correct dates

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Southern Chinese Kung Fu
1

i’ll let joseph tell the history, and allow you fools to follow him. but when the real truth comes out, who will be the last one laughing? the chan clan once again makes a mistake, according to chan family masters sam and phil ng, chan heung was born in 1806 and died in 1881. i have just re-verified what i thought and wasn’t chan heung dead in 1875?

wow, at least the hung sing people are consistent with our history? is there or isn’t there a green grass monk? the chan family says yes now! i thought chan yiu chi wrote the history of clf but that website says chan heung wrote down the history himself?! which is true? dfw says hung sing opened in 1848 but the current fshsk says 1851. well, who can answer that one? first its lung gee choy now its chan dik someone…

oh yeah, chan yuen woo taught hung ga, or was it fut ga, oh im so confused with the way the chan family mixes up their stories!!!

as i have said, i’ll let you fools follow joseph, and go for what i know. also joseph, email me a copy of the pages of this book you mentioned, prove its validity. you can email me on our website at hungsing.com.

bunch of fools!

2

i am perplexed with all these arguments.

feel free to have them of course, as this is a public forum and a forum’s purpose is exactly that, to tell your story, that is.

But if the Kung Fu is good, isn’t that what really matters?
I can’t lay claim to my sifu’s Kungfu, I only have my own.

I don’t have his skill, I have mine. My family history is not same as his, etc etc etc.

Is not all the training worth something if it manifests as an effective fighting art in the practitioner?

Don’t the Chinese have an entirely different calendar?

I just don’t get this guys, you are arguing about people who have been dead a long time and you could be taking an opportunity to make a friend with a common foundation style interest and practice.

Having said that, I’ll leave you to it.

peace

3

I just don’t get this guys, you are arguing about people who have been dead a long time and you could be taking an opportunity to make a friend with a common foundation style interest and practice.

Kung Lek,

For most part this is the case. It is the few among the many that choose to stir up **** on this forum. Frank IS 9 times out of 10 the instigator of any discord.

4

Frank,

You are confused like most people because there is not enough serious research done on the history of CLF in the west. The only difference is that you open your big mouth before you know the facts, thus causing a lot of arguments amongst us brothers and sisters. If you allow me, I will try to give you my 2 cents worth on dates.

  1. When it comes to Chan Heung¡¦s life, we should consider what Chan Yiu-Chi has to say first, after all he is Chan Heung¡¦s grandson and why should he lied about his grandfather? He would not have perceived the contraversy we are having today. The date given was that he was born in 1806 and died in 1875. They are so confident about this they put it on a commemorative plaque made of granite in front of the Ancestral Hall in King Mui village for everyone to see. I wrote it down the last time I was there. It said he was born on the 10th day of the seventh moon in the 11th. Year of the reign of the Qing Emperor Jia Qing, making it 1806 and died on the 20th. Day of the eighth moon in the first year of the reign of the Qing Emperor Guangxu, making it 1875. Other people who has less access to the family documents said at various time that he was born 8 years later at 1814 and even 10 years later at 1816. The tablet in King Mui said he lived to 70 years, so your statement that Chan Heung died in 1875 was more correct than Sam and Phil Ng¡¦s date of 1881. Tha date 1806 - 1875 was confirmed by Xinhui Yuanshi or the County Record of Xinhui.

  2. Was there a Green Grass Monk? Yes there was a GGM and he was the same person as Choy Fook. Choy Fook was his given name at birth whereas Ching Cho or Green Grass was his Buddhist name when he entered the Monastery. ¡§Rotten Head¡¨ was his nickname. Jeong Yim had only one teacher and he was Chan Heung. If he had studied with some one else for another 8 years and made up the kung fu himself, then the Hung Sing he taught would have been very different to other branches, but in real life that is not the case, we do much the same thing and use much the same terminology.

