Hung Gar
洪家拳A southern Chinese Kung Fu style with low stances and the symbol of the tiger and crane. The documented lineage begins in the 19th century with Wong Kei-ying and Wong Fei-hung.
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About Hung Gar
Hung Gar (also Hung Ga or Hung Kuen) is a southern Chinese kung-fu style associated with Guangdong province, known for low and stable stances. According to legend it was founded by the tea merchant Hung Hei-gun, a student of the monk Jee Sin from the southern Shaolin in Fujian. The tradition contradicts itself already on whether it was the 17th or the 18th century, and one version attributes the founding only to Hung’s student Luk Ah-choi. We were able to document only a lineage from the 19th century: Wong Kei-ying and his son Wong Fei-hung (1847–1925), a physician from Foshan who ran the Po Chi Lam clinic. Wong’s student Lam Sai-wing wrote, with the help of Chu Yu-zai, three books on the main routines of the style and taught in Hong Kong from 1928. The present-day family branches Tang Fung, Lam, Chiu and Lau are derived from Wong Fei-hung.
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The symbol of the style is the tiger and the crane, which is why it is also called Tiger-Crane Boxing (Fu Hok Kuen). The hands work with the forearm (bridge hand) and the tiger claw, and a block is often a counterstrike at the same time. In the Wong Fei-hung branch the four pillars are the routines Taming the Tiger, Tiger Crane Paired Form, Five Animal (Five Element) Fist and Iron Wire Fist. The last of them combines a breathing exercise with isometric tension. Lam Sai-wing expanded the five animals with five elements. Traditional instruction began with months to three years of stances, often half an hour to several hours at a stretch in the horse stance. Then one routine was learned in roughly a year and weapons last, above all the Fifth Brother Eight Trigram Pole and butterfly swords. We found no free sparring or competition rules of the style in the sources, and the syllabus of the Hong Kong school Lam Ka Hung Kuen has paired routines. Individual schools have their own grades, for example sashes or colored T-shirts and belts. Wong Fei-hung is the main character of Hong Kong film: since 1949 over a hundred films and series have been made about him, and Kwan Tak-hing played him in more than seventy films. Hung Kuen is inscribed on the Hong Kong list of intangible cultural heritage.
History
We have not been able to confirm the origin of Hung Gar (also Hung Ga or Hung Kuen). According to legend, the monk Jee Sin, after the destruction of the Shaolin Monastery, taught lay students in southern Shaolin in Fujian, among them the tea merchant Hung Hei-gun (pinyin Hong Xiguan). The sources give the 17th or 18th century, and another version attributes the founding to Hung's student Luk Ah-choi. Researchers consider the tale of the monastery's destruction by the Qing dynasty fictitious, and according to Ben Judkins the southern Shaolin Temple appears only as fiction in local literature. The documented lineage begins in the 19th century with Wong Kei-ying and his son Wong Fei-hung (9. 7. 1847 Foshan – 17. 4. 1925 Guangzhou, Chinese sources give 1924 as the year of death), a martial artist and physician, taught besides his father by, among others, Lam Fuk-sing. Wong's student Lam Sai-wing (1860 or 1861 – 1942 or 1943) from Foshan taught in Hong Kong from 1928 and with Chu Yu-zai wrote three books on the main routines of the style. Professor Mak Ging-sang named no one in a 2021 lecture as the founder of Hung Kuen. According to him, the lineage from Jee Sin through Luk Ah-choi to Wong Fei-hung's father comes from a film of 1949, most stories are oral and disputed, and the Hong Kong lineage is well documented only from the arrival of Lam Sai-wing.
