Snake vs Crane Wing Chun



Wing Chun: The Science of In-Fighting

Wong Shun Leung’s Challenge Matches (Beimo)

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[Wong Shun Leung] “told me stories about the sufferings [in Hong Kong during WWII].  He had seen many who fought over left-overs found on the street.  Some even grabbed food directly from children’s months only to be kicked and punched to death by the people around.  The crippled … simply starved to death helplessly on the street.”
Kim Man Au Yeung, Wong Shun Leung Through My Eyes

Wong Shun Leung was born in June 8th, 1935.  In 1931, the Imperial Japanese military perpetrated was later called the “Manchurian Incident,”  in which a Japanese officer sabotaged one of their own railways (not really doing any significant damage).  The Japanese blamed the incident on Chinese “dissidents” (the 1930’s equivalent of terrorists) and used this staged event as a pretext to invade and occupy Manchuria (a big chunk of Northeast China).   In 1937, the Japanese invaded the rest of mainland China and soon controlled the country all the way down to the Shenzen River, opposite Hong Kong.  “Hong Kong” is a region which includes both the island of Hong Kong and a big section of the Kowloon peninsula.

Hong Kong’s population swelled with refugees escaping the Japanese.  The population nearly doubled from 879,000 in 1931 to 1.6 million by 1941.  The Japanese finally got around to attacking Hong Kong itself, then a British territory, on the 8th of December, 1941, the day after they attacked Pearl Harbor.  Hong Kong surrendered by the 26th.  From 1941 to 1945 (when the Japanese unilaterally surrendered after the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki), Hong Kong was under martial law.  This was the Hong Kong in which Wong Shun Leung grew up, as noted in Kim Man Au Yeung’s new book, Wong Shun Leung through My Eyes.

This aspect of the book really opened my eyes to some of the possible motivations behind the hardcore training of Wong and others of his era.  He grew up in a nightmare.  Its hard to imagine how bad it was, but as an example, there was one incident referred to as the St. Stephen’s Massacre.  St. Stephen’s was a British-style university (Ip Man went there).  At this time, it was being used as a hospital.  Japanese soldiers broke in, raped and killed the nurses and killed all the patients.  I’d heard about the Japanese atrocities on the mainland (Nanking for instance) but had not heard about what went on in Hong Kong.  Curious, I looked around and found various sources (such as this page) detailing the events of the occupation.  Basically, there was an untold number of rapes and murders (and who knows what else).

This was the backdrop of Wong Shun Leung’s childhood.  I was motivated to learn to fight by incidents that are pretty small in comparison to any of this.  Imagine the levels of insecurity and rage you would feel as a little kid surrounded by the rape and pillaging of your city!

How is the book otherwise?

Its seems like a (not very good) English translation of a Chinese text.  But this very characteristic makes it interesting in its own particular way.  The phrasing and the allusions to culture are an interesting peek into the “Chinese mind,” and Chinese culture of the time.  There is a infusion of Confucianism and Taoism into the everyday that is very illuminating, if you like me are interested in the mindset and ways of thinking behind the development of Wing Chun.  As a Western non-Chinese speaker, I can probably never know certain nuances about Wing Chun, but this book helps bridge the gap a bit.

Also, this book is probably the best examination of Wong Shun Leung’s Beimo (challenge fights) we’ll ever get.  Kim Man Au Yeung has been able to combine his first hand accounts with media accounts (the fights were covered in the newspapers) to present a detailed picture of Wong Shun Leung’s “career” as a challenge fighter.  In many cases, we get a blow by blow description, as well as an understanding of the social practices surrounding these fights.  We sometimes forget the deep cultural differences between the West and the Chinese – these accounts really allow you to see some of these differences, such as in the formalities of the fights stemming from the clan-like school groups and other sorts of family ties.

