My Background

Wing Chun  - Continued - Part 2

While I was learning Tai Chi I encountered upon a Hong Kong magazine called Real Kung Fu. This magazine had little advertising and was the only English source of information on the many Kung Fu styles of Hong Kong. Leung Ting had written a series of very informative articles on Wing Tsun entitled "The Seeds of Wing Chun System." Soon after I also acquired a copy of the green covered book Wing Chun which was ghost written by Bruce Lee and published in the name of his student James Lee. Even today this is still a good basic book on the art.

Through a Tai Chi connection I heard that someone had recently come to Vancouver and was teaching Wing Chun privately in various locations in the city. So one day I decided to go and have a look. The place was a small garage. Inside there were a half dozen students who had been training for a couple of months. Patrick Chow was a slender, gentle but confident type of person. He greeted me and asked what kind of art I did. I told him my background was in Karate, Hung style and Tai Chi with the most number of years in Hung style. So he asked me to perform some Hung style for him. I did a form that we called the Eagle claw form which was very fast with many chopping and smashing hands. Patrick commented it was very good and even better than some of the Hong Kong stylists. After that, he invited me to partake in the class.

Learning the Little Idea Form

 I was shown the Goat restraining stance with the knees in. I followed along with what everyone was doing. They slowly brought a Tan sau out at a 20 degree angle from the horizontal. I was told that some Hong Kong practitioners have the hand too flat and so it was vulnerable to a punch over top. Others, he said, had the Tan sau at too steep an angle. He said a forty five degree angle was too steep and would make it vulnerable to an upward push.

 After the Tan sau, we circled the hand and slowly brought it back. Patrick would sometimes check the hand coming back by applying a slight slap to it. Even though the hand was going back, he wanted us to have a forward force intention. An additional thing this would test for was stiffness. Too stiff and the entire body would move when the Wu sau was slapped.

 Then the Fook sau was formed and it was slowly brought out, the hand circled and a Wu sau or guarding hand was slowly brought back. This was done for a solid hour. Slowly out, slowly back with only a slight tension involved. I was told it was a practice for bringing the elbow in and of course was training for the stance as well. Also it was a training to build up our forward flowing energy. I had heard my Hung style teacher talk about small circle Kung Fu as the highest level Kung Fu. Patrick said, "Yes, that’s true." and Wing Chun was small circle Kung Fu. The size of the circle he said was determined by the position of the elbow. With the elbow in, the circle size would be much smaller than with the elbow out.

Patrick's Instructor Yip Man

 Patrick said that he was from a wealthy family and thus could afford private lessons from Yip Man. He said he had to do what we were doing for two and a half years before he got taught anything else. I didn't totally understand the purpose but I followed along in this intriguing art. I found out that most of the students there had eight to ten years of martial arts background. That included me as well. After several lessons of this slow practice, Patrick would demonstrate his Wing Chun by having the various students attack him however they liked. in all cases he handled the attacks with minimal movement. In one case a student did a quick low kick to Patrick's knee. I remember his response was a small circling movement with the foot and before the guy retracted his foot, Patrick had kicked his rear knee with a low side kick.