Complete Misrepresentations - Part 1
Rene Ritchie, February 3rd, 2008
There are a number of misrepresentations about Complete Wing Chun which have been, and still are being spread around the Wing Chun community. This series will address them as we go along (or as they pop up).
We’ll start with Savi, on KFO:
Honest HFY Question- - Page 16 - Kung Fu Magazine Forums
Now, that chapter on Hung Suen Wing Chun was originally written by John Murphy (HFY member, not a TWC member), altered and edited by the authors of CWC (non members of either family)
We (neither Robert Chu, Y. Wu, nor myself), altered or edited anything in the Hung Suen chapter. If anyone said we did, they are mistaken. I’ve had to correct this already far too many times, so I would appreciate everyone’s help in propagating the correction wherever possible.
For the other sections of the book, because the contributors weren’t writers, they provided raw information (old notes, photos, charts, etc.) and we compiled it all into the structural format we were using (history, forms, training, etc.), sent it back for them to check, and the finalized it.
John Murphy provided the Hung Suen chapter already written. Unfortunately, since the first draft did not (structurally) match the rest of the book (didn’t divide things up in the same sections), I took a stab at editing it, but John didn’t like the idea of anyone else working on it, so Robert forwarded him some sample chapters from other branches, as well as a list of things we needed changed, and John did the edit himself. He sent it back, we packaged it with the rest, and sent it to Tuttle (who, as far as I know, didn’t edit anything aside from spelling and adding Leung Ting’s and William Cheung’s pictures to the Yip Man section since they felt it would add appeal to their large student bases).
That’s why, if you look at the acknowledgements at the beginning of Complete Wing Chun, there’s a list of people we thank for their contributions (like Andreas Hoffmann and Eddie Chong), but we thank Gee Sifu and John Murphy for supplying their chapter. The difference of acknowledgement was deliberate.
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