 

 

Greg LeBlanc on Using the Predator Armor

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“You’re having the opportunity to develop the instinct to use full power.”
Greg LeBlanc

When I first started studying Wing Chun (back in 1999), it was almost impossible to get any information about this fighting method.   There were a couple of books available (J. Yimm Lee’s book with Bruce Lee was about it) and you could find articles here and there in the magazines of the day, like Black Belt Magazine or Inside Kung Fu.  So Westerners who got excited about this style (often because of the Bruce Lee connection) would often travel very far to get training.  Some went so far as to travel to Hong Kong.   Back then, there was no real way to even find out if a city near near you had a school, unless you went there and they had an ad in the Yellow Pages.  The internet has changed all of this,

Now we have a glut of information, most of it bad, but some of it for free and of the highest quality.  80% (or more probably) of the information on web sites and Youtube is from beginners or hustlers trying to make a buck.

I started this site mainly because when I started it, there was little good, proven information and I had spent a lot of time training with poor results.  After 9 years of training with modest improvement in my fighting skills (in my opinion, based on my skills comparisons with people outside the system), I was fortunate enough to have Greg LeBlanc move into my city (Oakland).

In my experience (which is all this site contains , my opinions and experiences and my recommendations out of what is available out there), the Wong Shun Lineage has a degree of street legitimacy not found in some of the other Wing Chun lineages.  The information that has come down to us through Wong Shun Leung students like Gary Lam, David Peterson, and Philipp Bayer has a certain quality that I might call street credibility.  Because of Sifu Wong’s testing of the system in his challenge matches and his subsequent tweaks and modifications of the system and most especially the resulting mindset (feeling the need to keep testing and questioning the system), the method we’ve been given by these men is a truly pared down, logical, and effective system of fighting.

And the amazing thing these days is how much of it is just out there for free on the internet, just waiting to be learned!  For instance, my Sifu Greg LeBlanc is currently putting up videos regularly on his Youtube channel (LeBlanc Wing Chun) that is a master class in the system.  He has taken the system taught to him by Sifu Gary Lam and really thought about it and boiled it down to its essence.  He has found the language with which to clearly describe it.  Being able to explain what are essentially abstract concepts and body feelings is not easy.  The qualities that distinguish good Wing Chun from malfunctioning Wing Chun are often indiscernible to the untrained eye.  So you NEED proper explanations and demonstrations to understand it.  Then getting it into your own body is a whole other thing!  But, take it from me, if you aren’t watching his videos and listening to his little mini-lectures (given out free), you my friend are missing out!

For instance, he has recently added another tool to the toolbox by adopting a new piece of equipment called Predator Armor (designed by Bill Kipp) to add an adrenal-stress training element to the curriculum.  Sifu Gary Lam calls tools like the pole and the dummy “second coaches.”  This armor is another “second coach.”  I’ve been out of class rehabilitating my shoulder, but I am very excited to get in and try out this new wrinkle on getting the system fully into my nervous system.  In Hong Kong, they had beimo.  Or they might go into the ring with Muay Thai, like Gary Lam.  But we modern city dwellers who want a degree of the skill, but don’t want to be professionals, can use this training to get that one step closer and develop the skill to that one additional level of realism.

Why We Bong Sau

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“Basically what the Bong Sau is, is a way of continuing down the centerline, but not with the end of your arm, but with the middle of your arm, so you can once again get back to using the end of your arm.”
Sifu David Peterson

An excellent, very clear explanation of how and why we use the Bong Sau in Wing Chun.  Many thanks to Sifu David Peterson and his student, Sifu Morten Ibsen for posting this primer on the Bong Sau (which as I’ve said, is one of the most misused actions in the Wing Chun repertoire).  The distinction about always going forward (never up or to the side) is critical.  I hurt my shoulder pretty badly making just this mistake for many years.  And once you get the bad habit, even if you become aware of it, its easy to slip when you’re tired or lack focus, and then the damage to your tendons is slow but steady.  Beware!