Thursday 31 January 2013

Wing Chun Martial Art Article - Ng Moy, Yim Wing Chun & Ip Man

*This article covers a broad spectrum on the martial culture and climate in Southern China in the 19th Century, and the different schools of thoughts regarding martial qigong practiced by the opposite genders. You may recall that we featured an article called 'The Traditional Chinese Medicine and Qigong in the Wing Chun Community' two months ago, it actually ties in with this, and is written by the same author,martial artist and researcher, BENJUDKINS.

Ip Man and the Prostitute:
Female Sexuality as a Weapon in Traditional Chinese Martial Culture.

Introduction: Masculinity as a Core Value in the Traditional Southern Martial Arts.

One of the few facts that everyone seems to “know” about Wing Chun is that the art was created by a female. Whether this is actually true or not has no bearing on the current discussion. Instead what is important is that so many martial artists believe this to be the case.

Not many other Chinese arts share this distinction. White Crane in Fujian (which may or may not have a connection to Wing Chun depending on who you ask) is also said to have been the creation of a talented female boxer. Boat Boxing (also from Fujian) is reputed to have been developed by the wives of fishermen to defend themselves against the
onslaught of pirates that infested the waterways of southern China for most of the late imperial period. Female warriors also play an important role in the martial mythology of Yunnan Province, located at the very edge of the Chinese cultural sphere. Nor can one discount the literary power of figures like Hua Mulan. But these examples, as interesting as they are, are basically the exceptions that prove the rule.

The martial arts of southern China were a man’s world, both
symbolically and literally. The vast majority of martial artists in this period were male. Exceptions did exist, but they were rare. Further, the creation stories of the region’s martial arts are dominated by male figures, often with some connection to the Shaolin Temple. In fact, this claim to a monkish origin is one of the sociological markers that we use to identify the “Hung Mun” arts of the Cantonese speaking majority. Female heroes might appear in fictional stories, but they were a point of interest precisely because they were
rare.

The ways in which female characteristics and traits (or anything associated with the idea of “Yin”) were viewed in 19th century Chinese popular culture was different from how your average western martial arts student might think of the same topic today. This then raises some very interesting questions. To begin with, when people heard the
stories of Yim Wing Chun, or Fang Qiniang, how did they interpret them? What sorts of meanings did they attach to them?

A Psychological Approach to Gender in the Chinese Martial Arts

There is no easy way to answer this question. The story of Yim Wing Chun is still popular today because it has fictive (transformative) power in people’s lives. The ultimate origin of this power is based on human psychology. In this story we are presented with a classic “rite of passage.” Listeners are told how an immature, weak, virginal girl was turned into a powerful adult female, capable of returning to her
home and getting married, because of the intervention of a guide who led her through an adventure set in the hazy dreamscape of south-western China. The psychological appeal of this story is universal. Individuals from all cultures have to navigate basically the same life-pathway that we see laid out here. It is no wonder that it has been so successful with modern audiences.

Still, as the anthropologist Victor Turner pointed out, good symbols are always multi-vocal. They have more than one interpretation. In different situations they can adapt and take on new readings. As we change we always “find something new” in them. This is why a really classic story or myth never seems to get old, no matter how many times
we hear it.

When we move into the realm of symbolic analysis we also take a step away from the universality of basic psychology towards the particularism of culture. Culture is a shared system of signs and symbols. These signs have meaning precisely because we all agree that they do. Yet meaning can be a slippery thing. So what does the story of Yim Wing Chun look like in cultural terms?

Again, this is a tough question to answer as stories tend to be told at specific times, and to specific audiences. During our period of interest all of that was starting to change. New groups were coming into the martial arts for the first time, and they were bringing new ideas with them. And the older groups did not totally disappear. They remained and became part of the mix.

As I have argued in other posts, the Yim Wing Chun story that we currently possess probably dates to the 1930s. It is dependent on names and literary characters that did not actually appear in Chinese literature and publishing until quite late. However, the basic sort of female hero that Yim Wing Chun represents is much older.

Consider for instance the story of Feng Qiniang. According to Fujianese fighting manuals authored around 1800 (preserved and later rediscovered in Okinawa, where they played an important role in the creation of Karate) Feng was the creator of Yong Chun (Wing Chun in Cantonese) White Crane Boxing. Her father (and teacher) eventually
died from wounds he sustained in a battle over control of a local village. Swearing vengeance Feng dedicated herself to practice and preparation.

One day while still grieving Feng was roused by the sounds of two cranes fighting. As she watched she was transfixed by the strategic movements and “entry” strategies of the graceful birds. She noted how they jumped, feinted and used precisely aimed attacks. Getting a pole she decided to scare the birds off but they sensed the proximity of her
weapon, easily evaded it and resettled at a different angle forcing her to come at them again. Eventually the birds flew off of their own accord.

Feng decided that her encounter with the cranes was a revelation. She combined what she learned from the birds with the “Monk Fist” of her father and derived the physical outlines of the art that is now White Crane. After three years of practice she became a strong and confident fighter who triumphed in many challenges. But she also learned to
appreciate the wisdom of her late father. One who cannot find inner-peace or harmony will never master any fighting tradition. To overcome one’s enemies you must first master and cultivate the self.
(Bubishi 97-98).

I have presented only a brief summary of the story of Feng Qiniang, but it should be enough to suggest many interesting features. This legend has a pretty nuanced and philosophical view of the martial arts for a document dating from the first part of the 19th century. It doesn’t advance any complex Daoist doctrines or practices, but it is remarkably dedicated to the idea of self-cultivation being the ultimate basis of martial success. In that sense it is more reminiscent of books and stories that would be written 100 years later than most of what we read from the period.

Obviously Feng is important for those investigating the background of Yim Wing Chun and Ng Moy. In fact, many of the later accounts of Feng either tie her father explicitly to the Shaolin Temple or claim that she eventually becomes a Nun or a female hermit. I think there is a good chance that Feng (who was based on a real person) provided the raw
materials that would later be reorganized to construct Ng Moy.

The story makes it clear that evasiveness, deception, retreat and timing are all key ingredients in Feng’s style of boxing. These are also all characteristics that are associated with the idea of Yin, or female (receding) energy.

Manipulating “Yin” as Disruptive Battle Magic

So, would all Chinese martial artists who heard this story in the 19th century have been receptive to its message? Again, it is very hard to tell but I suspect the answer is no. As Boretz makes clear in his study of martial culture and gender in the region today, “Yang” or masculine (advancing) values are usually seen as the key to success in the Cantonese martial arts.

His ethnographic research presents a detailed examination of the role of gender in both southern Chinese folk religion and martial culture. He finds that in practical terms “Yang” is viewed as being pretty much the key to success in everything. It is the Yang forces of fertility that feed the village, ensures the survival of families and brings good
fortune. Nor is there much thought of achieving a “balance” here.

Generally speaking, the more Yang the better.

The concept of “balance” may be important in philosophical Daoism but it doesn’t always come up in folk religion. According to Boretz one of the main roles of the martial arts (from the perspective of folk religion) is to increase and cultivate an individual’s “Yang powers.” Any concentration of Yin is likely to lead to sickness, misfortune or
death.

Temple processions, exorcisms and even martial arts sets are means of projecting “Yang” into the community to dissipate lingering “Yin” and to ensure prosperity in the future. In his research he notes that martial arts forms or special exorcisms might be performed at street corners where car accidents are common to eliminate the build-up of Yin in the area that is believed to be causing the problem.

