Allen Kong
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Director - Hung Fa Kwoons
World Hung Fa Yi Wing Chun Kung Fu Association
Hung Fa Yi Wing Chun World Headquarters
219 Monterey Blvd.
San Francisco, California 94131 USA
(415) 589-2898 HungFaYi@aol.com HungFaKwoon@aol.com www.HungFaKwoon.com
email/call for all inquiries regarding Hung Fa Yi Wing Chun domestic/international affairs, training programs, and workshops/seminars
The important thing to remember here is that learning and memory are not just cognitive functions that take place in the brain; they are intimately involved in everything that we do with our bodies, from philosophy to strength training, from poetry to cardio. Just as LTP helps us remember the lyrics to a song or the password to a website, it also help us to remember the physical experience of being strong, fast or endurant. Indeed, more than one aging athlete has remarked that it’s not so much that his tissue is weak but rather that he has forgotten the sensation of physical competence and vigor. Just as getting in shape is a process of learning new sensations and strengthening neural pathways, getting out of shape is a process of forgetting.
Handstands on the plum blossom posts, sipping upside down from an empty teacup. I tell Yim Wing-Chun again how I watched a fox battle a snake.Yesterday I told her a crane and snake. Tomorrow it will be fox and crane. Or maybe chicken. I have not yet decided.
I am quite certain my sifu is the most awesome of all sifu’s, yet I never see him mentioned on the message boards. Are people really unaware of my sifu’s supreme awesomeness?
Yes, but don’t let it stress you.
Everyone loves their sifu and loves to see their sifu acknowledged and loved by others. Only natural. And everyone thinks their sifu is the bee’s knees, Yip Man’s nephew or son or first or last or super special, or Sum Nung’s son or uncle or teacher’s son, or best technician or fighter or whatever, or inside the Fung family, or inheritor of the Cho legacy, and it goes on and on.
And hey, maybe there’s a little ancient man in Chinatown repairing bikes who never says a word but was the last student of 400 year old Ng Mui?
The internet is the biggest sea there is, and even the largest blue whale has plenty of room to swim around.Best to just read, share, exchange, learn, relax, and ride them waves.
A bad rep is no fun at all. It wastes time, it wastes effort, and it gives a false sense of accomplishment.
We’re talking about repetitions, of course (not reputations, you salacious gossipmongers!)
Let’s make punches our straw man (or straw technique, if you will). It’s sounds good (and mass macho!) to brag about banging out 1000x punches (or sets of 1000x), but is it? What do you gain by large numbers? Muscle fatigue? Mind wonder? Are you getting better at Wing Chun or just worse at math?
I was once asked to make a name card (like a business card, but a modern tradition in many Asian countries for introducing yourself in and out of business, and passing on your important information) for a Chinese Wing Chun Kuen teacher. He’d trained under his teacher for a dozen or so years, and after moving away, continued training and teaching for two dozen more.
I set up the card under the name “Sifu” (in Chinese and English).
Upon reviewing the draft, the gentleman requested a change. He wanted a different set of characters used, which meant “transmitter”
He said “My sifu is still alive, and so he is the sifu, I am merely a transmitter of sifu’s knowldge”.
30+ years in and he was a merely “transmitter”, yet in the West we have magazine after webpage of nascent “Masters”, “Grandmasters”, “Gods” and more…
The fifteen year old had been learning Wing Chun kuen for the last couple of years from a fellow Foshan restaurant worker. During those years, the he’d oticed that every once in a while, a slender looking old man would come to the restaurant to take tea. Sometimes, following dinner, the old man would remain behind long after the establishment closed and watch their Wing Chun kuen practice. Although the old man looked on intently and was presumably quite interested in their activities, he always sat quietly, never criticizing anything he saw. Thus, it came as quite a shock to the youth when, one day, his teacher came to him and stated that the old man was in fact a Wing Chun kuen master of highly advanced skill. His teacher went on to tell the youth that the old man had been impressed by his dedication and hard work and had offered to take over his training. The youth was uncertain how to proceed. He turned his attention first to his teacher, large and powerful and then to the old man, who was small and thin and presumably long passed his prime. The youth’s observations led him to express doubts about the old man’s abilities. Nevertheless his teacher, Cheung Bo brought him over and introduced the youth, Sum Nung, to the old man, Yuen Kay-San. They spoke for a few minutes and Sum again stated his reservations. Intrigued by the youth and sensing his potential, Yuen decided to offer him a potential solution. The old man told the youngster that he was going to place eggs inside his pockets and then they would have a match. If, during the match, the youth succeeded in breaking even one of the eggs, the old man vowed he would admit defeat and be on his way. The youth quickly agreed to the simple sounding challenge and the contest was soon underway. Sum attacked repeatedly with all the power and skill his hard work and training had given him, yet each time he felt himself cut off and unable to continue after only one or two actions. Yuen remained calm throughout and hardly seemed to be moving at all. Nevertheless, when the match ended, Sum Nung stood back, confident that he had been victorious. It took mere moments for that confidence to shatter, however, as Yuen Kay-San slowly pulled all the eggs from his pockets. None were broken, not even so much as a crack.
Wing Chun kuen is not a technical style, it is a conceptual system. More than a set combinations of pre-patterned movements, it is an ingenious index and guide to the core principles of Southern Chinese martial arts. Thus, in the Wing Chun kuen of Yuen Kay-San, as taught by grandmaster Sum Nung, it is the yiu dim (yao dian, important ideas) that are vital, since from them come the many individual applications and implications.
