Fuzhou Cranes.

I posted this clip on youtube for my students in the US; trying it out here (embedding html code).
I got a bunch of very old video tapes taken over the years featuring my old school in Singapore and I got to convert them pronto!

I been asked - what style of Cranes do we do in the Fuzhou Association? Well, essentially 3 lines of Crane Boxing.

We got Sifus who taught both MingChiang and Putien Whooping Crane; you could tell them apart from the salutation sequences.

The MingChiang Crane is the more widespread style associated with Masters like the late Huang Xing Xian and Ruan Dong. If you examine their renditions, you could almost tell straightaway that they are fruits from the same tree.

The Putien version is, comparatively, harder and the opening salute is differentiated by a simple “Ming” salute with 2 open fingers sticking out rather than the whole palm. The open fingers symbolize a Crane singing.

These days, the more I work with Sifu Liang Ti Lien; the late Wong Yi Ing's senior disciple, the more I am swayed that his “Ming Zhong He” could share the same origin with my Putien Crane.

His “Ming Zhong” simply refers to “in the midst of MingNan” and MingNan is another way of saying Fukien.

The other style of Crane practiced by Fuzhou in Singapore is “Ancestral Crane”. This was later modified to “Fuzhou Crane”.

In the clip, you see snippets of both Whooping and Ancestral Crane forms.