Northern vs Southern Kung Fu Styles Explained

 

Northern Tai Mantis Kung Fu and Sifu Paul Eng

Over at Zen Sekai's blog, there was a recent post where the author described Tai Mantis kung fu and recalled his instruction under Sifu Paul Eng. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

Yesterday was the Anniversary of the the birthday and passing day of my Tai Chi Mantis Shifu. Paul Eng. He was my second Tai Chi Mantis Shifu, the First was Kam Yuen. They were related. He passed away Ed a couple of years ago go. Eng Shifu was about 10 years ago. I first started with Kam Shifu and received my teacher certificate from him. (Northern Shaolin Tai Chi Praying Mantis)

My training included Northern Shaolin, Lohan, Seven Star, Tai Chi Mantis, Ba Qua, Hsing Yi.

Later I trained with Eng Shifu received advanced training and admission into the inner circle of Tai Chi Mantis Society via him. This post is in Honor of him.

Historical Context of Tai Chi Praying Mantis

Praying Mantis boxing (螳螂拳) developed in northern China as a family of related systems rather than a single, uniform style. While popular narratives often trace all mantis boxing to a single founder, historical evidence suggests a gradual evolution, shaped by regional methods, battlefield experience, and individual refinement.

Within this family, Tai Chi Praying Mantis (太極螳螂拳) represents a principle-oriented expression rather than a purely technical divergence.

Relationship to Other Mantis Systems

Seven Star Praying Mantis (七星螳螂拳) is the most widely known branch and is often treated as representative of all mantis boxing. However, Tai Chi Praying Mantis differs in emphasis:

Seven Star favors: Direct aggression Strong percussive force Clear, decisive striking combinations Tai Chi Praying Mantis emphasizes: Listening and sensitivity Adhesion and redirection Lighter contact leading to control

Both are aggressive systems, but their methods of arriving at dominance differ.

The Meaning of “Tai Chi” in Tai Chi Praying Mantis

A common misunderstanding is that Tai Chi Praying Mantis incorporates techniques from Tai Chi Chuan. Historically and functionally, this is incorrect.

In Tai Chi Praying Mantis, “Tai Chi” refers to principle, not choreography.

Specifically:

Using the opponent’s force against them Neutralizing rather than colliding Alternating yin and yang in timing and pressure Maintaining balance while disrupting the opponent’s

These ideas long predate the modern separation of martial arts into named styles and were part of the broader internal logic of Chinese martial culture.

Tai Chi Praying Mantis applies these principles within a mantis framework — through seizing, trapping, elbow control, and rapid finishing — not through Tai Chi Chuan postures.

Northern Shaolin Influence

Northern Shaolin systems historically served as foundational training grounds, providing:

Structure Conditioning Large-frame movement Long-range striking

Tai Chi Praying Mantis emerged and was transmitted alongside this environment, benefiting from Shaolin’s physical discipline while refining it through economy of motion and tactical intelligence.

As practitioners aged or moved into teaching roles, emphasis often shifted away from large, forceful expressions toward principle-driven efficiency — a pattern seen repeatedly across Chinese martial traditions.

Transmission and Refinement

Rather than being a modern hybrid, Tai Chi Praying Mantis represents a refinement process within mantis boxing:

Reducing unnecessary collision Improving timing and sensitivity Prioritizing control over exchange

This refinement made the system especially suitable for:

Smaller practitioners Older practitioners Situations requiring decisive resolution rather than prolonged fighting

Teachers such as Master Chi Chuk Kai preserved this approach by emphasizing principle over appearance, ensuring the art remained functional rather than performative.

Tai Chi Praying Mantis as a Mature System

Historically, many Chinese martial arts evolved toward lighter, more internal expressions over time — not as a loss of effectiveness, but as a gain in clarity.

Tai Chi Praying Mantis reflects this maturity:

It listens before acting It controls before striking It finishes without excess

Seen in this light, Tai Chi Praying Mantis is not an offshoot or compromise, but a culmination — a system shaped by experience, realism, and the understanding that true skill conserves both effort and life.

Some Chinese Influences on Japanese Martial Arts

Below is an excerpt from an interesting article that appeared at Ellis Amdur's excellent Kogen Budo blog, describing Chinese influences on some specific Japanese martial arts. The full post may be read here. You'll have to follow the link to the article to see the videos.