In short, the view of Yin that Boretz reports in modern folk religion is strikingly at odds with what we read in the stories of Yim Wing Chun or Feng Qiniang. This other discourse on gender is also well attested in the 19th century literature. In fact, I suspect that this was probably the dominant approach to gender seen in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

While reading about the role of the martial arts in the Boxer Uprising (Hat Tip: Scott P Phillips, “Theater, Ritual and Exorcism in Chinese Martial Arts.”), I was reminded of a very colorful set of passages that illustrate popular attitudes towards gender during the Ming and Qing. Before I introduce these, readers should recall that the Boxer movement was made up of both martial artists and impoverished peasants who sought to use an arsenal of traditional charms and spells, as well as whatever weapons they possessed, to eradicate Christianity in China,
defend the Qing dynasty, and ultimately drive out the foreigners. Their attacks on Chinese Christians and European missionaries led to foreign military intervention by the western powers and Japan in 1900.

“The Boxers regularly attributed the casualties they suffered in fighting with foreigners in Tianjin to the latter’s placement of naked women in the midst or in front of their forces, which broke the power of the Boxers’ magic. The story was also circulated and widely believed by the populace that a naked woman straddled each of the many cannons mounted in the foreign buildings in Zizhulin making it impossible for the “gunfire-repelling magic” (bipao zhi fa) of the
boxers to work properly. (Paul A. Cohen. History in Three Keys: The Boxer Uprising as Event, Experience and Myth. Columbia University Press. 1997. p. 131).

The Boxers also employed special female troops (the so-called “Red Lanterns”) to try and counteract this (imagined) negative sexual magic being employed by the westerners. Nor was this strategy all that unique. Earlier in Cohen we read about similar strategies being used at other points in the Ming and Qing dynasty.

“Dirty water, as a destroyer of magic, was unquestionably related in Boxer minds to the most powerful magic-inhibitor of all: women, and more particularly uncleanness in women, a category that, for Boxers, included everything from menstrual or fetal blood to nakedness to pubic
hair. Water was of course a symbol of yin, the primeval female principal in China, and there was a long-held belief that the symbolic representation of yin could be used to overcome the effects of such as phenomena as fire (including gunfire), which was symbolic of the male
principal, yang.

Several groups of rebels in the late Ming used women to suppress the firepower of government troops. During the insurgency of 1774 in Shandong, Wang Lun’s forces used an array of magical techniques, including strange incantations and women soldiers waving white fans, in their assault on Linqing. The Imperial defenders of the city were at
first frustrated by the effectiveness of the rebel’s fighting tactics.

An old soldier, however, came to the rescue with this advice: “Let a prostitute go up to the wall and take off her underclothing….we will use yin power to counter their spells.” When this proposal was carried out and proved effective, the government side adopted additional
measures of a like sort including, as later recounted by Wang Lun himself, “women wearing red clothing but naked from the waist down, bleeding and urinating in order to destroy our power.” (Cohen, 129-130).

We are now in a conceptual world far removed from the fighting strategies of gentle cranes and teenage girls. The earlier discussions of the place of Yin in boxing were clearly related to technical debates about entry, timing and the value short boxing. The examples from Boretz and Cohen place us squarely in the realm of adversarial magic.
Rather than being a matter of balance, the forces of Yin are seen as a shadowy harbinger of chaos and destruction. Rather than neutralizing your opponent on the physical realm, the weaponization of female sexuality allows you to attack his virtue and manhood on a much deeper
and more fundamental level.

I suspect that the stories of Ng Moy, Yim Wing Chun and Fang Qiniang originate in a slightly different cultural milieu than the accounts above. At the end of the Qing dynasty there was an intellectual reform movement within Confucianism that argued (among other things) that the
original “goodness” of all people was shared by women. These scholars held that females were moral creatures and they should be treated as such. They were even capable of being educated and might excel in poetry, literature or the arts.

This movement was far from anything that we would think of as “modern feminism” and it maintained rigid gender hierarchies. Yet it did have an important effect on the lives of many women including the revolutionary and martial artist Qiu Jin (who grew up in a relatively liberal gentry household).

These beliefs are evident in some of the stories of female boxers and heroes told at the end of the Qing dynasty. Likewise these same ideas are remarkably absent from earlier fictional works such as Water Margin. In the more liberal 19th century martial mythology women are
typically viewed as fully realized moral creatures, capable of hard work and self-cultivation. There is nothing about their inherent “femaleness” that disqualified them from being a proficient boxer any more than being a female disqualified one from being an accomplished calligrapher. In fact, a lot of the discussion in the Bubishi about the importance of self-discipline and internal cultivation sounds more
like a reflection of popular 19th century Confucianism than Daoism when you get right down to it. We often forget that Confucians also used meditation and breathing exercises and were just as capable of medical or metaphysical thought as anyone else.

These attitudes on gender were obviously not shared by everyone in society, and even some aspects of modern Chinese folk religion continue to draw a much sharper ontological distinction between genders than
most of us in the western industrialized world would be comfortable accepting.

Examined from this more reactionary perspective, the story of Ng Moy starts to look very different. Suddenly a lone female figure, manipulating the forces of Yin to skirt the authority of the government and bringing down local “heroes” becomes a questionable role model. In fact, I suspect that this is one of the reasons why a number of
lineages in the Wing Chun world today have attempted to create “alternate” creation stories.

Rather than focusing on women, which they find to be both embarrassing and “unrealistic,” these schools would prefer a narrative that relied exclusively on male “rebels,” usually in association with an exotic secret society, fighting desperately to take down the government. In short, there is a certain amount of pressure within the Wing Chun clan
to ditch our own creation story and to start telling basically the same (male-dominated) story that every other Cantonese martial art uses. It would appear that the multiple possible readings of the role of “Yin” in martial culture are still causing unresolved tensions even in the current era.

Understanding Gender to Decode History: Yim Hung Challenges Ip Man.

These competing popular ideas about gender might provide a useful dialectic for thinking about other issues that occasionally arise in the history of the southern Chinese martial arts. For instance, one of the strangest stories that I have ever heard about Ip Man’s youth is that of his challenge match with a well-known prostitute. Even odder,
this story is related by his son Ip Chun, who is not prone to
exaggeration, and hence it is probably factually true.

As a point of reference, readers should recall that many northern martial artists were starting to come to Guangdong in the 1920s. Some of these individuals came with the Jingwu Association, and others were sent as part of the later Guoshu movement. Still more came independently. This mixing of old and new styles was occasionally a
source of tension as teacher competed for students and social influence.

In the 1920s a beautiful prostitute named Yim Hung spent some time in Foshan. She was not a local resident and was originally from northern China. She is reputed to have been a woman of many talents, one of which was her mastery of hard Qigong. This is a practice whereby martial artists condition or train parts of their body to accept
punishing blows. Whenever you see a “Shaolin monk” having cinder blocks smashed on his head or boards broken across his stomach during a demonstration, he is doing “hard Qigong.” Such skills were commonly displayed in marketplaces and they were a great way to draw a crowd
when selling patent medicines or other services.

Ip Man’s friends wanted to test his martial skills (and possibly humiliate him) so they arranged for a surprise meeting between the two at a private restaurant in Foshan. Yim Hung extended a challenge to Ip Man. If she could withstand three blows to her stomach he would have
to pay her about $750 in current American dollars. If he managed to penetrate her “Iron Stomach” technique then he could avail himself of her services free of charge.

Ip Man proceeded to perform a “1-inch punch” on the woman using the typical Wing Chun soft fist. Much to the delight of his friends he succeeded in doubling her over. As such Ip Man was declared the winner of the challenge but he magnanimously released Yim Hung from her part
of the contract and gave her a prescription to help her “repair her Qi.”

So what is really going on in this story? At first glance it would appear to be a rather tawdry tale about a young Kung Fu master literally beating a traveling prostitute in a local brothel. Not exactly the sort of thing that one usually builds a martial reputation on, or records as a memorial to one’s father. Nevertheless, I think there is some additional meaning we are meant to derive from this story.

It might be instructive to start with the possible motivations of Ip Man’s friends. There does not seem to be much indication in Ip Chun’s accounts that they were experienced martial artists or really understood what was going on at a detailed level. Instead they probably viewed Qigong as some sort of magic. So from their perspective the question was “will the polluted female Yin of a travelling prostitute (from the north no less) destroy the virtuous Yang of Ip Man?”

