Training tigers : Inside The Hit Hut

Yeung Pang Pang's new martial arts centre opens its doors.

Kung fu enthusiasts from overseas and locally based performers have often asked me the same question: where can I got to learn martial arts for movies? Lets face it, most fighting arts schools focus on teaching a specific discipline, regardless of the student's underlying ambition to become the next Bruce Lee (or Michelle Yeoh). I would always tell people they needed to study a combination of arts: boxing/Wing Chun for hands, taekwondo/wu shu for legs, traditional kung fu for weapons, add in gymnastics and then try and work out with as many stuntmen as possible. Now there's a one stop shop for wannabe big-screen warriors: Yeung Pang Pang's Hit Hut...

Pang Pang, also know as Sharon Yeung, has been one of the great woman warriors of Hong Kong cinema. She started her career as a stuntwoman ('The Fourteen Amazons') and supporting actress ('Rivals of Kung Fu') at Shaw Bros, before becoming a star in her own right in such independently produced chop socky classics as Story of the Drunken Master and Duel of the Seven Tigers.

She later returned to Shaws to star in the much underrated Lion VS Lion. When the kung fu boom faded, Yang starred in numerous 'battling babe' actioners, including the ground-breaking 'Angel Terminators'.

In recent years, Sharon has focussed on producing, and has assembled a terrific action team, including Ken Ip, who worked with me on the recent 'Blood Bond'. Yang has earlier produced Ken's directorial debut, Kung Fu Fighter, starring AnD stalwart Vanness Wu. I promised Ken that I'd come back to his team for our next B&E Production, and so we happily asked him to come on-board our upcoming Shaolin volleyball epic, 'Beach Spike'.

I was delighted to hear that Yeung Pang Pang, Ken, German Cheung and the rest of their band were opening Hit Hut. Selfishly, I realised that this would provide a great training centre for the cast of Beach Spike!. On a broader level, Hit Hut is a terrific new resource in an industry that still focusses very heavily on action movies.

The opening itself was a very theatrical event: it opened with a cutting edge promotional video, followed by a dramatic martial arts demonstration, and then a tearful speech from Sharon herself. On hand were some great names from the world of wu xia, as well as myself and my now former (sob!) assistant, Christine Ip. She was just so excited to meet "that fat guy from Kung Fu Hustle".

I was just delighted to see Adam Cheng, star of sooo many classic swordplay dramas, including The Sword, Zu:Warriors and Shaolin VS Wu Tang (the film that gave the WT Clan its name!). We had a great chat about movies and martial arts. You're too tall to practice Hung Gar, he told me. You should try Northern Mantis...

Also on hand were Yuen Wah, Yuen Qiao (both from Kung Fu Hustle), Shaw Bros veteran Ku Feng, choreographer Yuen Cheung-yan...

And two of our Beach Spike! girls, A.Lin and Dada.

If you want to get more funk than a Shaolin monk, Hit Hut is located at:

Unit A03-04, 6th Floor, Cheung Lung Industrial Building, 10, Cheung Yee Building, Cheung Sha Wan, Kowloon, Hong Kong (tel: 2376 2273, email: vivianho@brilliantemperor.com.