  3. Chan Yiu-Chi did not write the entire CLF history, he re-edited and expanded the family history and he said so in the title page of the manuscript. If you look carefully at the page that was posted up in clfma.com earlier this year. In Chinese it said clearly ¡§Chun Ding¡¨ or re-edited by Chan Yiu-Chi. The information he put down in writing would have came from his grandfather Chan Heung and his father Chan Koon-Pak. Whether they were in written form or an oral tradition or a mixture of both, no one knows for sure.

  4. The Futsan Gwoon was first open in about 1848-49 by Chen Dian-Huan. Chan Heung sent him there from Xinhui. When he went blind, Jeong Yim took over in 1851 and used the name Hung Sing meaning Great Victory (Hung written with the radicals river + bird). So both dfw and fshsk are correct.

  5. Chan Yuen Woo taught fut gar kuen, meaning martial arts done by the Buddhist monks. Since the Shaolin Temple also heavily influenced hung kuen, some people said he taught hung gar as well, meaning martial arts done by people from the Hung Mun. These names are not the name of a style or a school as we know today, they were just names indicating the type of practitioners they represented. I have also heard he taught hung fut, meaning it was a system of martial arts influenced both by the Hung Mun and the Shaolin Temple, which amounted to much the same thing ¡V kung fu came out from the Buddhist temples and transmitted by the monks as different to being transmitted by the ordinary folks.

Sorry, but I will not email you a copy of the pages of the book but will try to post them on the net. If you are in speaking term with Futsan daily, then they should be able to get hold of a copy for you. It is a standard textbook for most Wushu teaching institutions in Guangdong province.

There is no need to call us a bunch of fools, just stick with the dates and facts and we will get along well like one big happy family. :smiley:

You are not a bad guy Frank, I know you don’t mean it.

JosephX

5

Kung Lek,

Originally posted by Kung Lek
i am perplexed with all these arguments.

I gave an explanation from my perspective earlier, other people may have their reasons.

"I guest it all boiled down to Confucian ethics and the idea of respecting and upholding your tradition and ancestry. Fidelial piety is very strong in Chinese culture and knowing the source of the water you are drinking from is a also very strong in CMA tradition.

To have someone telling you that the founder of your system is no longer the real founder, but in fact one of his disciples is now considered the new founder by decreed, is quite an insult to many people. It is a bit like saying your great-great grandfather is no longer your great-great grandfather but someone else was and you are now an offspring of a line of ba$tards.

We know it is nothing much to worry about if you are skilful and confident of what you are doing, but most of us are insecure and some of us just want to know the truth for truth sake, hence the motivation for endless debates, especially when some people started to get personal.

Stay away from all this if you don’t think it is worth the trouble. The truth of the matter is that we are having fun and all this is making us learning more about our history and about human nature. "

Just the same, I hope it will run out of its steam soon. Imagine all that time wasted I could have used to work on my Gwa Sow Chap.

JosephX :smiley:

6

It’s also worth remembering that during all this no-one has once said that their kung fu is better than anyone elses (except Frank McCarthy, of course, but he needs to big himself up all the time. Some sort of inferiority complex happening there I’d wager).

Everyone in the debate has always agreed that we all do CLF, we all have the same core and we all are brothers and sisters in CLF. That, however, does not stop us from defending the history as it was passed down and also looking for the truth.

However good our kung fu, all of us, I won’t have one branch or one loudmouth try to change history or tell us that Chan Heung is not our Founder. To suggest that our history is not important, Kung Lek, is rather disappointing, coming from someone like you. It is important.

7

Serpent,

You have pinpointed the sore spot. To say Chan Heung was not the founder of CLF would have put everyone who can relate himself or herself to the Chen Family out on a limb, and that would mean virtually all of us. Even Tarm Sarm studied with Chan Koon-Pak for a while.

The silly thing was that they based their whole argument on Ching Cho who was in fact Choy Fook. If there was a Ching Cho, then he would have left at least a tiny bit of footprint of himself behind even though he may be a revolutionary hiding from the government of the day. The reality is there is no historical evidence that he ever existed as a separate person. If he taught Jeong Yim for 8 years in the mountain, surely he would have some sihengdai and names and events left to tell his disciples. None of Jeong Yim¡¦s disciples ever mentioned Ching Cho or what he has taught that was different to other branch of CLF.