How it differs
Hung Gar, Choy Li Fut and Wing Chun come from the same area of Guangdong province, and the historians Benjamin Judkins and Jon Nielson state that they arose from the same historical processes. Judkins classes Hung Gar and Choy Li Fut among the typical schools associated with the Hung Mun society, which share the legend of the destruction of the Shaolin Temple. According to him, Wing Chun little resembles the Hung Gar and Choy Li Fut lineages, which prevailed in Foshan. The verifiability of origin differs too. According to China's national list of intangible cultural heritage, Choy Li Fut has a specific founder, Chan Heung, and the year 1836, whereas for Hung Gar we have not been able to confirm a founder. Choy Li Fut was organized in Foshan in the Hung Sing Association, which the Kuomintang suppressed in 1927. In the Hong Kong list of intangible cultural heritage, as printed by the South China Morning Post, Hung Gar Kuen is number 372 and Wing Chun number 380. We have not found a comparison of stances and hand work from a federation or an independent expert, we know it only from Vincent Liu, who practiced both Hung Gar and Wing Chun.
Technique
Hung Gar rests on low stable stances, above all the horse stance. Among its prominent hand techniques are the bridge hand (work with the forearm) and the tiger claw. Attack and block run simultaneously, and a block can be a counterstrike at the same time. The basis of the style is the tiger and the crane, which is why it is also called Tiger-Crane Boxing (Fu Hok Kuen). According to legend the tiger comes from Jee Sin and the crane from Fong Wing-chun, the wife of Hung Hei-gun. The list of the five animals varies. Lam Sai-wing expanded the Five Animal Fist routine with five elements: earth, water, fire, metal and wood. According to Vincent Liu, who practiced both Hung Gar and Wing Chun, the stances of Hung Gar are lower and wider than those of Wing Chun, and the side stance turns by 90 degrees, in Wing Chun by 45. The stance height is similar in Hung Gar and Choy Li Fut, but Hung Gar holds the torso square to the opponent, while Choy Li Fut turns it at an angle.
Training
Traditional instruction began with several months to three years of practicing stances. Students often sat in the horse stance for half an hour to several hours at a stretch, Vincent Liu gives roughly an hour, and according to him the Lam Family Hung Kyun school omits this. Then routines were learned one at a time, roughly a year for each, and weapons last. In the Wong Fei-hung branch the four pillars of the style are, in this order, the routines Taming the Tiger Fist, Tiger Crane Paired Form Fist, Five Animal (Five Element) Fist and Iron Wire Fist. Outside the Wong branch, 108 movements are given for Tiger Crane. Iron Wire is attributed to Leung Kwan and combines hei gung breathing exercise with isometrics. According to Vincent Liu, partner work rests on the kiu sau exercise and the pre-arranged deui chaak routines. The Lam Ka Hung Kuen school in Hong Kong includes paired routines, for example Gung Gee Doy Da and Fu Hok Seung Ying Doy Da, from level 1B, and it does not state whether this also includes free fighting with resistance. We found no documented sparring or the structure of a lesson.
Ranks and progression
We found no common grading system, and grades are set by the individual schools. The Yee’s Hung Ga school gives seven levels marked by sashes, from white through yellow, green, purple and two browns to black. At the level of Jo Gow the student is an assistant to the instructor, and the title sifu requires, according to the school, a further two years of training. The Lam Ka Hung Kuen school in Hong Kong holds examinations twice a year. It distinguishes six student grades 1A to 3B by the color of the T-shirt and belt, yellow, orange and red, each without a black stripe and with it. These are followed by instructor grades 1 to 3 in black, and further grades are awarded by the school leadership according to merit. We found no mutual recognition of grades between schools.
Gear
We have not found prescribed clothing or protectors. In the Iron Wire routine, practitioners sometimes wore iron rings on the wrists. Weapons are learned last, and their selection differs markedly by branch. The main weapon of Wong Fei-hung was the pole Fifth Brother Eight Trigram Pole, and butterfly swords, the Flying Hook, the guandao and forks are also practised. According to Vincent Liu, Hung Gar practises the pole luk dim bun gwan as part of the routine Ng Long Baat Gwa Gwan (the pole of the fifth brother), and Wing Chun as a separate form.
