Drunken Monkey

is nothing moe than a school using a famous name. granted that there are undoubtedl talented martial artists there, it is simply not the same place that is mentioned in the legends. going thre to laern just for the sake of learning "at the temple" isn't worth it. like someone said, it is run by the government and i'd like to add to this and say that it's primary purpose is to make money. if you want to learn from a monk, sifu shi yan zi teaches in london. no need to go all the way to china. and like all the guys say, it isn't where you train but who with and how. amd even if the guy is chinese doesn't meant he's good or genuine. conversely, i have met a lot of western sifus that are damn good not because of where they trained but who trained them.

to paraphrase an old dude in an old film buttos are for holding my shirt together...

well, there's also the point that when we talk of martial art, we also further qualify by stating what art i.e: quan shu=fist art and when we talk about learning kung fu we normally refer to it by name i.e: i pratise hung gar quan which if you go a bit further should be hung gar quan shu or hung family art of fist (or fighting if you prefere, translating isn't that straight forward i'm afraid but you get the idea)

there are lots of styles of kung fu and to be honest you have to ask yourself what you want from it. if you want flash then i'd advise you give wing chun a miss. it doesn't look good (unless you do wing chun in which case, a simple wu sau at the last second can look amazing and keep you wondering for ages about how he got his hand there even before you made the move...) and training is long and hard, doing the same things over and over and over... but it is also very effective because of it's simplicity. if you want a counter point for this, talk to a choy li fut person and they'll tell you how crap wing chun is. but then that'a kinda my point. every style has it's merits as well as it's faults but then every style has developed ways of minimising the faults and it does, it usually does very well. by this i mean, you can say that a tkd peron won't be very good with his hands but by god they can kick you high heaven. conversely, a wing chun guy won't be kivking you all that much but you'd be hard pushed to find a style with faster hands...

before i start, i mean no disrespect to anyone and this is just my opinion... as you said before, chi in chinese simpy means air/breath. i believe that is was an observation in the good old days that if you can't breath, you can't act. therefore, if you can control your breathing, you ccan control your movements better. just like when we exert force, we breath out to get that little bit more. breath out=exert chi. unfortunately, it is the chinese nature to tell stories which is where all of the magic energy versions of chi come from. the classic example is the "book of bone and sinew transforming" (yik gun ging). it is originally a book on how to stretch and keep supple and breath properly in exercises but one of the story tellers turned it into a magical book of ancient secrets... well, that's my two cents....

like most things in wing chun, the usefulness of the pole form lies in it's simplicity. it is very direct with very simple answers to many situations. you should also remember that the moves we learn are for use specifically with the 9foot tapered pole. personally, i believe that the pole form is a "leftover" of when wing chun was developing on the opera boats. you have to imagine that on the red junks, there wasn't much opportunity for them to train for strength. the pole (as a leverage bar) is an excellent way to develop strength in the areas that you need most in wing chun (namely the wrists in preparation for baat cham doe and the forearms). i mean, have you tried to to the single arm lifts from the narrow end??? man, how does sifu do it???

...now i know that this a very iffy topic because you simply believe or do not believe in chi. but you are right, the open hand used in wing chun is because of it's structural qualites combined with correct position. in classical teachings of wing chun, we are taught that stength comes from the gound up and is created by the six major strengths( ankle, knee, waist, shoulder, elbow, wrist). this, in modern terms, is trying to explain that wing chun is a study of structure and position and quite simply, an open hand (as in tan sau) is structurally better than a closed fist.

sparring in wing chun is quite difficult due to the nature of the art. if you are simply talking about friendly sparring then yes we do that and how heavy/light we go depends on the situation. going all out hard on a novice isnt going to do anyone any good. much of the time we go at it full speed (which does not mean full power) or as fast as we can whilst still being clean and tidy in our techniques and concerntrate on the moves we are using and yes, we do aim hits to the head as this is the biggest natural target. if you are talking about simply sparring to win then no, we don't because the moves that we use to win fights are quite dangerous, which is why we don't do them in class against our brothers.

i was always taught that an open palm is more useful. it can to more things than just hit, unlike a closed fist. because of the way wing chun is supposed to flow, if you always use a closed fist to receive, then you have already slowed yourself by having to open your hand to make a grab. one of the key things in wing chun is the ability to change what you are doing at any point. this is one of the reasons that a fist is only formed at the last moment before contact. receiveing with an open hand allows to flow from technique to technique with the minimum of interruption. it is aslo why we don't grab with a closed hand. in fact, more often than not, a simple pulling motion with the open hand is enough to drag the bridge down.

