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As requested by Bruce Ganked Lee

Now I don't claim to know a lot about this. I sure have opinions on it, but those are no reflection on my school or my teacher. So no thinking that I was 'taught' to believe certain things. My teacher refuses to get involved in such nonsense anyway. However, I have mooched around and garnered various opinions on various things and have seen plenty for myself.

There must be hundreds of styles of Wing Chun. Yip Man had a number of students, and each he taught slightly differently - he did not teach them different THINGS, but he explained things in a different way to ensure men of differing levels of education could understand and to ensure the techniques were adjusted slightly in terms of body size and height (just the same way my teacher has to occasionally have me add a turn or a step to make the technique work, because I'm shorter. This does not mean that a turn or step is always necessary, see?)

Some students stayed for years, others for weeks, and rumour has it one was never there at all. They all taught Wing Chun as they knew it. Some were great. Others good. Some, it started to get a bit diluted. And then there were lineages not attached to Yip Man flourishing elsewhere.

Bruce Lee does a few weeks of Wing Chun and then runs off, making t famous. Now everyone's at it. One teacher is condemned by others as a liar when he doctors false photographs to show he trained with Yip Man, so he creates his own version of WC - Wing Tsun.

Wing Tsun IS different. There is not as much emphasis on sensitivity and some schools in Germany and other parts of Europe, where it is very popular, have come under fire for bullying and beating students. It is also home to a practise of making people cough up a lot of money - four figure sums - to see later forms and weapons forms. A very honorable grandmaster therefore went to Germany and showed all the forms for free, thus angering a lot of people who felt Wing Chun should be all about the money.

(I know this because I went to Germany to see a seminar, and chatted with many people. However I'm sure many people do succeed with Wing Tsun - but it does not have the sensitivity aspect of WC so it is therefore pretty much a style in itself. WC without the sensitivity is like Karate without kata.)

Another teacher claimed Yip Man woke him up every night at midnight to teach him the 'special secret wing chun' while spending his days teaching everyone else a false, inferior version. People have been rumoured to actually BELIEVE this nonsense although most are unimpressed.

When I was in China I got to see some of these discrepancies for myself.

1. A Chinese group who had students perform chum kiu (a form) as if it were a dance routine. They bobbed up and down in time to a beat and, during a part of the form where one steps forward three times before turning, they added little steps back and more bobs. You could have played a pop song over it and it would have looked funky, but damn, you couldn't learn anything martial from it.

2. Others performed forms with chunks of other forms added in to make them look funky. Siu Lim Tao? But that's boring! You just have to stand still! Let's add some kicks and some steps! Performing a basic guard position, nah, too bland, let's wave our arms around our heads three times first.

3. And then you had the jokes. A teacher who brought a couple of students with him had already embarrassed himself by leaping at another teacher and engaging him in what he believed to be chi sau, but instead waved his arms frantically around the other man. The other guy completely pwned him at chi sau and everyone else raised an eyebrow. When this guy was required to perform his forms in front of everyone, we all shuddered. It was as if they were watching it on DVD in front of them and were copying along for the first time.

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So; the lineages wars are there because people think WC needs 'improving' either by removal of chunks, addition of dancing or the inventing of tall tales. Or they do not trust in its ability to mould around an opponent - some sifus insist one fights in the pigeon-toed training stance with one hand chambered. Some sifus believe WC is a fitness and health art, like yin tai chi, and we should all just practise our forms and get along with one another.

"I don't do elbow strikes in my class!" one softy declared, "And we don't do body shots either. Or head shots."

"Why are you wearing body armour then?" I asked a female student.

"We wear it so the boys don't ruin their techniques by not wanting to hit us," she said, "They don't like hitting our chests without them. So we wear them for the boys."

"BULLSHIDO!" I pointed at her. No I didn't. But I really wanted to. What a n icon for women in martial arts, eh? I wear armour so the boys can improve.

So the fitness-guys fight the fighting guys, who fight the WT guys for having no flow, who fight the WC guys for getting everything for free, and the WC guys fight the guys who added or took away from the forms Yip Man recorded on 8mm film - why?

Because he was worried someone would start to change them, add bits, take bits away or claim they knew special versions. Despite the fact he was dying of cancer, he made his sons film him performing all the forms. He died two weeks after.

That's that, then smile And again - all my view, all my opinion, nothing to do with me or mine.

There is obviously going to be bias and loyalty to one's own teacher.

But do you truly believe Yip Man spent all his time teaching people, including his own sons, an inferior version while selecting one person to teach the real one too?

William Cheung got pwned by Emin Boztepe(sp?)....that was funny not because he got pwned...but because they both suck at ground fighting.

There is indeed an whole batch of Wing Chunness flowing through Vietnam. Seeing as no one has any idea who invented WC, why or when, there are probably only legends as to how it got there as well. I only found out about Vietnamese WC a few months ago and haven't had time to research.

Emin Boztepe is pretty... bullshido. There's no other word for him. He got thrown out of the Leung Ting group, and Leung Ting is the Grandmaster of Bullshido... Boztepe has declared himself MMA only now.

I recall in Germany a couple years back and there was a Boztepe school on every street corner. It was insane.

I've seen the fight video. I think they were both having very bad days, which, considering I don't have much respect for either of them, isn't saying much.

(No offence Wolf, but I'm not a Cheung fan. That be that ^^)

I'd love to see those 8mms.. or digital versions anyways

If you look on yahoo and type Yip Man in to the search bar and click video you can find a few of his videos showing the Siu Lim Tao form but I can't find any thing other than that and some dummy stuff.

The whole Ng Mui/Yim Wing Chun thing is a myth, debunked long ago. There is not one record, ever, of any Ng Mui.

sweet, I'll have a look and see what I can find..


wolf3001 - on that diagram it has Russel Hill leading down from Bruce Hill, but Russel Hill seems to be a higher rank than Bruce Hill.. how is that possible?