I just wanted to hear from other CLF people about the bows in the beginig of their hand forms. In our branch “Lee Koon Hung” the older forms have 3 bows, some only 1. There are 3 main different beginings, 1-faces forwards the other 2 begin with the left side facing forward.
Just wanted to hear everybodys version of the bows, or any stories about the bows.
Maybe this will be a good thread.
I feel the bows changed throughout the times for a couple of reasons. Maybe to differentiate the schools, or forms added by different masters.
in our branch of hung sing clf under professor lau bun we mainly use only 1 bow. i believe this may have been adopted by the professor.
cheung kuen and cheh kuen usually begin in the middle of the stage, where everyother set begins at the right hand corner of the stage. moves out in a straight line moving into the bow.
in fut san hung sing choy lee fut the always do “3” bows as in 1) choy 2) lee 3)fut.
from what i have learned in fut san according to them the chan family uses the bow using the left hand open palm and the right hand in the fist. but in fut san they say jeong yim used the right hand with the open palm and the left hand with a fist.
usually anything done in 3’s represents choy lee fut. even down to little hand gestures.
our openings to our sets closely mirror fut san, but prof. lau bun added his ear mark on it.
see you.
fran
“graceful staff flies above like a dragon wiggling it’s tail-strong fist releases out like a tiger raising its head”
When starting the salute in our branch, we face forward and us the right fist with the left hand open. When finishing a form the bow sequence is tow ma long yik (stepping back into cross stance with arms spread open then bow). But our more advanced forms all have different opening sequences. I would also like to add that when I was in Hong Kong A few years ago all the CLF schools I came across only did the bow once.
Fear not the man who has learned one thousand kicks, fear the man who has practiced one kick a thousand times.
[This message was edited by alecM on 11-08-01 at 12:03 PM.]
I think the one bow is used a lot now to shorten the opening a bit. I think all the forms traditionally had the 3 bows for “Choy”, “Lee”, “Fut”.
The Lee Koon Hung branch, which according to my research is comprised of a mixture of the Cheong Hung Sing side and the Chan Hueng side uses two traditional opening sequences with plum flower and the shortened beings to ping kuen & tuet sin kuen added by sifu being the exception.
The first sequence faces forward and is seen in Sup Gee Kow Dah Kuen, Ping Chan Kuen, Ng Ying Kuen as well as weapons such as Sheung Garp Dan Kwun and Wang Tow Dang. This sequence I was told by Sifu Li Siu Hung is referred to as “Sub Gee Jong”.
The second sequence is often seen in the some of the higher level forms such as Fu Pow Kuen, Hok Ying Kuen, Fu Ying Kuen and Pa Kwa Sum Kuen were you stand with your left shoulder facing front. This sequence is referred to a the “Pa Kwa Sum Jong”.
Bak Hsing CLF- my lineage bows for all fist patterns one way: left open hand over a closed right hand fist (thumb down). For weapon’s forms, same as what Shaolin36 said if I understood him correctly.
Joe,
I had a visitor last week who trained at the Holland Plumblossom school. He showed me his Siu Sub Gee form. They do the same 3 bows, but as far as I could figure, they do it in a gwai ma stance instead of Bow stance (not that that really makes much of a difference). The opening looked similar to sub gee or 5 animals.
The rest of his form was well presented, just fairly different. Seems like they do their Sow Choys more like a hooking punch (with much more of an arc). Also thier gwa choys are more lower (maybe this is for more power). Never the less, it all still makes allot of sence, and I figure the application is still valid.
Sorry, this might have been slightly off topic, it was just interesting to note some differences in the execution of some moves between the different groups. Makes you realise CLF is such a nice style.
back to the bows…
[This message was edited by Eddie on 11-09-01 at 12:28 AM.]
The 3 bows in the loq kwai ma stance is more traditional than the bow in the bow stance. The loq kwai ma stance is close to the ground almost kneeling which is a sign of greater respect. The bow stance was likely used by later generations.
