90 Year Old Practitioner

[Bob]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBlvkVT_HLk

[dspyrido]

90 years? Phenomenal.

[Doc Stier]

+1. Respect!

[wiesiek]

[jonathan.bluestein]

Same teacher from the following well-known video:




and also:

[nicklinjm]

Wow, if I can move even half as well as this guy at 90 I will be more than happy!!

Testament that so called 'external' kungfu can be equally as good for health preservation as internal CMA

[Bao]

Testament that so called 'external' kungfu can be equally as good for health preservation as internal CMA

Hung gar is originally an "internal" art. The last form is the original system, the Iron thread, and it's still an internal form. Everything else, all other forms and all of the external bits of the practice was added to cheat money from people.

[Bhassler]

Hung gar is originally an "internal" art.

Everybody says that about the arts they like-- baji, white crane, shaolin, it doesn't matter.

Everything else, all other forms and all of the external bits of the practice The whole internal/external distinction was added to cheat money from people.

Fixed!

[Bao]

Hung gar is originally an "internal" art.

Everybody says that about the arts they like-- baji, white crane, shaolin, it doesn't matter.

What people says doesn't matter. How movements or a method is performed is what matters.

[Bhassler]

Amen, brother.

[TeaSerpent]

Yang Deyou is not a Hung Gar guy.
Neither is he Leung Daiyau, who is a Hung Gar guy, although Hung Gar from the old Lower Four Prefecture region which is a different animal from Foshan Hung Gar and does not do the same forms at all.
Yang Deyou practices Nan Shaolin Tiangang Men. There are a few branches but they claim origins from a famous Song dynasty geomancer from Fujian via the Southern Shaolin temple.
They have some rather esoteric bric a brac in their system which they claim comes from the Song geomancy lineage.
His teacher taught free fighting methods for a while at Nanjing which is probably where he picked up the Hung Gar form he does in the second video. But they have their own Taming Tiger Luohan set and associated methods which have some similarity to Hung Gar, actually a few styles in Fujian do.
He was known for having learned an extremely large amount of forms from styles from all over China.
But the first video, taken when he was 92 is stuff from the actual Nan Shaolin Tian Gang Men school. The term Sheng Shou in the name of the set is both a reference to masterful or skillful methods and to one of the titles of the Song geomancer.
He is dead now but lived to over 100, there is another video of him on youtube which shows him doing single hand pushups at 98.
There is another major line of Nan Shaolin Tian Gang men which is being passed on in some of the monasteries in Putian. It was passed there by a famous Buddhist monk. He travels around outside China and is famous for teaching Buddhism. He was raised in one of the main Buddhist temples in Putian and is now a well known abbot overseeing some of the oldest temples in Putian. He's locally known as a martial arts master, but doesn't seem to be known for it outside of that area. Actually it seems like he actively doesn't want to be known for martial arts. But he has started teaching them in the temples he oversees in Putian, although not in a modern Shaolin way, more in a this is Buddhist temple if you aren't here to learn Buddhism than piss off sort of way.
I'm not sure exactly how the two lines are connected. Yang Deyou's line claims lineage from Putian and is obviously of the same style, but I don't know when they diverged. From what I understand the Putian line keeps more of the old esoteric stuff, but there is very little out there about either of the lines and I've only seen a couple videos with a couple forms from each line. But Yang Deyou's seems to have a lot more stuff from other schools mixed in, not sure that his students even know what is what anymore.

[Bao]

Thank you very much for jumping in TeaSerpent, for the info. Pls, keep on your great work with the vids!

[TeaSerpent]

Thanks, I've been slacking off on those.
But here is the video of him doing some one armed pushups.

Here's another version of his Tiger Crane set.

[TeaSerpent]

Here are some videos of the Nan Shaolin Tian Gang Shengshou Men lineage from Putian that I put on my channel a year or two ago but never got around to writing up a description for and posting publicly.
This one is of Shi Shixian, the monk I mentioned who was raised in one of the major Buddhist monasteries in Putian and is now abbot of a couple of the main monasteries there. He's pretty well known around the world for Buddhism and is one of the last old school Chan Buddhist monks from Putian. Putian has quite a few very old monasteries and was a major center of Chan Buddhism in Fujian. He learned the style when he was younger and is teaching it to the monks in the local monasteries along with Buddhism.
They preserve a number of esoteric practices and healing methods including specific fighting skills using a bamboo rod to strike acupoints as well as a method of medical acupressure using small bamboo sticks.


Here is another video of some of the monks at Shuanglin temple in Putian also doing some of his style, as well as other stuff.
The local PRC Buddhist committee decided that if he was going to be teaching martial arts in the temples that he needed to make a standard training curriculum for the young monks incorporating martial arts from "The Real Southern Shaolin Temple" in Putian. So they sent over some guys from there to teach stuff to the monks which is why the kids are other "stuff". Unfortunately both the Putian Shaolin temples have the worst martial arts of any of the fake Shaolin tourist traps that they have opened all across Fujian. The main instructor in one of the Putian temples trained with backups for the Shaolin stage shows, so that's where their "Shaolin" comes from.

[Ian]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBlvkVT_HLk

11:40

Wtf