Chris mentioned the thread, so back to the top with it!
kinda like saying,"Beetlejuice" three times?
"My Gung-Fu may not be Your Gung-Fu.
Gwok-Si, Gwok-Faht"
"I will not be part of the generation
that killed Kung-Fu."
....step.
chan tai san chan tai san chan tai san
Good Job bringing this thread back to the top Dave. I recommend it to anyone and everyone. There is a lot of good stuff here!
Out of curiosity guys, how much do you miss your teacher?
Psalms 144:1
Praise be my Lord my Rock,
He trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle !
to say he was an essential part of my life and like a parent would be an understatement. The really sad part about getting old is that you lose people like this, never to see them again. For all the conflicted things that happened, he was still my teacher for two decades
I have two main teachers, both have passed away, when I think about that, it makes me feel very lonely
Pick up the torch brothers, pick up the torch.
Eccentricities are part of the gig, cultivate some to keep those young fellas off balance...LOL!
I wish I could tell the stories about my Sifu, but unfortunately, he's only 5 years older than I am, and I'll have to wait until he's gone to do so. I suspect he may outlive me anyway...
My old Sifu, who passed away in '89, was old school. Following a particularly financially unsuccessful tournament, the association was sitting doing the wrap up. He cam in late and during the discussion was just digging at his nose, not saying a word. I mean, he was harvesting, not just poking around. And full-on, not discretely. Building one massive snot ball on his finger.
Then, when all the younger sifu's finished rationalising what they had done wrong and spent all the association money, he wiped the massive boogie right on the middle of the table, stood up, said something ****ty to them all in Canto (probably along the lines of, "you bunch of F**kwits") and walked out.
Guangzhou Pak Mei Kung Fu School, Sydney Australia,
Sifu Leung, Yuk Seng
Established 1989, Glebe Australia
I wouldn't say that I miss him per se, since I hadn't studied with him since '93 and wasn't as close to him as Dave and some of the other seniors were, but what I do find is that I appreciate him and what I learned from him more and more as I progress in my current practice - for example, I recently realized that the hand movements of the "standard" opening to a number of his forms I learned from CTS correlates almost exactly to the hand movements of the Six Healing Sounds Qigong I practice, except that the order is based on the Five Element Control / Destruction cycle sequence - which, for fighting, kinda makes sense; I mean, how cool is that?
anyway, it was certainly one of those "adventure of a lifetime" things w/him...
The info contained in the thread is very interesting and a testament to what genuine kung fu can do in the right hands.
I have not read the whole thread yet so apologies if this question has been answered already, but I would like to know what was CTS's opinion of traditional Japanese/Okinawan karate.
He sounds like a man who would have given you his opinion on this subject if he had one, so I hope to be informed of his (genuine kung fu master) perspective.
HW108
I moved this over here from another thread, because it seemed relevant
CTS certainly didn't treat forms with the semi-religous obsession a lot of TCMA people did, and we all noted that different people got different versions
But when you learn about Lion's Roar history, you learn the forms were never part of the tradition in the way they were perhaps for other lineages. IE in Lama Pai and related arts each "form" was associated with certain concepts, technique strings, strategies etc... the "exact sequence" wasn't really the point as much as the core knowledge
That being said, I can tell you that on several occassions, months, often YEARS later CTS corrected sets he taught us. Steve Ventura even "tested" CTS by messing up a sequence on purpose once to see what would happen
Inevitably though, and back to my point, when he would correct and remember were key sequences... essential concepts, not necessarilly every movement of the entire set