I am prompted to revisit this topic after viewing this video of Tada Hiroshi, a remarkable 94 year old aikido instructor. For those who like order, you are in trouble. I will live up to my promise of ‘casual’ – this will go all over the place. I’ve got no final point to arrive at–this essay is more like a jazz improv on a basic theme, the latter of which might have been insipid to begin with.

Tada explicitly states that the idea of using this as a training tool came to him when he found this (or a similar) length of wood in his garden, a scrap left over from his gardener trimming posts to prop up trees. He doesn’t reference any other inspiration. Clearly, he is using it to contribute to the away he does aikido, yet one more training tool.

If we just look at the bang, the Chinese name for the thick short-stick training tool, it would be easy to claim that Tada Hiroshi obviously derived his training implement from traditional Chinese practice. Even if this is true, Tada is clearly doing something very different from Feng Zhiqiang and Chen Yu. The latter two men clearly show exemplars of 六合 (Six Coordinations): the first three being a balancing of forces throughout the body (wrist & ankle, elbow & knee, hips and shoulders) and the latter being jin (intent-driven, whole body coordinated movement, utilizing gravity & ground forces), qi (a method of expressing power through the use of trained connective tissue and no rigid, localized tension in the muscles, cultivated through specific exercises that incorporate the breath) and tanden (the use of the midsection of the body – not “one point” – to distribute the force of the body through the limbs in perfect measure – imagine the tanden as the head of a “quintipus” – with the arms of this imaginary beast extending through the four limbs and the head). This way of using the body is sometimes referred to as Heaven-Earth-Man, although this term is also used to describe a myriad of other ideas. At any rate, if this subject is of interest, particularly regarding its relevance to Japanese martial arts, then, (ahem), I have a book for you. (with translation in French and a new versions in German and Portuguese pending in 2025).

Tada is doing something different. Quite admirable, but different. Tada has always been an athlete, with a body that, even as a young man, reminds one of whalebone: flexibly stiff is the best I can describe it. He is known to have run for miles, and done thousands of suburi with a bokuto, and rigorous chanting/breathing exercises in the Ichiukai, a spartan method of training that combined misogi no kokyū-hō (a Shintō-derived chanting practice) and Zen-style meditation. Its main focus seems to be overcoming human frailty and lack of will: the spirit dominates the body. Tada also trained in Nakamura Tempu’s Shin Shin Toitsu. Nakamura was a bigger-than-life character, with more than a bit of Baron Münchhausen in his personality. The dubious aspects of his own autobiography aside, he was one of the first to bring concepts of yoga to Japan, before orthodox systems were accessible, and he developed a very effective method of breathing for health that influenced the famous aikidō instructor, Tohei Koichi as well as Tada Hiroshi. A comparison of the way Tohei and Tada moved, however, will quickly show that they incorporated the lessons of Nakamura and the Ichiukai (which Tohei also studied) in quite different ways.

Tohei had the ability to relax his massive body so that, in essence, it was as if, at every moment in a technique the point of contact on his partner received him as if a large sack of potatoes dropped onto that locale. Tada is, exactly like he does with the “neri-bō,” twisting his limbs and twisting you. I never took ukemi from Tohei, but I did from several of his leading followers. And I did take a fair amount of ukemi from Tada, and I can testify from personal experience that my descriptions in this paragraph are accurate. Tohei scratched the surface of what I described earlier as Six Coordinations – in particular, his development of certain aspects of qi (ki in Japanese); Tada used the same methodology to become a magnificent athlete, still moving very well at the age of 94.

As I described in several chapters in Hidden In Plain Sight, the influence of Chinese martial arts principles upon the 17th century development of Japanese arts is undeniable. I won’t rewrite that history here, but suffice it to say that those principles became embedded in Japanese martial systems. However, no Chinese system of martial arts was transmitted, and the principles that were received (in partial fashion), were then adapted to the needs of various Japanese martial arts. The best metaphor is that the original teachings, such as they were, were digested and “in-corporated,” becoming something quite different from the original as the centuries passed. By the 19th century, there was lip-service paid within some Japanese arts of Chinese influence, but for the most part, no one could delineate exactly what was passed on. [The major exception was Akiyama Yoshin-ryū), which preserved a set of training exercises, called nairiki no gyō (“internal power exercises”) that they explicitly assert were derived from Chinese training methods].

