Click Here for Chinese New Year 2021: Year of the Iron Ox
You’re probably wondering why I titled this year’s tiger ‘soppy.’ The element for this year is water, but for my annual Chinese New Year blogs, I prefer more unconventional labels. Water was the most challenging yet and I ruminated long and hard about what adjective to use. Water is elusive - it slips right through your fingers. The last two years were Metal, so ‘Iron’was a natural for the Ox and the Rat. Martial artists like the descriptor ‘Iron’ as in Iron Body or Iron Crotch. The prior two years were Earth, so I went with ‘Dirty’ for the Pig and the Dog. I have a dog so I’m painfully familiar with how dirty dogs get, and pigs live in pigsties so there you have it. And prior to that, I used ‘Flaming’ for Fire for the Cock because the notion of a flaming cock elicits so many different mental images. While I wrote one for the Year of the Ram, I hadn’t committed to this annual series, soI hadn’t started in on the elements. I missed the Year of the Monkey between Cock and Dog, which is a shame. I can’t remember why I skipped that year now. Flaming monkey isn’t nearly as evocative as flaming cock, yet I probably would’ve gone with it.
The Flaming Cock was 2017. My dream is to complete one zodiac cycle of twelve here. I’m now halfway there (overlooking that pesky monkey). However, given how the last two years have gone, who knows how much longer any of us can hold out? I suppose my success with these KungFuMagazine zodiac pieces depends on how many 2022 Year of the Tiger T-shirts and Hoodies we can sell. If you want to see me see this through, support us by getting one. The design is by Kung Fu Tai Chi’s longstanding graphic artist, Kevin Ho.
So here we are in the Year of the Tiger and given recent events, I was perplexed about what water synonym to insert before it. The Saturated Tiger kind of worked because we all feel saturated by the endless stream of bad news lately. The Drenched Tiger almost works in the same manner. I also liked the Fluid Tiger because we must all be fluid to adjust to the new norm – it’s the Daoist way to go. I was personally fond of the Soused Tiger because this pandemic has driven many of us to drink. And then there was the Teary Tiger, which appeals to my alliteration addiction (like Marvel’s J. Jonah Jameson, it’s a publisher/editor-in-chief affliction). But Teary Tiger was too sad, and I’ve always striven to imbue these horoscopic meanderings with an optimistic tongue-in-cheek tone. Ultimately, I like the word ‘soppy’. It doesn’t get near enough the usage it deserves.
So here we are – the Year of the Soppy Tiger. So enough with the zodiac dantian naval gazing, let’s talk about Kung Fu.
Tiger Style!
Although Chinese New Year involves many rituals, the tradition of New Year’s resolutions isn’t one of them. Nevertheless,a dedicated practitioners will take any opportunity to renew their commitments totraining. My first thought was to practice some Tiger Kung Fu because there’s a lot of it. The tiger has the most related styles of any zodiac sign. The next closest is that pesky monkey. Unfortunately, I don’t know any Tiger Kung Fu.I learned some years agobut I’ve forgotten most of it.
My first Kung Fu master was Lam Kwong Wing. He taught me my foundation style, Bak Sil Lum a.k.a. Northern Shaolin. However, he was also a proponent Hung Gar, which contains a lot of Tiger Kung Fu. Obviously my Sifu was a great advocate for cross-training as he practiced these two styles and more. So, when I was nearing completion of hisBak Sil Lum curriculum, he shared some Hung Gar with me too. Among the forms I was shown, three were Tiger related: Taming the Tiger (gung ji fuk fu kuen 工字伏虎拳), Tiger Crane (fu hokseungyingkuen 虎鶴雙形拳), and Ten Forms (sup yingkuen 十形拳).