Philosophy
According to one version of the legend, the style bears the name of the anti-Qing brotherhood Hung-mun, and Hung Hei-gun took the name Hung in honour of the first emperor of the Ming dynasty. Vincent Liu describes Hung Gar as a style of iron bridges, that is arms trained with dynamic tension, breath and sound. According to him the purpose of the Iron Wire routine is inner training of the bridge hand, not self-defence. The intent of the techniques is to injure the opponent seriously or cause him such severe pain that it weakens his response. We have not found training against full resistance.
Today
Today's family branches Tang Fung, Lam, Chiu and Lau derive from Wong Fei-hung. The lineage is held by the institutions Chan Hon Chung Gymnasium (1938), Hong Kong Chinese Martial Arts Association (1970, Chan Hon-chung) and Hung Kuen Academy in Hong Kong (1996, Gam Bok-yin). We have not found a common grading scale or competition rules, and Hung Gar is not in the Olympic programme. According to Mak Ging-sang, Hung Kuen has been ranked among sports since the era of the Republic of China and the founding of the Jingwu association, and its combat function was taken over by sanda and MMA. Hung Gar Kuen is inscribed in the Hong Kong list of intangible cultural heritage in the category of social practices, rituals and festive events, we have not found the year of inscription. Mok Kwai-lan, from 1915 the wife of Wong Fei-hung, taught Hung Gar in 1944–1969 as an assistant to his student Dang Fong. Chi Kuan-chun began training in 1961 under Chiu Wai in Hong Kong, Gordon Liu at the school of Lau Cham. Since 1949 more than 100 films and series have been made about Wong Fei-hung, Kwan Tak-hing played him in more than 70 films, and Once Upon a Time in China (1991) with Jet Li began a series of six films. Wong was not among the Ten Tigers of Canton, his father was.
Did you know
The first film about Wong Fei-hung, The Story of Wong Fei-hung by director Wu Pang with Kwan Tak-hing, was made in 1949. According to the Hong Kong Film Archive, its second part is the first film to show the Shadowless Kick on screen. The archive discovered both parts in 2011 in a film collection handed over by the television station TVB, the first is complete, the second incomplete. The archive called the series begun by this film the longest-running in the history of Hong Kong cinema. According to SCMP, Wu Pang made 57 films about Wong, and Kwan Tak-hing played him in roughly 80 films over 32 years. According to a study in the journal Entertext, he himself practiced White Crane, not Hung Gar. According to Judkins, the 1949 film used real weapons instead of magic and wires and begins with a lion dance in Foshan. According to the same study, the dispensary, clinic and school Po Chi Lam were founded by Wong's father Wong Kei-ying. Wong most likely learned Hung Gar mainly from his father, and the story of studying under Luk Ah-choi was spread only by films of Lau Kar-leung such as Challenge of the Masters (1976). The sources differ on Wong's years of life, giving 1846–1925, 1847–1924 and 1847–1925.
Frequently asked questions
What is hung gar?
Hung Gar (Hung Kuen) is a southern Chinese martial art from Guangdong Province built on low stances and tiger and crane techniques. In the Hong Kong list of intangible cultural heritage it is entered under number 372, and according to an academic study it was popularized in Hong Kong by Lam Sai-wing.
Who was Wong Fei-hung?
Wong Fei-hung was a martial artist, physician and herbalist from Guangdong in the second half of the 19th century and a master of Hung Gar. Historian Benjamin Judkins points out that little of his life can be verified. He was made famous by a film series that began in 1949 and, according to the Hong Kong Film Archive, is the longest-running in Hong Kong cinema.
Who played Wong Fei-hung in films?
Most often Kwan Tak-hing, who according to SCMP played him in about 80 films over 32 years, starting with the film The Story of Wong Fei-hung from 1949. The internationally known series is the one launched in 1991 by the film Once Upon a Time in China with Jet Li.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.