At the inception of the 20th century, the Japanese were largely ignorant of Chinese martial arts (not military arts, per se – remember, the Chinese and Japanese went to war in 1895, and there were any number of subsequent skirmishes before full-scale war again broke out with the Japanese attack first in Manchuria and then China itself in the 1930’s. During hand-to-hand combat, Japanese troops certainly got the experience of facing Chinese “big knife” sabres]. Kano Jigoro, the founder of jūdō, in one essay, wrote that the main distinguishing factor between the two countries’ martial arts is that Japanese martial arts focused on two-person training, whereas Chinese martial arts were almost exclusively solo training. It is unclear to me (or anyone) if Kano knew more, and he was trying to brush aside Chinese martial arts as being insignificant, or if his knowledge at the time was this sketchy. At any rate, some knowledge of Chinese arts seeped into Japan. According to Andrea Falk, in Li Tianji’s, The Skill of Xingyiquan, “In 1914, a teacher from his (Li Cunyi) associate, Hao Enguang, was the first to introduce xingyi boxing abroad, into Japan.” [So many questions!!!: Did he just do a demonstration as part of some kind of cultural exchange, or did he have students? Wouldn’t it be a delightful twist of history were we able to find a guest list with some significant Japanese martial artists among his students, who then “stole his technique!”].

The diffusion of information about Chinese martial arts into Japan was patchy. Ueshiba Morihei, the famous teacher of aikidō, deeply resented his students practicing jūdō after hours, and yelled that them to stop practicing Shina martial arts. [A couple of layers here – he’s actually referring to the fact that jūdō is derived from Yoshin-ryū and Kitō-ryū, the two jūjutsu systems that most prominently have accounts of Chinese principles incorporated at their origin. Furthermore, Ueshiba, an arch nationalist, used a racist term (there is no argument about this) to refer to China]. Nonetheless, Ueshiba had some contact with Chinese martial arts: In 1936, he visited Takeda Hiroshi in Beijing, Takeda being a well-known Japanese student of tongbeiquan and he is known to have seen some Chinese martial arts during his visits to the colonialist Japanese-run Kenkoku University in the early 1940’s. [NOTE: rather than revive a dead-horse to flog yet again, these visits occurred several decades after Ueshiba had studied Daitō-ryū and consolidated his own version of that martial art, and there is not one scintilla of evidence of any change Ueshiba made in his methodology due to his visits to China].

Sawai Ken’ichi studied tachengquan (AKA Yiquan) in Beijing and brought back his adapted version of this art after the end of World War II. [NOTE: He shared the same instructor, Wang Xiangzhai, as Wang Shujin (to be discussed below). Wang was far more well-rounded, having achieved expertise in xingyiquan, baguazhang and the Nanjing Synthesis form of taijiquan. Both Sawai and Wang taught students on the ground of Meiji Shrine at roughly the same time, and friends of mine, who studied with Wang, said that Sawai would occasionally wander over and berate Wang for wasting time on “all that flowery crap; you should just do Yiquan,” and Wang would laugh and continue doing things as he chose.]

 

Bruce Lee's Training Regime

Over at The Art of Manliness blog, there was an extensive article on the techniques and philosophy of Bruce Lee's training regime. I thought it was an impressive article. 

An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

Bruce Lee is a legend.

He revolutionized movies and martial arts.

He also boasted incredible strength and all-around physicality.

Lee could place his fist one inch from the chest of a man twice his size and unleash a quick, cobra-like strike that’d send his opponent flying. 

Lee could perform push-ups using just two fingers of one hand. 

Lee wasn’t huge, but his lean, chiseled, defined physique was widely admired, and bodybuilders like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno, Flex Wheeler, Shawn Ray, and Dorian Yates all acknowledged the impact it had on their careers.

Co-star and fellow martial artist Chuck Norris described Lee’s ripped physique as “muscle upon muscle.”

A woman who asked if she could touch Bruce Lee’s flexed bicep (a common request he appreciated receiving) described it as “warm marble.”

How did Lee develop his strength and physique? Was he simply a genetic freak?

Nope. If you look at early pictures of the Little Dragon, he was a pretty scrawny guy.

Instead of genetics, Lee systematically and relentlessly built his body with physical training.

Thanks to the meticulous research of martial artist and writer John Little, we know exactly what Lee did to achieve his results. Little shares the details of Lee’s fitness training in his 1998 book Bruce Lee: The Art of Expressing the Human Body. The book is an absolute gold mine of fitness history and information, and I highly recommend picking up a copy.

