/chaining running punch. it also used an angular method of pinwheel blocks. Lau Gar, the next hardest, is practiced as its full art in england. in the states it is available as a hand form and a staff form. Both of these have been absorbed by Hung Gar in the evolution of CMA. Hung Gar is the Hardest of the Hard and the softest of the soft, therby allowing the student to apply the tincture of his body to the forms that most suit his ability. you may want to look into combining tkd with yang tai chi before moving more indeapth into CMA which depend on the practicioner's fluidity. tai chi, specifically the Yang 88 manuever form, is much better for people who don't know how to move like a china man/woman who want to learn CMA to CYA. Once the principles of TCC have been mastered the principles can be applied to any form as long as the practice is ballanced: meaning that you do the forms both forward and backward or left and right-handed. being able to reverse your form before learning a new one is more important for long term training than becoming a master in three years.

noob: do you mean the kung fu ethic? or the nuance? or the general attitude? when you get beyond forms and legends there are all kinds of things like animism that are affected by 'spirits'? could you be more specific?

delta1: apportioning aside, if some turkey provokes a fight, strikes first and dies first his side is only heresay -correct? use of force can only be met by equal force. equal force can be a strike/attack that causes serious injury even death. if a woman gets attacked for any reason she can cause serious permenant damage and basically walk away... if a man is attacked and he uses crippling or lethal force he must prove that force was neccessary to defend his own life and/or he goes on near permenant vacation due to the severity of damage inflicted and likelihood of being capable of doing it again... so the only way to guarantee that your use of lethal force is to demonstrate to the court that the bully unlawfully detained you (cornered you or impeded your progress away from the situation) and touched you first...?

delta1: apportioning aside, if some turkey provokes a fight, strikes first and dies first his side is only heresay -correct?

i reitterate Delta1's comments on affiliation. in Chinese Martial Arts there are several affiliations which regulate who gets to teach based on competancy with certain forms, not if you know a certain form that most others can't learn. this is because most students will be better off learning a simple set of forms well than learning difficult ones poorly. it is to guarantee certain basics within a system and guarantees filial reciprocity to the founder's ancestry as well as making money. it is a way of guaranteeing a standard of quality. For example, i'll use our enemy's method as an example: the wah lum affiliation is very dogmatic and emphasises that they are the only practicioners of choy li fut. of course, this Flames other choy li fut stylists such as Hung Gar, Fut Gar, Lau Gar, Mok Gar, Sil Lum, Hung Fot, Consolidated, Goju, and Li Ling Pi. The Hung Fot Grand Master Tai Yim studied with both Lam Jo and Yip Man in addition to the hung fot grandmaster before him and was niether the first nor the last to do so. those names are affiliations in and of themselves of a certain generation of students. which is why lineage is so important to chinese martial artists. the next generation is defined by Tai Yim, Chan Pui, and Kwong Chi. the three most famous of those previous three. thier kids are limited by not being able to train with Yip Mann and can't access Lam Jo, for the most part. so they are restricted to their predominant philosophy and maybe one other. Some of my Li brothers have tried to sneak into Wah Lum schools and have been rooted out at competitions where sigungs who have witnessed Li observe them perform: it is that different even though the forms are basically the same. one brother went to ufc. they brought out horace to test his groundfighting which ended by my brother capitulating to horace. even then he was not allowed onscreen. a year or so later another brother went and was denied even to try out based on our systems' name. so, affiliation is important. It's just a matter of what kind of affiliation you want: either a subscription or a stigma.