Luk Bik

On Monday Grace took off work and we were able to go to dim sum with Jonah. Just to make it easier, I had to bring Noah into school first by myself. I then had to wait for Grace to find a parking spot. We went to Hei La Moon which is right near the Chinatown gate where there is a park, and where I kept bumping into people. Since I was childless for a moment I started practicing Kung Fu. And since I didn't want to sit in my own sweat at Dim Sum, I started  taking off my layers until I was down to just my shorts. Were people staring? Yeah but it's a park and it's Chinatown and I'm doing Kung Fu. It would have been a great Photo op for a tourist because I was doing bak gwas around a manhole that was releasing steam. At some Point Hong Bak (Sifu's friend whom I am teaching Tiger Crane Song Ying Kuen too) saw me and I started teaching him right there. Now people were really watching. It was a fun Chinatown moment. Grace came over with Jonah thinking who knows what, and then we all went to Dim Sum together. I had earlier bumped into Zhou Suk and invited him too but he had earlier decided not to come.
At dim Sum we had Kung Fu conversation and the conversation turned to Luk Bik or Six urgencies. It is a combination of techniques that Hong Bak learned from Sifu. A few of Sifu's students taught there whole villages and this combination of movements was used by those villages specifically for fighting. I had heard conversation around this combination before but Sifu had never said, "This is Luk Bik" and showed it to me. From what I saw from those various conversational demos I learned a few things. Martial arts wise, those combinations are in our forms so maybe that's why Sifu never bothered to show me. In fact without being shown, I automatically had used that style of fighting during sparring. So in a way, I already knew it. In fact I had inadvertently taught a simplified version of this to my classes at Kwong Kow. I guess you could call it two urgencies. The comments from the kids were, "You have to have a sword to do this!" Kids like to tell you how it's supposed to be done sometimes, even when they don't know. But that comment basically tells what two urgencies looks like. You hack with your fist instead of with a sword. I saw it as something easy they could just do. I also realized from all the past conversations that these are the few techniques that Sifu had taught to his wife, his daughters (who might not remember them) and my Si Hings who had to take care of the Challengers who came into the school. I had used these techniques on a challenger once so again, maybe Sifu didn't feel the need to talk about these moves again. But one time he did show me a three combination which I think was a more advanced version of six urgencies right in between washing vegetables and cooking them like, "You know chuen pow cup now I'll show you (xyz)... awesome huh! I'll show you more later." But then he forgot about it.
Hong Bak fought me so hard over paying the dim sum bill that he fu jowed my wrist. (We invited him and I always feel bad when he pays. I thought that the rules of Chinese etiquette would mean he would allow us to pay this time. But he was so serious about paying even though he didn't eat anything and basically the main thing is his money is extremely hard earned through Chinese Restaurant work.)

Anyway on the way out on the side of the street he did Six Urgencies real quick so I could see what he was talking about. 1,2,3,4,5,6.

After that conversation I keep thinking about those techniques. More on that later.