In today’s article, we take a look at the principles that informed Bruce Lee’s training and the components of his regimen that turned a man into a legend.

Throughout his childhood, Lee was incredibly active. He got in trouble at school, and his spiritedness drove him to mischief and street fights. If Lee had grown up in the 21st century, he probably would have been diagnosed with ADHD. His hyperactivity inspired his family to call him “never sits still.”

To channel Lee’s energy into less destructive activities, his father signed him up for kung fu instruction under the tutelage of master Ip Man. Thus, at age thirteen, Bruce began the lifelong practice that would make him a worldwide legend.

By the time Lee was in his twenties, he had developed enough physical conditioning to excel as a martial artist, but remained a skinny guy.

Then came a moment that would take his physical training to the next level.

In the early 1960s, Lee lived in Oakland, CA, and had begun teaching kung fu. Lee didn’t discriminate in who he took on as a student, and according to some accounts, some traditional Chinese kung fu masters in the area weren’t happy with him teaching the martial art to non-Chinese. So in 1964, they presented an ultimatum to Lee: take part in a kung fu battle against their best fighter; if Lee lost, he had to shut down his kung fu class.

While different versions of exactly how the fight went down exist, according to Bruce, the fight lasted three minutes and primarily involved him chasing his opponent around a building until he forced him to submit.

Despite winning, Lee was disappointed with how he performed. He was unhappy about the shape he was in and had begun to feel that the parameters of traditional martial arts were impractical for street fights. He concluded that to realize his full physical potential and become the best martial artist in the world, he’d need to move beyond kung fu and expand his repertoire of physical modalities.

This moment of discontent not only inspired Bruce Lee to get serious about his physical fitness, but birthed a martial art and overall life philosophy he called Jeet Kune Do or the Way of the Intercepting Fist.

In moving forward from the fight, Lee sought to develop a physical training system that emphasized “practicality, flexibility, speed, and efficiency” and drew from a wide range of training methods.

While Jeet Kune Do sounds like a formal martial art style like Tae Kwon Do, Lee intended it to be “the style of no style” — a martial art that transcended formal rules and incorporated the best ideas from various disciplines.

To find these ideas, Lee became a devoted student of the art and science of physical training.

Even though Bruce had struggled in school, he had a strong commitment to continuous learning and was a voracious reader throughout his adulthood. Over his life, he amassed a huge personal library of over 2,500 titles.

He trained his mind by reading Eastern and Western philosophy (Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas; The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi), as well as American self-help (As a Man Thinketh by James Allen; How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie).

He also religiously studied everything he could get his hands on about training the body.  

Lee thought there was something to be learned from all combatives and read books about boxing by Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, and Rocky Marciano, texts on karate and aikido, and over sixty volumes on fencing.

In the 1960s, bodybuilding magazines were the primary sources of information on strength training, and Bruce Lee subscribed to them all. If he found an article that contained useful information, he’d clip it and put it in his filing system.

Lee also browsed used bookstores and bought copies of health and fitness books from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Strength and How to Obtain It by bodybuilder and strongman Eugen Sandow and The Application of Measurement to Health and Physical Education written in 1945 by H. Harrison Clarke.

Lee continued to add fitness books to his extensive library throughout his life and never let a set lens contort his reading choices; if a book or magazine had some useful info in it, he bought it and read it.

Besides magazines and books, Lee would ask his friends and students for training advice. Two men who had a huge influence on Lee’s physical education were James Yimm Lee and Allen Joe. James Lee (no relation to Bruce Lee) was an Oakland-based martial artist and weightlifter, and Allen Joe was the first Chinese-American bodybuilding champion. Both men introduced Lee to the way of the iron and helped develop his first weightlifting program.

 

Lee’s study of all aspects of physical training led him to experiment with different fitness modalities, including barbell training, isometrics, plyometrics, circuit training, running, and stretching.

His practice of these diverse modalities all had a single goal: becoming a better martial artist.

While Lee only chose exercises that would help him improve as a fighter, because martial arts require the full spectrum of physical capabilities (strength, power, speed, endurance, and flexibility), Lee systematically trained all these capabilities; he didn’t specialize.

 

The Hidden History of Shuai Jiao

The video below is a short documentary on Chinese wrestling, shuai jiao.

 

A Lifetime of Chinese Kung Fu

Below is a short documentary on the life of Master Adam Hsu, on his life practicing and teaching Kung Fu.

