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northstar
06-21-2001, 04:45 PM
Baak siu lam seems to be a rather popular style, at least in the US. Most often I've only seen discussions of the forms of BSL, not so much their application. Do BSL people practice a lot of applications and spar etc? Not bashing BSL, just wondering what the focus of the training is.

GLW
06-21-2001, 06:50 PM
By using Bak Sil Lum...you are stating your case in Cantonese.

There is an inherent logical flaw in this.

Cantonese is predominantly spoken in SOUTHERN China and mainly Hong Kong.

As such, the representation of the northern styles is not as large or as well developed. In fact, I have known many teachers from Hong Kong, who when judging staff tried to say that a VERY traditional northern staff routine was MODERN wushu due to the fact that they had never seen true northern staff.

For good northern style, you have to look more north and use the Mandarin Bei Shaolin....or simply Bei Quan (Northern fist).

It can work but requires you to know distances and how to adjust. It also requires a lot of speed.

GeneChing
06-21-2001, 07:56 PM
Northstar: Well, BSL didn't do so well against Bruce Lee, but that was only one fight, and it was Bruce Lee after all. ;)

As for apps and sparring, it really depends upon the school. Some BSL do a lot of it - some not so much. My sifu used to teach a lot more fighting but he has backed off of it over the last decade. So there is a significant generational difference from the instructors that have emerged from our school alone.

I think the reason why BSL people discuss the forms so much is because the 10 sets form such an awesome overall composition so most of us focus a lot of energy on it. Also, I beleive my Sifu's video series had an impact, since now many have seen all the forms and want to know more.

GLW: There is no flaw in the term Bak Sil Lum - refer to my e-zine article on Shaolin vs. Bak Sil Lum. The Cantonese term has a historical basis that is well rooted, especially outside of China. After spending 3 generations in the south, BSL has definately picked up a southern accent, but it still retains a northern spirit in my opinion.

I love your observation about mistaking northern for cont. wushu. How true, how true!

Gene Ching
Asst. Publisher
Kungfu Qigong Magazine & www.KUNGFUmagazine.com (http://www.KUNGFUmagazine.com)

beiquan
06-21-2001, 08:52 PM
GLW - since Gu Ru Zhang emigrated south to Nanjing, and his top students Yan Shang Wu and Long Zi Xiang both taught the majority of their students in their Hong Kong schools, it is not at all wrong to use Cantonese pronunciation in referring to this style. Most of the teachers of this style in the US learned in Hong Kong and are Southerners, so in fact it is much more common to hear the style referred to as Bak Siu Lam than as Bei Shaolin (although I personally prefer the Mandarin pronunciation as I can be fairly sure that I am pronouncing it correctly :)).

As for applications, in my school we do work a lot on applications, including Qin Na, throws, and punching/kicking combinations. As with any traditional kung fu style, if taught correctly, the focus is on developing martial skill. As a matter of fact, I believe that among Wong Jack Man's students up in the Bay Area there are a few fairly successful sanshou fighters.

shaolin_knight
06-22-2001, 12:12 AM
gene, check out the old article about that fight. I posted it on the Kung Fu Forum when someone asked about Wong jack Man. interesting!

GeneChing
06-22-2001, 01:49 AM
I saw that post - and have heard many different retellings of the alleged fight, even one from Linda Lee. All I can say is this - whatever happened and whoever won, you will never see a Wong Jack Man T-shirt at the Gap store. Like so many martial artists, only we remember him, but the world at large never even knew him.

Gene Ching
Asst. Publisher
Kungfu Qigong Magazine & www.KUNGFUmagazine.com (http://www.KUNGFUmagazine.com)

NorthernShaolin
06-22-2001, 09:31 AM
You are right. You will never see a T-shirt at Gap with a picture of Wong Sifu. He is a very traditional sifu and is an honorable sifu. Since Bruce sudden death, Wong Sifu elected not to talk about the fight out of repect of the dead nor did he elect to take advanage of the fight and make money. There are people in the Bay area who know what really happen but what is there to gain? It is well known in the older generation of MA that the fight was not about teaching whites or about Chinatown gangs. These two men respected each other for their MA skills and after the fight before they departed, it was BL who told WJM that they will cross arms again in 10 years. Of course BL sudden death occur 9 years after the fight.

The MA community of the older generation knows that:
As a traditional sifu who lost a fight, he would lose face in the Chinese community, close his MA school and never teach MA again. As a traditional sifu, he would seek out and learn a new style. As a traditional sifu, he would leave the area where he lost face.

WJM never did any of these and the older generation in the MA community know that and respects him for what he is and what he represents.

