Cha Chuan #4

[norther practitioner]

Great post Gene...

Use whatever will help..

[blooming lotus]

Originally posted by GeneChing
Recording the martail arts can grasp the external - the skin - but never the flesh, never bone, never marrow. Chen Zhenglei's stuff is a good example. His VCDs don't even begin to capture what it's like to stand next to him when he emits fajing. Does that make them worthless? Not at all. A shadow is better complete darkness.

I know exactly what you mean! Like alot of peeps on these boards, I have also had the pleasure of learning personally from an awesome songshan monk. There's nothing like being in that presence....and while it's not replacable, if I saw anything instructional out in book or dvd/video etc, that I had any even passing interest in at the time, I would definately pick it up and have a read or a run through. I probably wouldn't deem myself proficient as such until I had a personal teacher check form and application, but no doubt I would glean enough to pick up a few variations and to know whether or not I DID want that more intense training.

cheers

[cha kuen]

i have learned number four before, but it is from a differnet cha kuen lineage, very very very challenigng,

more challenging than the BSL routines. all of them.

[GeneChing]

...sounds like a challenge

[NorthernShaolin]

Cha,

Do you know which branch it is?

Out of the three branches, Yang and Chang are very similar. Li is the odd ball of the three and, imho, it looks more difficult of the three branches.

[cha kuen]

Don't know which branch but..

1. left cat stance w/ both hands in the middle like an X
2. keep the stance, the hands both move outward to crane beak wing movements. (like i'm flying)
3. take 2 steps forward and make 2 circles with my hands to end up in ....a position where i'm looking at both of my palms, elbows tucked in

what branch is that?

[NorthernShaolin]

Cha,

Sounds like Ch'a #5 but I'll get back to you. I have to pull out my text on Ch'a to compare the description you have.

[cha kuen]

my teacher that taught me said he mixed it from the 2 branches.

So i guess the most popular branch here is the ___, so it would be a mixture of the 2 other branches. =]

And one is from his teacher and one is from wong jack man, your teacher, so he mixed both. a little bit.

[cha kuen]

I'm pretty sure it's #4 though becuase I have a green thin book on it, it has MOST of the moves in it but not all cause it was combined form.

[NorthernShaolin]

Ch'a

Sounds like it is a combination of #4 and #5.

[cha kuen]

Actually, the green book says it's #5 hehe. SO it's a #5 combiatin from wong jack man lineage and this other more rare lineage. but both #5

[NorthernShaolin]

Ch'a,

Okay that's what was my original thought. (A combination of Yang and Li with Li being the more rare of the three branches.)

From your description of what you wrote for the beginning of your set, it reads like the opening of Ch'a #5 of the Li Branch. The move from Yang branch IMHO feel better than the movements from the Li Branch. But the opening of #5 of the Li Branch is much better than Yang's #5.

[norther practitioner]

ttt, as there is a current thread, that talks about this, and some may want to take a looky gander at was posted in the past.

[David Jamieson]

Hmm, looks like this is a thread that Kung Lek and GHD should read! Also, every OTHER vid student that says the vids AREN'T marked....

Thanks Gene for once again proving that I'm correct 99.9% of the time ...Much Luv Brotha!

~Wen~

HMmm, that's funny cause the bsl that I was taught a few forms from came from my former sifu vis a vis Ma Ching Fung when he taught in calgary, canada in his autumn years and it looks like everyone elses moi fah. lol

but thanks for throwing that in there wen, can always count on a disparaging remark from ya and right back at ya by the way, lol.

Interestingly enough though, I have seen a site from italy that shows #6 and #7 demos. They are performed a little higher in stance than what I learned but in essence are the same. As all BSL seems to be except for school bows and what not. Even Luebs buddies abridged demo is the same as what I learned albeit abridged because he had a brain F4rt while doing the set.

Now what line was it that started callin Tun Ta, Moi fah and Bot bo Shaolin #1,2 and 3 respectively. I'm seeing more and more of this nowadays. The site from italy is another example of the renumbering.

G~ KWL's book on the plum flower set also makes the 4 petal statement. Maybe it's a coincidence that you and mancuso both say that?

BTW and FWIW, the entire text in chinese for Cha Chuan with complete set diagrams and drawn out is available through my friend who can be contacted through my site if anyone is interested.

[YuanZhideDiZhen]

My plum tree is blossoming now and the flowers have five petals.

So this is a bit of an embarassing confession, but relevent to this conversation. The common BSL myth that BSL#7 is based on a 4 petal plum blossom is largely my fault, so here's an opportunity to correct it. When I was working on Sifu Wing Lam's video series, it gave me an ample opportunity to really question him on the forms, and for me personally, I always like to know the origin of names. When I asked him about plum flower, he said that it was because it travelled down four roads, one for each petal. Now back then I was younger and didn't cross-reference my research as thoroughly as I do now. I took what my Sifu said on face value, and that's how it went out in our literature and video series. I'm not sure where he got that - I find it interesting that my BSL cousin Northern Shaolin made the same error, so maybe it's something that persists in BSL. Maybe there are 4 petalled plum flowers, although that would fly in the face of conventional CAM usage. I can always tell when someone learned off of Wing Lam's videos, because I know all the mistakes, and when someone teaches that as doctrine, I know that their only source was the videos. But I know something of NS's lineage - although he may have seen WL's videos, that certainly wasn't his source. So now it's a bit of a puzzle to me. When I first discovered my error, I did do a literautre search to find an earlier example of a 4 petal plum blossom, but turned up empty. Of course, that was a long time ago, so maybe there's evidence now. Anyone?

I had been avoiding this thread a bit when the 4 vs. 5 petal thing came up. Let it be a lesson to all of us. Always cross-reference your research.

Gene: you are both correct on both counts. there are four and five petal plum forms. elsewhere i once heard it described (in the presence of one of my sifu) as "four and five square dancing" with most of the practicioners being familiar with the four square method. both methods had a stem representation, so they end up as five and six petal forms, each petal around 20 manuevers. the Night Sect combined roads and flower pattern footwork through 11, 17, and 22 Ba forms.