ovine king

not everyone can say they are a wing chun sifu. to say so involves proof and in the case of wing chun, it is normally easy to prove whether or not someone is legit or not. it doesn't make a difference as this is true for all styles. to say so requires proof. to prove, you ask people. you can claim to be a direct student of yip man and are therefore a wing chun sifu but you still need to prove it.

they featured a lot in them fantasy books i keep talking about, mainly because they could be concealed and so it gave the characters an edge and acts as a way to say that that person isn't a true 'hero' (in the traditional chinese sense). beyond them i don't recall any stories of real people being master of such weapons unlike three section staff, broadsword, staff etc etc. apart from modern wushu guys that is.... er, did you do know that bog is uk slang for toilet as well.... so 'bogbeast' can be taken to mean 'toilet beast'....

the guys does kickboxing. if he doesn't actually get to hit his partners, i'd be worried.

but then you're talking about false lineages. he was talking about simple lineages that can easily be proven (as most real lineages are). in his case, his sifu is a student (or student of a student) of ip gee keung who is the son of the late ip shui, the recognised 'keeper' of the style. it's nice and simple and clear. to prove it, you just ask the people involved. it also means that it is actually very hard to fake.

but hey, you do know that chow gar mantis is a rare thing in that it isn't as mass market as wing chun has become and it is still a very close knit. (not that all wing chun is mass market....) but i mean, can you see yourself feeling the same way if you were in a more commercial school? by the way, i have recently found out that i am very close (10 miles) from the class in upminster and am seriously considering joining the class. looking forward to it as well as being totally cacking it at the same time.

have you done the obvious thing and checked in google? that way you will have more specific questions. anyway. the short answer is that wing tsun is a trademarked name used by a certain sifu under the yip man lineage.

bad example. most people know that the modern shaolin temple is bogus.

yep. i agree. i've seen some sites where they allow you to delete your own posts as well as the ability to ignore other members at the click of a button. that way, if there are members who really do annoy you, you can then simply ignore them. if you don't and still respond to their posts, which you choose not to ignore, thatn that just means you're after arguments. anyway, back to the thread. so if this isn't a fixed way for categorising and not all styles will fit into a category, why do it? you use the words "vague" and "general" and that is my point. it IS vague and it IS general. if nothing is ever going to fit into them perfectly, then doesn't that render it pointless?

so if you've avoided it, it isn't technically not a fight and so doesn't that actually mean it isn't a valid answer? or should i point out the original intent of that phrase ('defeating the enemy without fighting'), as used during times of warfare, refers to the use of spies, espionage and other 'underhand' tactics to destroy morale and otherwise cause death and mayhem in the enemy from within their own camp and hence guarantee you victory even before the fighting has actually begun......?

why are you saying it will interfere with jkd? that is probably the most UNjkd thing i've ever heard.

well, there's also the point he's probably still learning the pattern and rhythm of it. he's yet to apply his own body to it.... if you get what i mean.

whoa..... boyo, give it more time will ya.... you'e only just begun to get your jinga down, right? chances are you're still 'moving like a white man'. once you get into it more and learn more it will begin to make sense...... hey, is it regionale or angola?

you can't catogorize. trying to do so will lead to overly short-sighted views on things. in short, to do so is to make a very big pile of *. the most obvious reason is because most styles feature all aspects. you learn when to retreat and when to advance. you learn when to stay on your feet and when to take down. the fight and the fighter dictates what happens, not the style. therefore you can't catogorize styles, only the way people fight/apply the style.

not always. the twelve tan tui are the basics of long fist (the style) and are actually quite useful training drills for multiple use of sets of simple movements but this has been absorbed by the chinese wushu forms and i'm not aware of many schools teaching long fist as a combat system.

firstly, you two prove my point perfectly. the only times when confusion occurs is usually based around western people's mis-use of supposed chinese names/terms. it's like no one actually bothers to make sure it is correct as if it doesn't matter. if you't going to use a romanised chinese name, at least bother to get it right. antoerh point is once again, you are basing your posts on what other people have mis-used. i re-iterate the point that people here have been posting FACTS about the language and yet you insist on mentioning things that are at best second information based on something you or they don't know about and presenting them as your 'facts'. what you've seen and what you know and what is true are different things. secondly, yes there is only ONE way of spelling tai chi chaun. it involves three very specific chinese characters. what you see here is one english version of how to write the sounds. it isn't the 'correct' way of spelling but a correct way of writing the sound. am i being arrogant because to my knowlege i've only seen two people here demonstrate knowledge of the language beyond what you can get out of a tanslating program? if more did know the language, more people would be here trying to explain why trying understand the langauge using english versions of things is stupid. tolerant? hey if i think it's stupid then i think it's stupid. no amount of tolerance is going to make me think otherwise. what's tolerance got to do with whether or not i think something is stupid? how about we also take into consideration the amount of trash that i hear people say about things they THINK might be true even though people have already said what really is true? if you did know the language, culture and history, you wouldn't be asking the questions. for the record, pinyin and wade giles are not systems of translations, they are systems of writing the sounds of the chinese words. the translations for both are the same. if you compare the actual meanings of both you'll see what i mean. the only difference is how you write the sounds of the chinese using english letters.

