montreal Hung gar

[wuwei]

anyone train Hung gar in Montreal??

[wuwei]

went to check out a Hung gar school in downtown Montreal. Wasn't to happy with it. Was confused about the colored belts..thought TCMA has no belts... Also the nunchaku form??didn't know ther were 'chucks in Hung gar?

[David Jamieson]

tcma in the west is littered with belts and sashes.

no big deal there.

in the so called internal arts they are indeed a rarety though. Hsing I (xingyi), Pa Kua (Bagua) and Tai Chi (taiji) do not use belt systems at all.

As for the nun chucks in Hung Gar, well, that depends on what the teacher knows weapons wise.
some teachers incorporate weapons from other learnings they have. In fact, this is often the case.

No two hung gar schools are the same in my experience. even the so called pillar sets are performed with large differences from school to school and they change over time dramatically.

One of the best bits I've read about what Hung Gar is this and I'll paraphrase:


The Hung Gar system comes from Shaolin Temple. It is based on the fighting techniques derived from the five animals Dragon, Snake, Tiger, Crane and Leopard. The four basic stances must be known these are the square horse stance, the bow and arrow, the cat stance and the scissor stance.

It must be noted that Hung Kuen includes in it's characteristics, The hard and the soft, slowness and speed, no external force, but internal strength, no hastiness, but patience, Austerity in motion and good form. If a person can execute these things then they can be considered a practitioner of the Hung Fist.

Hung Kuen is southern shaolin kungfu in one of it's higher forms. It isn't about the number of forms, or the sequence in the forms, but it is about the practitioners and how they characterize their kungfu practice in accordance with the above.

Be wary not to get wrapped up in "true" lineages or definitive styles or definitive sets and methods given in a certain sequence of events over time.

The hung fist is larger than any one of it's practitioners and spans out further than any one of it's schools.

In short, it's all good, but some of it is better depending on who "has it". :)

cheers

[mok]

Hi Wuwei, and everyone on the forum.

I am a student at the school wuwei was talking about, and have been learning Hung Kuen with masters Hong Bun and Hong Kin for 6 yrs now.


What Kung Lek said is particularly correct of our school - ours is a modified curriculum with some northern siu lum stuff thrown in (we do a couple northern sets, and some northern kicking in addition to the normal HG pillars). In weapon sets especially though, no 2 Hung Gar schools teach the same stuff. It's really up to the teacher's preference.

As for the coloured sashes - it's a fairly large school (over 300 students), so the sashes have their uses. Also I suspect there' a financial incentive there, but seeing as the cost is only 500$ CDN per year, and that the kwoon is open 7 days a week from noon to 10:00PM, (classes divided by levels - hence the sashes) It's still a fairly good deal.


I hope the coloured sashes and 'chuk's won't put you off too much....



Cheers,


Mok

montreal, canada