90 Year Old Martial Artist

Folk martial artist and old Chinese doctor Yang Deyou learned martial arts with his teacher at the age of seven, and taught at the Nanjing Jingwu Sports Association in his middle age. Yang Lao inherited the authentic Tiangangmen of Southern Shaolin, and is good at Nanquan, Tanzu Tiangangquan, Tiangang Sanshou and Shaolin Plum Blossom series There are more than 100 traditional routines in the Luohan series of boxing weapons. Yang Lao is unique in that he is ninety years old, but his movements have no signs of aging at all. His moves are fast and sharp, and he can roll and fly at will.

Southern Praying Mantis Kung Fu Master Gin Foon Mark Documentary

Below is a short documentary on Gin Foon Mark, who was a master of Southern Praying Mantis Kung Fu. Enjoy.

The Long Fist of Adam Hsu

Adam Shu is a master of several Chinese martial arts. In the video below, he is demonstrating Long Fist. 

He is the author of The Sword Polisher's Record, an anthology of his many columns and essays that he's written over the years. 

 

Lu Mai Fu shaolin Long Fist Form

 

Kung Fu: the Hidden Art

Below is a series of six videos which comprises a documentary on Kung Fu, from it's beginnings as a military art to modern times.

 

Vintage Chow Gar Video

The vintage video below shows Master Ip Chee Keung performing the Humting Bridge from from Chow Gar kung fu.

Eight Step Praying Mantis on Taiwan

Below is a short documentary on Eight Step Praying Mantis as practiced on Taiwan.

 

 

Kung Fu Masters of Taiwan

Below is a short documentary which is a visit to a bookstore in Taiwan, where the owner has a huge collection of martial arts books and recounts the history of martial arts practiced in Taiwan.

Hung Gar Kung Fu and Buck Sam Kong

Bucksam Kong is a giant in the world of Hung Gar Kung Fu. Below is an excerpt from an article that appeared at Black Belt magazine about him. The full post may be read here.

Bucksam Kong started studying eagle claw kung fu at age 6 with his mother as a means to ward off colds and fevers. Today, he is a master of hung gar kung fu and runs the Sil Lum Pai Gung Fu Association. BlackBeltMag.com explores his path.

Bucksam Kong is one of those names that martial artists have heard for years — even decades. As one of the first masters to teach hung gar kung fu in the United States, he is recognized as a pioneer in the history of Chinese martial arts. In 1974 Bucksam Kong was inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame as Instructor of the Year. He currently runs the Sil Lum Pai Gung Fu Association, based in Los Angeles.

Hung gar kung fu master Bucksam Kong was born and raised in Hong Kong, a city (and former British colony) tacked onto the southern part of the People’s Republic of China. Unlike a lot of martial artists who tell stories about street fights and running battles with the police, Kong says that because he was so young, he never really felt threatened.

That’s why Kong ended up starting his martial arts training not for badly needed self-defense skills but for the often-overlooked health benefits.

“When I was young, I was sick all the time,” he says. “I would catch colds and get fevers. That’s why my mother wanted to start me in kung fu.”

And Kong did start training — with his mother as his instructor. “She started teaching me eagle claw kung fu when I was 6,” he says. “She had been learning that art for a long time, but she didn’t teach anyone — except me.”

At first, the young martial artist and future hung gar master wasn’t really sure if he liked eagle claw or not. If you’ve ever been forced by your parents to take any kind of lessons, you’ve probably been in the same boat.

“But as I grew older, I started loving it,” Kong says. “I kept practicing with my mother for a couple years.”

When Kong turned 8, he began training under a hung gar kung fu instructor named Lum Jo. The boy must have liked hung gar because he stayed with Lum Jo for more than 17 years.

“The training then was a lot different from the way I train people now,” Kong says. “Classes were very strict. The sifu (master) always emphasized very low stances. We had to put a lot of force into every movement.

“We spent long periods of time learning each technique until we became very good at it,” the hung gar master continues. “Only then would the sifu teach us something else. If an instructor tries to do that these days, a week later he’ll have no students.”

Lum Jo ran a clinic in which he set broken bones and administered other medical treatments. So he probably didn’t care how many students dropped out of his hung gar classes because the training was too severe.

“He never had a lot of students,” Kong says. “Nobody in Hong Kong did because the place was so small that getting 15 or 20 people into any room was hard.”

Because it was so crowded in the hung gar training hall, Kong and his classmates practiced a lot on their own out of doors. “We learned all the forms first in class because they taught us how to apply the techniques,” Kong says.

