The Tao of Wing Chun : the history and principles of China's most explosive martial art

273 Pages·2015·4.28 MB·English

by  John Little

Copyright © 2015 by Danny Xuan and John Little All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Qualcom Design Cover illustration: Dong Jinwen ( ) and Danny Xuan ISBN: 978-1-
62914-777-2
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63220995-5
Printed in China.
C
ONTENTS
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION

ONE Wing Chun: A Reality Check
TWO Genesis: The Origin of Martial Art
THREE Martial Art: The Chinese Connection
FOUR Grandmaster IP Man
FIVE On the Origin of Wing Chun
SIX The Wing Chun Concept
SEVEN Wing Chun and The Art Of War
EIGHT The Centerline: The Science of Concentration
NINE Chisau: The Science of Espionage
TEN Structure: The Science of Architecture
ELEVEN Force: The Science of Physics and the Essence of Wing Chun
TWELVE Speed: The Science of Time and Space
THIRTEEN Wing Chun: The Science of the Human Body and the Human
Mind
FOURTEEN Building and Preserving Strength
FIFTEEN On the Value of Wing Chun
GLOSSARY
NOTES ON THE TEXT
AUTHORS’ NOTES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
P
REFACE
L
IKE MANY WHO ARE familiar with Wing Chun, my journey to the art
came via Bruce Lee. Having seen Lee’s films in the 1970s, millions of
international fans were won over by his lithe grace and charisma, and we wanted
to learn more about what he had demonstrated on the big screen. During the
course of our research we learned that what Lee had practiced was his own
martial creation, which he termed Jeet Kune Do, or “The Way of the Intercepting
Fist.” To better understand the man, we reasoned, we had better understand his
art.
Unlike today, in 1973 (the year that Lee died) there wasn’t anybody teaching
his art. Evidently Lee had closed all three of his formal schools several years
before returning to Hong Kong to focus on making the movies that would
justifiably bring him international and enduring fame. Those who had assisted
him in his instruction at these schools had, in an effort to both honor his
memory and to preserve his art, started teaching small groups of individuals
and/or teaching privately, but you had to live in either Washington or California
to have access to them. As I lived in a small suburb in Ontario, Canada, such
personal instruction simply wasn’t going to happen. The next best thing to
personal instruction from a knowledgeable teacher was self-education through
studying Lee’s surviving writings on his approach to martial art and its
underlying philosophy, and then reinforcing his written words by re-watching
his films with an eye toward more carefully examining the techniques he
employed, as well as the movements and postures he made. This sustained us at
the time and taught us much about Lee’s approach to martial art and, as
ancillary, the Chinese martial arts in general, for many years.
Almost immediately we learned that in his youth Lee had studied a Chinese
martial art called Wing Chun under the tutelage of a master by the name of Yip
Man (the name would be changed to Ip Man several decades later) and one of Ip
Man’s senior students (and the clan’s best fighter) Wong Shun Leung. When Lee
wrote about Wing Chun and Ip Man he did so with great respect. In an article
profiling the young martial artist in Black Belt magazine in 1967, Lee is quoted as
saying, “I owe my achievement to my previous training in the Wing Chun style.
A great style.”
According to Lee’s earliest students in America, such as Jesse Glover, Ed Hart,
and Taky Kimura, no small portion of the principles, training methods,
techniques, and philosophy that Lee employed came directly from the art of
Wing Chun. That the man generally considered to be the greatest martial artist
of the twentieth century should hold the art in such high regard won many of us
over to it simply by default. Few of us, however, really understood the depth and
breadth of the art, which was greater than we could have fathomed.
Fast forwarding to 2009, I found myself in Hong Kong working on a film
about the locations that appeared in Lee’s films, where I had the opportunity to
meet the eldest son of Bruce Lee’s teacher, the then 86-year old Ip Chun, who
told me stories of his late father (who was then the subject of two feature films),
the principles of the art his father taught, and how diligently the young Bruce Lee
had practiced it. I resolved then that I would take up the study of the art upon my
return to Canada and began immediately looking for a suitable instructor. Being
