The Gung Fu Form

By Vincent Yu

At the very heart of Gung Fu are the forms, the intricate movements and postures and patterns and shapes which make Gung Fu such a character within the classification of fighting arts. Though most of the classical arts have forms or patterns or katas (the terminology shifts with the system but they point to a general notion), the reasoning behind the actual practicing of forms takes on different meanings for different people. A study of the Gung Fu form might seem a bit redundant to the ardent practitioner. But to NOT at least briefly analyze this integral part of the system would do the art form as a whole an extreme injustice. Many of the criticisms leveled at TCMA (substitute any classical art for TCMA) seems to revolve around the extreme focus on learning forms. They even have a derogatory label for individuals who seem primarily keen on learning forms:Forms Collector. It sounds exactly like what it denotes; an individual who never actually studies the forms, but simply learns enough to copy the general shape, leaving at that, then quickly moving onto the next one to copy. There is no rhyme or reason to this want, save a pathological need to know as many as possible and perhaps inflate their self-worth with shallow demonstrations. But more on that later. Now allow me to progress into the analysis of the Gung Fu forms.

Bruce Lee takes after his Sifu, Yip man

By Derrick Ho

In order to use the Wing Chun, you would have to learn the whole system to understand it. (Siu lim tao, chum kiu, biu jee, mok yang jong, luk dim book gwun, and butterfly knives). If you understand everything, then you become a very skilled person. But you would NEED everything. This would not be a problem in a traditional world cause the student would merely stay with the Sifu and live with him and basically be a family with him. In that way, as long as the master doesn't die (before he has finished teaching) the wing chun skill would not be lost in translation and it would have an almost perfect transition to the next generation.

But

Written Words Preserve The Wing Chun Stance

By Derrick Ho

Yee Gee Kim Yeung Ma is the stance that wing chun people use. My Sifu just calls it the Siu Lim Tao Ma. Although it isn’t the right name for it, it still describes the same thing.

The Wing Chun community is very large a diverse and depending on your lineage, there are slight variations of the stance. You can argue and maybe even prove that your doing it right by testing like a scientist. Maybe it will work, maybe it will not. However, I discovered a video talking about the wing chun stance and it described the original stance by analyzing the characters used to name the stance.

The Take home Message from this video, at least for me, was that the chinese character holds secrets. These secrets are there to preserve and keep things original and to prevent deviation from the intended meaning.

Remember when you were a kid in Elementary and you played a game of telephone? What happened when the message finally came to an end? Most likely, the message would not even be close to to what the original message was. However, if they just sent a msg written down on paper, there is almost no chance that words will change.

The “Yeung” character used for the Wing chun stance is a homophone. Now when it is said out loud ppl may not distinguish the difference between “yeung” as in “goat” or “yang” as in yin and Yang. Because of this confusion, the meaning would change.

However since, the chinese character offers a more complete description, I believe that the secrets, hidden meaning, and the ORGINAL meanings are all in the Character. These things are implicit and would take careful study to notice these things.

This makes me think that our ancestors were very careful about how they would name something.

For those who are reading this I would like you to find a chinese character that describes something. Look at the Character and ask yourself why your ancestors decided to write the character in that way. Ask yourself what this character implies and what this character looks similar to.

Let me know in the comments what you discovered.

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