Give a man a fish vs teach a man to fish

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Northern Praying Mantis
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MantisifuFW said…

"I have pretty much finished the first in a series of books to teach reading Quan Pu, (Kuen Po in Cantonese), and the language of WHF’s books. It too will go on sale at the MQ website around the first of the year if all goes well.

Wong’s book devotes itself to LKY’s history the Qingwu and development of curriculum then moves to WHF’s work then gives a brief biography of WHF as well as some nice appendicies on iron palm, hand training and such. As far as I can tell it is a well researched and objective recounting of the development of LKY Mantis. For those who practice HK Tanglang it is the best scholarly reference available today. Hence my efforts to get it for MQ to offer.

I hope to continue to write books to teach exclusively the reading of Martial Chinese from Quanpu to movement discourse to technical and theoritical material. Give a man a fish vs teach a man to fish as it were…

In the books we will use actual boxing manuals available to practitioners and eventually, with permission, exerpts from books such as this one by Wong.

IN the meantime we will continue to search out books of this kind of quality to offer on our website. Got a few others in my sights right now…
Steve Cottrell"

[end]

Greetings Sifu Cottrell,

If I understand correctly, you are writing a book that will allow those of us who do not read Chinese to translate the written material in our WHF books (from the set of 16) to English?

As a student of NPM I will for the first time be able to read for myself what WHF had to say about his kung-fu.

For those of us in the WHF line, the publication of this kind of book cannot be considered as anything other than a pivotal event.

Sifu Cottrell, do I understand correctly? Are you about to publish a book that I can use to translate my WHF kuen po (from the set of 16) from Chinese to English?

If so when and where do I line up to get my copies?

Best regards,
UM.

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Ursa, when do you plan on coming down?, Lets get together!

Yes from reading previous posts Sifu Cottrell has been working on this for a long time, I cant wait, cause like yourself I have the I book set and cant read any of it!

Skard1

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WHF Books

Ursa Major,

This book will focus exclusively on the reading of Tanglang Quanpu, the written records of the movements of every form maintained by every line of traditional Tanglang.

In the case of the WHF tradition, it has been preserved through the writings of WHF in his books, 16 of which are still publicly available.

In the case of the CCM tradition, it has been preserved through the writings of Lam Wing Kit. In June of 1998, Sifu Lam Wing Kit published, in Chinese, the entire corpus of Chu Chi Man’s curriculum of empty hand sets. It is still available online and is one of the best references for that line as he preserved the CCM curriculum without omission or change as a historian.

Both of these traditions use the same language in their Quanpu, the same terms for movements and the same notation method.

For this reason, I focused on the Quanpu so that instructors of the art of both families could learn to read the references available to their lines.

Each of WHF books begin with the numbering of the posture and the name of the posture in precise terms. This is what the first book covers.

In the case of WHF the next section of each page is a discription of how the movement is to be performed; that is how the hand and feet move to acheive the posture.

Finally the third section gives anl analysis of why the technique is done that way, the application.

In the case of WHF’s works it is said simultaniously that there is much information in them and that there are errors in them. I have found misprints and errors scattered about but I will add that if you can read them and know his Tanglang, you will recognize the few, minor errors immediately and the ability to read both his 16 books and the one just published is well worth it for the HK tanglang practitioner.

There is more to say but I must get back to teaching tonight and I have a visiting instructor. I will give some more information on the book soon. I will write again soon.

Thank you for your kind comments,

Steve Cottrell

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Structure of the Book

UM,

I have been a student of language (Far East and Middle East) for many years so I decided I would try to make a book like I wished they had made for me back in the day.

The book is about 230 pages long. It has:

  1. a brief history of each form being covered,
  2. vocabulary lists for each form with definitions,
  3. discussion of what the term means in Tanglang usage,
  4. how to use a Chinese Dictionary both to find the term being studied and new ones,
  5. exercises to develop proficency
  6. tests using actual Tanglang Quanpu (with answers)
  7. Chinese numbering system
  8. Quanpu notation theory
  9. Flashcards for 180 different simple and complex Chinese Tanglang terms, (there are more terms than this in the text but these give the ability to understand all others in the book). This may not seem like a lot but remember how often movements are reused in forms if not complete sequences repeated. Hence the terms give you a LOT of information in reading Tanglang Quanpu.

A CD with a native Chinese speaker with a degree in Mandarin from Beijing Univ pronouncing the terms covered in the text.

An added application for the book is for those practicing both Eagle Claw and Qingwu Changquan because they used the same notation system and a lot of the same terms.

For the new Chinese language student of either Meihua or Taiji Tanglang there is about 9/10 or more that is applicable directly and the rest is so close that it would be no problem to make the transistion in terms. Originally I was going to have a Meihua Quanpu for work in the book but that fell through.