older and having been involved heavily in the martial arts world at this point for
thirty-some years, I had seen many—too many—fractured egos and self-
professed “masters” in the various arts, and, sadly, Wing Chun seemed to me to
be an art that was burdened by more than its fair share of such people. And,
unfortunately for me, the nearest instruction of any substance in Wing Chun was
still hundreds of miles away from where I lived. The next best thing, I reasoned,
was to learn from a competent instructor on-line. After all, we were then well
into the Internet age, the era of the information Super Highway, and anyone,
anywhere was by some means accessible. This was how I first met Danny Xuan
through his web page. Here at once was a man who downplayed his significance
in the art (which was a surprising and refreshing change of pace), and yet wrote
about it with such a passion and a depth of knowledge that I hadn’t experienced
since reading Lee’s own writings on the martial way many decades earlier.
Xuan approaches his art like Lao-tzu approached nature; looking for and
revealing the Tao, or underlying way of things in relation to human combat,
much as Lao-tzu had sought to reveal it in every wave, bending branch and
twinkling star. Xuan’s insights were deceptively simple, which I have come to
learn, is a hallmark of most truly deep subjects. He spoke of the impartial,
impersonal, and yet rational natural law of things—from geometric planes to the
nature of force production—to which all things abide in accordance with their
true selves or natural natures. From the perspective of the Tao, all of the laws of
nature are united and their aggregate is simply reality, in which all natural forces,
forms, and structures find their proper place and optimal method of operating
and surviving. Apparent contradictions and diversities seem to dissolve before it.
It is a means by which one learns to understand, trust, and act in accordance
with ways of nature.
There is nothing weaker than water
But none is superior to it in overcoming the hard,
For which there is no substitute.
That weakness overcomes strength
And gentleness overcomes rigidity,
No one does not know;
1
No one can put into practice.
Although these words sound as though they were written by Bruce Lee (most
certainly he adopted them as the cornerstone of his martial philosophy),
tradition has it that they were first written by Lao-tzu in the fifth century BCE.
And while they do reveal a truth about human combat, they also reveal a larger
truth about the reality of the world and how its various elements interact.
Xuan understands this bigger picture and his interpretation of the art of Wing
Chun is a product of this understanding. Coming from a traditional background
where he was simply taught the methods and postures of the art, he wasn’t
satisfied and instead of merely continuing on practicing by rote, he retired from
running a very successful business on the West Coast of Canada to backpack his
way across China. Along the way he would stop in small villages that tourists
never see and that are seldom if ever written about, and look more deeply into
the culture that had produced his art. But more importantly, he began thinking
about his art in a different way, examining every aspect of it—from its legendary
origin, to its fundamental stances, to its forms, to its conceptual underpinnings.
At the end of his trek he was a different man with a different and more profound
understanding of the art of Wing Chun. It is this understanding that he shares
with the reader in this book. In an attempt to get at the actual “Tao” of the art, he
examines the natural laws regarding structure and forces. Indeed, the chapter on
forces (Chapter Eleven) may well contain the distilled essence of Wing Chun, for
as Xuan once told me, “This art is also about life. And life is about dealing with
forces. And in our lives we’re always dealing with some kind of force or some
kind of conflict, whether it be with, you know, your wife, your brothers, sisters,
or your boss in business, there’s always some kind of challenges that you’re going
to have to face.” This is perhaps the most technical chapter in the book and, to
some, perhaps, intimidating, but like Lao-tzu’s book, it repays further reading
and re-reading.
Unlike other books on Wing Chun that have appeared over the years, and that
for the most part provide but a surface examination of the art, Xuan takes the
reader as deep into the art as the reader may wish to go, revealing its many
components and the interrelatedness (in true Yin-Yang fashion) of its concepts.