Too old for dynamic tension?

[yak sao]

this is five ancestor and i think is the closest to the performance of Goju-ryu

This first form is very similar to the form I had learned.
I assume Hakka origins as it has the characteristic triangular footwork etc.
Also, a stick form I had learned was known as the Northern Beggar's stick. There were many other indicators from the research I had done but that was 25+ years ago and is all water under the bridge.

 

[Xue Sheng]

This first form is very similar to the form I had learned.
I assume Hakka origins as it has the characteristic triangular footwork etc.
Also, a stick form I had learned was known as the Northern Beggar's stick. There were many other indicators from the research I had done but that was 25+ years ago and is all water under the bridge.

Interesting footwork

 

[VPT]

going off memory i thought the Hakka people were a group that moved into the Fujian area from the north. bringing their more northern martial arts into that area. the small group had several splinter arts evolve over the years thus making most of the arts in the area all related, but would have at least come from a common ancestor. different names would have been adopted along the way. as i understand it many took names of other more famous arts like "white crane" because those other arts were so well known. my impression was that the area was so dense in different lineages that it becomes a tangled mess of mixed lineages and arts.
is this incorrect then?

There is a website dedicted to Hakka Kungfu: HAKKA KUNG FU 客家功夫 If you look at the teachers there, they are mostly all Hong Kong and Guangdong based. Also my friend does not consider Fujian arts as being Hakka. He's met up with Lee Kong of Hong Kong White Crane fame and did not explicitly mention White Crane as being Hakka.

The majority of Hakka people inhabit the East River area of Guangdong. This is at least where Bak Mei, Lung Ying, Lei Gaa and Lam Gaa come from. Also Meixian, titled the "Hakka Capital of the World", is in this area. The main homeland of the Hakka people in Fujian is Longyan. Yongchun county, the "home of White Crane" is actually in Quanzhou, a different city and linguistic area (Southern Min and its dialects). Even Yongtai county, a mountainous area famous for its many different styles of kungfu is in the eastern part of the province (nowadays administratively under Fuzhou), and they are "Sanzhan based" as well and express similar body language.

This is merely a hunch, but the claimed Northern origins of Hakka kungfu seems like a rhetorical tool of establishing cultural prestige. It is known that the Guoshu movement looked down on the "primitive" Southern styles of fighting, trying to push the privilege of Northern styles.

It has to be admitted, though, that some of the family-based Hakka styles do have similarities in the postures as with some Fujian styles. But then again, same can be seen in some Zhejiang and even Jiangxi styles.