Fu Hok Seung Ying Kuen

Quick Facts

About the kata

In Wong Fei-hung's lineage, Fu Hok Seung Ying Kuen is one of Hung Ga's four pillars alongside Gung Ji Fuk Fu Kuen, the five-animal form and Tit Sin Kuen. English Wikipedia writes that it follows on from Gung Ji Fuk Fu Kuen and expands the stock of techniques; per HK01, it shares the sei ping ma and ji ng ma stances with it, plus most of the hand work. Per HK01, the tiger part draws on the straight and crosswise movements of older Hung Ga, complemented with grips and sweeps: the tiger claw strikes directly, or, after seizing the opponent's arm, sets up a kick. The crane part moves in arcs, strikes from the side and works with feints. An example is the series of butterfly palms, where both palms aim at the groin and breastbone at once while the feet shift with the kei lun step. Pavel Macek (practicalhungkyun.com), citing a note in Chu Yu-zai's book, states that the form opens with the three-lunge method saam jin faat and closes with techniques of the Fat Gar Lo Hon style. HK01 traces some movements, such as 羅漢曬屍 (the arhat sunning his body) or 童子拜佛 (the boy bows to Buddha), to an older Shaolin tradition, and compares the crane hands to the white crane style of Yongchun.

Meaning of the name

The name 虎鶴雙形拳 means literally fist of two forms, tiger and crane. Per HK01, the form models the nature of both animals, merging two entirely different ways of fighting. Lam Sai-wing, in his book, per the same source, distinguished two parts: the tiger hands, always present in Hung Ga, and the crane hands, taken from the Buddhist arhat fist. Yee's Hung Ga in Inverness explains the pair thus: crane develops soft, whipping power bin ging, tiger the fighting spirit and hard power.

Creator and history

Both English Wikipedia and HK01 attribute the form to Wong Fei-hung. Per Wikipedia, he added the bridge work and rooting of master Tit Kiu Saam and long-arm techniques attributed to the Fat Gar, Lo Hon and Lama styles. However, the entry on his father, Wong Kei-ying, states that he already practised the tiger-and-crane form and was famous for it, and Hung Ga tradition links some version of it to Hung Hei-gun already. We believe Wong Fei-hung reworked the older form, since Wikipedia explicitly speaks of the version he passed to his students. Lam Sai-wing made it famous. Per English Wikipedia, he performed it in 1921 at a fundraiser for an orphanage, and Sun Yat-sen then addressed him as "Mr Tiger and Crane" (虎鶴先生); HK01 places the same event in 1908. With the help of his student Chu Yu-zai, Lam wrote and published a book about the form.

Differences between styles

Tiger-and-crane forms are practised outside Wong Fei-hung's lineage too. Per English Wikipedia, they are shorter and usually have 108 movements or techniques; we could not establish the movement count in Wong Fei-hung's version. Pavel Macek (practicalhungkyun.com) cites Wong Man-kai, per whom the form combines techniques of Hung Gar, Mok Gar, Hap Gar, Fat Gar and other styles. Lam Cho, Lam Sai-wing's nephew, told Macek in 2004 it is not a Hung Gar form but a mix of styles; per HK01, he added a paired exercise, 虎鶴雙形對拆, to the solo form.