On the surface this wager appears to be similar to accounts of using prostitutes to suppress the enemy’s “fire” during the late Ming and Boxer Uprising. Given that Ip Man was larger, stronger and also an experienced martial artist, it was exactly this aspect of the challenge that probably made the wager between the two a potentially interesting public contest in the first place.

Yet Ip Man, Yim Hung and Ip Chun (the story teller) actually did understand what was actually going on. On a deeper level things were not what they seemed. Yim Hung, who was by all accounts a beautiful woman, practiced a discipline that is almost exclusively the domain of working-class men seeking to increase their “Yang characteristics.”
Ip Man, a male from a privileged background, used techniques predicated on relaxation (a Yin trait) borrowed from a martial art developed by and for women.

To an outside observer it might look as though Ip Man’s Yang had been great enough to triumph over the challenge posed by the prostitute’s corrosive pollution (i.e., Yin). But in reality it was the Yin that triumphed, just as popular wisdom might have expected—but not for reasons that they would have understood. The entire story is a paradox
that revolves around the disconnect between a thing’s apparent and real nature.

Conclusion

This is a hard story to tell. I don’t typically use it with students. I think the only reason that Ip Chun and others feel comfortable passing it on is that while Ip Man defeats the prostitute, he does it in a way that strikes a clear moral victory for her and people like her.

One empowering way of reading this story is that he proves it is not necessary to suppress your essential characteristics (especially gender) to be a good martial artist. That is what Yim Hung was actually doing (though she looked feminine on the outside) when she studied her brand of martial Qigong, and it is ultimately why her Qi was damaged.

In order to get to this interpretive level it is necessary to know a little about how gender has been viewed in the Chinese martial arts. Late 19th century Chinese martial culture contained multiple competing schools of thought on these questions. We have reviewed two of them in
this article.

The first school was more liberal and reformist. It saw women as capable of morality, learning and self-cultivation. In this framework female characteristics could be used to establish balance and inner harmony, either through some understanding of Daoism (rare) or popular Confucianism (much more likely). Feminine metaphors then became
available for descriptions of specific tactics and certain modes of story-telling.

However, older ideas that understood “Yin” in a harsher and less forgiving light did not simply go away. In certain circles they may have even been strengthened. These same ideas are still present in the popular religion of Southern China today.

Both casual readers and historians should be aware that there is more than one way to read many of the Chinese martial arts legends, particularly when gender is involved. In the west we tend to rely on psychological readings of these myths, as those are the most accessible to us. However, as the story of Ip Man and the Yim Hung demonstrates,
understanding nuance often requires one to be able to see the same story from multiple points of view.

-BY BENJUDKINS









Wednesday 30 January 2013

Wing Chun James Yimm Lee 嚴鏡海

Wing Chun Kung Fu

A book with a superior in-depth introduction to 'Sil Lim Tao,' the first form of the Wing Chun System. The author James Yimm Lee says one cannot learn from a book but this is a great training manual for the first form, the immovable elbow and centerline theories, Chi Sao (sticking hands), trapping, and more.

J. Yimm Lee compares Chi Sao practice to the Asian game of 'Paper, Scissors, Rock.' Scissors can cut paper, a rock can crush scissors, and paper can envelop rock. Similarly when your opponent uses a palm-up block, you should execute an elbow-in block. When your opponent strikes from the elbow-in block, change to an elbow-up block, the one who can't change effortlessly will be defeated.

This link has its selected pages for display;

http://books.google.com/books?id=bpqI0uQ26YIC&pg=PA143&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false

This book continues to set the standard for martial arts instructional books. It also features 100 detailed illustrations and photographs explaining Chi Sao and trapping.

Bruce Lee is the Editor of this book.

A brief biography of the author:

James Yimm Lee 嚴鏡海 was an American martial arts pioneer, teacher, author, publisher, and a welder by profession. He was a veteran of the U.S. Army. He was one of Bruce Lee's three personally certified 3rd rank instructors and went on to teach in his absence in Oakland. James Lee mentored Bruce Lee greatly and influenced him in nutrition, weight training, and the forming of the style jeet kune do. Lee became well known for his Iron Palm and would routinely break bricks at demonstrations. He was the first to publish an Iron Palm book in America in 1957. Lee was a well established author and was one of the first to publish martial arts books in English in America. He also helped Bruce Lee publish his first book, "Chinese Gung-Fu: The Philosophical Art of Self Defense." James Lee's published books include: Modern Kung-Fu Karate: Iron Poison Hand Training, Book 1 (Break Brick in 100 Days), Wing Chun Kung-Fu , and Secret Fighting Arts of the Orient.

Tuesday 22 January 2013

Legend of Wing Chun 咏春传奇 TV Series 2012

Legend of Wing Chun 咏春传奇
TV Series
2012

Director: Lai Shuiqing

Cast:
Zhou Yang
Andy Zhang
Cecilia Yip
Cheng Pei-pei
Yuen Biao
Xiu Qing
Wu Huaxin
Kang Xiaowei

The Legend Of Wing Chun is the latest offering kung fu legend Yuen Biao, also starring Jade Xu, Zhou Yang and legend Cheng Pei Pei.

There are many movies focusing of the system of Wing Chun, one of many's favorite style to watch on screen, since Sammo Hung brought it to the screen with movies such as Warriors Two, The prodigal Son and the latest movies Ip Man.

Wing Chun Sifu Lui Ming Fai

A Wing Chun Documentary
produced by the Shui On Group.
Starring Vincent Lo and Sifu Lui Ming Fai.
Narration written and performed by Vincent Lo.
Directed by Seamus Walsh.
Produced by Katherine Lo, Bill Yip, Wan Siu-keung and Seamus Walsh.
2012

A 30+ minute Wing Chun documentary crafted by director Seamus Walsh and Hong Kong producer Bill Yip exploring the philosophical dimensions of the Wing Chun system. It tells how the techniques and skills can be applied to the daily life of anyone in any field.

This documentary was shot in well chosen places including training halls, modern art galleries, ancient courtyards and clean walkable street, to promote the future of Foshan as a Martial Arts centre.

Thursday 17 January 2013

[Trailer 1] 电视剧《叶问》片花 (郑嘉颖, 韩雪)

Wing Chun Ip Man TV series Kevin Cheng Ka Wing 鄭嘉穎 2012

Three times TV King Kevin Cheng has been putting in a lot of effort to focus on filming fight scenes ever since he joined the Ip Man crew earlier this month - sparring with his opponents are inevitably carry more danger because all of his opponents are martial arts experts.

The scene being filmed on 30th August goes that Ip Man (played by Kevin) is hit on the head by Chen Huashun (played by Yuan Wah) with a long stick. The scene was described as horrid, keeping the crew on the edge of their seats. Master Chen Huashun played by Yuan Wah was disciplining Ip Man, is to pick up a stick which is 2 meters long, walk out of the room, and swinging it towards Kevin's head.

In order to be as real as possible and to preserve the authenticity of the story, Yuan Wah is supposed to use his might and strike the blow against Kevin's neck. If he would miss by just a little or uses a little more strength, Kevin will be injured in the process. There is no substitute arranged for Kevin in this scene. In order to soften the atmosphere of the set, Kevin said jokingly "Even the stick has a substitute but not me" The crew was afraid that the stick will be broken hence they prepared a spare. Fortunately, Yuan Wah is a Kung Fu expert and was able to control his strength properly, the scene was wrapped up without any mishaps.

It is reported that the production team is very strict and have high expectations of all the fight scenes. In order to give his best, not only does Kevin practice his moves on a wooden dummy diligently, he also insists to perform the fight scenes himself. Kevin's professionalism is definitely commendable!

-Sohu Entertainment News

Wednesday 16 January 2013

The VING TSUN Grandmaster - IP CHING

Empty Mind Films has produced some of the highest quality and most engaging martial arts documentaries seen anywhere in the last few years. They are a small organization, and as a result they are selective about the projects they take on. Luckily we seem to be on the same wave length.

