Interview conducted September 25, 2007 by Robert Chu.

Photo by Ord Millar

How do you feel to receive this award?

Equal parts flabbergasted and honored. As I’ve said repeatedly, the only time I go out and do something publicly is when I can’t first find it myself. When I first came on the Internet, I was amazed that the lineages of Wing Chun Kuen from mainland China were almost completely unknown. So I began writing about them. It was a very natural process, so the idea that other people have found interest in my various projects as well is very satisfying.

What is your thought on Wing Chun Kuen world presently?

I think the WCK world has just passed a cross roads. It came from a generation of secrecy, political and commercial, and was then thrust in a spotlight where many were able to take advantage of it — in both senses of the word.

A relatively unknown fighting system localized in Foshan, China, taught to very few people, was suddenly blasted onto the world stage by it’s attachment to Bruce Lee, and became a way for people to make a living. But while the art itself became available for the masses, real information about it was still hidden. There was no way to really know how well a perspective teacher knew the art and, perhaps more importantly, in an era of Kung Fu flicks, how well a student could learn real skill (and not just trappings). For a while, anyone with bad intentions could open a school, claim some special knowledge, dress up like Game of Death or 36 Chambers, and attract a following. Then came the internet. And then came combat sports.

It’s sometimes said that, in the old days in China, teachers could get famous in one of two ways: tell tall tales (i.e. they came from Shaolin or some other fabled place or person), or jump up on the Loi Toi (Lei Tai) and let their skills speak for them. The internet provided a great tool for sorting through the tallest of the tales. And combat sports, a modern Lei Tai.

With the internet, almost anyone could start to fact check. If a teacher claimed to learn directly from Yip Man, even if they were now in middle America, a prospective student could jump on the ‘net and find out if it were so. If whole systems claimed to be super secret offshoots directly from Ng Mui (or whomever), with the ‘net and the advent of crowd-sourcing, they could be more properly identified as a branch from Foshan, Guangzhou, or Koolo, or another system (or combination of systems) well known in China (or they could be unidentifiable inside China).

It hung a blade of over the heads of many teachers who’d taken advantage of the fact few, if any, people knew a lot about Wing Chun Kuen or it’s origins.

Then — and say what you want about combat sports like San Shou, Mixed Martial Arts, etc. — but they did for application what the internet did for history. One finger knock outs, death touches, techniques too super deadly to ever be used in actual training — they very quickly had real venues to prove themselves, or not. Just like the last century in Foshan, the Loi Toi was reborn in rings and cages and mats, and people who’d spent years claiming unbelievable skills they never ever thought they’d really have to demonstrate found themselves standing under a sometimes very uncomfortable spotlight.

Now, this isn’t to say people still can’t enjoy great stories (rather than histories) and socialization (rather than combat training). Wing Chun Kuen comes with all the rich cultural traditions of China, so the myths like great romances, and light exercises like yoga or Qigong can easily and justifiably be someone’s cup of Wing Chun Kuen tea. The only difference is now it’s harder to pass on myths and motions as histories and combat training — you have to be more upfront up what you’re teaching, and that’s better for everyone.
Where do you envision Wing Chun Kuen to be headed?

I think Wing Chun Kuen will head in a number of different directions. There will be preservationist movements, applicants, and (of course) opportunists.

Preservationists come in a couple of forms. The most absolute are those who pick some moment in time, some particular sifu’s interpretation at one specific day, and want to achieve exactly that in concept and execution. Whether that sifu changed things before or after, whether the world continued to evolved around them, they’ve captured a still frame from the fluid video of Wing Chun Kuen, and that’ll do just fine, thank you.

Less absolute are those who want to preserve a distinct art, true to whatever their own interpretation may be of the concepts behind the art. They take what they learn, examine it under their own reality, and pass it on to the next generation.

For me, I agree with “green comes from blue but is better than blue.” Just as every real sifu has a duty to make their students better than themselves, every student has the same responsibility to give back to the art, to keep it fresh and vibrant and not allow it to stagnate and become extinct or (perhaps worse) irrelevant.

Applicants tend to just want to fight, and if WCK (in whole or in part) helps them, they’ll take what they can easily integrate and leave the rest. Maybe they box or compete in MMA or still do Wing Chun Kuen but spar with Thai Boxers or wrestlers or whatever. It’s all about the utility and if, in the end, what they have resembles Wing Chun Kuen in nothing but name, they’re fine with that.

To help illustrate, some people may only ever drive a Honda Civic. Siu Lien Tao people. Others may only ever drive Honda, but they’ll switch to another sedan within that brand — or maybe to a 4×4 or SUV as long as it’s Honda. Wing Chun Kuen people. Others may broaden that to any Japanese car, or even Asian car. Kung Fu people. Still others will drive whatever is the best vehicle for them at the moment. Martial arts people. (And some people won’t even care if what they do is martial art or not, as long as it improves their performance in a fight).

That we treat martial arts differently than cars, athletics, etc. and more like religion (or politics for some) is interesting and perhaps necessary, but these different mindsets all exist and all have some validity.