While I learned a lot from the cross-training, reflectingupon it now, it was an academic exercise. I’ve forgotten all those forms. My brain can only hold so many sets, or more accurately, I’m too lazy to keep all those sets in my regular practice rotation. If you don’t keep practicing, Kung Fu goes away. I have tremendous respect for Hung Gar as a complete traditional system and I do wish I had kept some of those forms. But it has a different vibe than Bak Sil Lum, something I couldn’t attain with a lot more practice, and that time was better spent on Shaolin for me. No one can know everything. Nevertheless, as this Tiger year approached, I nibbled at one of the tiger sequences from Tiger Crane just for fun, but I had to consult YouTube to remember the pattern. It’s been fun, another academic pursuit, and there’s no harm in that.
I learned some Tiger Style at Shaolin Temple too. I still practice Twisting Roots (Pan gen 盘根) which has a tiger-like movement towards the end, but it’s just one movement, so it doesn’t really count. More to the point, I learned Five Animals Eight Methods (Wu xingba faquan 五形八法拳). In fact, I learned it twice. I first learned it from Coach Zhu Changxin on the expansive training fields of Grandmaster Chen Tongshan’s gargantuan school near Shaolin Temple itself (see Shaolin Trips: Episode 2). I learned it again later when my Shaolin master Shi Decheng visited California (see Shaolin Trips: episode 4 – A Hero Watching the Formation).
However, I let this Five Animals Eight Methods form go too. I’m not sure why. It has just fallen to the wayside over the years. I learned the entire form in a short session under Coach Zhu. I spent a little more time on it under Decheng at the workshop we hosted for him to help sponsor his trip. I even got Decheng to demonstrate it in its entirely for Kung Fu Tai Chi (see my pictorial article Shaolin 5 Animals: Demonstrated by Shaolin Monk Shi Dechengin the JAN+FEB 2007 Shaolin Special). But that form didn’t really stick.
Some believe that this is not a traditional Shaolin form. They say was created recently because legend tells of the Shaolin Five Animals: Tiger, Dragon, Snake, Crane, and Leopard. However, that’s predominantly a southern Chinese Kung Fu legend, southern as in Hung Gar. It was created with the restoration of Shaolin Temple only a few decades ago, mostly to fulfill the requests of Kung Fu tourists. That’s not much of an excuse for forgetting because it’s built on traditional Shaolin principles. I suppose I could rebuild it. This would be the year to do so. I’ve got the notes in that pictorial article.
However, rather than dust off one of these forgotten forms, there’s plenty of Tiger movements embedded in Bak Sil Lum. The initial form taught of the epic Ten forms of Bak Sil Lum has several movements lyrically named with tigers. Bak Sil Lum #6 (Dyun da 短打) was one of the first Kung Fu forms I ever learned and I remember it right well (I know, I know, why is the first form you learn of theBak Sil Lum Ten called number 6? That’s a story for another time.)
My Shaolin disciple brother Scott Jeffrey (proprietor of Jade Forest Kung Fu & Tai Chi in Rockland, Massachusetts) sent me a delightful translation the lyrics for this form. Scott translated Dyun da as ‘Short Fighting’ whilst I’ve always heard it called ‘Short Strike.’Da can mean ‘strike, hit, beat, or fight, or attack’ so it’s just a matter of interpretation.
I did a translation of the lyrics too for Sifu Lam years ago. We came up with three tiger lyrics: #15. Wild tiger comes out of the cave, #19. Fierce tiger comes out of the mountain to grab the sheep, #32. Horse stance, striking the tiger technique. I no longer have the original Chinese, so I don’t know if Scott and I had the same lyrics. He came up with several more tiger lyrics and he had the Chinese. His numbering deviates from mine by one digit, which leads me to believe his source was different. Nevertheless, this doesn’t invalidate either lyric set. Just like there can be variations in the moves from school to school, the lyrics can deviate. I find these deviations fascinating, like different versions of the same song. This yearI’ll defer to Scott’s version because it’s more tigerish.