They have also devoted substantial time and effort to documenting the Chinese martial arts. It has been my personal experience (from traveling in Asia) that it is relatively easy to find interesting martial arts in Japan and they have shot some good stuff there. China presents an entirely different set of challenges, and this is where they really shine. Their film on the Chen village and Chen style taiji is a classic. It is mandatory viewing for anyone interested in Chinese martial studies or the state of Taiji today. I would not hesitate to use that film in a university level classroom.

I think they may have come close to the same level of excellence with their most recent martial arts themed release Wing Chun: A Documentary. While filmed exclusively in Hong Kong and Foshan this study of the modern hand combat system sought to explore the diversity of thought and practice arising from the teachings of Ip Man. He was an active instructor in Hong Kong from the early 1950s until his death in 1972. All of the individuals who were interviewed for this film were associated with the Ip Man Wing Chun clan, either as direct descendants, students or grand-students.

Many individuals in the broader Wing Chun world will find this editorial direction limiting, and possibly offensive. There was no discussion of non-Ip Man lineages, let alone non-Leung Jan lineages of Wing Chun. The story of the art’s origin was told in a simple and direct way that supports the supremacy of the Ip Man Wing Chun clan. Viewers are told that the art resided with Leung Jan who had only one student, Chan Wah Shun. While many people taught Wing Chun in Foshan in the 1930s, what they did was different from the art that Ip Man spread to the world from his schools in Hong Kong. Wing Chun as the world knows it today is a result of Ip Man’s innovations in the 1950s.

One can only assume that the makers of this film must have known they were bound to upset the Yuen Kay-San Wing Chun clan, among many others. Nevertheless, I suspect that this editorial slant is largely correct. While there are certainly lineages of Wing Chun being taught today that do not want to associate themselves with Ip Man, the truth is that he single handedly created the entire global demand for the art that we recognize today. He did this by training hundreds of students, including Bruce Lee.

In a very real way Ip Man set the terms for the global discussion of Wing Chun that is still unfolding. He codified the values, set the standards and decided which aspects of China’s complex martial heritage were best adapted to a modern, urban, middle class market. Ip Man single handedly trained an entire generation of exceptionally talented martial artist that would bring his art to North America, Europe and even back to mainland China. Without his innovations in Hong Kong in the 1950s, and the rise of Bruce Lee to superstardom in the 1970s, it is exceedingly unlikely that anyone would be interested in seeking out any of the non-Ip Man lineages that seem to be so valuable today. In a very real sense they exist only because he existed first, and they define themselves in reference to the model he established. So yes, the story of Wing Chun after 1949 really is the story of the social community that Ip Man gathered around himself in Hong Kong and its subsequent explosion on the world stage.

Overall the production values of the documentary are sound and the videography was always good, and occasionally great. A few minor criticisms can be made. I found the pacing to be a little slow in places. The extra features were also quite brief and could have used more depth and development. They appeared to be mostly an afterthought and contributed little to the overall presentation of the story. I had hoped for more here.

On the other-hand, I quite liked how the documentary progressed and presented itself to the audience. The director was not afraid to let the individual masters he interviewed tell their own stories on their own terms. A majority of the screen time was dedicated to simply watching class room mechanics and instructions in a number of different schools throughout Hong Kong. I am sure that this material will surprise a lot of martial artists used to more regimented and formal decorum of Korean or Japanese schools.

The exploration of modern Wing Chun starts off with a visit to the VTAA headquarters in Kowloon and includes interviews with both Ip Ching (the younger son of Ip Man) and James Jar (current Chair of the VTAA). All of this information is very interesting. Next they visited the school of Donald Mak (a student of Chow Tze Chuen) who discusses his own understanding of why Wing Chun is a principal based art.


Ip Ching, the younger son of Ip Man, discussing Chi Sao techniques with a teenage student at the VTAA headquarters in Hong Kong.
The narrative then turns to a branch of the Leung Sheung clan who have just opened a school in Mongkok. Leung Sheung was one of Ip Man’s most skilled students. He in turn taught Ng Wah Sum, who recently died. Some of Ng’s senior students have opened a school in his honor and Sifu Leung Ngor Yin and Sifu Jason Fung put on a spirited Chi Sau and Chi Girk demonstration.

After that the film heads back across the ferry to the Central District where it drops in on a Wing Chun class being taught in an upscale health club run by Australian expatriates, Sifu Nima and co-owner Heather Hogan. Nima is a student of Chu Shong Tin (the eldest remaining Hong Kong era student of Ip Man), and shares his master concern for the role of the mind and intentionality in Wing Chun. While the class was mostly dedicated to beginners there was quite a bit of enthusiasm and even a classic “the time I got in a fight” story. I have often thought about the role of this sort of personal narrative (one is tempted to compare it to religious witnessing or testimony) in creating identity and attachment with the art.

The next Sifu interviewed was Kong Chi Keung in the Wanchai neighborhood. Kong’s teaching style included a lot of discussion and lecture. His personal philosophy was somewhat eclectic and embraced borrowing and innovation, topics that were a matter of some concern to a number of other teachers (more on that later). As if to reinforce this impression, his school displayed a number of Lion Dance heads. While alive, Ip Man explicitly discouraged his students from becoming involved in Lion Dancing because of its association with criminality and the extortion of local shop keepers. I know for a fact that Ip Ching still has the same attitude about Wing Chun schools and Lion Dancing today.

Perhaps the most interesting segment of the show was the visit to Master Sam Lau’s Wing Chun school and hostel on Nathan Road at the tip of Kowloon. I was pretty impressed with what I saw here. Most of the students were visitors, only staying for a month or so to take Master Lau’s “intensive” course. That fact not withstanding he had them engaged in serious Chi Sao and everyone the camera turned to looked pretty solid. Clearly they weren’t all experts, but they were working hard, their energy was good and you could just feel the intensity in the room. I am definitely putting his school on my list of places to visit. Of all of the classes that the show profiled his seemed to be closest to my own experience in Wing Chun.

Lastly the documentary heads back up the Pearl River to Foshan, the ancestral home of Wing Chun, Ip Man and Bruce Lee. In fact, Wing Chun barely scratches the surface of this small city’s martial heritage. A lot of my own recent research focuses on the economic and social development of Foshan as a handicraft center in the Qing dynasty in an attempt to better understand what made some market towns, but not others, incubators for the martial arts.

Rather than answer that question the film focused on the Ip Man Museum built on the grounds of the Foshan ancestral temple. The segment was well shot and gave the feeling of actually being there.

This was followed by an interview with Lun Kai at the Sim Wing Martial Club in downtown Foshan. Lun Kai was among Ip Man’s first students when he made his initial foray into teaching the martial arts at a friend’s cotton factory in 1941. I thought that some of Lun Kai’s comments were quite interesting. He seemed to indicate that already in 1941 Ip Man’s Wing Chun was different from what was being taught elsewhere in Foshan. This really makes one wonder how early Ip Man began his reform process and what inspired him to do so.

It also gives one pause for thought as almost nothing being taught in that school was actually identifiable as “Wing Chun” to me, given my “modern” post-Ip Man vantage point. The angles and pressures looked tortured. It wasn’t clear what the intentionality behind the movements were. If this was a reflection of Ip Man’s Wing Chun from the 1940s, which had already diverged from what was generally taught in the 1930s, it makes one really wonder what “traditional” Wing Chun would have looked like? Once again, the modern understanding of the Wing Chun really begins with the thinking and innovation of one individual. Even earlier stages of his own teaching seem oddly distant.

The director and editor of the film went to some lengths not to impose too much narrative direction on all of this material. Even the film’s narration shows a light touch, keeping explanation of what is seen on screen to the bare minimum. Still, some themes did emerge. As I stated earlier, it is clear that they see the story of the Wing Chun and the story of the community of practitioners built by Ip Man as one and the same.