How are you my friend? I hope all is well over there. I too have seen some style do the movements you spoke of. I notice in forms that some CLF have higher stances and shorter arm movement as if shadow boxing and then some who use the form with lower stances and longer movement for more development of power, flow, etc…
CLFNole is my handsome CLF brother, and that’s what I have learned of the bows being on 1 knee. I believe we learned about the significance of(probably Spelled wrong) kneeling when you bow through Grandmaster Poon Sing.
But even in our Lee Koon Hung family there are some sifu’s who bend their arms a little, and some who don’t. There are some who swing the gwa choy low or high. It’s all good in forms. Fighting of course a different story. We learned to fight in a much different matter than the form.
That probably is another way of teachers making sure someone who learns the only the forms doesn’t really understand all the theory, who knows.
Reading my own posts makes me realize I am not a good typer or speller, time to go back to school.
I saw the tape from the Hung Sing reunion in Singapore. I noticed a lot of the performers were doing the 3 bows in “kneeling horse.” I believe the performers were mainly bak sing CLF.
The first form of our school has the bow as described in my post above. Our second form Moi Fa is the only form at our school with three bows in a kneeling or loq kwai ma. All the rest of our empty hand forms have only one bow in loq kwai ma then instead of the other two bows we do gwa choi palm strike in loq kwai ma. The actual opening hand movements at the beginning of each form are all different.
Fear not the man who has learned one thousand kicks, fear the man who has practiced one kick a thousand times.
In the beginning of the Sup Gee form where you begin facing foward, the first 2 steps with the hand movements, in your CLF styles do they represent the hands of a Shaoiln monk at prayer?
CLFNole, my KF bro has a book that describes the movements representing that. Just wanted to see if in your CLF families if that is so.
Our school teaches a 2 basic stance forms, and 3 basic fist forms before learning the CLF forms. Lie ma is very long and in Hong Kong our school teaches this form 1st and works on it for about 5-6 months.
Grandmaster Lee Koon Hung developed some basic forms for the 1st level, and more recently we have implemented 2 basic stance forms that are a little bit shorter, so the student can still train intensely but not have to wait 6 months before learning the next form.
Here is an order in which we learn for hand forms:
Siu Mui Fah (Plum Flower)
Siu Sup Gee (Tut Tsen)
Siu Ping Kuen (Peaceful Fist)
Ng Ying Kuenb (5 Animal)
So on and so forth.
Later on we teach Lie Ma and Che Kuen to students who are real students.
But still would like to hear about the last question I made.
Sow Choy
The only forms in our lineage which start as you describe is our moi fa and sup ji kow da forms. In our sup ji form we start by facing to the side with you left side to the front similar to the way sifu Tat Mau Wong starts the empty hand forms in his video’s.
Fear not the man who has learned one thousand kicks, fear the man who has practiced one kick a thousand times.
Sow Choy
We don’t have a siu sup ji or a dai sup ji just sup ji. At the beginning of the form, we do the two steps but in stead of double back fist, we use double pow choi then double spear hand.
Our ping kuen forms opening sequence (I hope I can describe it clearly) starts by facing front keeping your feet stationary and knees slightly bent turn your upper torso so your chest faces left while at the same time bringing your open palms up to chest height. Then while at the same time as you turning your upper torso to the right you do a double palm strike front and back. Then repeat again on the left side.
Fear not the man who has learned one thousand kicks, fear the man who has practiced one kick a thousand times.
So let me get this straight. The form which other lineages call Siu Sup Jee is called Tut Tsen by our lineage? Wow I did not know that.
Also, we do Che Kuen at our school, but only as a class. I don’t think anyone has individually learned it from our Sifu. I don’t think anyone at the school knows Lie Ma, Sifu said it was too boring.
I hadn’t heard that “real” students learn Che Kuen and Lie Ma, rather, my Sifu says it is kind of intense to teach to new students, so he saves it for int/adv classes. But again we only do it as a class. You might think I’m just not at high enough level to have learned but thats not the case. I just started learning the crane form to give you an idea of my level.