The book was written with the person who has never studied Chinese in mind. It starts from gound zero linguistically but assumes that you do study Tanglang. It is intended for self study but for that reason would be great for a class environment.

Anyway that about it. coming soon to a website near you…

Thanks for your interest. When I have it ready I will let you guys know,

Steve Cottrell

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MantisifuFW

I would like to thank you for all your efforts. The Mantis Community World Wide appreciates your true diligence, and we all will be the better for it. Many of us are interested in your book, so bring it on!

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Outstanding!:cool:

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Every little bit helps…

Yu Shan and El Tejon,

Thanks for your encouragement! It means a great deal to me, rest assured.

Sincerely,

Steve Cottrell

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Books/Translations

Hi MantissifuFW,

I am extremely glad to hear about your book project - congratulations!
In terms of romanisation, will it be Pinyin or?

On a side note, I have half completed a translation of Mr. Huang’s (WHF) Tanglang quanpu (Praying mantis boxing manual - 1953). Initially the project was for a select few PM practitioners. However, if an appropriate method can be found - I’ll make it available to others too.

Best wishes,

Tanglang-UK

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looking forward to it!!

good books with chinese to english translations aren’t too hard to find, but one that MA language is gold for many…

cheers …

bl

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Greetings from The U.S.

Tanglang U.K.,

Pinyin is used in the book. Though I was more familar with and love Wade Giles romanization and actually think it is easier for Westerners to use, Pinyin has, without doubt, taken the day with most electronic media all using it for coding purposes. Therefore it is best for the new student to go ahead and learn the Pinyin and have the resources of computerized dictionaries, language learning programs and the vast majority of modern language texts at their disposal.

However, the traditional characters are used throughout the book also. My goal is for students to be able to read Quanpu and as most are older texts the student is more likely to encounter traditional characters. As I have stated above, eventually I will write three or four texts to cover reading the quanpu, then the movement sections of the book, then one on the application sections and then perhaps a book that will focus on reading theoretical Tanglang material using the classical chinese grammar.

None of this will take the place of formal education in Chinese and the classics. However, it will give the instructor or student a firm grasp of martial Chinese by studying at their own pace, on their own as they enjoy training in Tanglang.

Blooming Lotus, thank you for your encouragement. We are just making the final Chinese edit changes and will have the native speaker do the CD in a couple of weeks. I am still shooting for November for the public availability. I will announce it here when we do.

Tanglang-UK, it is a lot of work to translate the Quanpu for WHF’s corpus, are you a WHF lineage practitioner or do you study his notes for research purposes?

Great to have you on board, by the way,

Steve Cottrell

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extremely cool :smiley: :cool: …

please do advertise though, on as bigger scale as you can afford…
I really don’t know of such a resource, and many a time , western ma folk run into a dead - end not being able to translate…

you’re book 'll directly or indirectly, benifit many an maer for time to come… imagine if we could find info for ourselves ( how novel :wink: :P) …

maybe register on a google available site , and get it out there. you’ll adavance many an ma’er you’ll never hear of…

thx from all …

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Excellent!

Mr. Cottrell - Congratulations on your project! looking forward to it…
My book is being translated for some descendants of LGY. No, I am not a WHF practitioner but, have had studied a little in the past. The book ‘Tanglang quan pu’ was published by the Hong Kong Jing wu hui. It was Mr.Huang’s fourth book and contains stances, stepping methods, punching and palming methods aalong with diagrams of the above. The second half of the book deals with his qiuan pu. It is, a little different to that which is found in the more popular Yih Mei publication ‘Cha chui tanglang quan pu he bian’. In that it contains the Zhan ma dao pu, Chun qiu da dao pu etc..

Wishing you every sucess,

Tanglang-UK

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I hear you!

Tanglang-UK

Excellent! For my part, thank you for making the information available for those interested! Until more sifu can read Chinese, it is generous and admirable for those who can to make the information accessable in order to better the art.

My copy of the book is an old Quanpu book that predates the newer Yimei publications by many years. The book itself has no pub date. It has the forms you mention. The hand and foot techniques are in another book. Your discription of the book you have is very interesting!

My sifu, Brendan Lai, was kind enough to make a very old set of books available to me. The books, which he told me once belonged to Wong Hon Fun, has sets not in the newer publications from 1968. Also there is a medical edition, martial theory edition and Tanglang theory edition and fighting theory editions.

One day, it is my intent to make all these available in their original format. I hope that people like you will be able to translate them for others so that the work of Wong Hon Fun can be appreciated by future generations.

Again it is good to meet a fellow traveler. I appreciate your works and wish you the best in the future. If I may be of assistance please do not hesistate to contact me.

Sincerely,

Steve Cottrell