Anyone get the latest Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine? It’s a special on Hung Gar. As a Hung Gar nut, I thank all you folks who put it together.
Just got my copy and loved the tribute to the Kiu Sau and Buck Sam Kong’s 12 hands article. Nice perspective.
Thanks for the props, hasayfu
Here’s the cover and table of contents for our May June 2006, on stand now.
Gene
now that’s a cool issue.
a nice balance of : History, Theory and Application.
Whats with the Wing Chun, thought it was a HG issue? (still a great article).
Think Chen can do a follow up article on the applications of the 5 element pole?
again, great issue, a template worth continuing
Thanks again for your kind words, ngokfei
The Wing Chun article was in there because we have so many Wing Chun articles in the queue. Wing Chun is the most prolific community for article submission for our magazine at this time. Since we have so many, we almost always put a Wing Chun article in. I figured it was still a southern style and still in the ballpark. The kicking theory presented there was general enough to apply to Hung Ga kicks (or any style for that matter).
As for Sifu Tony Chen, we could do an applications article but it would be really hard to shoot. Long poles are just that - long. We had a tought time squeezing his image and the pole into shot. With two people and long poles, it gets really hard to see the details because we’d have to be so far away to shoot it. I have a few other Xingyi things up my sleeve with Sifu Tony, though. After all, he is my teacher now, and you don’t know how rewarding it is for me to be able to write articles from the inside, as opposed to covering wushu or some other style I do not train in. The Xingyi long pole was somewhat related to the Xingyi Da Dao article I did in the previous issue (see the internal forum thread and the Kung Fu Tai Chi Magazine forum thread - both short).
We can only do specials when they come together and they come together organically. It’s sort of a push-pull because some specials are more successful on the newsstands than others. Hung Ga is pretty secular, so such a special might not appeal to those outside the system. But still, it was a fun issue to work on. We saw the opportunity to do a special and just went for it. I’m glad at least two of you appreciated it. 
careful ~G all this talk of long poles will get our female posters into a tizzy! 
We need more female posters…
We especially need more female posters in a tizzy.
Great Article About Wong Fei Hung
I have only read this article but it was VERY GOOD. It is pretty amazing how flashy they get it to look on screen, but I still like watching the old men doing the froms slow and showing you every stance.
Wong fei-hung theme song
is there any way you can post this article, I might call myself jethro but james wong’s version of this in once upon a time in china is my favorite song ever.
Nothing’s free
buy the magazine.
hmmmmmm
I can try can’t I?:rolleyes:
May/June issue
Gene- I am nota hung gar person- but congrats on a great issue. I recommended it
to several friends- and they bought the issue. I did too.
joy chaudhuri
on a critical note though:eek:
Aren’t you missing quite a few prominent Hung Gar Sifu’s in the line up?
YC Wong, KW Lam, etc?
common what’s the scoop, i think we prefer them over a
shaolin monk and a wushu kid;)
(on a side note, I bet that kid is really popular with the girls given what his dad can do with his “Little John”!!!
Wow, I just have to say Ilove the article. I haven’t recieved my hard copy issue yet but I’m pretty excited if the other articles are that good. Keep up the good work.
Yc & Wl
We did the Bridge Hand comparison photo spread from archived photos. Unfortunately we could access photos of Y.C. Wong and Wing Lam. We probably have them somewhere, but frankly, we haven’t done anything with either of them in a long, long time, so whatever photos we might have weren’t easily accessible. I suppose that’s a bit ironic given that Wing Lam is my old sifu, but there’s more to that story as anyone who follows it knows. :o
The monk and the wushu kid was mostly to make the point about the possible evolution of kiu sau from baduanjin to nanquan. I’m rather disappointed that no one has commented on the baduanjin theory. It opens up a huge pandora’s box if you examine that more closely.
Thanks for all the great support of this special issue everyone! It’s very gratifying. Truth be told, this is the kind of issue that I prefer to do more than the general content issues, but typically newsstand sales don’t support them as much because they are more secular. That doesn’t stop us from doing them, obviously, but it does mean that we can’t do them as often. Specials are a lot more work too. I don’t think I could handle having to do them all the time.
BTW, I had several Hung Ga wannabe writers come up to me at UC Berkeley’s tournament this weekend proposing Hung Ga articles. While we are always interested in submissions, to query an article on a subject we just covered in a special sort of day late and dollar short. Then again, it’s worse to wait for the specials like many of the Shaolin guys do. Anyways, we’ll see how it does on the newsstand. We won’t get palpable results for several months and I’m already deep into the next issue.
Ive just bought it today
A related thread
Here’s hasafu again working this issue (and we do appreciate that very much) in a discussion of Dr. Johnny Jang’s article.
I’m going to move this to our TC media forum because I think it’ll get more traffic there.
