TRAINING Lau Family & Hung Gar

About the instructors

Hung Gar has many 'forms', or pre-arranged fighting patterns that we teach, learn and practice.  These incorporate open hands and weapons, and are an important means of preserving and transmitting useful fighting tactics as well as conditioning and developing stamina, fitness, balance, agility, breathing, focus, power, perseverance and understanding.

However the objective is not to become bound by these 'forms', but to transcend beyond the limits of sheer movement and composition as we inevitably gain insights into ourselves and those that created the 'forms'.

All great arts, including Hung Gar, transcend the mere rules of their format and composition.

The Lau family has been the leaders of the kung fu films for Shaw brothers for many years. People around the world who love kung fu films have watched a film by Lau Kar Leung and after watching his films have followed his path in learning Hung Gar. Lau sifu not only is a top class director but also a real kung fu master, he was born in 1935 and started his training at 5 years of age with his father Lau Jaam, who was a kung fu master in his own rights.

Lau Jamm started off with “choy lay fut” and after learning this martial art went on to study Hung Gar under Lam Sai Wing, when they moved to Hong Kong. Lau Jaam himself went into the movie industry, where he acted in many of the black and white films about Wong Fei Hung ( starring Kwan Tak Hing ) in which he often played his own sifu Lam Sai Wing. In these films Lau Kar Leung started his film career as a stuntman in his early teens. Lau Jaam also had a very good relationship with the HK police where he taught a lot of the CID and inspectors his kung fu.

It was at this time that Lau Jaam and two of his kung fu brothers were in Sheung Wan fish market Hong Kong side and had a dispute with 100 coolies, the three of them where attacked. Lau Jaam picked up a bamboo pole and hit it against the wall shattering the end into splinters. He used this to attack the coolies and the razor sharp ends of the bamboo acted like knives, they won the fight and it was printed in the HK newspapers later Lau Kar Leung went on to use this method in the movie DRUNKEN MASTER II with Jackie Chan.

At 13 years of age Lau Kar Leung went to Macao to teach kung fu, his students were not children like him but adults, he returned to Hong Kong to join the film industry at the age of 15 years. Ten years later at the age of 25 he became a director for Shaw brothers and the rest is history. His brother Lau Kar Wing and his elder sister Lau Sui Yee also entered the film industry and made names for them selves.

Lau Sui Yee is the mother of Sammy Lau Kar Yung, who followed his mother and uncle's into the industry. At an early age a small boy with the surname Sin became a student of Lau Kar Leung, Lau sifu's mother took a liking to this boy and made him her Kai Zai (adopted son) he was then introduced to the movie industry and made into a star on the condition he changed his name to Lau and this he did without hesitation, he is now know as Lau Kar Fei or the MASTERKILLER.

All of Lau sifu's students were movie stars and he only taught to a small few until after the death of his favourite student Alexander Fu Sheng when he stopped taking students. In 1989 he took another student under his wing this time in the form of Englishman Mark Houghton, who also followed his sifu into the film industry. With over 60 films under his belt, Mark is now teamed up with Lau Kar Yung and together they are producing and directing their own films and teaching the Lau family style of Hung Gar to the next generations. With years of movie magic, wonderful fight choreography and real kung fu, the Lau family have made Hung Gar their own. Many Hung Gar sifu's around the world have looked to the Lau families films and kung fu for inspiration.