Hung Style 1969-1976

In 1969 I moved to Toronto to study Computer Science at the University of Toronto. For martial arts I was a green belt in Karate and didn’t progress from there because of knee injury that stopped my progress in this art. I met a Chinese student at the University by the name of Albert Yee and we decided to look at every single school of martial art in Toronto to find the best Kung Fu school for us, Eventually he heard from a neighbor that there was a very good school that taught the Hung style of Kung Fu in Chinatown. So my friend Albert checked it out and reported back to me that there was this 13 year old kid who was the fastest human being he had even seen in his life. So we asked if we could join and they accepted us. Five years later Albert also started to study Tai Chi under a very high level master and that got me interested in Tai Chi as well.

When I joined there were about 10 or 11 students. All of them were super good. I was totally impressed with the speed, power and beauty of form. These students trained 5 days a week with five hour classes. I never achieved their level in my martial arts but it left a lasting impression in my mind for what quality martial arts really means.

Hung style emphasized a very strongly rooted but also very mobile stances combined with powerful hits and arms of steel. There was maybe one block and all the rest were high seed attacks. This was an attacking art that people practiced in the China towns in various cities to protect the Chinese against the evil white people.

For Hung style, if you could not stand in a low Hung style stance for 20 to 30 minutes then they would not bother teaching you anything else. They would consider anything you do with your hands as just garbage powerless movements. So the secret was all in the leg work. Definitely it felt like torture with our legs shaking a lot even after just a few minutes. For the seniors, it was no problem.

One day a student from the Philippines by the name of Jopit Laraya joined our club. He was already advanced in his Hung style. He said his Master in the Philippines was 87 years old and regularly sparred with everyone of his students. His students would compete regularly with martial artists of all kinds and would always dominate the competitions. He said his Master taught both Hung style and at the other end of the spectrum, also Tai Chi. So he was a Master of both the hard and the soft although each art had elements of both.

Jopit said that his Master would have many specialty drills. For example, he would have a handful of cork bits that he threw up into the air and then using very rapid pecking type of hits from the Hung style Crane form would catch every one of those bits before they hit the ground. Another thing this Master did was to have a marble somehow attacked to a string that he swung around in all kinds of circular patterns so that he could train his eyes to cope with high speed attacks. Also he said there was a barrel full of sand that maybe up to your knee level. What you would do is get into a good low horse stance, then plunge your spear hand to the bottom of the barrel then try to grab a handful off sand and pull it out and then repeat this over and over. sounded like fun to me.

In 1975, I moved to Vancouver for work. I looked fora Hung style school but couldn’t find one. So inspired by my friend’s Tai Chi teacher in Toronto, I found a high level Master of Tai Chi by the name of Raymond Chung. I continued wit both Hung style and Tai Chi , teaching both for my lunch time exercise to a small number of students. I also found Wing Chun teacher by the name of Patrick Chow soon after that.

One day an older Chinese gentleman who was maybe about 75 years old came to view my Hung style Kung Fu class. We did the static stance , then moved our horse stances all over the floor, then added various hand techniques and kicks to the movements and then did various forms. The older gentleman said he trained Hung style a lot when he was young and my class format was exactly how he trained in his youth 50 years before. So it looked like what I was taught was very good.

He said there was a nurse that was just killed in Toronto and that bothered him a lot. So each day he would walk various streets of Toronto somehow looking for who did that. I have no idea how he could. He said he always carried salt in his pockets so that he could throw that into someone’s eyes should the need arise.

Another time I was in a Chinese bookstore looking at some pictures in a Chinese book about Wing Chun. Anther older gentleman noticed my interest in Wing Chun and told me that he had practice Wing Chun a lot in China. I didn’t know much about Wing Chun at the time. He said that there were two kinds of Wing Chun and that one came from the lady by the name of Wing Chun and the other came from her husband.He said the male and female versions of practicing the arts were different with each gender using their own special characteristics, strengths and weaknesses to mold Wing Chun to their capabilities. He showed me various things which I wish I could remember but I was new to the art and so what he told me, didn’t stick.

Unfortunately my training in Hung style was too short. I only scratched the surface of the art to learn just a few empty hand forms and a couple of weapons forms. My Hung style teachers would teach whatever forms fit the students physical and mental characteristics. Later the student would learn the rest of the forms in case they wanted to teach and to round out their knowledge of the art. So Crane style wold be suitable for people with long arms. Tiger styles would be more suitable for shorter stronger people. Long weapons would be for taller people and short weapons like he Butterfly knives would be for shorter people. And so it went.