Blitz - June-July 2017

24 ƫđƫ333ċ(%06)#ċ*!0 | (^) FEATURE STORY
beat up at that time, and he made
me into a good fighter. He just
put me in the centre of a circle
and all these adults were standing
there kicking and punching me,
and I had to defend myself. It’s
called a circle-defence drill, and I
did it every week, so every week
I turned into more of a fighter.
Even that, for the mental part, was
very important. So, I’m grateful to
all of them.
So who’s teaching you
now, or who are training with
nowadays?
Nowadays it’s pretty much
internal-based teachers. One
of my teachers is in Canada
(Vancouver), and he’s teaching
me tai chi, Xing-yi, bagua, each
one — but he’s also very skilled
in Foshan Wing Chun. He’s more
like an encyclopedia of Chinese
martial arts. He’s in his eighties
now, but very skilled, so that’s
where I go now a few times a year.
Just before that, I did a few
years in Shanghai and in New
Zealand with Wee Kee Jin, a
teacher of the Yang tai chi, which
is more connected with the Fujian
White Crane style, one of the
ancestors of Wing Chun. I did a
lot of research into the ancestors
of Wing Chun, including Emei 12
Zhuang style, and the form that
sprung out of that, the Siu Nim
Tao [or Sil Lim Tao] form, which
then split into the three forms.
I’ve been very interested in the
internal aspects of these arts over
the last four or five years. And if
I do something, I do something
with commitment: to learn tai chi,
I went to Shanghai and studied
there six hours a day under Sifu
Tian Bing Yuan, the grandson
of Tian Zhaolin, who was the
adoptive son of Yang Shao Hou
(a direct descendant of the Yang-
style founder).
I’m always learning, always
studying, but it’s only now, in
the last few years, that I’m more
focused on cultivating internal
skill instead of collecting more
‘stuff ’. I think I’m pretty much
done, curriculum-wise — now it’s
about going into depth.
Wing Chun has always
promoted the control and
channelling of chi, or internal
energy — represented in chi-sao
and, most famously, by the so-
called one-inch punch. However,
your book, The 6 Core Elements,
suggests this skill has largely
been lost from modern Wing
Chun systems — i.e. what we
see today are mostly incomplete
incarnations of the original
method. How did you come to
this conclusion, and what was
the catalyst for finding this out?
To be very honest with you,
in Yip Man Wing Chun, the only
one that did a bit of internal is
Tsui Sheung Tin. Many others
claim to do internal elements but
they just use substitute measures.
They do more leaning, bracing
type things — still some muscular
force, but because of structure
and certain body mechanics, they
call it internal. But internal goes a
little bit deeper than that.
And if you read the old
writings of Wing Chun from
before the system got split into
the three-set format, you read
about chi, you read about the
dantien [the ‘centre’, called the
hara in Japanese], you read all
these things...but still, it depends
on your knowledge, skill and
ability and how you translate that.
So when I read something four
years ago and when I read it now,
I might have a totally different
viewpoint of it.
Having said that, I think
that very few Wing Chun
systems have any internal skill
nowadays. There are some very,
very good sifus who are trying
their best but maybe don’t have
the complete full picture or
don’t know the sources. In my
opinion, some in Wing Chun
with internal aspects got it from
tai chi, but they’re never going
to tell their students that. It’s
the Chinese way; they’re just
too private... So then people
automatically presume it’s from
Yip Man and this master is the
only one who got taught that,
or other people will say he came
up with it himself. But of course
not — he’s also a human being
and a martial artist, so he reads,
he learns, incorporates, develops,
cultivates, and gives it out.
So, some Wing Chun styles
are more internal than others.
What about the schools in
the Foshan region?
Nowadays, no. There’s no
internal left there. Some say,
for example, that the chi gung
[qigong] form from the Yuen
Kay San lineage is internal, sure,
but it’s more the health part
than internal power. You have a
martial side to internal energy;
it’s a different kind of chi. You
have chi like it’s explained in
traditional Chinese medicine
[TCM]: it runs through the
meridians [channels throughout
the body, according to TCM
theory] and it’s accessed and
opened up with acupuncture.
But you also have a different
kind of chi gung, as the breath
is also called chi in Chinese, so
“I’m always learning, always studying, but
it’s only now, in the last few years, that I’m
more focused on cultivating internal skill
instead of collecting more ‘stuff’.”