:) :cool:

GLW
06-22-2001, 08:45 PM
...let me try this explanation again...slowly:

there ARE northern stylists in Hong Kong...mostly from a single lineage....(as pointed out...)

However, do the math....out of ALL the Chinese Martial Arts teachers in Hong Kong and for that matter, southern China, how many specialize in Northern Fist...? The majority are Southern Fist styles (including Choy Li Fut...it has more southern influence than northern)

So, now do the math again... Out of the number of instructors in ANY location, what is the percentage that are OK, Good, Great....

Now multiply the first idea by the second and you get a much smaller number of people in Hong Kong who know or understand Northern Fist...simple math. If this were NOT true, you would see a lot more Northern Fist in the old Hong Kong movies....the Shaw Brothes and golden harvest used what was there...

Now, if you want to improve your chances, you go north where the northern fists came from...Congshan and such...There are the Hui people, and many variations of northern fist. You have the Ching wu in Shanghai, etc...and Beijing and further...and I do NOT mean just that which has survived through the current government.

SO, limitting yourself to trying to understand Be Quan from looking to hong Kong is like limiting yourself to understanding physics by going to a college that specializes in liberal arts...doable but MUCH harder.

beiquan
06-22-2001, 11:01 PM
There's no disagreement here. We're just talking about two different things - the specific Gu Ruzhang lineage of Bei Shaolin which has very strong roots in HK and the general set of northern styles which are sometimes also grouped into a category as Bei Shaolin or Bei Quan. When northstar asked about Bak Siu Lam, using the Cantonese terminology indicates to me that he is referring specifically to the former and not the latter, which you seem to have assumed. Despite the predominance of Southern styles in HK, I can personally attest to the fact that the BSL of the Gu Ruzhang lineage has still retained the flavor of Northern Fist, at least based on what I have seen of practitioners from my school and others' such as Wing Lam, Wong Jack Man, and Chan Kwok Way, all of which came to the US via Hong Kong.

respectfully
beiquan

GLW
06-22-2001, 11:27 PM
Quite treu..but difficult to trace once you get away from people like Wong Jack Man.

There are a large number of instructors who claim to teach Iron Palm who have pictures of Ku in their schools. That in itself is t bad since his photos of breaking tiles is quite well known as an example of Iron Palm. However, they tae it a step further and claim connection to his lineage. Then you watch them train or their students...and it is 100% southern in flavor and approach.

Northern fighting, done well can be ****ed impressive...but often never gets more complicated than 2 or 3 techniques from Tan Tui. Those really do boil down to it being better to have 10 techniques that work perfectly than 1000 techniques that sort of work.

Do many here train those?

I know from my experience, it is hard to get students to work that hard...:)

beiquan
06-22-2001, 11:43 PM
It's interesting that you should say that, because that's almost exactly what my teacher tells us when we practice sparring or prepare for tournaments -- take 2 or 3 techniques from Tan Tui and just drill those, don't try to get too fancy. When we do drills in class, usually we are just doing techniques extrapolated from Tan Tui or Lian Bu.

GeneChing
06-24-2001, 07:17 PM
You know it's funny, I wrote the Shaolin vs. Bak Sil Lum article to stimulate dialog about BSL lineage and it has been picked up on a few thread, but none have gone how I would have anticipated. Eveyone seems to overlook the Gan Fengchi origin tale, which is a vital key to this whole thing.

GLW: I've lost the direction of your posts. First it was geographical/linguistic and now it's lineage/methodological. I'm not sure what we're discussing anymore, but you still bring up some nice points.

beiquan: Who is your Sifu? Sounds like we're cousins...

The Gu Iron Palm thing is interesting, especially since it was my sifu, Wing Lam, who made a video about it, openning Pandora's box about IP lineage. It's a little troublesome for those of us who can trace a pretty direct lineage, but if we become less possessive of the teachings, it really doesn't matter. Look at how many people hang pics of Yip Man or Ueshiba on their walls with no direct connection. As long as the honor the ancestor, I don't see to much of a problem.

As for WJM, I should qualify and say that I have great respect for him and do not mean to berate him in anyway. He just got in a fight with the wrong person and no matter what the result was, history will forever remember him for that fight. There's a good lesson in there for all of us.

Gene Ching
Asst. Publisher
Kungfu Qigong Magazine & www.KUNGFUmagazine.com (http://www.KUNGFUmagazine.com)

GLW
06-24-2001, 08:53 PM
Gene,

I tend to do that...

