All in all, he was a serious dude with serious fighting skills.
HAPPY NEW YEAR ‘INC’AS.
Every new year is ‘Rinse and Repeat’, you all know the drill by now, start at the beginning and see if we missed anything on the last run-through.
We usually have, I did for years upon years.
As we all agree, and tell anyone willing to listen, Wing Chun is a ‘Concept Driven’ Martial Art.
Concepts are not physical, and to a very large degree Concepts do not live in the present moment, they are an IDEA that we intend to develop and take forward.
If they exist at all they exist in the future, but we endeavor to train them today.
This is head-banging stuff, especially on the day after New Year’s Eve.
What we need more than anything else, especially here at the restart, is to reject the already known, the familiar, the accepted dogma and engage in abstract thinking.
Wing Chun today is a long way removed from what it was at its inception back in the mid-1860s by Dr Leung Jan of Foshan.
It is a long way removed from what Ip Man taught in Hong Kong back in the mid-1950s.
Wing Chun is a concept-driven Martial Art, and as more people navigate and share its theories, it evolves and is reborn anew and it always will evolve.
But at its heart, it is still the same Wing Chun that Dr Leung Jan developed, and Ip Man carried forward.
If we wish to give ourselves the best chance of understanding the “Concept or perhaps Concepts” that live at the heart of Wing Chun we would do well to engage in a thought exercise around why Dr Leung Jan found the need to begin a process that changed his personal approach to Martial Arts usage, and as such create Wing Chun.
Who was Dr Leung Jan?
As far as we know he was a Herbalist and Chinese Medicine Practitioner who worked closely with the Red Boat Opera Troupe that performed around the Pearl River Delta on the S.E. Coast of China.
The shows that made up the programs of all Chinese Opera of that time contained Complex Martial depictions that called on every known Martial Art, in his role as the troupe’s doctor he, Dr Leung Jan, would have first-hand knowledge of what Martial Arts techniques damaged the body and which techniques didn’t damage the body, simply from repairing the actors.
Because of this, he would have naturally, almost without thinking, recommended removing or avoiding stances, movements, and techniques that carried negative physical consequences.
And those techniques that remained he would have advised on finding an easier way, as all doctors do.
Again as far as we know, Dr Leung Jan was a celebrated and famous tournament fighter in Foshan, who in some accounts had over 300 fights.
While this number is obviously not a true number, we can read it as shorthand for him having had many, many fights.
It is reported that he never lost any of his fights, this again should be taken as an exaggeration, no one ‘never loses’, but I think we can safely assume that his success rate was impressive.
All in all, he was a serious dude with serious fighting skills.
The time was 1864ish and the Pearl River Delta was aflame due to the Red Turban Rebellion, a catastrophic Civil War.
As is always the case in Civil Wars, law and order had collapsed, muggings, home invasions and burglaries would have become commonplace, and as Dr Leung Jan was a wealthy man with his own Herbalist shop it is not hard to imagine that he was a regular target.
Taking all of this into consideration we can begin the thought exercise…
… Why did this well-respected, successful Martial Artist find the need to refine what he did and the way that he did it?
The first consideration must be ‘Why does someone change a winning formula’?
The only reason anyone would change a winning formula is because the winning formula no longer worked.
This speaks to the heart of the difference between tournament fighting and self-defence.
Tournament fighting is organised, social, and planned out.
Self-defence is everything but this, the situations are always unexpected, always a surprise.
Surprise is the key.
Dealing with surprise needs instinct more than strategy.
Dealing with surprise needs whatever action is chosen to work straight away, there is no room for working out the opponent’s rhythm and looking for weaknesses to exploit later.
Dealing with surprise relies on us knowing our own skills because our opponent’s skills would be unknown.
Dealing with surprise needs creativity more than conditioning.
Dealing with surprise is far more emotional and psychological than it is physical.
List as many things as you can think of, there must be hundreds more, and do not shy away from the manifestation of fear and its repercussions.
In my thought exercise… Dr. Leung Jan would be awoken in the night by unfamiliar noises coming from his shop, half asleep and unsure of what was going on he would find someone behind his counter looking for money, and he would be set upon by a second thief he had not seen.
In the crowded environment of his shop, and of course in the dark, he would have little if any space to move around, and half asleep would be unsure where he could safely move to.
This is the worst possible environment for a tournament fighter, even a celebrated, successful tournament fighter.
Thinking about this scenario as a root cause it is easy to understand why he based his refinements around the five principals of…
- SIMPLICITY.
2. PRACTICALITY.
3. DIRECTNES.
4. ECONOMY OF MOVEMENT.
5. MINIMUM USE OF BRUTE FORCE.
The world has moved on and our requirements may differ but very little else has changed.
A Violent Surprise still needs the same responses.
This is why Wing Chun was brought into being.
If it was just about fighting, Dr Leung Jan had no need to change.
So if we follow the thinking of Wing Chun’s progenitor, we see that Wing Chun concepts are not about fighting, or rather not about learning how to fight, but are intended to improve an already present skill set to work under conditions of unexpectedness, unpreparedness, and surprise.
It was and still is, about developing emotional and physiological stability in the face of violence.
It is easy to misunderstand this aspect of Wing Chun and to think that consciously working on the non-physical, non-fighting aspect of Wing Chun is of little value in a violent situation, but this is incorrect.
As contradictory as it sounds, it is the very fact that we are involved in a non-physical, non-fighting activity that infuses and improves our Self-defence ability by magnitudes of intensity.
Fighting is nothing more than two EGOs battling for supremacy, no need to think too much, just go hard and do as much damage as possible to the other guy.
Fighting is always EGO-driven, malevolent, and malicious.
Self-defence is about smart decision-making, it is Conflict Resolution, and easier to achieve with a clear mind, a good heart, and no thought of malice.
Even though we may cause harm it is not because of a wish to do so, it is simply survival, the most natural of Human Instincts.
Wing Chun Sydney, Australia 