9 continents staff review

this review is for 9 continents staff that i ordered a while back.


it was also labeled monkey staff at the time i bought it. when i got it in i was expecting to see some type of monkey form. little did i know it was part of the long fist family of the system. no monkey movements at all. it was a decent form but i was turned off heavily. i have seen a lot better staff forms. the video was put together very well and the instruction very good. the teachers of the video are very good and i liked the intro a lot.

lueb gives it
2 out of 5 yingyangs.

which longfist family?

tai shing.

tai shing pek kwar seems to be combined long fist of tai shing and monkey kung fu pek kwar.

i hear alot of complaints about these tai shing videos
people expect to see monkey kung fu
as is advertized
and what they get is axe fist or something else

granted all of this is part of the monkey "system"
but i think it's false advertizing by not letting people know what they're getting into.

I asked around years ago regarding the Tai Sing Pek Kwa system.

I found 2 books in chinatown one with that famous movie star (Hung Xi Kuan character) who does some techniques, a Pek Kwa Form, etc. and theother book is of Chan Sau Chun doing a sword set. I hear there is a 3rd book also.

Didn't see any monkey forms.

Even traded to get copies of Paulie Zinks Monkey tapes and even he only has loose techniques.

So I asked some teachers in HK and they said that the system only has Pek Kwa forms. All the Monkey material is loose techniques that are combined together to make forms for demo, etc.

Nothing wrong with that but they should really not call the tapes Monkey Forms (both Chan Sau Chun and Paulie Zink)

I've seen tspk monkey forms...

but i agree , they shouldn't call those things on the tapes monkey forms.

why not? because it doesn't look like a monkey is doing it? White Ape doesn't look anything an albino ape is fighting or anything, I think people have the wrong expectations of "animal" styles sometimes.

no, not because they don't "look" like monkey
it's cause they're not monkey
they are axe fist forms , a totally different system

Yeah, I've seen a one or two clips of TSPK monkey forms(on thier Yin Yang Fist video) and the monkey forms do look like monkey. TSPK is made up of two main styles Tai Sheng(the monkey stuff) and Pek Kwar(Pigua). In their Pek Kwar system, they also seem to have forms from numerous other styles(like black tiger, mizong, chang quan, etc.). Basically, the monkey stuff is only for "deciples" who've been training the Pek Kwar for 10 years.

It's also an issue of traditional vs. modern (or in this case, Hong Kong vs. PRC). Most of the monkey styles that people are familiar with today are based more on opera, more imitative, like the Monkey King. This is particularly true with modern wushu renditions. Most of the moves you see in wushu monkey are straight out of opera. Some claim (and I'm not making this claim, I'm just relating it to be devil's advocate) that traditional monkey looks nothing like this at all. You see a similar phenomena with drunken style. A lot of people don't think that Chiu Chun Yat's Drunken style looks very drunk, but it's a traditional (or a Hong Kong) style. What they're really saying is that it doesn't look like wushu.

Quote:

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Originally posted by GeneChing
It's also an issue of traditional vs. modern (or in this case, Hong Kong vs. PRC). Most of the monkey styles that people are familiar with today are based more on opera, more imitative, like the Monkey King. This is particularly true with modern wushu renditions. Most of the moves you see in wushu monkey are straight out of opera. Some claim (and I'm not making this claim, I'm just relating it to be devil's advocate) that traditional monkey looks nothing like this at all. You see a similar phenomena with drunken style. A lot of people don't think that Chiu Chun Yat's Drunken style looks very drunk, but it's a traditional (or a Hong Kong) style. What they're really saying is that it doesn't look like wushu.

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you know gene. i have heard the same thing about all animal styles in wushu. that the systems they come form, the traditional ones dont make it so obvious. the eagle claw forms i have i see the claw a lot and more fighting/ killing mvoes. while in the wushu form you have lots of stuff to look like the eagle coaring in the sky. so i dont doubt it for a minute.

The imitative forms of kung fu - animals styles, drunken, manacled, etc. - are really interesting to me lately, not so much for their applications per se, more for their spiritual/shamanic implications. I touch on it in my latest cover story on Drunken Sword in our Jan Feb 2005 issue (we'll have the table of contents and the story up on our magazine index - it's just with the holidaze, we're a little crunched right now). Anyway, clearly a lot of modern imitative boxing is more performance oriented, a lot more 'dance' moves if you will. The traditional tends to lean more towards capturing the essence of what it's imitating while the modern is more like a direct pantomine. Clearly it's a lot of modern wushu influence, as well as peking opera.

BTW, I once saw footage of a tournament that was strictly monkey styles. It was wacky. Unfortunately I can't remember where or when that was, so I don't know if it's still going, but with the significance of Monkey King, I wouldn't doubt that something like that is still going.