Re: new at kungfu -- Martial Arts Discussion Board

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Date Posted: 01:06:19 05/31/03 Sat
Author: Goktimus Prime
Subject: Re: new at kungfu
In reply to: alice 's message, "new at kungfu" on 08:54:42 05/30/03 Fri

Hello alice,

I must admit that my knowledge of Wing Chun is limited. I had a brief look at the two web sites, and both schools seem to offer some advantages.

The second school, although commercialised with the coloured belt system, was founded by William Cheung, who has published a lot of literature regarding Wing Chun Kung Fu and martial arts such as "Advanced Wing Chun" and "A Comparison Between Wing Chun and Jeet Kune Do" which, as I recall, he co-wrote with Ted Wong. So if nothing else, the style being taught at that school is reasonably authentic, as it can be verified by a wealth of available literature.

The other style (Shaolin Jee Shin Wing Chun) is a style that I am less familiar with, however, it is interesting to note that this school teaches a form of body hardening for endurance conditioning (Iron Shirt Qigong). This is very uncommon to see in Wing Chun schools, and one open criticism that I have often made about Wing Chun is that they often do NOT teach conditioning, which means that a lot of Wing Chun fighters are poorly prepared to absorb a direct hit (which will happen in a real fight). So it's really interesting to see a Wing Chun school compensate for this by adopting Qigong conditioning exercises into their curriculum.

Both schools sound really interesting and I would personally check them out myself, but I'm all the way up in Sydney. :p

Also, be wary about references made between Wing Chun and Bruce Lee. Some things to note are:
(1) William Cheung did NOT teach Bruce Lee Wing Chun. Lee was taught by Yehwen (or Yip Man in Cantonese). I'm not familiar with Cheung's lineage, but I do know that he wasn't Lee's teacher.
(2) Wing Chun was NOT Bruce Lee's primary style of martial arts. Bruce Lee did Wing Chun for a brief while before moving on. Bruce Lee dabbled in a LOT of martial arts -- Wing Chun was just one of many arts that he learnt and adopted. The main reason why Wing Chun has established a reputation with Bruce Lee is because Wing Chun was among the FIRST Kung Fu styles that Bruce Lee ever learnt, but it was by NO means the only style. The style that he eventually created by amalgamating all the different styles he learnt was called Jeet Kune Do. So don't be fooled when people tell you that you'll be learning Bruce Lee's martial art, because you won't be -- not any more so than if you did any other martial art that Bruce Lee also learnt.

Hope that helps.

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