“Then some classmates and I would get together and play around doing the forms and sparring. Sometimes it got pretty rough, but there weren’t a lot of injuries because we always used a lot of self-control.”

 

Shaolin Animal Forms

Over at Black Belt magazine, there was an article on the animal forms of Shaolin Kung Fu. At excerpt is below. The full article may be read here. At the end of this post, I placed a video of master Ark Wong performing the Leopard form.

If you're on the prowl for new ways to improve your martial arts skills and expand your knowledge base, the five animals of Shaolin kung fu are for you. By studying the fighting methods of the snake, crane, tiger, leopard and dragon, you'll glimpse kung fu through the eyes of its legendary masters of yesteryear. Like them, you'll be able to tap into the mental and physical characteristics of those denizens of the wild kingdom in a way that's guaranteed to benefit all aspects of your training. The concepts of the five animals is thought to have originated early in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) at Shaolin Temple, located on Song mountain in China's Henan province, says Black Belt Hall of Fame member Eric Lee.

“The animals of Shaolin made a huge impact on the development of kung fu and are still doing so today. That's because the animals, like nature, offer the same insights today as they did centuries ago. “In the beginning, the old masters studied the animals and adopted many of their habits. Those habits included how they rested, how they gathered and released their chi (internal energy), how they stalked their prey and how they fought. The five animals were chosen for their superior attributes for fighting and defense and for other mannerisms that contribute positively to human life." Practicing kung fu with the attitude of one of the five animals can help you see things more clearly, says Eric Lee, who began teaching the Chinese arts in Oakland, California, in 1970.“You'll be more aware, and you'll be more in balance internally and externally. The animals help you express yourself wholeheartedly in any direction. They'll help you know what it's like to be anything you want to be. If you let nature be your teacher, good things happen." 

Shaolin Kung Fu: Snake Form

Full-body awareness gives the snake a heightened sensitivity, and that allows it to use all its resources to accomplish its goals. The animal coils its body for speed and power, then strikes without hesitation or fear. It's a relentless hunter that uses every muscle to push, slide, penetrate, wrap and eventually control its prey. The snake is a natural ground fighter— which is why grapplers often find its movements to their liking.

The snake hand, in which all four fingers are extended to strike like a spear, is the primary weapon. “You can move the snake hand up, down or from side to side using it or your arm to block, then you can strike your opponent's throat or another vital area with the same hand," Eric Lee says. “When doing snake moves, you can strike and lock simultaneously. Offense becomes defense, and defense becomes offense."

A useful snake technique entails raising your hand like a cobra lifting its head, then relaxing your arm and shooting it out and back for a lightning- fast strike, Eric Lee says. In super-tight quarters, he adds, you can increase your effectiveness by switching to the snake tongue: Extend your index and middle fingers and hold them together as you jab them into a pressure point.

 

 

Butterfly Swords in Southern China

There was a pretty good article at Crane in the Tiger's Shadow blog regarding the history of butterfly swords throughout Southern China. Below is an excerpt. The full post may be read here. At the end of the post are many YouTube links which you may find interesting.

When you ask a modern Wushu athlete about weapons of the southern Wushu styles, he will answer you: Nandao and Nangun. That’s not even half of the truth. While Nangun has indeed some references to southern staff techniques, Nandao is newly created weapon for modern Wushu which has some resemblance to a true southern blade, the Butterfly Swords or in cantonese Wu Dip Dou.This is just one of many names these blades have. Other names are Zi Mou Soeng Dou, Wu Saau Soeng Dou or Baat Zaam Dou. The Wu Dip Dou usually come as a pair and are shorter than usual swords or sabres with a length of about 50 cm. While other short weapons like Daan Dou or Daan Gim (Dan Dao or Dan Jian) are seen in whole China, the Wu Dip Soeng Dou are a typically southern weapon, nowadays only seen in southern traditional Gong Fu styles.

Early recordings about the Wu Dip Soeng Dou can be traced back to the early 19th Century. Although not known under todays common names, this double weapon was mentioned also in western magazines in England and the United States. A Captain Bingham who was involved in the first Opium War mentioned in an article from 1842 that a part of Lins troops (Lin Zexu, Governor and General in Guangdong) were trained in double swords:

“March the 21st, Lin was busy drilling 3,000 troops, a third portion of which was to consist of double-sworded men. These twin swords, when in scabbard, appear as one thick clumsy weapon, about two feet in length; the guard for the hand continuing straight, rather beyond the “fort” of the sword turns toward the point, forming a hook about two inches long.»

