I know this is a naive question but I looked on youtube and found stupid stuff, so instead I hope you can look past my ignorance and give me a straight answer.
Basically I just watched Kung Fu Panda again (I love it, and identify with Po in his quest to learn kung fu, hence my username) and it made me wonder if bear style kung fu actually exists (trivia on imdb says in the end fight he uses this style.) I know it’s ignorant but be gentle
Another one I’m curious about is duck style. I bought a DVD coz it said it starred Jet Li, but it was a ton of different people demonstrating various styles of kung fu. There was the usual shaolin stuff, tai chi of chen and Yang I think, the traditional five animal styles, but there was also duck style.. was a fairly short thing, but it’s the only place I’ve heard of it, does anyone know anything more about it?
Some say that bear was part of early 5 animals syetems.
Yaquan or duck boxing exists, but I don’t know much about it. Here’s a vid though http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Bi1xiFgn8
Thanks for the reply, was afraid I’d be torn apart for asking such a newbish question. Any idea where in the UK I could find somewhere that teaches bear and duck style, or is it only done in China? I’ve never heard of either until recently, certainly not locally.. but one can hope
The late sifu Tak-Hing Kwan or Kwan Tak - Hing published a book about his martial arts - the 10 animals styles. One of the styles is the bear style. It is in Chinese, but it shown the form of the bear style and its application in fighting.
Duck style I never heard of. There is a bear style. The main strike in bear style is of course the bear claw. To make the bear claw you make kinda a modified tiger claw/eagle claw, the difference being that the fingers are together tightly and the strike is to the side of the head (ripping the ear off) like in a swatting/raking manner. Come to think of it is is very similiar to a leopard paw except your using a diferent part of the hand to strike with (the palm side instead of the knuckles). I suppose you could use this strike to other parts of the body as well.
[QUOTE=SimonM;881039]By that logic there is only one style we should chose: “Human Style” because humans have effectively pwned all other animals. :D[/QUOTE]
For more on Bear and Duck style, see my 1999 October article The Martial Menagerie: Exotic Animal Styles of Kung Fu. Part two of that piece was in the following issue, but both bear and duck were covered in the first installment.
For the record I can’t imagine me dedicating time to duck style but I’d love to see it in person and have a try out of fun.
As for bear style I’d like to try it because I’m a big … screw euphamisms, I’m fat and I thought it might be a little more compatible with my size than something more speedy and acrobatic (not that the other animal styles are especially acrobatic but they look like you need to be fairly agile all the same)
Still sticking to wing chun, just interested in exploring other things is all.
[QUOTE=mkriii;881024]Duck style I never heard of. There is a bear style. The main strike in bear style is of course the bear claw. To make the bear claw you…[/QUOTE]
MAN! i was really hoping for a joke after that…something about pastries maybe…
Baji Quan can be considered a bear and tiger style I guess. As for duck, there’s multiple duck styles. Other than the imitative one on the Jet Li dvd (which might be more qigong than martial art… I’m not sure though), there’s also a mandarin duck style which basically looks like a chang quan style.