...is a very special move. it is formed when your tan sau receives too much pressure. when this happens, you have to reposition your elbow to "leak" (translating from the chinese "lau") the oncoming force. this basically means that you turn the tan sau into bong sau. if it is done properly, the bong sau has a spring to it and the oncoming strike is deflected with very little effort. BUT the bong sau only occurs when there is sufficient force to turn your tan sau. you don't just do it to receive a strike.

the hardest technique i know is probably the bong sau, that is getting it to actually work without it collapsing. turning it from a tan sau after i've intercepted a hit sort of works but isn't really smooth. trying to receive a hit with bong sau just doesn't seem to work. it either collapses or it ends up being too hard and just bounces the incoming hit away which it isn't supposed to.

if you dig deep enough, you'll eventually find one of the five from shaolin as the starting point for most chinese martial arts. gee sim is where wing chun got it's pole form.

just a little point about wing chun, it only really "looks" flashy if you're WATCHING a set up demonstration. if you're facing a real master then you don't really see anything at all except the guy looking in your eyes all of the time as you feel your arms being palmed away. think about it, in a real life/death (or whatever) situation, a wing chun master who trains hits to the throat and eyes is going to hit those places. it only takes one good hit to take a man down. just because you can punch five-fifteen punches a second doesn't mean you're going to do it every time, especially when one-two hits will do.

one thing i've noticed in wing chun it doesn't actually take very long to learn the three major forms. a hard working student could probably learn in half a year. but then, the forms aren't really that important, instead chi sau is emphasised. in most classes, forms aren't practised because you should be doing that in your own time. for the most advanced training i.e chi sau, you need a partner and you need many different partners because everyone does things differently, especially in wing chun when your physical differences mean that you all do things slightly differently.

i never went to a "proper" martial arts school. my first experience with kung fu was with my grand dad. now i'm learning in my uncle's garage with mainly family and a few family friends. we don't have a belt system. all we know is who has been learning longer, who works harder and who is better.

failing to prepare is preparing to fail

yeah but then no one really does something if they don't enjoy it

aight!

the "gar" bit just means family hung gar is hung family (from some guy called hung hei gung i think) lau gar would be lau family and so on to my knowledge there were five big families of kung fu hung, lau, choy, li (or lee), mok but there were/are many others. and then some styles are refered to by their own merit such as wing chun, bak mei, eagle claw, tong long etc. it is also interesting to note that different families sometimes have thier own versions of a style (where familiy history and teaching is concerned) such as in tai-chi.

i practise kung fu (guess which one from my name!) we don't have belts or grades. we just know who have been there longer and who are better and who are not. we know who turns up regularly and who doesn't. and we know who wotks hard and who doesn't. after all "kung fu" does translate as "work".

nothing to do with this but i just remembered when my grand dad first showed me some kung fu. well, what i really remember is him saying, if he hits you, hit him back harder! what i guess i'm trying to say is, it doesn't matter what style you think is better, as long as it works for you and gives you what you want. another point, you have to take context. if you're six foot nine, ninteen stone and practise wing chun and you wonder why the little guy in your class can get to your centre, you're missing a big part/point of the style... similarly, if you're five foot three, tkd and can't quite figure how the tall guy keeps you out of range...

not really sure you're asking for but here goes, five elements referes to fire, wood, water, earth, metal each sitting next to its compliment and opposite its opponent. each element also relates to certain meridians. i don't actually know much about this but this is what i remember. as for five animals, there's a set in hung ger called the five animals which may or may not be similar to the shaolin five animals (which is also in choy li fat). snake: like the dragon in it's appearance but it's the spring like nature of its energy that is emphasised. position of arms. speed and accuracy. tiger: clawing and tearing. really rooted movements. stance. crane: strikes at points (like the snake) but is more calm. leopard: pure strength. the motions based on panther are about pure physical speed and strength. dragon: like the wind, typified by wave like motions, grabs and diffusion. control. hip. it is also important that the five animals form is based on the ESSENCE of the animals and sometimes bear no real relation of the animal. the name dates back to when martial arts movements had poetic names such as gold dragon rises from ocean (gum long chut hoi or something like that).

wasn't hung gar founded by hung hei gung?

little chinese guy from london here just been reading you guy's profiles and i feel a bit under-qualified to be here...

let's see fav film? difficult choice between usual suspects and the shawshank redemption or possibily leon fav tv? i try to not miss buffy, sad but it has such a sharp script... well, it used to. in uk, teachers is good too. fav song? old classic would have to elenor rigby (beatles) new song, possibly glycerine(bush) or street spirit (radiohead). too many, different song different feeling