I found I have a nearby hung club, but there's a few things I have questions about. 1. To my knowledge, Hung Ga is southern in style, they do teach the obvious things like tiger-crane, taming the tiger etc to black belts, but they also have Tan Tui one the syllabus. Isn't that mostly a northern thing? 2. To my knowledge, Hung ga doesn't have a great emphasism on the gymnastics area, but I'm seeing a lot of backflips jumping high kicks and handsprings from the higher up students. Do I take this as something th higher students might be incorporating into the system? The stances and such seem to match what I have as reference from trying out other clubs as traditional hung ga, five animal forms an everything else seemed in order (which is what I really want to focus on if I pick this up.) 3. The club member I spoke up to was a representative, but told me the style was 'Hung Kuen' a style he believes to not be the same as 'Hung Ga' (last I checked, they are alternatives to the same name). I could just be looking at this a bit to hard, having gotten somewhat picky after seeing some godawful seminars and teachers in the last few years, but does this sound like reason for concern, or am I just overthinking?
Sorry, been meaning to answer your message but been on a bit of an irregular pattern. Some people just enjoy doing gymnastics. As a form of physical training it's not a bad idea. Tan Tui is done by a lot of schools as a general primer. The big problem with Hung Gar in it's purest form is it has no "beginner" forms. The practitioners in the video you sent me didn't look fantastic but it is a student club.
Yes it's a northern system but it is a good foundation for almost any style. The real question is is this mandatory training or just something that's available. This is really a question only they can answer. Hang gar and hung kuen can be interchangeable. However there are 2 major styles the canton and the Ha say fu. Typically the canton uses Hung gar and the ha say fu uses Hung Kuen. However if they are teaching the tiger crane and 5 animal sets they are the canton variety or a combo style. It's very hard to tell based on your brief description but the real questionsa are do they spend enough time on the areas you're looking for, are they good instructors, and are the gymnastics mandatory or just for fun.
I don't know if Ha Say Fu can be described as a major branch, if it wasn't for Kwong Wing Lam it would be virtually unknown outside of Maoming. Also Canton branch isn't a particularly useful label as all Hung Gar is from Canton Province and much of it from Canton City. Plenty of WFH line places use Hung Kuen and plenty of other lines use Hung Gar, they're essentially interchangeable terms.
Ha say fu didn't come from Canton, it was a major system despite fading in modern day and it's known by a lot more than Kwong wing lam's people. One of my teachers, Hwong Shao Dong taught it and it could be seen in tournaments by various people from different schools with no relation to Sifu Kwong when I was younger, although the name ha say fu is mostly associated with his line. Most called it hung kuen. I just use that name to differentiate. You're confusing different lineage with different systems. The Wong Fei Hong lineage is the same system as all canton Hung gar despite having a few original forms or training a few moves differently, the ha say fu is a completely different system with a completely different origin. Therefore these 2 variations make up the 2 main systems/branches/styles/whatevers of Hung.
My main reason for asking was I want to focus on fighting applications as close to traditional as possible. If Kuen and Gar are interchangable, and there are only very minor differences without it being a different system, and if it is indeed authentic Hung Ga, then I'm fine with that.
So Ha Say Fu isn't from the four lower counties of Southwest Canton where it's practiced today and appears to be named after? While most Hung Gar schools claim to have the same origin as WFH style it's debatable if they really do. It's debatable if WFH style has the origin it claims. WFH style Hung is as distinct from other Hung lines as it is from Choy Gar, Li Gar or Hark Fu Mun. Regardless of any claimed shared history today they are to all intents and purposes different systems.
The lower 4 counties of Canton? Canton is a city in the Guangdong province. Re reading your previous post you refer to Canton province. The only ones that call it canton province are foreigners and a handful of merchants who deal with foreigners. If you asked the average Chinese about canton province they would look at you like you had 3 heads much like they would if you used the term kung fu and expected them to know you were talking about martial arts. The Hung family of canton originated the commonly seen hung gar style and there are many branches of it that didn't pass through Wong Fei Hong that share their core sets and trademark stances and techniques. There may be others besides the "ha say fu" that have a different origin but I've yet to see them.