If I find that I am either in total agreement with a poster or totally opposed to their ideas...In that case, there is usually not too much to say. So, I either don't post again or...if as in this case, another item came up in the meantime, I will post on it and see if the thread develops. Part is me being too lazy to take it to another thread...since the same audience would see it ....

It is sort of like a shotgun. The number of really interesting threads that get on here tends to ebb and flow...

The lineage thing is interesting. For example, many of the people who trace their lineage back to Hong Kong Sifus often have a connection to Ku (Gu).

Then you have the mainland and people like Wang Ziping, Huo, and many others.

Wang's training methods were simple and direct. For example, in Tan Tui, he emphasized mid-level kicks and simplicity. There are many variations with a bit more flowery moves that I have seen but in Wang Ziping's methods, the transitions are very simple and clean.

This has a benefit of making the translation from Taolu (form) to use clear.

He also emphasized all aspects of the techniques. Some emphasize the kicking or hands only. Wang Ziping worked Ti Da Shuai and Na (the kick, punch, throw, and lock) depending on which move it was.

His 20 Posture Fist method was sort of a brief encyclopedia of the major fighting methods of northern Zha Quan - flowing from Da to Ti to Shuai and Na...borrowing and enhancing from Tan Tui, Hua Quan, Pao Quan and Zha Quan. He then took each of the 20 Postures and made an application training method that drilled each move. This drill is one of the things that I find missing from many people's Northern fist...in that it makes a bridge from the formulaic methods in routines to how they work with an opponent.

(How was that for hitting the lineage and the other ideas...sorry but stream of conciousness writing hits me at times...:) )

NorthernShaolin
06-25-2001, 12:14 AM
GLW,

Is it because Wang Zi Ping had his own school where he could control his curriculmn and had students from "day one"? If this is true that he could develop and ensure what was taught. He had full control of what he wanted to teach his students. Another words he made sure the style was taught right as he learned it.

While with Kuo Yu Chang, he taught in the provenical schools that was control by the government. They (the government) more less dictated what was to be taught. Also in this enviroment, students alrady have experience in other MA.

Even when Kuo left the provenical schools and opened his own school, most of his students were exchanged students from Tam Sam's Choy Li Fut and were Tam' top students who had much experience. Kuo had a tendancy to teach the good stuff and skip the basics if the exchanged students had experences. Most of Kuo students were of experienced MA already. Even Yim Shan Wu had already completed learning Lui Ho Style (another northern style) from Wan Li Sheng before starting his lessons from Kuo.

Most of Kuo's students were around his age group and this heavy influenced his way of teaching. It was not like what most westerns think: an old sifu teaching a young student.
:) :cool:

beiquan
06-25-2001, 12:49 AM
Gene - we sure are, I'm a student of Sifu Kisu down here in LA.

GLW
06-25-2001, 05:30 AM
"Is it because Wang Zi Ping had his own school where he could control his curriculmn and had students from "day one"? "

Not at all. Wang Ziping taught the Chinese military back in the 1920's or 1930's. He was also the first head of the Shaolin division at the Najing Central Guoshu Guan. Only later did he teach for himself. Later still he was lauded as one of the top living masters...of course that was until the Cultural Revolution when everything was turned upside down.

He was a highly skilled doctor of Chinese medicine and used the money he made practicing medicine to support his martial arts endeavors later in life.

I doubt that he 'controlled' the curriculum as much as he required his students to all have extremely solid foundations and basics...and if you didn't, you did not progress with him.

He had a great love for all matial arts and examined every tyle he could for similarities, strengths, weaknesses...

"While with Kuo Yu Chang, he taught in the provenical schools that was control by the government. They (the government) more less dictated what was to be taught. Also in this enviroment, students alrady have experience in other MA."

That was probably more the rule than the exception for that time.

I do know that Wang Ziping was quite ahead of his time. H would train one aspect on even days and another on odd days. For example, gymnastic stuff on one set of days, wrestling methods on the other days. Weight lifting would be every other day...that type of thing.... The stuff that many coaches are just now figuring out he was doing 70 years ago.

GeneChing
06-25-2001, 07:56 PM
GLW: Stream of consciousness - cool, I can hang with that. And there you go again, teasing me with the 20. When are you going to bust that bad boy out for us? It sounds really intriguing.

beiquan: gotcha cousin - regards to your master.

Gene Ching
Asst. Publisher
Kungfu Qigong Magazine & www.KUNGFUmagazine.com (http://www.KUNGFUmagazine.com)

GLW
06-25-2001, 08:31 PM
Gene...

I will mention it to her again....and say that you have asked several times....

Tonight....after class.

I promise...

(Actually, I forgot to bring it up last week because I had hideous deadlines at work...)