They also seemed to be impressed with the variety of different approaches to the teaching of the same art. This diversity was most obvious at the philosophical level, with some teachers embracing globalization and change, and others hanging back. But it also came up at the commercial level. It was clear that not everyone had the same business plan. Teachers operated out of larger associations, collective partnerships, health clubs and small, hole in the wall, schools. Master Sam Lau even seems to make as much money from running a hostel dedicated to Wing Chun pilgrims as he does actually teaching.

Even more interesting were the strains of thought and argument that seemed to arise, almost spontaneously, from the many interviews they conducted. By the end of the documentary there was a real sense of dialogue within the Ip Man clan. Much of this dialogue was concerned with thorny questions of authenticity, identity and change in the face of a rapidly growing global movement.

Only one of the Sifus interviewed in the movie was of western origin, but it did not seem lost on any of the masters that the vast majority of teachers and students today live outside Hong Kong and are not Chinese. Most of them are in Europe and North America where being in the third generation of local instruction is now pretty common. While most of these individuals have no primary connection to Hong Kong or the Chinese ethnicity, they remain very dedicated to Wing Chun. Increasingly it is their buying power and tourism dollars that are driving the development of the global Wing Chun movement.

Truth be told, many of these western practitioners are extremely good at what they do. It was certainly neat to see all of the different schools in Hong Kong. But I wasn’t really awed by anything I saw. I have seen instruction, understanding and chi Sao that was just as good, if not better, right here in the United States.

Nor is the US even the epicenter for Wing Chun in the west. There is clearly a lot more interest in Wing Chun in the UK and some parts of Europe than there is anywhere else in the world. If the beating heart of Wing Chun is anywhere, it is certainly not located in Foshan or even Hong Kong. Instead it’s metaphorical soul can probably best be found in the cold industrial cities of the UK, or maybe Germany.

This is both a blessing and a problem. On the one hand it means that Wing Chun is unlikely to ever be threatened with extinction again the way it was during the dark years of the Boxer Rebellion (when all Chinese martial arts became deeply unfashionable) and then again after 1949 (when the Chinese Communist Party noticed the unique relationship that existed between Wing Chun and membership in the “new gentry” class). The survival of the art finally seems assured.

On the other hand this is quite a problem. So many martial arts have left their traditional homeland and entered the global market place only to be changed beyond the point of recognition. How does Wing Chun spread itself around the world without losing its soul?

Specifically, how do we insure that this will remain Ip Man’s community, built on and promoting his insights and understanding of the Chinese martial arts? Almost every speaker addressed this question, and some did so at length.

For Sifu Donald Mak, Wing Chun must always remain a Chinese art because it was built on a conceptual foundation that westerners simply cannot easily understand or accept. If they wish to really understand the art it is necessary was for them to “come to china” in their thought, adapting themselves to Wing Chun’s mother culture. His comments seemed to anchor the conservative side of the spectrum.

Sifu Nima and Sifu Kong Chi Keung were the least bound to tradition. Both have a firm grounding in traditional Ip Man Wing Chun, yet both feel that the art must be open to adaptation to survive. For Sifu Nima that means going further even that Chu Shong Tin in conceptualizing and teaching Wing Chun as an “internal” martial art (something I have argued against here). Whatever the historical and philosophical problems with this move, it certainly seems to be popular among a certain group of western students.

Kong Chi Keung goes in exactly the opposite direction. He has thought deeply about Jeet Kune Do, Thai Kick Boxing and Brazilian Jujitsu, all arts that are popular in the west. He notes quite correctly that the martial arts landscape is changing quite rapidly right now and believes that Wing Chun must learn from these other arts and adapt in order to survive.

But how do you set the boundaries? When have you adapted yourself out of your art and your community? This is not an easy question to answer. Ip Ching and Sam Lau address this paradox the most explicitly. Both argue that Ip Man’s Kung Fu was genuine, and adherence to his principals remains the litmus test for “authentic” Wing Chun. And yet both freely admit that what he did was also original. It bore little resemblance to what was taught in Foshan and was a product of his life, experience and thought. Authenticity is a difficult concept for all of these masters. They all want to talk about it, to wrestle with it. Still, there is a universal acknowledgement that it is not enough of a foundation to justify any given approach to the art.

“Adaptation” itself is not a problem. Learning from your own experience and adapting your fighting style accordingly is not only a good idea, it’s a foundation concept for all of Wing Chun. In a real sense it is where Wing Chun came from. But clearly not all change is desirable or positive.

For Ip Ching the red-line appears to be intentionally lying about, or misrepresenting what Ip Man taught. This was a real problem in the early stages of Wing Chun’s globalization. During this phase the main body of students in Hong Kong were unaware of the claims that some of their brothers were making in the west. Lack of English skills and no universally read publications allowed Leung Ting to claim to be the heir to Ip Man when clearly he was not. More damaging to the reputation and growth of the art were individuals like Duncan Leung and William Cheung who made exaggerated and highly dubious claims about their “special status” and the “secret teachings” that only they were given, in an attempt to undercut the legitimacy of other Ip Man students.

Ip Ching and others roundly and forcefully rebutted this entire category of claims at multiple points in the documentary. They pointed out that those who made such claims are not only wrong, but they totally misrepresent the most basic and fundamental aspects of Ip Man’s life, personality and teaching philosophy. So clearly attempts to re-write Ip Man’s story in one’s own image are beyond the pale of what the community will accept.

Yet as Sam Lau reminds us, most of the problems that emerge in a global martial arts movement are more subtle. They are expressed in slipping standards, eccentric personal philosophies or creeping adoption of outside material to meet the demands of a local market. His solution to all of this is as simple as it is sweeping. In his view there should be an international regulatory body that can determine what Wing Chun is, and should set clear standards for practice, advancement and licensing.

It is an interesting idea. Lots of Japanese and Korean arts do exactly this. Interestingly Chinese ones tend not to. Why? I suspect it has something to do with the social structure of the traditional Chinese arts. They don’t facilitate a lot of trust or mutual reliance across party lines.

Every Wing Chun school already operates as a cell and is basically self-sufficient. Given that the art has never been more popular, I doubt many individuals will be all that keen to pay the immense start-up costs, and surrender the personal freedom to run their own schools, that such a solution would entail. And then there is the small issue of trust. No one would ever trust someone from outside their own lineage and clan to run such an organization. Regulatory bodies like this just make too convenient a club to beat your enemies with. His proposed body is just never going to happen, even though other arts do quite well in this sort of institutional setting.

By the end of this documentary I was proud of the community that Ip Man had created. He started a conversation about the nature of the Chinese martial arts in the modern world that is still going on today. But the future seems cloudy. While something called “Wing Chun” will continue to exist, I was less clear as to what it will look like.

Still, I do not foresee any immediate crisis. Ip Man was successful because he asked his students a compelling question. When we dedicate our minds and bodies to the practice of Wing Chun we are formulating our own answer, becoming part of the conversation that he started. It doesn’t look like we are in any danger of running out of things to say just yet. I suspect that Wing Chun will survive as a unified social community for as long people find Ip Man’s innovations relevant and his conversation gripping.

Wing Chun is one of the most popular martial arts to emerge from China. It is surpassed only by Taiji in terms of total students in the global community. Given the size of this potential market I have always been shocked that there is so little good media for Wing Chun practitioners. I highly recommend this film. It is topical and makes a valuable contribution to the conversation about Ip Man’s stature and place in the art today. Wing Chun: A Documentary should be on your viewing list. This film was directed by Jon Braeley and Betty Yuan. It is 75 minutes in length and is distributed by Empty Mind Films.

