Weng chun pt 2
- Thread starter wckf92
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Martial D
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Huh.
It's like Wing Chun, but more radically different than most. Time to go down the reading rabbit hole.
The fire and water is similar to how we were taught the five elements... I would imagine these sorts of detailed interviews are why he had a falling out with Tang Yik's nephew Sifu Michael Tang
That was long before these interviews! But it was not long after Sunny So became closely associated with Sifu Sergio.
Ok. Finally watched it!
To clarify....at the beginning when he is talking about the forms: Sap Yut Sau, Sheung Keung, and Jong Kuen are the empty hand forms. "Sap Yut Sau" means "11 sections hands" because there are 11 sections in the form. This is a more modern nickname. Originally it was just called "Weng Chun Kuen" because it was the original core empty hand form. This is what he shows some of at the mid-point of the video. It is essentially to Weng Chun what Siu Lim Tao is to Wing Chun. Jong Kuen means "dummy fist" and was an out-growth of the dummy form. It was essentially taking the main movements of the dummy and adding footwork to them. Sheung Keung was added even later. The Sap Yut Sau form has no real footwork. So the idea was to take the major movements and concepts from that form and add a lot of footwork and angling to come up with the Sheung Keung form, just was as done for the Jong Kuen form. There were two dummy forms. One was taught by Fung Siu Ching and the other was taught to Tang Suen in Tang Village. They are similar but not exactly the same. At the Dai Duk Lan they chose to practice the Fung Siu Ching version. Whether you call one the "heaven" form and the other the "human" form is rather arbitrary.
The original "ancestral" version of Weng Chun was likely just the "11 section hands" form that had a two-man Chi Sau drill to go with each section, the dummy form, and the pole form. The rest was added over time to end up with Tang Yik Weng Chun. Then at the Dai Duk Lan in Hong Kong, a lot of things were "mixed and matched".
Practicing the empty hand forms with 4 different energies....earth, fire, wind, and water is definitely a "thing." "Earth" is rooted solid strength. "Fire" is fast and explosive....Fa Jing. "Water" is soft, flowing, and evasive. "Wind" is a little less defined and less specific. Doing the forms with a "wind" or "water" energy is what earned Tang Yik Weng Chun the label of "southern Tai Chi" in some circles. Notice that he also mentioned the 4 energies that are usually associated with the Hakka arts....sink, rise, spit and swallow. This is something I have mentioned before.
The 5th element is "ether" or "space" or "emptiness." This one isn't really used in Tang Yik Weng Chun. This version of the 5 elements comes originally from ancient Greek philosophy, passed to Buddhism, became part of Ayurvedic and Tibetan medicine. Note that this is diffferent from the 5 element system used in Traditional Chinese Medicine, which is Earth, Metal, Water, Wind, and Wood.
Sunny So also studies White Crane with Lee Kong and has studied Okinawan Karate. At one point he was working on his own system that would combine common elements from Weng Chun, White Crane, and Okinawan Karate. But I haven't heard anything about that in a long time, so he may have given up on that project!