See this is what happens when you mash anglicised Cantonese with mainland Chinese/ mandarin. Guangdong is a city in Guangzhou province . Once you've said Canton you're stuck with saying Canton for both.
The defining feature of most non WFH Hung I've seen is the lack of the core forms. Indeed as WFH re-coreographed the forms anyway how can you identify if a form is shared anyway besides a name? My earlier point was that Hung Gar's "trademark " techniques and stances are found in numerous Cantonese systems.
Long time lurker first time poster, mid-level student of the Tiger-Crane Fist of Wong Fei Hung style Hung ga. Canton / Guangdong /Guangzhou are often used interchangeably outside China because unless you happen to be a native speaker, in which case you'll speak with the appropriate language or dialect, you're going to use any of these names to generally refer to the same exact geographic region, depending on your own grasp of Mandarin/Cantonese, you might speak them a little more appropriately for the exact local dialect, or be WAY off even if you pronounce it perfectly, it might sound wrong to a rural ear. But the word "Canton" is colloquial for that whole area of China, to billions of non-Chinese ears, to make things easier for gwai lo like myself to simplify what I mean when I say "where Canton is" to a Chinese listener. Yes, locals would look at you funny for saying "KUNG FU", because it's "gung fu" in their ears. It has a colloquial meaning for "martial arts" inside and outside China. Likewise to them, Hung Kuen = Hung Ga, colloquially. As a matter of fact, we can combine the Romanization puzzles AND the various short names of the style to get multiple full formal names of the system: Hung Ga Kuen Hung Ga Chuan Hung Ga Quan Hung Gar Kuen and so on. Feels good to finally have something useful to post. Cheers.
Dude check a map. You've got that completely backwards. Guangzhou is a city, Guangdong is the province. I have no idea what your even trying to say with that Canton comment.
Not going to argue about this anymore it's obviously pointless but this part was just too funny. Hung gar/ga kuen - check Hung gar chuan/quan - WRONG. These are 2/3 Cantonese and 1/3 Mandarin. The surname Hung is Hong in mandarin and it's usually just Hong Chuan/quan in mandarin. Additionally the canton style is the surname but the ha say fu is a different tone/character/meaning. It refers to the red(Hung) clan that was an underground sect of revolutionaries that were trying to bring the Ming dynasty back into power. That Use of Hung isn't recognized as a surname.
Not saying my own notes are by any means correct or accurate, but as I understand the bits of history...love to get this "sanity checked" by the smarter people in the room. I'm not the brightest bulb to say the least, so maybe some of this is fantasy, but here we go: Once upon a time there were many small sets known as the Hung family styles, shared here and there between master and student, father and son. This continued to the time of Wong Fei Hung. He was a skilled fighter/scholar so he sat down and organized some of the most famous/fearsome material into a handful of formal choreographed sets that included his favorite nasty bits, and that is the Wong Fei Hung style as handed down today. A "generic" Hung ga school might have 10 forms overall or 100, but the Wong Fei Hung school no matter how many will contain the same few basic sets that he prescribed. Does that sound right? On the other hand I don't know of any modern Hung ga fighters who have brought their training anywhere near the level Wong Fei Hung was known for, so who knows what the overall legacy of the art will be. If some people are to be believed it is going the way of the dinosaur because its so old. If others are to be believed, its one of the deadliest styles on the planet.
Exactly, which is why you are having a language difficulty. I don't mean to be difficult just some light hearted fun. What I really mean is there is a two-way language difficulty going on. Perhaps this will explain everything: why is the language of Guangdong and Guangxi known as "Cantonese" in the West, if it's the official language of "Guangzhou" city? Solve that linguistic puzzle and you'll understand exactly what I meant.
You're missing my point brother. The mix was intentional, and related to Ben's post. I'm sorry if I don't make sense, I'll work on that. I have my own difficulties with your language, so maybe we can help each other out long-term.
