HERO OF THE EAST : Hung Kuen legend Lam Cho turns 98.
His back is ramrod straight, his forearms hard as wound steel, he can still walk, talk and laugh. If ever a man exemplified the benefits of lifelong kung fu training, it’s Lam Cho. Lam is the nephew of Lam Sai-wing, the legendary ‘Butcher’ Wing who popularized Hung Kuen (AKA Hung Gar) kung fu in Hong Kong. Though, like all Chinese kung fu styles, the ‘Hung’s Fist’ is divided into many occasionally feuding different sects, Lam Cho is widely regarded as the elder patriarch of the style. His annual birthday party sees kung fu luminaries from near and far gather at a Chinese restaurant in Kowloon’s Prince Edward area, and I was honoured to represent Dragon Dynasty at this event.
As the Chinese saying has it, remember the well when you drink the water. In this case, when watching the exemplary kung fu action in our Shaw Brothers releases 36th Chamber of Shaolin and Heroes Of The East, you can look upriver to the great tradition of Hong Kong-based Hung Kuen masters whose DNA permeates these classics. The films’ director, Lau Kar-leung, learnt the art from his father, Lau Cham, who was himself a student of Lam Sai-wing. Appropriately, the star of both these films, Gordon Liu (AKA Lau Kar-fai or Liu Chia-hui), was on hand to pay his respects to Grandmaster Lam Cho. (Liu also appears in our third Lau Kar-leung directed release, My Young Auntie.)
I attended the celebration with my eldest son, Ryan (the Harry Potter lookalike posing with Lam Cho in the photo above) and he sat enraptured as the visiting Hung Kuen exponents (some from as far afield as Germany and Canada) showed their stuff. (I’ve actually had the honour of performing in previous years, and made a vow to return to the floor for next year’s event.) We met up with my current Hung Kuen instructor, Sifu Mak Chi-kong and my fellow student, Marcus Corrigan. Ryan kept gazing at Lam Cho in wonder. He’s ten years old, and it seemed amazing to Ryan that someone could live for ten times as long as he.
Watching the demonstrations, I remembered how I began my own journey in Chinese martial arts. I started my formal training in a system called ‘Lau Gar’ in Peterborough, England. In hindsight, it seemed to combine elements of various southern Chinese martial arts. (In Hung Kuen, we have Lau Gar kuen (form) and Lau Kar kwun (pole), but they don’t particularly resemble the ‘Lau Gar’ I studied in the UK.) After relocating to London, I trained in Hap Kune Do, another composite style (this time from Malaysia) with a strong Hung Kuen influence. My first instructor in Hung’s Fist proper was the formidable Mark Houghton, under whom I studied in Birmingham, before he relocated to Hong Kong to pursue a movie career. When I relocated back to London, I started training with Jim Uglow, who teaches Hung Kuen under the Chan Hon-chung lineage. (Long-time cognoscenti will remember the later Chan Sifu from the classic BBC documentary Way of the Warrior.) When I moved to Hong Kong, I continued in the same tradition, studying with another of Chan Hon-chung’s students, Cheung Yee-keung in his mo kwoon (martial arts school), located next to Mong Kok police station. No matter where my travels took me, something always drew me back to this particular art.
I first encountered the Lam family Hung Kuen through Jesse Gooding, a Canadian kung fu teacher I trained with while he was living in Hong Kong. (Jesse went on to do stunt work on Dragon Heat, out now from Dragon Dynasty.) To cut a short story long, I hadn’t seen Jesse for a long time, and was delighted to reconnect at the Lam Cho dinner. After Jesse left Hong Kong, I met Mak Sifu, with whom I train now and who provides a great introduction to Chinese weapons on a Heroes of the East bonus feature.
As is traditional, everyone attending the birthday bash brought Grandmaster Lam a ‘lai
see’ red packet containing ‘lucky money’. Everyone gave their lai see to a Lam family friend working the front desk, but, being the pushy bugger I am, I had Ryan give ours to Lam Cho directly. He and my other two sons are now benefiting from traditional kung fu training, as I still am, and I wanted to pay respects to one source of the great river that is southern Chinese martial arts.
Even if you don’t feel inspired to embrace the art yourself, I hope you feel something similar when you watch the incomparable kung fu fighting displayed in Heroes Of The East and the rest of our forthcoming Shaw Bros releases.
(It’s my blog and I’ll plug if I want to: Mak Sifu teaches Hung Kuen two to three times a week in Central’s Chater Garden, and all are welcome to train. His email is Lck486001@yahoo.com.hk, his website is www.hungkuenhk.com.)
- "Kung Fu Bob" O'Brien, PA. | 2008-03-07 08:45:34