Records in the US show that the Wu Dip Soeng Dou were used by gang members in San Francisco and other Chinatowns throughout the country. There are pictures of confiscated weapons oft he Tong Wars in the 30ies as well as a picture of Gong Boss Eddie Gong with Wu Dip Soeng Dou in his hands.

Although mentioned by Captain Bingham that the Wu Dip Soeng Dou were used by Lin Zexus troops, they were never an official military weapon. It must have been in the 2nd half of the 19th Century that they found their way into southern Chinese Martial Arts Systems like Hung Kyun, Wing Ceon and Coi Li Fat.

Unlike regular swords and sabres the Wu Dip Soeng Dou were easy to hide under the long robes the people were wearing during the Qing Dynasty. This was quite an important fact as it was usually forbidden for common people to have acompanying weapons in the streets. Therefore it was a perfect weapon for secret societies like Hongmen/Tiandihui. And this may have been also the reason why the Wu Dip Soeng Dou were used by the Gangs in the Chinatowns of San Francisco, New York and other cities.

Shandong Literary Sage Boxing

 

 

The Legacy of Hung Gar's Wong Fei Hung

Wong Fei Hung is a giant in Chinese martial arts history. Below is an excerpt from Crane in the Tiger's Shadow blog regarding his enduring legacy. The full article may be read here. A video accompanies the article and I have included it below. Enjoy.

There are thousands of stories about Wong Fei Hung and he is probably the most portrayed hero in movies. Up to today 123 movies were made about Wong Fei Hung.  Actors like Kwan Tak Hing, Jackie Chan, Gordon Liu and Jet Li played him in many blockbusters. And of course there are Wuxia like novels about the Folk Hero.

But who was Wong Fei Hung, what do we really know about him? Actually, we don’t know as much about his life and his background as we think. The stories and legends about him which we saw in the movies are just that: stories and legends. Wong Fei Hung had also a great impact on the development of Hung Kyun, so much that we can talk about old Hung Kyun and modern Hung Kyun. This will be the second part of the article. As i will try to concentrate on facts and not on legends the article could be a bit boring for some here.  So, let’s make a step backwards and have a closer look on what we know.

Wong Kei Jing, the father of Wong Fei Hung

Wong Fei Hungs father was Wong Kei Jing. He was born between 1810 and 1820 in a village of Nanhai county in Foshan. As legends are telling us already Wong Kei Jings father Wong Taai was a Hung Kyun master and had learned directly from Luk Aa Coi who in turn was a disciple of the famous abbott of the southern Shaolin Monastery Zi Sin Sim Si. Most historians instead believe that Wong Kei Jing learned directly from Luk Aa Coi, but it seems logically to me that he first started learning from his father and later continued to learn directly from Luk Aa Coi. From Wong Kei Jing it is known that he was not only an excellent Martial Artist but also a bonesetter with his own clinic called Bou Zi Lam. It is unclear if he learned these skills from his father or from Luk Aa Coi, but we know that since then many great masters that followed Wong Kei Jing and Wong Fei Hung were also very skilled in Dit Da or Bonesetting.

Wong Kei Jing was also a member of the «Ten Tigers from Kwangtung» (Guangdong). This title was given to a group of Martial Artists that lived in Guangdong at the same time and were famous for their skills, morality, Qing resistance and helping the poor. This group although didn’t act together but some of them knew each other, were friends and exchanged their skills. To get an understanding the name can be compared with the «Four Buddha’s Warrior Attendands», four Chen Style Masters from Chenjiagou who  represent the Taijiquan from the Village best. All the stories about the Ten Tigers from Kwangtung acting together as a group are legends and fictional mostly written in Wuxia novels and Hong Kong movies. On the other side it proves that already Wong Fei Hungs father had some reputation as a Martial Artist and Bonesetter. Wong also exchanged with other Martial Artists, like Wong Yan Lam who was another Tiger from Kwangtung. From him he learned long range Lama Pai techniques and integrated them in his Hung Kyun. It is also known that he was the Martial Arts Instructor for the Black Flag Army for some time but it is unclear for how long. Wong Kei Jing passed away in 1886.

