History
The history of Southern Dragon style has historically been transmitted orally rather than by text, so its origins will probably never be known in their entirety. Modern Southern Dragon style's history can be reliably traced back to the monk Daai Yuk Sim Si who was the abbot of Wa Sau Toi (White Hair) temple on Mount Luofu. No reliable records of the style's origin prior to that exist, though there is much speculation regarding the subject.
Southern Dragon style has roots in Hakka Kuen, a combination of the local styles of the Hakka heartland in inland eastern Guangdong with the style that the monk Ji Sin Sim Si taught in Guangdong and the neighboring province of Fujian in the 18th century.
North of the Dongjiang in the northwest of Bóluó (博羅) County in the prefecture of Huizhou in Guangdong Province is the sacred mountain Luófúshān. Luófúshān is the site of many temples, including Wa Sau Toi where, c. 1900, a Chan (Zen) master named Daai Yuk taught Southern Dragon style to Lam Yiu Gwai, who in turn passed the art on to the many students of his schools in Guangzhou.
Lam Yiu Gwai and Jeung Lai Chuen were good friends from their youth in the Dongjiang region of Huizhou, longtime training partners and later cousins by marriage. Lam and Jeung would open several schools together, and Southern Dragon style and Jeung's style of Bak Mei share many similarities.
A variation of the Southern Dragon style is taught by the Long Choo Kung Fu Society based in Penang, Malaysia and with branches in Australia. Founded by Li Ah Yu and his father near the turn of the 20th century, this association claims it is teaching a Soft / Hard Dragon style originating from Fukkien province.
Read more about this topic: Southern Dragon Kung Fu
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.”
—Richard M. Nixon (b. 1913)
“Let it suffice that in the light of these two facts, namely, that the mind is One, and that nature is its correlative, history is to be read and written.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)