whatever was on discount in B&Q at the time we were decorating?

i hate it when people seem to make things up. here we have two chinese guys telling you exactly WHY things are the way they are and people still seem intent on posting what they think are the reasons. chinese people do not tend to catagorise hard/soft. sure, arts are known to be hard or soft or both but it is not a way used to group or separate styles (unless you are reading old fantasy stories) kung fu=gung fu. no difference. it WOULDN'T be used for northern styles because the term is a cantonese one, a language which is not used in northern china. if you want to bring in shaolin and long fist. shaolin kung fu is normally used to describe ALL shaolin arts. shaolin kuen would be used to specifically refer to the hand/fighting arts. long fist is ONLY known as long fist. cheung kuen=long fist. this is a term which has an expanded meaning of something like 'fist art/form which is long like the river'. you never say cheung kuen kung fu. the correct name for 'tai chi' is 'tai chi chaun'. in the chinese the meaning is 'tai chi hand fighting art/style'. bagua is known as 'bagua jeung' ('bagua palm fighting art/style') 'hsing yi',as far as i know doesn't use a suffix although 'hsing yi kuen' sounds right to me.... the thing with the names is that they are just names. wing chun can be called wing chun kuen or wing chun kung fu or just wing chun. it doesn't make a difference. this is purely a language thing, that's why there is confusion; YOU DON'T KNOW THE LANGUAGE. actually ali, i wouldn't say 'hotdog, bread, burger'. i think it makes more sense to say 'hotdog, food, burger'. anyway. see, that's the real reason why the chinese shouldn't have taught western guys. they ask too many stupid questions and we have to explain to them things about a language that they don't know/understand and it doesn't matter anyway.

i might've said this before but a long time ago i read that generally, 1st dan to 2nd dan is about a year's training, 2nd to 3rd is two extra years, 3rd to 4th is about 3 years.... etc etc is this right? if so, shouldn't 9th dan be about 36 years of training? that would be consistent training of course. hmm, reminds me of a story i know of someone who once turned up at our club. he said he had about 7 years experience. what he meant to say was he had a few lessons 7 years ago..... of course, that's just one story of someone i know.

and heck, how do you really know if what you learnt is valid if you've never tested it fully? how do you honesty know how much control you have if you've never had to truely exercise that control? that's something that i am quite aware of. no matter how much pressure testing i go through, no mater how often i tell my friends to come at me hard i know 100% that it doesn't really mean a thing compared to the potential threat that might occur in reality. sure it might not happen and if it does, it might actually be less dangerous than what my friends do but i can't be 100% sure that what i know 'works'. compared to your fight experience i have absolutely none. so who's more of a martial artist? the one who has actually fought or the one who hasn't?

depends. as you might know, the knife form from wing chun can be applied empty handed. that's because the knife movememtns are based on hand movments and you can simply exchange the knife version for the hand version. i'm not sure how many other weapon forms are so closely tied to their emptyhand equivilants.

like i was trying to say in another thread, people are so quick to jump to the usual conclusions upon hearing certain things. why automatically say it must've been your fault cos you were in a fight? most of us are sensible people here. if you got into a fight, i'm not that short-sighted to not see you might not have had a choice in the matter.

.....let's not forget that the world of and teaching of sports martial arts is not that similar in content and intent compared to what the majority of us here do. i guess this is in a way, a question of whether or not, when you take into consideration what it is we are dealing with here (XMA/sport martial arts), what plays a more important part, age/time experience or actual forms comps experience. by the way, i am talking about the imagined 16 year old with 8 years training/forms comps eperience who decides he wants to teach his xma to people. i am not talking about chris gallio, who for one cannot defend what he does on this forum and so i don't think any of us are really qualified to make definite judgements on. the point is, i agree that if it were something else he were teaching i.e a traditional fighting art then i'd have qualms about him heading a school. thing is, we're not talking about that. we are talking about a guy who is good at what he does (xma) and is successful at what he does. remember these guys more often than not, choreograph their own forms, practice their own forms, film them and critic themselves. their success is based purely on their own hard work and experience on what works (in their field).

the thing that i'm not keen on is that i get the idea that you are after something that can allow you to 'get even' as it were.....

see, i was under the impression that the black belt forms are ALL of them in your style but done to perfection.

little story about some guy who went to china to visit some schools. on one of the guy's wanderings, a man approached him and asked him if he was looking for a martial arts school. the guy answered yes. with the that, the man gave a little shout and the guy noticed a small group of other men get up from their conversation and card game, run through the stone arch of the courtyard, put on their 'costumes', come running back out and prcedeed to perform what the guy hesitates to call 'martial art'..... like ali said, lots of wushu and chi kung. in fact, if you've seen the "wheel of life" show, that's pretty much the majority of what schools teach. i hate to say this but even the famous "jing woo" school in shanghai is a shadow of what it used to be. (although in the guangzhou school, i think the yuen kay shan line of wing chun is taught)