I found a YouTube channel with a few videos of a guy performing the Tit Sin Kuen and some other forms of the Hung Kuen style. His kung fu is 95% similar to the one that my master Chan Hon Chung taught in the late Seventies and early Eighties in the iconic 729 Nathan Road gymnasium in Hong Kong.If you followed my previous articles about my Hung Kuen studies or if you read my book, you might remember that when I came back to Hong Kong after several years of absence I went back to my si-hing Cheung Yee Keung’s gym to fix my Tit Sin Kuen and he added a few moves that I was supposed to have forgotten.
I was surprised, because while learning the form from master Chan I took notes of every movement of the sets and the supposedly missing parts were not present in my notes. For this reason I made two assumptions:
- master Chan skipped a short part to keep the full set safe in Hong Kong
- Cheung Yee Keung in the following years Cheung Yee Keung added the extra moves, after discovering them somewhere or just creating them.
This video proves that assumption 2. is the correct one: the guy on the video plays the set exactly as I learned it in 1983, showing that the extra part was added later by my si-hing.
I want to be very clear: Cheung Yee Keung is the one and only caretaker of the pure martial legacy of master Chan Hon Chung. His great style and his long years of practice fully entitle him to refine the forms, according to his experience and his studies. I love, respect and admire him.
But I am also happy that what I practiced for decades after my Hong Kong years was real, pure and whole. In the last years I decided to hand it down to a few Hung Kuen students, now I have the confirmation that I am handing down exactly what I learned from master Chan.