-BENJUDKINS

photo: GM Ip Ching, discussing Chi Sao techniques with a teenage student at the VTAA headquarters in Hong Kong.
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Sunday 13 January 2013

Wing Chun Practitioner - Robert Downey Jr (Sherlock Holmes)

Robert Downey Jr.: "He Was Skinny"

How the 150-pound star of Sherlock Holmes trained up (and down) to become Hollywood's top action hero.
by Sam Dehority

Robert Downey Jr. hadn’t played an action hero before 2008’s Iron Man, and while he wasn’t out of shape, he didn’t have the heroic build needed to portray Tony Stark. “He was skinny,” says Brad Bose, Ph.D., Downey’s personal trainer. “He weighed about 150 pounds, but he was big into Wing Chun, which kept him in shape.”

To prepare Downey for his role, Bose prescribed a periodization program, alternating periods of heavy weight/low reps with lighter weight/high reps. Downey trained at least four days every week, with sessions lasting anywhere from 40 to 90 minutes. Bose varied the length of every training session to keep the actor on his toes. “He couldn’t say, ‘OK, I know I can conserve a little energy because we’re two exercises from the end,’” Bose says. “He never knew what was coming, so he had to work hard all the time.”
Bose also placed the prospective Iron Man on a strict, clean, calorie-dense diet. “He ate every three hours,” he says. “We kept him on a 30/30/40 split: 30% protein, 30% fat, and 40% carbohydrates. He was taking in more than 5,000 calories a day for nine months. If you don’t eat that much, your body won’t accept the weight.”
Stylistically, Bose wanted to build Downey into a character who looked capable of going toe-to-toe with fighter jets and terrorists. “Our goal was to get him as big as we could, but we also wanted to make sure he had some kind of six-pack,” Bose says. “We really focused on the old-school heavy lifting. Military presses, dips, and bench presses. Keep him ripped but maintain the muscle mass.” The muscle Downey built wasn’t just for show either. By the end of his training and 25 pounds of lean muscle later, he’d doubled his bench press, and nearly tripled his shoulder press.
So what did he do after reaching this peak? He promptly dropped the mass and went back to 153 pounds to film Sherlock Holmes.

Kung Fu Fighting

Robert Downey Jr. incorporates Wing Chun into his everyday life—including his films.

“Robert's focus is night and day from when we first began,” says LA Wing Chun Academy founder Eric Oram, who has been training Robert Downey Jr. since 2003. “This shotgun mind of his channeled it into a single point of focus and turned it into a laser,” he adds, regarding the concept-based Chinese martial art and form of self-defense that utilizes both striking and grappling while specializing in close-range combat. “The training demands it. During an exchange, if your brain is anywhere else, I’m gonna get ya. If the mind strays, gotcha. Stop to pat yourself on the back? Thinking about your taxes? Gotcha.”

Made famous by Bruce Lee, Wing Chun is having a moment, thanks to the amazing fight choreography in Sherlock and Iron Man. “Film fight choreography has its own demands,” Oram says. “It’s focus, control, timing, and lots of repetition. It’s remembering where you are every step of the way in telling a story and yet playing it as if it’s happening for the first time live. There’s an art to that, and Robert works very, very hard in that process. I’ve fight doubled him for minor stuff , like pick-up shots, but Robert does all his own stuff when it comes to fights. When the camera’s on him, it’s really him doing it.”

Sunday 6 January 2013

Sad News of Wing Chun Family

SAD NEWS HAS REACHED US FROM HONG KONG! Sifu Wu Chun Nam, who was a student and classmate of Sifu Wong Shun Leung’s from the third year of their high school studies, has passed away today. Even though he wasn’t feeling too well at the time, he granted us an interview in September 2012 for our upcoming Special Wong Shun Leung Tribute Edition. Our deepest condolences. May he rest in peace.


Saturday 5 January 2013

Respective Wing Chun Great Grandmaster - IP MAN

Ip Man and the Roots of Wing Chun’s “Multiple Attacker” Principle
(pt. 2)

Detective Ip Man and the Roots of the Multiple Attacker Scenario

Ip Man was a younger son born into a wealthy merchant family. His parents owned businesses between Foshan and Hong Kong and they could afford the best for their children. Ip Man received both a traditional Chinese style education and a state of the art western one in Hong Kong. In sociological terms he was clearly in the economic class that subsequent historians have termed the “new gentry.” Among the various luxuries in life, his parents bought him Wing Chun lessons with Chan Wah Shun, an important local martial artists.

Ip Man appears to have been a genuinely genial and well liked individual. However, it is also quite clear that he was not a very productive member of society for much of his young adulthood. Apparently he preferred to spend the family fortune rather than building it, and he devoted most of his time to practicing Kung Fu and associating with other local martial artists.

I suspect that much of the impoverishment of the Ip family actually has to do with Nationalist (GMD) tax policy and wealth expropriations to support the Northern Campaign against the warlords in the 1920s. In this sort of an economic environment making large investments with payoffs in the distant future probably did not make a lot of sense, and consumption at least insured that you got to enjoy your wealth while it lasted.

By the 1930s and 1940s the economic fortunes of the Ip family had turned for the worse. It is often said that due to his diminished circumstances Ip Man was forced to get a job as some sort of law enforcement officer in Foshan. When this happened, and what post he actually held, is not always clear.

There are a number of reasons for this. Most of the accounts we have are brief and sometimes they have been carelessly translated. Ip Man himself did not spend a lot of time ruminating about the “good old days” as he apparently came to despise the Nationalists government. His children (especially Ip Ching) were also quite young at the time of these events. Lastly, most Wing Chun students only care about the Hong Kong period of his career when he was actively teaching. As a result not much research has ever been conducted on his earlier career in law enforcement.

The accounts of Ip Man’s career in law enforcement that we do have are brief and contradictory. Some sources indicate that he started working with the police in Foshan as early as the 1930s. I recently heard an interview with an “expert” from a mainland non-Ip Man Wing Chun lineage who claimed that Ip Man actually started to work in law enforcement after the 1938 Japanese occupation of the area. According to this individual he was actually a Japanese collaborator and traitor, which is why he was forced to flee to Hong Kong in 1945 and never returned to mainland China.

The claim that Ip Man started to work for the local GMD police in the 1930s is interesting, but I believe it is ultimately based on a misunderstanding. The more recent claim that he worked for the Japanese police and was a collaborator is outrageous. There is no evidence to support that claim and quite a bit (like his actual travel documents that show he immigrated to Hong Kong in 1949, fleeing the Communists) that disprove it. Still, on at least a social level this particular conspiracy theory is interesting as it demonstrates how uneasy many martial artists in mainland China are with both Wing Chun’s sudden rise in popularity and its domination by “foreign” teachers in both Hong Kong and the West. Discrediting Ip Man and his lineage would be a helpful first step in rewriting the history of this art in terms that mainland martial artists might find more helpful.

Instead the greatest number of accounts, and the most reliable accounts, seem to indicate that Ip Man was first hired to work in law enforcement by the Nationalist government as it struggled to regain control of the countryside in the wake of the Japanese withdrawal at the end of WWII. During the war Ip Man had actually been employed as a private martial arts instructor at a friend’s cotton factory. As the war ended and the economy returned to normal his first experiment in public teaching came to a close.

Shortly after the close of his school Ip Man was apparently approached about leading a group of “plain clothes” detectives in Foshan’s newly reconstituted police force. He likely accepted this position at some time in 1945 and held it until he abandoned his post and fled to Hong Kong at the end of 1949. As far as I can tell this four year period was the only time in Ip Man’s life when he held a conventional job that brought home a steady paycheck.

While his days as a carefree “Kung Fu bum” might have been over (to use a modern image), Ip Man’s association with the martial arts did not go away. In fact, they were probably the reason he was offered the job in the first place. We know for instance that between 1945 and 1949 Ip Man frequented a local private martial arts association that was backed by the local branch of the GMD. This is where he occasionally instructed other police officers such as Jiu Chow (who asked him to “correct his forms”) and where he first met and exchanged notes with Pan Nam (again, while the two worked together neither claimed a teacher-student relationship).

