And I said: "Wow... I've got to learn it."

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Wing Chun
1

In an earlier post Rene wrote:

I was practicing bad Karate with my friend Antony and a little old Chinese man walked up, big smile on his face, and asked what we were doing (in fairly broken English). We told him. He invited me to punch him, which I did, and he used Noi Dap to counter, then showed quite effectively how I could no longer touch or harm him at all, while he was free to pummel me with both hands and feet at will. Not knowing anything about WCK at the time, we asked him to teach us and he, remarkably enough, agreed. (We later found out he’d been turning down people in Chinatown for years, and to this day I have no idea why he agreed to take us on).

Do any of you guys/girls have interesting/fun/inspiring stories regarding your Sifu? Things they’ve done, feats they’ve wowed you with, things that made you say: “Wow… I’ve just got to learn that.”

Maybe you’ve seen them fight for real, maybe it was their Chi Sau, maybe it was simply their method of teaching. What is it about them that inspires you? (You know that feeling, when you finish a class and you’ve got that Wing Chun/WingTsun buzz).

2

I don’t know if these are funny or inspiring, but here we go:

One of the karate guys from the bad karate we were learning at the time came to “try out” WCK and seemed mostly confused by it. At one point he came up to our sifu and asked what he would do if someone attacked him with a flurry of punches. Not waiting for an answer, he proceeded to really send a flurry of punches at our sifu. Our sifu intercepted, countered (with a shove, not a real punch), and left the guy rather shocked. Then, with a smile on his face, sifu said “sorry, what you say?” (he spoke almost no English at the time and his daughter was not around to translate). What made this especially sweet at the time is the bad karate teacher was in the habit of getting hit in the face even when forwarned and then saying we’d punched him wrong.

Once, when we were practicing in my garage, a guy came to class that was perhaps more interested in my sifu’s daughter than in the class. He was, for some reason, selected to demonstrate Po Yik Jeung on. My sifu (about 5’3) applied it and the guy (shorter but heavier than me) went up into the air and sailed across the garage and into the wall. My sifu smiled and said sorry. The guy was unhurt (since the power was just sending) but a little shocked, and I never heard about him pursuing his other ideas.

Another time, when we were just learning the dummy, my classmate Antony and I were holding it down (we hadn’t finished mounting it at the time). Our sifu was showing the Pai Jarn section and when he hit it with his elbow, both Antony and I were sent flying off the dummy and into the wall nearby. Our power-lifting classmate immediately stepped up to try it, and applied the elbow. Antony and I didn’t move, but his face turned bright white, then he gurgled, stepped back, and clutched his injured arm. My sifu chuckled and said step by step, in a year or so he’d get it.

Another time, one of my classmates (who’d missed a few sessions) was working with us when my simo walked in. She doesn’t do any WCK but had been watching my sifu do it for more than 30 years at the time, and she immediately started to laugh and call out for my sifu, who rushed back in and sent the guy to the back room to practice his Sei Go Bun Choi (4 basic punches (horses)) so that, as my simo had been yelling, his butt wouldn’t stick out so much. (We all learned to dread her eyes over the years).

RR

3

Good stories AND funny, Rene… thanks

I’m so new to WC it’s the little things that blow me away.

I was at a Chi Sau seminar last weekend, and was pulled out for a demo of Dan Chi Sau. We were doing DCS with movement (arrow walk, circle step and basic turns), and my Sifu says: “Look, I’m not going to use any changes - I’ll move around with my tan sau in place and you keep your fook sau position. I’ll attack (palm) fast, but with tension.”

He did so and I managed to nulify each of the attacks.

“Good”, he says. “Now I’m going to attack again but this time I’ll attack with slow strikes, and I’ll be relaxed.”

Whack, whack whack whack whack. I couldn’t even feel him move. Each time his slow attack would land on my chest. Even when I looked down and looked the attacking palm, I still couldn’t prevent it from hitting.

Mad. Can’t even begin to explain Chi Sau proper… feels like I’m rolling on my own. Often have to look at the bridge just to see if I’ve lost contact. Of course, he’s got stick and if I deviate my position by even an inch… whack whack whack whack whack.

Crazy skills.

4

Great thread, b&b! Great stories, rr!

I have many stories, but I think the single most inspiring thing is my sifu’s endless patience and good humor in passing his (IMHO excellent) skill to us.

And now for some interesting details: first time I came to the club, sifu gave me a short demonstration. It was all nice but not breathtaking, until he performed one inch punch on me. It felt like a bullet passing through my chest. I moaned and took 2-3 steps back to barely prevent myself from falling. From that moment on, I was hooked…
Then there was this time when he hit one of my sihings with a twohanded side punch. My sihing instantaneously went from vertical to horizontal position, before falling to the ground. He wasn’t hurt though - it was like being hit with a giant pillow… and I said “I gotta learn me some of that!” :slight_smile:

I have many more tales to tell, but not now; I’ll have to get back to you

5

129 reads and only a few have impressive Sifus?

C’mon guys - there must be some impressive and interesting Moy Yat, Wong Shun Leung, Kenneth Cheung (Red5 - where the ****ens are you), Augustine Fong stories.

Duncan Leung’s stories of Yip Man were very interesting, anyone got a Sifu story to tell?

6

this isnt about my Sifu but my Sisuk… he’s blind and wheneve ri go to see my Sifu i usually stay with my Sisuk.

One day we went to the park in the morning to do some practise… there was a picnic bench so we decided to do some table training.

Well, as u would expect my Sisiuk had much more skill and moved me all ove rthe place, usually i ended up jumping off the table as my centre was gone…

the funny thing was people were walking their dogs past us and stopped to look as i went flying. Then we finished and my Sisuk picked up his white stick and we walked off! the look on their faces was pure magic!!! :D:D

dawood

7

Here’s one that happened just a few nights ago, when sifu was explaining body torque and Bone joint power to me. Having crossed his arms in front of him, he tells me to grab and clench his wrists as hard as I can. Chor ma to the right, Chor ma to the left, and the next thing I know, I’m on the floor, rolling away…

8

Inspiring?

I can’t think of any great feats of Wing Chun as performed by
my Sifu, although there are certainly some good stories from the
kwoon. Most of the really good ones happened before I was here,
though, when the school was in the basement of an Asian grocery
store. The stories from that era have passed into the mists of
legend as most of the students have moved on for whatever
reason. I don’t feel comfortable telling those stories as they’re
really not my stories to tell.

As for meeting my Sifu, there really wasn’t any cool setups. I just
walked in and said I wanted to take classes. He worked us
really hard and told us it was an easy day. Like a fool, I came
back only to find that he had exagerated a bit. He makes the first
day a little tougher for beginners to weed out the people who
aren’t willing to put effort into it. Granted, I now go through
classes like that and it’s not that hard anymore.

Most of our cool stories involve people visiting the school. I can’t
imagine that a lot of them are any different than for any other
school. You know the sort. Some guy is trying out a class and
he tries to test someone (usually one of the senior students) by
punching “incorrectly” for a particular drill. The student usually
takes the fist and puts it back where it should be.

One good visitor was this old drunk guy who walked in and
started to watch. I was doing pak sao drill with a sihing. My back was to the door but my sihing to see it. Sifu walked over and was
talking to the guy a bit followed by a bit of silence. The drill
continues. Finally, I heard the guy exclaim, “This is bull****.” My
sihing stops in midpunch and his eyes got real big. I turned
around in time to see the guy half-punch/half-fall into my sifu, who
calmly caught him and escorted the old man out the door.