S.L.T. IS CHINESE FOR NUANCE!!!

The difference between a Master and a Journeyman is measured by the depth of their knowledge much more than the quantity of their knowledge.

A few years after the passing of my teacher, and just as I had opened my own school, one of his senior Wing Chun brothers, Sifu Mo Chi Pu, visited us here in Australia.

I attended a workshop with a number of my students, wearing our new club shirt, which had on it in Chinese the script ‘Year of the Tiger 2010’.

 Another person at the workshop pointed at the shirts and quite disrespectfully said that I could not even get the Chinese words correct, Sifu Mo immediately admonished the man and said that it was indeed proper Chinese and that it was he, and all his generation, who could not speak proper Chinese, and that this script was the same Chinese script that would have been used by Ip Man himself.

This was of course just good luck on my part that the person I asked to give me the translation, who was older and better educated than the complainant, spoke proper Chinese.

On a subsequent visit, Sifu Mo stayed at my house and we talked about many things Wing Chun, including the changing role of language, and the passing on of information.

Understanding is governed by the quality of information.

Where we source that information and how we assimilate that information can be as important as the information itself.

Often the deeper content of the information is gained from reading in-between the lines so to speak.

From NUANCE.

The difference between a Master and a Journeyman is measured by the depth of their knowledge much more than the quantity of their knowledge.

But as language shifts, and gets bastardised, how do we curate genuine information for future generations.

The above tale points out another serious problem.

If we do not speak the source language we are always dependent on another person’s translation, even more perilous another person’s ability to understand and transmit NUANCE.

In a society where more people watch YouTube than read books we are in danger of losing the ability to “read in between the lines”.

Video is a sledgehammer, it rams information at us and into us so quickly and continually that there is no time to stop and think about the finer points as the next clip is already playing.

Yes, we could pause it, and engage of mind in contemplation, but how often do we do that?

Words, however, can stop us in our tracks.

The difference between the experience of the word Tarn Sau and a video clip of Tarn Sau are a few universes apart.

Lets us use Tarn Sau, Fook Sau, and Bong Sau as examples, but we could choose any of the movements.

When you say the word Tarn Sau what image does your mind produce?

The image in your ‘mind’s eye’ will be similar to a video.

Now think about what Tarn Sau means as a word, what it is as a movement, and how to perform it.

Different experiences I bet.

To understand Tarn Sau we must know what it means as a word, or more accurately as an IDEA.

But the Chinese language is logographic while Western languages are phonetic/syllabic, there is no equivalency and not even all Chinese people read the logograms the same way.

From my understanding {taking account of the fact that I do not read Mandarin} reading Chinese characters is all about interpretation, which of course leads to NUANCE.

My Sifu was a well-educated Hong Kong Chinese who spoke excellent English, his Wing Chun translations are the equal of any so I have always stuck with them.

He would describe Tarn Sau in two ways, as “Lay flat hand” and on other occasions, he would say “Palm up hand”.

While these explanations are clearly the same thing there is also great difference.

‘Lay flat hand’ implies movement, as in the laying flat action, while ‘Palm up hand’ implies orientation or shape, two different trains of thought heading to two different destinations.

‘Fook Sau’ was described to me as the controlling hand, where does this train of thought lead us?

‘Bong Sau’ translated to the ‘Wing Arm’, how do we explain this with a video?

Sil Lim Tao was translated to me as “The Little Idea”, yet we have six Forms with almost 1000 movements, Chi Sau, and numerous applications to show us this Little Idea.

Chinese characters are logograms that are constructed from ‘Little Ideas’.

In English, we could easily translate ‘The Way of the Little Idea’ as the way of the NUANCE.

We all know that Wing Chun is not about the movement or the shapes, it is about using these movements and shapes to reveal the ‘LITTLE IDEA’.

To find the ‘LITTLE IDEA’ we must develop the ability to read between the lines, this is what the Forms are for, to allow us a safe place to practice reading in-between the lines.

With Video presentations, any spaces between the lines get filled in with advertisements.

Yet the deepest truths are best read between the lines,

and for the most part,

refuse to be written.

Amos Bronson Alcott.