I review the details of all of this in my book manuscript and I do not want to get bogged down in a discussion of what Wing Chun looked like between 1945 and 1949 in this post. But I will say that knowing some form of martial arts was an important job skill for law enforcement officers, and being able to evaluate and teach them was something that would benefit their officers.

to be continued..

-BY BENJUDKINS


Friday 4 January 2013

Respective Wing Chun Great Grandmaster - IP MAN

We start off our New Year 2013 with another interesting article (in 6 parts)...

Ip Man and the Roots of Wing Chun’s “Multiple Attacker” Principle
(pt. 1)

Law Enforcement and the Martial Arts in Republican China
The intersection between law enforcement and the development of the modern Chinese martial arts is a fascinating topic that deserves a lot more attention than it normally gets. In many ways the police are an ideal place to look when you are trying to capture recent trends in hand combat. The military never wants to engage in “hand to hand” combat. They would prefer to do their killing with artillery or bombs. Most civilian martial artists actively try to avoid trouble and they train their students to do the same. That makes perfect sense. Avoiding street violence whenever possible is a great self-preservation strategy. It’s what society expects of them.

Law enforcement officers are in a very different situation. Their job requires them to go out looking for trouble. And when they locate a criminal they cannot just call in an artillery strike. They are expected to apprehend the suspect so that the individual can be questioned or put on trial. There is every reason to expect that wanted criminals will violently resist arrest. As a result police departments the world over tend to be very interested in hand combat training.

This is often a little different from what civilians practice. How to safely handcuff a suspect without accidentally shooting them is a topic that does not come up very frequently in my Wing Chun classes. Still, police departments frequently hire outside combat experts and pour considerable time and money into the sorts of tactical questions that society as a whole is content to ignore. Law enforcement around the country manages to support a small but thriving industry that caters to their specific needs for combat training and resources.

The situation in Nationalist controlled China was no different. As the government struggled to assert its control over society it created police departments and reformed traditional law enforcement techniques in every major city in the country. This was a huge undertaking and it took a lot of money. Ironically, much of the funding to support these reforms came from the sale of opium and heroin by the state, but that is a topic for another post.

Chinese police departments and law enforcement academies hired civilian martial arts instructors in large numbers. These individuals acted both as instructors and were sometimes recruited as officers. A contract teaching at a local police academy was both a steady source of income and a prestigious honor for any martial arts teacher. Cheung Lai Chuen started his rise to fame in exactly this manner.

Given that law enforcement was such an important consumer of martial arts instruction, it might be interesting to ask whether it had any sort of impact on the development of the Chinese martial arts in the mid-20th century. The case of Wing Chun, especially as it developed in Hong Kong during the 1950s and 1960s, would seem to indicate that it did. To understand how, we need to know a little more about the early years of Ip Man’s career.

to be continued..

-BY BENJUDKINS

Thursday 3 January 2013

Respective Wing Chun Great Grandmaster - IP MAN

Ip Man and the Roots of Wing Chun’s “Multiple Attacker” Principle
(pt. 5-1)

Self-Defense, Wing Chun and Youth Challenge Matches, 1950-1972

Nor is this something that can be explained by looking at the association between Wing Chun and youth violence in the Hong Kong period. It is true that Wing Chun students were involved in a number of illicit “challenge matches” or street fights. However these events always paired two fighters against one another and the spectators tended not to interfere in the contests. Brawls between schools did occasionally happen but these events were considered to be rare and they often ended up involving the police.

This is not to say that this period did not have an important impact on the development of Wing Chun. It certainly did. Period accounts from the 1950s and 1960s all indicate that Ip Man was willing to make changes to the art’s teaching methods and even forms in response to his student’s experiences on the streets. He also changed the way that the art was discussed. He did away with the traditional sayings and the abstract philosophy of the Five Elements and Eight Directions, which had traditionally been part of the art, and replaced them with simple discussions that would appeal to modern western educated high school and college students.

This is actually an important process to consider as Ip Man was actually pretty conservative. He liked to dress and speak like a Confucian intellectual of a previous generation. In no way was he reforming his art simply for a love of “modernization.” Instead he wanted Wing Chun to be brutally effective, and he wanted other figures in the martial arts world to be forced to acknowledge his accomplishments.

Yet for the most part his students rarely encountered multiple attacker encounters. Instead they spilled most of their blood in a series of underground fights called “bimo.” These impromptu events would usually only be planned a few days or a week in advance. Fighters from various schools would meet secretly in basements, roof tops or allies and fight in prearranged bouts until one contestant submitted or was incapacitated. There were few if any rules limiting what fighters could do, but the events were far from chaotic. Each fight had a judge, seconds to attend the fighters between “rounds” and was arranged by a teenaged promoter. One suspects that truancy and illegal gambling were also part of the bimo youth subculture.

Individuals were occasionally badly hurt in these bouts, but interestingly I have never come across a confirmed account of an actual death. Regardless, the police viewed the entire institution as patently illegal and a violation of multiple laws. Martial artists in America today spend a lot of time ignoring and apologizing for the dark underbelly of youth culture in Hong Kong and its very real relationship with the martial arts. This revisionist tendency is one of the main factors contributing to our systematic misunderstanding of the arts that arose during this time period.

One of the dangers with bimo was that with no formal oversight and an excess of youthful enthusiasm the violence it generated could occasionally spin out of control. This might happen if a pattern of repeated injuries or humiliations led to spiral of retaliations and escalating violence that might envelop an entire school.

Ip Man clearly benefited from the reputation of his students in the bimo sub-culture, but these unregulated challenge matches also caused him headaches. I am aware of at least two incidents in the 1950s when it became necessary to hold talks with other local martial arts clans (White Crane and Choy Li Fut) to smooth over problems created by his younger, less disciplined students.

This was the dominant sort of violence that Ip Man’s students faced in the 1950s and 1960s. They were not spending a lot of time defending themselves from street crime (though that probably happened from time to time), nor were Wing Chun students involved in large scale conflicts against the Triads or the government. Instead, Ip Man’s students generally went out looking for trouble, and they found it in the semi-structured bimo youth sub-culture that dominated the era.

This is a very different situation from what one might have found in Foshan in the 1920s or 1930s. Challenge matches between students and instructors did happen during this period. Ip Man himself fought in two such matches have have been documented. One occurred 1918 and another during the Second Sino-Japanese War when he began to formally teach. But these occasional challenges were pretty different from the bimo matches of Hong Kong.

The big problem that martial artists in Foshan faced were not actually formal challenges. Instead it was the massive levels of organized crime, rampant street level violence, corrupt police and a rapidly escalating civil war that provided the drama of the period. Further complicating matters was the fact that the Triads, police, military, Nationalists and Communists all made use of local martial arts schools to advance their own agendas. Ambush, kidnapping and death were all a lot more common in this arena than they were in even the worst Hong Kong neighborhoods of the 1960s.

I suspect that if we want to understand Wing Chun’s interest in multiple attacker scenarios we need to cast our gaze further back in time and ask about Ip Man’s earlier career in the 1930s and 1940s. As a law enforcement officer he would have understood the realities of violence on a level that his teenage students a decade later would have found incomprehensible.

As I have argued in other posts, for many of Ip Man’s students in Hong Kong, the martial arts were fundamentally about social performance, reputation and networking. But by the time Ip Man started to teach in 1950 he was a veteran of the devastating civil war that ultimately claimed the Republic of China. If I had to guess he probably saw the martial arts as about survival.

But what exactly was he trying to survive? Being ambushed by multiple armed attackers who intend to kill you means almost certain death. There are very few ways that a lone individual can survive these scenarios if they are genuinely surprised and their attackers do not make some sort of horrific mistake. Assassinations in the 1930s and 1940s used favored guns, knives, grenades and very large improved explosives. If a group was determined to kill you chances were they would eventually pull it off. No martial arts system could protect you from these sorts of threats.