Ching Cho¡¦s name was not mentioned until the early 1970s in Hong Kong and Chan Yiu-Chi died in 1965 in Guangzhou but did most of his writings in the 40s and 50s, so there no way he would have made it up to say Ching Cho was in fact Choy Fook. Besides if you talk to the old timers in their 70s and 80s in China, they will tell you straight out Ching Cho was Choy Fook and Jeong Yim was definitely Chan Heung¡¦s disciple and he found Futsan Hung Sing but not the CLF system, that honor belongs to Chan Heung.

Historically, there was a break down of communication of at least 30 - 40 years difference between the CLF practitioners who stayed in China and the ones who went overseas after the Communist takeover. China did not really open up until the late 70s and early 80s. During that period many misunderstandings took place. We, as the new generation who is able to travel at will to and from Mainland China now, have the responsibility to re-address these misunderstandings and keep our system and our tradition strong.

We can all rally under Chan Heung and not using him and Ching Cho to bash each other to death like some people are trying to do now. Jeong Yim was a loyal and outstanding CLF master, he sacrificed his life to CLF, to portrait him as someone who tried to take the honour and glory from his teacher would have done him gross injustice.

JosephX.

8

Re: correct dates

Frank,

My father and I have as much to do with Sifu Chen Yong-Fa as we do with you - absolutely nothing except that we all claim to practice Choy Lay Fut. We are not anal about history and have listed on our website a version of the history that was passed down by my Si-gung, To Hon Cheung. JosephX and yourself might be correct about the dates, as we had not paid as much attention to exact dates as we do our training. It is our belief that Chan Heung founded Choy Lay Fut. You might believe otherwise (we really don’t care), but please do not disrespect us on a public forum. I for one am not at all interested in this debate.

I will post an excerpt from the introduction of the Choy Lay Fut history section from our website. Hopefully it will clarify our position in regards to this argument.

“The inconsistencies of the stories told of Choy Lay Fut’s origins by practitioners of different lineages, often ignite debates that cloud the more important technical and conceptual aspects of this fighting method. As the methods and contents of today’s Choy Lay Fut must have evolved and changed from its original state, it is more important to focus upon why Choy Lay Fut works and how to put its principles to work for today’s practitioners. Even as we embark to discuss Choy lay Fut’s historical origins, it is important to keep in mind that no matter how the Choy Lay Fut method came to be, the method as it exists today is by far more important to the practitioner than the Choy lay Fut that had existed in the centuries pasted.”

-Philip Ng

Originally posted by yik-wah-tik
[B]i’ll let joseph tell the history, and allow you fools to follow him. but when the real truth comes out, who will be the last one laughing? the chan clan once again makes a mistake, according to chan family masters sam and phil ng, chan heung was born in 1806 and died in 1881. i have just re-verified what i thought and wasn’t chan heung dead in 1875?

wow, at least the hung sing people are consistent with our history? is there or isn’t there a green grass monk? the chan family says yes now! i thought chan yiu chi wrote the history of clf but that website says chan heung wrote down the history himself?! which is true? dfw says hung sing opened in 1848 but the current fshsk says 1851. well, who can answer that one? first its lung gee choy now its chan dik someone…

oh yeah, chan yuen woo taught hung ga, or was it fut ga, oh im so confused with the way the chan family mixes up their stories!!!

as i have said, i’ll let you fools follow joseph, and go for what i know. also joseph, email me a copy of the pages of this book you mentioned, prove its validity. you can email me on our website at hungsing.com.

bunch of fools! [/B]

9

the truth is when you die and meet all these people. you can verify who was and is and who was made up.

the people claiming linage to make money should also take with them the money they made if they can, also to show how foolish arguement like this is or someone’s eagle to prove their own point.