Personally, I like the lesson of an old calligraphy teacher — master at least two historical styles before attempting to express your own. Generational knowledge and systematized methodology have enormous, time saving value. The best evolution tends to be almost invisible — a natural extension of what came before.

And opportunists? They will continue as they always have, whether they put on yellow Game of Death tracksuits or not. There’s money to made in the Wing Chun Kuen brand (by itself or conjoined with others), and a supply of people always ready for exploitation. Best to ignore them.

Who was influential in your WCK career?

My sifu, Ngo Lui-Kay introduced me to Wing Chun Kuen. I didn’t even know what it (Wing Chun Kuen) was when I met my sifu. I’d been doing judo and karate and he lived in the neighborhood and saw us training and one day just made an observation about positioning and intercepting which really clicked. Apparently people had been trying to get him to teach for years and he kept refusing, so why he approached us and offered to teach was and remains a mystery, but we recognized the skill and knowledge he had. It didn’t matter what system he was teaching, (especially since we didn’t know what it was! It could have been anything!), it was good and that was what matters (and what I still try to remember).

Sifu stressed utility. He encouraged us not to take anything on faith but to find other people, other arts, and test it ourselves to see if what he was teaching us really worked. And if we made a mistake, to figure out how to correct or overcome the mistake. Unless we could make something work, he wouldn’t teach us the next thing. He said if we didn’t train to make it work, it was useless knowledge, and there was no need to teach it. I think we learned 1 pole point every 6-12 months, and drilled the heck out of each and every one, but that was his philosophy and I treasure it to this day.

He also taught us from the beginning that there was no real or false Wing Chun Kuen branch or teacher (or martial art). He said you could never say if any martial art or martial artist was good or not good, only if the person could use what they knew — if they could make it work. Everything else was words. It didn’t matter if it had a famous temple name, or a legendary fighter lineage, or any type of secret romantic background, only if you could use it.

Lastly (in terms of this simplistic list, not in terms of the immense, diverse impact of his teachings), his English, while far better than my Cantonese, wasn’t great, so he would write things down for me in Chinese characters. I’d take those home and, with a dictionary and etymology book, try to penetrate their meaning. That not only helped me learn to help myself, but taught me an invaluable amount of the Chinese language, philosophy, and culture behind Wing Chun Kuen.

In addition to my sifu, my classmates, Antony and Georgia, Deon, Wilson, and David helped immensely with my training and with my subsequent works. They pushed me. Hard. As any good artist (martial or otherwise) should know, criticism is the most valuable tool, the keenest edge, in developing real skill. Hollow praise is useless. Someone loving or approving or coddling everything you do leads to delusion and stagnation. Likewise, intellectualization, turning everything into an endless, senseless debate to rationalize away or justify a lack of real results leads to much the same. Only honest, brutal criticism brings about real growth. You need a good peer group. If everyone tells you how great you are, like your momma insisting Simon’s crazy for dumping you from American Idol, run away. If everyone tells you how much like Ng Mui your training is, how you must trust in esoteric, tangental hope, and how “others” just don’t get the Zen behind your super-secret skills-to-be, run faster. If, however, you meet a group of peers who point out every flaw in your Siu Lin Tao, who smack you (with control!) in the face every time your line is open, who laugh every time you mention your historic connection to Wudang and the Yellow Emperor, and peerless skill over all other Wing Chun Kuen people in the world, keep them for life.

Topping those off, my Sigung, the late Sum Nung, was also kind enough to spend a short time helping me with my Wing Chun Kuen. Beyond the incredible detail he brought to every movement and transition between movements, his link to the past, to all the stories we hear (often through generations of broken-telephone distortion), and his ability to connect them to vibrant, living Wing Chun Kuen was awe inspiring. Even then, in his 70s, and only a few years prior to his untimely passing, he was still working on his Wing Chun Kuen, on making Chi Sao easier for his students to learn, on tweaking movements to better counter the Western boxers and wrestlers who had become more common in his region, and to making sure the concepts he so treasured were passed on clearly and concisely to his own son, Sum Dek, and to his followers around the world.

Next, I have to thank [Robert Chu], who opened my eyes to the Wing Chun Kuen beyond my own lineage, and small, remote group. He gave me another set of eyes to examine my art, and another set of measures to drive my skill. His perspective on WCK is utterly practical and as universal as it is brilliantly simple. His depth of knowledge made Complete Wing Chun possible, and his profound belief in openness and sharing helped drive much of our partnered work and my own separate projects. The best kind of harsh critic, Robert crystalized the idea that branch or form or interpretation didn’t matter — only observable, testable, repeatable results mattered.

Lastly, all the Wing Chun Kuen people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting (online and off) and training with. Similar but especially different, there is incredible value in each and every perspective I’ve encountered. Many seek comfort (if not conceit) in what they know. Others seek the disruption of what they don’t (know). I definitely prefer to latter. Ultimately, agree or disagree, the mental and physical exploration required to properly argue (be it through conceptual discussion or applicable Chi Sao) and explore forces us to expand and to improve.

If no one disagrees with you, you’re in the wrong place.