Wing Chun and the Fading of the Traditional Chinese Medicine, 1950-1990.
World War Two and the subsequent Japanese occupation did little to promote the fortunes o
f Wing Chun. The art did recover somewhat between 1945 and 1949. Unfortunately, this brief flowering was crushed by the ultimate Communist victory in China’s long running civil war. The Communists had a lot of reasons to dislike Wing Chun. This was a violent reactionary art closely tied to the reactionary land owners and rich merchants of Guangdong, their sworn enemies. Further, a number of individuals in the Wing Chun community (including Ip Man) had served as police officers and detectives at the same time that the GMD was using law enforcement to investigate, interrogate, and even execute suspected Communists. Not all Wing Chun teachers fled in 1949 (for instance Lai Hip Chi and Sum Num stayed), but Wing Chun was effectively crippled on the mainland. It would not begin the process of recovery and rebuilding until the 1980s and 1990s.
The situation was different in other places like Hong Kong and Vietnam. Ip Man managed to start a vibrant Wing Chun community after he fled into exile in 1949. It is often said that he was the first individual to publically teach Wing Chun. This commonly repeated assertion is mostly nonsense. Many individuals had taught very publically before him, but the events of 1949 erased or helped to obscure their legacy. Nor did they ever achieve the fantastic levels of recognition that Ip Man earned. From Hong Kong he was in an ideal position to send students abroad at a time when the Chinese martial arts were just starting to trend in the global market. While Ip Man was not Wing Chun’s first public teacher, he was certainly its most successful. But what did he teach his students about medicine?
For the most part he seems to have ignored the subject. The image of Wing Chun that emerged in the 1950s was that of angry young men fighting on rooftops and settling scores in secret challenges matches. A less charitable reading of this period might instead characterize it as one in Wing Chun was closely linked to street violence and youth delinquency. That is certainly how the Hong Kong police perceived the situation.
The sorts of students that came to Ip Man in the 1950s were, by in large, not very interested in traditional medicine. Young people rarely are. Further, Hong Kong had a relative abundance of high quality modern western medical care. Certainly some students like Moy Yat and Ip Man’s children (to name just two examples, there were also others) expressed an interest in TCM and learned the old man’s art. Most, however, did not.
It is remarkable how important health practices were to practitioners in the 1930s and how much they faded in the 1950s and 1960s. Wing Chun was quickly and efficiently rebranded as a street fighting and self-defense art divorced from the world of traditional Chinese philosophy and cosmology. It is often said that in Hong Kong Ip Man simplified the teaching system, removing the “five elements” and the “eight directions” as these were no longer helpful metaphors when coaching his modern, urbane, western educated students. Yet without these metaphors it is impossible to master the complex world of Qi cultivation and traditional herbalism.
Nevertheless, there is one interesting development in this period. Ip Man’s students and children report seeing him perform Siu Lim Tao very slowly (emphasizing the ‘Three Prayers to Buddha’ chapter) as a form of breathing exercise dedicated to building and (and presumably moving) his Qi. This may have happened in his lineage in Foshan as well, but I have yet to find any direct reference to it. It is suggestive to note that breathing exercises are observed in the Ip Man clan for the first time at about the same period that they are being promoted as a form of healthcare for the masses on the mainland.
-BENJUDKINS
*to be con't
The situation was different in other places like Hong Kong and Vietnam. Ip Man managed to start a vibrant Wing Chun community after he fled into exile in 1949. It is often said that he was the first individual to publically teach Wing Chun. This commonly repeated assertion is mostly nonsense. Many individuals had taught very publically before him, but the events of 1949 erased or helped to obscure their legacy. Nor did they ever achieve the fantastic levels of recognition that Ip Man earned. From Hong Kong he was in an ideal position to send students abroad at a time when the Chinese martial arts were just starting to trend in the global market. While Ip Man was not Wing Chun’s first public teacher, he was certainly its most successful. But what did he teach his students about medicine?
For the most part he seems to have ignored the subject. The image of Wing Chun that emerged in the 1950s was that of angry young men fighting on rooftops and settling scores in secret challenges matches. A less charitable reading of this period might instead characterize it as one in Wing Chun was closely linked to street violence and youth delinquency. That is certainly how the Hong Kong police perceived the situation.
The sorts of students that came to Ip Man in the 1950s were, by in large, not very interested in traditional medicine. Young people rarely are. Further, Hong Kong had a relative abundance of high quality modern western medical care. Certainly some students like Moy Yat and Ip Man’s children (to name just two examples, there were also others) expressed an interest in TCM and learned the old man’s art. Most, however, did not.
It is remarkable how important health practices were to practitioners in the 1930s and how much they faded in the 1950s and 1960s. Wing Chun was quickly and efficiently rebranded as a street fighting and self-defense art divorced from the world of traditional Chinese philosophy and cosmology. It is often said that in Hong Kong Ip Man simplified the teaching system, removing the “five elements” and the “eight directions” as these were no longer helpful metaphors when coaching his modern, urbane, western educated students. Yet without these metaphors it is impossible to master the complex world of Qi cultivation and traditional herbalism.
Nevertheless, there is one interesting development in this period. Ip Man’s students and children report seeing him perform Siu Lim Tao very slowly (emphasizing the ‘Three Prayers to Buddha’ chapter) as a form of breathing exercise dedicated to building and (and presumably moving) his Qi. This may have happened in his lineage in Foshan as well, but I have yet to find any direct reference to it. It is suggestive to note that breathing exercises are observed in the Ip Man clan for the first time at about the same period that they are being promoted as a form of healthcare for the masses on the mainland.
-BENJUDKINS
*to be con't
