I heard of a recent flame about “honour and respect” in Chinese martial arts that hit my Hung Kuen brother Che Kong Mak. According to what I understood, he has been criticized for posting a video of him teaching Hung Kuen kung fu to some Wing Chun students wearing the t-shirt of their school.
Leggi tutto “Honour and respect: a distorted storytelling of Chinese martial arts”
Again with this great Hung style performer. In the previous article I explained as this video confirms my theory of of a few movements added by my brother Cheung Yee Keung to Chan Hon Chung’s Tit Sin Kuen just before the first unicorn step. But there’s much more in this performance. Leggi tutto “A priceless Hung Kuen secret revealed”
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. Leggi tutto “Il Tit Sin Kuen di Chan Hon Chung”
E’ accaduto un evento eccezionale l’altro giorno, perché – almeno da quanto mi risulta – mio fratello maggiore Cheung Yee Keung non aveva mai dimostrato in pubblico il nostro “filo di ferro”. Lo ha fatto pochi giorni fa in occasione della serata di commemorazione del maestro Chan Hon Chung, a cui non ho potuto partecipare perché impegnato con l’evento di Accordo che si svolgeva nello stesso weekend.
In spite of some technical inaccuracies, the article “Exit the Dragon? Kung Fu, once central to Hong Kong life, is waning” (Charlotte Yang, The New York Times, August 22, 2016) describes the profound – not to say epochal – social, economical and cultural changes I recently found returning to Hong Kong 20 years later. From the Lantau airport to the new creative dimsum recipes, from the spread of Korean fashion to the gigantic shopping malls grown everywhere, Hong Kong is not anymore the town I left in the Nineties. Leggi tutto “Keeping the Dragon alive in spite of the Hong Kong Millennials”
“This is a great fact that I am sharing now, for the benefit of whoever wants to get it: in our family’s Hung style breathing in never happens while contracting the muscles or even worse executing a technique. For this reason we do not breath in while pulling the hands, as many people of other schools do.” This phrase written in a previous article produced a significant quantity of messages from students interested in a more exhaustive explanation of the matter.
Leggi tutto “Hung Kuen: the salute unlocks the breathing secrets”
“In fact, the author seems to make a very pointed argument that Hung Gar is in its essence not a technical system of physical movements, but is instead an expression of culture. He doubts the ability of anyone who was not born within the Chinese language and society to genuinely master the art, let alone teach it. In fact, one cannot help but escape the impression that for him the Chinese martial arts are “authentic” precisely because they emerge from (and ultimately reduce to) an expression of Chinese culture. Still, reading between the lines it seems that he felt that being immersed within his network of Kung Fu Brothers was enough to give him access to some of the inner aspects of the art, and make up for his own lack of deep cultural background.”
In every martial art the forms are basically a symbolic (if not “metaphoric”) way to avoid any contamination, aimed to keep and hand down the set as pure as possible. But every student should know that – albeit in a full respect of the tradition – a significant quantity of realism must be kept in the practice. Master Chan Hon Chung granted a great importance to this realism, that was part of his teaching starting from the stances, the actual pillars of the whole system. Our master always pushed us to keep realism in our practice of the forms, explaining that the Hung style is not about dancing or showing off, but it’s about fighting, for real.
Back in the days – late Seventies to late Eighties – when I was spending most of my free time in Hong Kong to learn the Hung style from master Chan Hon Chung, there was no the “lineage” thing, nor there was the rivalry that creates a climate of suspicion and a somehow wary atmosphere in today’s Hung Kuen world. Master Chan was the undisputed noble father of our style and – in many terms – of the Honk Kong Chinese martial arts world. No one questioned his role, after all he was Lam Sai Wing’s best known student and a respected bonesetter, had a four pages business card crammed with “chairman” and “president” titles, a prestigious martial curriculum. And – most of all – to no other kung fu master had been offered the honor of receiving the Medal of Glory and being introduced to Elizabeth II, queen of the British colony of Hong Kong, oddly not hated, if not respected, by the Hong Kong people.
Leggi tutto “Master Chan Hon Chung, the good masters and the bad masters”
“Check out one of the best Hung Ga Kyun books I had pleasure to read in years (and download a free sample here). Hung Ga Story is a memoir of Alberto Biraghi and his martial arts journey. Alberto studied the traditional Hung Ga Kyun in Hong Kong with the late Grand Master Chan Hon Chung, spending with him more than a month per year from 1977 until the closing of his historic gym at 729 of Nathan Road” (Pavel Macek).
Leggi tutto “Hung Ga Story: i miei anni col maestro Chan Hon Chung”