However, teams that were planning on assassinating you were not nearly as scary as those who wanted to capture and interrogate you. Ip Man would have known this from first-hand experience because that is the sort of work that plain clothes detectives were involved in on a daily basis. Fortunately these sorts of teams had to operate covertly and they could not just go around tossing grenades and bombs. This would have given a martial artist a chance to spot the trap in its initial stages, to confound one more team members, and to attempt to flee. When Ip Man thought about applying his martial arts to the problem of “staying alive,” he probably gave considerable thought to these scenarios.

Of course this entire topic is highly speculative. Its ultimately impossible to know what is going on inside anyone’s head. Further, Ip Man made a point of saying as little as possible about these sorts of experiences when he was alive. Therefore researchers are left to speculate as to how is life experience influenced the development of his martial art.

to be continued..

-BY BENJUDKINS

*Re Photo; Ip Man and an early group of students in the 1950s. The life experience of his students in Hong Kong was very different from what he had seen in Foshan during the late 1930s and 1940s.


Wednesday 2 January 2013

Respective Wing Chun Great Grandmaster - IP MAN

Ip Man and the Roots of Wing Chun’s “Multiple Attacker” Principle
(pt. 5)

This is an extended article on Ip Man’s career in law enforcement, and the subsequent emphasis on “ambush” and “multiple attacker” scenarios that later developed in his lineage of Wing Chun. See here for the first part of this post. As always the best way to approach these multi-section posts would be to print them out and read them as a single extended article.

I also hope that this series of posts inspires readers to think more carefully about the nexus between the traditional Chinese martial arts and the government in Republican China. The state was a major sponsor of the traditional martial arts. This relationship was channeled through a variety of official organizations including the the Central Guoshu Institute, the educational system and numerous military and police academies. While a valuable source of economic sponsorship these interaction also had an affect on the development and evolution of hand combat. In some cases arts were applied to new and novel tactical problems, in others they were subjected to the regulation or corruption of the Nationalist party (GMD). Students of Chinese martial studies should think carefully about the many ways that the state has impacted the martial arts. Reviewing the development of Ip Man’s Wing Chun suggests one possible avenue for what that sort of interaction might look like.

Hand Combat as Conversation: Context, Nuance and Emphasis in the Chinese Martial Arts.

One way of looking at the various styles of hand combat that developed in China is to see them as part of a larger, ongoing conversation. Producing effective fighters was clearly important, but you do not really need a “martial art” to do that. Militaries do it all the time.

No matter how tough you were when you were young, everyone grows old, and even martial artists suffer the ravages of time. Of course people continue to be interested in hand combat long after they are no longer 22 years old and in peak physical condition. But from that point forward studying principles and promoting a given fighting “style” takes on much more importance. It is this socially transmitted aspect that makes the “martial arts” distinct. This makes them a community or a “social movement” in a way that Marine Corps “combatives” can never be.

Much of the meta-conversation that happens between the various martial styles is actually a disagreement about how you think a certain kind of fight is likely to unfold. Almost all styles, modern and traditional, have the same catalog of basic movements. There are strikes with the hands and feet, locks, throws and grappling. Weapons basically come in a limited number of sizes and configurations. At the end of the day there are really only so many ways in which the human body can move, and anyone who is in this business long enough will see all of them.

Any “complete martial art” has a variety of techniques to deal with each of these situations. Do not be fooled by the rhetoric. Taiji players can box, Wing Chun students can master long-range entry and even the most ardent jujitsu student knows how to throw a kick or two. It is not really the techniques that make these arts different so much as it is their basic assumptions about how they think a fight is likely to start, how they want to guide its progression, and what they believe will give them the best chances of winning. These are the fundamental questions that really differentiate the styles. It is differences of emphasis and opinion that give each art its unique visual aesthetic.

This is the actual reason why Wing Chun prefers to generate force through “leverage” whereas Taiji seems more interested in “angular momentum.” Contrary to the assertions of many so-called experts that you find on the internet, it is not that one style is incapable of doing what the other does. Experienced Taiji players know all about leverage and can use it. Advanced Wing Chun training shows you how to generate force with “angular momentum” in Biu Jee and the dummy. Where these arts actually differ is on what they believe the “entry” phase of a fight will look like, and the sorts of counter-attacks that will be needed. This in turn dictates that both styles accentuate different ways of generating energy. What beginning students often take as statements of gospel truth (“Wing Chun is always…….”) are almost always matters of emphasis. When examined in broad social terms the Chinese martial arts are basically an ongoing conversation about hand-combat training.

One thing that the “Ip Man” branch of Wing Chun emphasizes is the possibility of multiple attackers scenarios. When modern teachers in this lineage discuss self-defense and the sorts of scenarios that concern them, an ambush by multiple attackers is always at the top of their list. A great visual example of this can be found in the 2011 series Fight Quest. In the second season of this show the hosts traveled to Hong Kong to shoot a documentary about modern Wing Chun training.

In an attempt to better explain and illustrate what Wing Chun was all about (and to create some good TV) one of the local instructors who served as their host for the crew staged a mock street ambush involving a dozen attackers trapping the star of the show in an alley. His larger point was to demonstrate the sorts of tactical problems that are central to this style. Much of modern Hong Kong style Wing Chun is actually built around these concerns, often in ways that are so subtle that they can easily be missed.

For instance, the art’s narrow footwork, backwards leaning stance and emphasis on maintaining a wide field of vision are all things that originate from its concern with the idea that one might have to face more than one attacker. Its strategy of quickly disabling opponents, dislike of submission holds and emphasis on staying off the ground (even when it would be to your immediate advantage to take a weaker opponent down) all revolve around a single fear. The worry is that while you hold an opponent, or grapple with them on the ground, it will be impossible to see their compatriots who are about to smack you upside the head with a bar-stool.

At first glance this all makes good sense. Pretty much the only time that you are actually assured that there will not be multiple attackers is when you are in a boxing ring, and that is not actually the same sort of thing as “self-defense.” The very concept of “self-defense” implies ambush and the idea that one will most likely be fighting at a tactical disadvantage. Your attacker will be larger than you, better armed, or there will simply be more of them. Anyone who is serious about doing you harm is not going to stage a “fair fight.”

It is also critical to realize that most fights do not happen between isolated individuals in dark alleys. Instead they tend to happen in public places. Why? Because that is where the people are. And when fights break out they often involve entire groups of people. While any trained martial artist should be comfortable defending himself against a drunken idiot, one drunken idiot and half a dozen of his friends in the middle of a parking lot is a less pleasant scenario to contemplate. And it is disturbingly common. When teaching I have never really encountered anyone who did not think that planning for multiple attackers was a bad idea when I brought this up.

Still, there is something a little odd about Wing Chun’s emphasis on this subject. To begin with all sorts of traditional fighting styles from southern China care about self-defense and are equally aware of this possibility. They certainly warn their students about it. But in general they did not think it was necessary to fundamentally restructure their art to meet this threat.

A typical Hung Gar, or even western boxing stance, with head forward and hands high might cost you some visibility, but it is probably a safer stance if you are sure that you are only facing a single opponent. As a Wing Chun guy it pains me to admit it, but its true. Under certain circumstances what other arts prefer to do really is effective. These guys are aware of the possibility of multiple attackers, but they have decided it is probably foolish to assume that every fight will go down this way. In fact, even other branches of Wing Chun do not share Ip Man’s interest in multiple attacker scenarios.

In some respects Jee Shim Wing Chun seems to have a lot more in common with Guangdong’s various schools of “Village Hung Gar” than it does Ip Man’s Wing Chun (and I mean that as a compliment). Of course there are some problems that occur when we try to make detailed comparisons between styles. Ip Man’s approach to Wing Chun has become so widespread that it probably has had an inevitable impact on these other lineages. Some schools seem to have borrowed at least a few of his innovations and philosophy, while others are clearly reacting against him in their quest to find a more “authentic” branch of Wing Chun.

to be continued..

-BY BENJUDKINS