Wong Fei Hung

Wong Kei Jings son Wong Fei Hung was born in 1847. Wong Kei Jing was beginning to teach his son Martial Arts when he was a five years old child. It is said, that Wong Fei Hung learned from his father a curriculum with Single Hard Fist, Double Hard Fist, Taming the Tiger Fist, Mother and Son Double Swords, Angry Tiger Fist, Fifth Brother Eight Diagram Pole, Flying Hook, Black Tiger Fist and the famous Tiger and Crane Paired Fist. When he was thirteen years old he met Tit Kiu Saams (Leung Kwan, who was another member of the Ten Tigers of Kwangtung) disciple Lam Fuk Sing and learned from him the essentials of the Iron Wire Fist. Later he also learned the famous shadowless kick techniques from Sung Fai Tong. He also often joined his father travelling within Guangdong to share the art and work as a bonesetter. With time he learned all Dit Da skills from his father and was later famous for both, his Martial Art and Dit Da skills. Wong Fei Hung was also skilled in Lion Dance. All following generations have and had Lion Dance as a part of their curriculum.

It is said that he followed his fathers footsteps as a Martial Arts instructor of the Black Flag Army and also being one of the Ten Tigers of Kwangtung. He also seemed to be a Martial Arts Instructor of the 5th Regiment of the Guangdong Army for a while but there are not much records about this time. He also wasn’t one of the tigers, he was more the tiger after the Ten Tigers of Kwangtung. During his professional life as a Martial Arts Master and Dit Da doctor he had a high reputation which later made him a folk hero who fought injustice and helped the poor.

Wong Fei Hung was married four times. His first wife died of illness short after their marriage in 1871. 25 years later he married again. With his second wife he had two sons and two daughters. While there’s no information about his daughters available, the names of his sons were Wong Hon Lam and Wong Hon Sam. Wong Hon Lam was later killed in 1919 when he worked as a Bodyguard. In deep grief Wong Fei Hung decided not to teach his surviving sons any longer. After the passing of his 2nd wife he married again in 1902. His third wife gave birth to two more sons, Wong Hon Syu and Wong Hon Hei. His third wife also passed away early. In 1915 he finally «married» again, the 22 years old Mok Gwai Lan who was already a very good Mok Gar practitioner, her family’s legacy. As Wong Fei Hung believed that there’s a curse on every woman he was marrying, he didn’t marry her, but took her as a concubine. She outlived him for decades and died in Hong Kong at the age of ninety on  03^rd November 1982.

Wong Fei Hung’s last years of life challenged him hard. The loss of his son Wong Hon Lam in 1919 had hit him hard. In 1924, during the uprising against the National Government, his medical clinic Bou Zi Lam was destroyed and Wong Fei Hung lost everything. Saddened he fell ill and passed away half a year later on 17^th April 1925.

So far the facts. Of course, there are a lot more stories about Wong Fei Hung but they are legends and many of them were told after he passed away. As there is not so much known about his life it is in a way surprising that he became so famous. There are two main reasons why it did happen. The first reason was that he had notable disciples who became famous themselves like Lam Sai Wing or Dang Fong. As they became famous themselves, they shared their experiences with their disciples and students. The expériences became stories, the stories legends and finally they became novels and movies. The myth Wong Fei Hung was born.

The second reason is much more important from a Martial Arts point of view. There is Hung Kyun before Wong Fei Hung and there is Hung Kyun after Wong Fei Hung. The influence he had on Hung Kyun is immense. Looking back on the origins of Hung Kyun there are several stories. Most trace the origins back to Zi Sin Sim Si, the legendary abbott of the southern Shaolin Monastery that probably never existed. Others see the origins in the Tiandihui or Hongmen, a fraternal society who wanted to restore the Ming Dynasty.

According to the legends, Zi Sin Sim Si had taught his skills to a layman called Hung Hei Gun who after he left the southern Shaolin Monastery later lived in Guangzhou as a tea merchant. From then on there are two versions. The first version is that Zi Sin Sim Si had another student after Hung Hei Gun already had left the monastery called Luk Aa Coi. But as he was already old he later sent him to Hung Hei Gun to complete his studies. In other stories did Luk Aa Coi learned only from Hung Hei Gun. Luk Aa Coi taught the system to Wong Taai, but in many stories he also taught Wong Taai’s son Wong Kei Jing directly (see above). So, it depends on how you count we already have three or four Hung Kyun generations before Wong Fei Hung. But many schools are counting the generations from Wong Fei Hung. Why is that so?

 

 

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