Wing Chun’s basis in body mechanics gives articles about Wing Chun the ability to enter into any magazine, even a Shaolin special. lmao. in a scientifically un defeatable manner.
i liked the HG special. who wouldn’t like to hear about Wong Fei Hong. And i enjoy knowing the meaning behind the once upon a time lyrics. It reminds me that i should work harder at trying to be a good man.
i was a bit ocnfused about the no shadow kick article though. nothing too bad but it does differ from what we say last year in KFM. no matter.
i tend to be learning more norhten stuff but southern fists are cool. Liu Chang I visited our karate school in the nineties & showed us some stuff/ i bought one of his feeding crane videos & practised the first form. major angle pounding fist.
now, Lin sifu has some southern material in the curriculum too but that’s a ways down the road for me. he’s from Taiwan, a crossroads of martial arts.
but that was definitely an enjoyable issue. i want to say, there was a disparaging letter to the editor, but take that with a grain of salt. every periodical would have variation among issues because the material is different every time. Saying that KFM is fluff compared to how it was in the past is inaccurate imo if for no other reason than variation between issues. plus, didn’t KFM used to be dojo & dojang mag? KFM made a huge step up imo lol. as far as content goes anyway.
plus the editorial staff seems to make no bones about the relation between Martial Arts Mart, Tiger Claw and KFM. most of the MA periodicals are heavily plugged with ads. or you could go pay 2 or 3x that for journal of asian martial arts… which i think is only a quarterly anyway, and which includes non-CMA.
Magazines are more supported by ads than by the circulation itself anyway aren’t they? so what difference where the ads come from…
just some props to the balance out the haters lol. keep up the good work.
props to the balance out the haters
Thanks Banjos_dad!
I actually enjoy when some one takes the time to send us criticism. It shows they care and it would be foolish for me not to listen. Now, with the forum here, where people can speak to us directly and get reaction like this letters to the editor are more scarce. So we appreciate the criticism. If you can’t take criticism, you can’t train. You can’t learn.
We did publish Dojo and Dojang but that was concurrent with our publication of Kung Fu Tai Chi. Each was quarterly and took turns alternating. Eventually, Dojo and Dojang was merged into World of Martial Arts and it became bimonthly, alternating with KFTC. We abandoned WoMA in 1999 and KFTC went monthly in 2000, but in 2001 we went back to bimonthly to spend more energy on the websites.
As for Wing Chun’s general principles, I couldn’t agree more. But I’d also agree that most styles could produce articles on general training and applications. Fighting is figthing, after all. Unfortunately most authors write from ego - they want to propound their style - so they stick the name of the style in the forefront. I can’t really blame them for that. In fact, I think it’s the tremendous diversity of styles that makes CMA so interesting. But in the case of WC, I already have several articles in the queue, and we only run one or two articles per style per issue (with the excapetion of specials). If someone was to submit a WC article now, I wouldn’t be able to run it for at least six months. We’ll probably have to do a WC special soon, just to clear the queue… :rolleyes:
Grats on the good reviews Gene.
Im gonna have to pick up one of those too…
beefs and bouquets
ok ~g you asked for it.
The issue is good. I liked the approach in your editorial at the beginning in regards to taking myths and legends with a grain of salt. This kind of thinking promoted while being a small detriment to on paper credibility, gets us past the stuff that otherwise blocks thinking process in training and moves a person towards just do the training and worry about legends and myths when the time for idle chatter is come.
I like the napoleon dynamite analysis too, and give props for the recognition of the current state of martial arts in teh US as portrayed through that movie. While it is not an entire reflection of teh situation , it does pointv a finger at a moon of a problem in martial arts propogation. I.E no one “gets it” in 8 weeks and 1 week of training is tantamount to a mere vacation that will drift with time.
Interesting note on the kiu sao. It is described as a hand gesture secret symbol. It then states how many southern traditionalist disregard the wushu version (virtually identical) as incorrect. If it’s a symbol akin to a peace sign or some other hand signal, how would it be incorrect?
Final comment is on the topic we’ve been discussing in another forum and alluding to here in another thread and that is the full page add which de facto promotes the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club.
In many versions of wu de that are held up as the philosophical principles of martial artists it is clear that one must not do unlawful acts, one must serve their country to the positive as well as other general rules about standing for what is good and what will grow and build a positive society. The Hells Angels and their Ilk is contradictory to this tone.
Where I am, the Hells represent nothing more than a criminal blight on our society with scores of murders to their name, distribution of hard drugs and controlling prostitution, extortion of legitimate businesses and in general the ruination of lives they touch. In my opinion, and likely in the opinions of many who have even a small understanding of the nature of such an organization, it is fairly innappropriate that they should be held up as something they are not. They are not a peaceful group of tai chi practicing individuals. They do not respect the laws of the land and they do not respect the social contract. they are in fact the living contrary to the true martial artist.
Now you could put the yin yang spin on it I suppose, but that still wont hold water. That would be an attempt at making a silk purse from a sows ear.
As a martial artist and on a personal note, as a person who has made positive strides in a negative life through kungfu practice, It is in the magazines best interest to not promote this gang and it’s lifestyle.