Here's Scott’s translation along with Yale Cantonese romanization and the Chinese characters:
#1. Black tiger chases the heart, sitting tiger posture (haak fu tousamcho fu sik 黑虎搯心坐虎式)
#7. Black tiger climbs its mountain(haak fu dang saansik 黑虎登山式）
#8. Leaned away crouching tiger posture (jak san fuk fu sik 側身伏虎式)
#14. Fierce tiger leaves its den (maang fu cheut dung 猛虎出洞)
#19. Fierce tiger returns to its mountain, posture of catching a sheep (maang fu cheutsaankamyeungsai 猛虎出山擒羊势)
#33. Posture body squared to the front, horse-riding stance, fighting tiger posture (jingcho ma da fu sik 正靣坐馬打虎式)
Another Bak Sil Lum that has some tiger spirit is one of my favorite paired weapons – the Twin Tiger Head Hooks. By happy coincidence, I recently restored this form to my weekly Kung Fu regimen. Tiger Head Hooks appear in last year’s MCU blockbuster SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS. I enjoyed that film so much that it inspired me to pick up my hooks again. So instead of attempting to rebuild any Hung Gar forms or Shaolin Five Animals Eight Methods, my Kung Fu plan to honor the Year of the Tiger will be to keep doing my Pan Gen and work my Dyun da and Tiger Hooks more.
I hope the Year of the Tiger inspires every martial artist to seek out the hidden tigers in their practice and work them.
A Tiger Champion
The year of the tiger has a special meaning for me personally. My wife is a tiger (or should I say tigress?) She always inspires me to be a better man. She also instills in a deeper connection to nature, especially with animals like tigers. In 1998 for the Year of the Earth (dirty?) Tiger, she brought my attention to the plight of tigers and how they are endangered. As a result, I got involved with The Asian Conservation Awareness Program (ACAP) which was supported by Jackie Chan. Among my efforts to increase tiger awareness in the martial arts community, I covered his work in a feature that I wrote for November+December 1998 World of Martial Arts “Jackie Chan Saves the Tiger.”
By 2010, the Year of the Metal (iron?) Tiger, I was publishing Kung Fu Tai Chi, the print incarnation of KungFuMagazine.com here. We publish under the auspices of Tiger Claw. With a tiger mascot, my calling for tiger preservation was rekindled. ACAP led me to WildAid which has offices in San Francisco. Tiger Claw had established its charitable branch,The Tiger Claw Foundation in 2002 and launched The Tiger Claw Elite Championships in 2006, and the confluence of these elements provided a perfect opportunity. Thus the The Tiger Claw WildAid Championships was born.
It is one of the proudest achievements of my watch with KungFuMagazine. The Tiger Claw WildAid Championships are a showcase division where all proceeds were donated to WildAid. Over the decade-long run, we raised over $12,500 forWildAid. It was our most coveted event. The winners received a custom tiger trophy, along with a back cover and full page spread inside Kung Fu Tai Chi. It made for some of the most exciting competition rounds of our tournament.
Unfortunately, like the print magazine, the in-person Tiger Claw Elite Championship, and consequently the Tiger Claw WildAid Championship, were cancelled by the pandemic in 2020. In November+December 2020, we held the The Tiger Claw Elite KungFuMagazine.com Online Championships, but the WildAid division was not included. We skipped doing anything in 2021 because Tiger Claw was too preoccupied with the global supply chain crisis.
There will be no in-person Tiger Claw Elite Championship in 2022. The world is still too unstable for us to host such a large gathering in good conscious. However, we are looking into the possibility of staging another Tiger Claw Elite KungFuMagazine.com Online Championships. We’ve had some preliminary developmental meetings, and while I cannot promise anything at this writing, so far progress is looking good. I don’t know if we’ll hold a Tiger Claw WildAid Championships event within it. I hope so, given the auspiciousness of this being the Year of the Tiger.
Stay tuned to KungFuMagazine.com to find out.
Happy New Year!
Xin Nian Kuai Le
新年快樂
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About
Gene Ching :
Gene Ching is the Publisher of KungFuMagazine.com and the author of Shaolin Trips.
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