Oral transmission.

I am sure you heard a lot about this – oral transmission of histories, lineages and principles.

Mainly from Sifus who are not exactly scribes and with these folks, they carry what they know with them and pass them on orally frequently in the tongue they are most comfortable; their spoken dialects.

So to understand, you got to overcome the dialect barrier to get to the subtleness.

To give you an inkling of what this is like, I got here a clip of snippets taken from 2 sessions with 2 of my Sifus.

Sifu Teo Choon Teck, Taizu or Fukien Grand Ancestor Boxing, who taught me using Fukien and Sifu Li Wen Shi, my White Crane teacher who speaks little else except Fuzhou.

These days, with the convenience of digital video cameras, I could tape everything and playback to ensure I don’t miss anything.

Sure beats listening and writing at the same time … so I am not complaining.

Anyway, Sifu Teo is talking about SanChiem and the role that Song TaiZu had in the formulation of systemized CKF.

Sifu Li, together with my sihing were reminiscing about the good old days of our White Crane school …..

Sifu Teo is almost 70 and Sifu Li is 84 when I shot the video.

I started training with them when they were in there 40s and 50s….

This has been one long journey …….too long.