Ip Man Wing Chun?

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Wing Chun
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[QUOTE=Graham H;1271475]I don’t agree and this discussion subject has been done to death already.

People are always pulling the “interpretation” card. VT is a very simple scientific approach to combat. It uses concepts which are open to misinterpretation not differing interpretations. There may be variations in how people move and what actions they prefer but conceptually and fundamentally we should ALL be on the same page. The fact is we are not so somewhere along the line somebody has got it wrong and/or filled in the gaps with their own ideas. As we can be pretty sure that the “group” of Yip Mans closest followers was very small it means that many people didn’t get enough tuition but then went off and made their own ways. The reason people struggle to admit that is because it would like admitting they are doing things wrong. In many cases they are! That’s not to say they cannot fight or use what they have very well but in the context of saying you are practicing YMWC you can never be sure. In fact in most lineages the further you go through the system the more vague and different things become compared to the next school up the road. This proves my theory IMO. Many similarities in SLT but massive differences and idea in say BJ or the weapons.

Yip Man is part of a line. His name has been popularized through out the world because he is regarded as the last Great Grandmaster. Most of this has come via the media and if stories were to be believed he shunned the limelight and was reluctant to teach many people.

How many people today are Grandmasters? There seem to be many mostly self -proclaimed. Is Yip Chun a Grandmaster? Is Yip Ching? Does bloodline have anything to do with it? No it doesn’t and IMO they are not.

It’s better just to say you practice Wing Chun and are putting in the work to improve and develop yourself in your own bubble. Some people can make use of it and some people cannot. Some rely heavily on marketing and BS and some others do not.

No point in giving it any more thought than that. The problem is many people these days act like they were joined at the hip of Yip Man. I find some it very amusing…[/QUOTE]

Good post graham, not bad for an old wanker :wink:

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[QUOTE=GlennR;1271476]Good post graham, not bad for an old wanker ;)[/QUOTE]

Yes a self proclaimed wanker not Grandmaster! I prefer it that way! :slight_smile:

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[QUOTE=Graham H;1271475]How many people today are Grandmasters? There seem to be many mostly self -proclaimed. Is Yip Chun a Grandmaster? Is Yip Ching? Does bloodline have anything to do with it? No it doesn’t and IMO they are not.[/QUOTE]

Good post. I agree for sure. I wonder if those two think they are because their father was (?) And that somehow this makes them default to that title?
Dunno…

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[QUOTE=chunner;1271421]stop spamming[/QUOTE]

It is a global directory, it is not spamming..

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[QUOTE=HybridWarrior;1271478]Good post. I agree for sure. I wonder if those two think they are because their father was (?) And that somehow this makes them default to that title?
Dunno…[/QUOTE]

Most people in Wing Chun like all the stuff that goes with it. They like the wooden puppet on the wall with the picture of Yip Man above it, the chinese banners either side and the kung fu pyjamas. Being associated to such a well known figure must give them a sense of belonging. There’s nothing wrong with that but when people claim they are teaching and/or practicing “authentic” “genuine” Hong Kong YMWC they are pulling the wool over their own and other peoples eyes.

For me Yip Man was responsible for an evolution in Ving Tsun. He was one of the stepping stones in a lineage. There was and is no BS attached to his character even though people like to play up to his social habits sometimes. He was just a normal human being with all the facets that come with it. He just so happened he was very good at Kung Fu. Good by today’s standards? Who knows? It’s like the Bruce Lee thing. If Bruce Lee were alive today you probably wouldn’t even know him. There are Bruce Lee’s everywhere now. Maybe it’s the same with Yip Man. They were ahead of their time and very good at what they did but in was in their time not ours.

I also consider the person responsible for my direction in VT (Wong Shun Leung) to be one of those people but these days I am reluctant to say I practice WSLVT or YMVT. My ideas and my system are in conjunction with the ideas of Philipp Bayer who was taught by WSL and WSL was taught by YM.

Whether it is the same or a close representation of what YM practiced and taught really doesn’t concern me.

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[B]It’s better just to say you practice Wing Chun and are putting in the work to improve and develop yourself in your own bubble. Some people can make use of it and some people cannot. Some rely heavily on marketing and BS and some others do not.

No point in giving it any more thought than that. The problem is many people these days act like they were joined at the hip of Yip Man.[/B]

But there are many other varieties of Wing Chun other than Yip Man Wing Chun. I practice Pin Sun Wing Chun. So it is not unreasonable for someone to qualify what Wing Chun they actually practice for purposes of some clarity when speaking with others. At least calling it “Yip Man” Wing Chun puts someone in the ballpark and people will generally have an idea of what they do and that it is different from Pin Sun WCK, Sum Nun WCK, etc.

Too often everyone assumes that “Wing Chun” means the Yip Man variety and all of its off-shoots. Your posts sound that way as well. But in a world where more and more people are doing Wing Chun that didn’t originate with Yip Man, using the “Yip Man” designation when talking about your Wing Chun is useful.

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[QUOTE=HybridWarrior;1271478]Good post. I agree for sure. I wonder if those two think they are because their father was (?) And that somehow this makes them default to that title?
Dunno…[/QUOTE]

Keep in mind that this is based on a Confucian family model. Your Sifu is the equivalent of your father and therefore your Sigung is your grand-father. Putting it in modern western terms this becomes “master” and “grandmaster”. So in actuality, anyone who has been around enough teaching Kung Fu that now has graduated students in the system that are also teaching his Kung Fu has become a “grandmaster” in the sense of “grand-father.” It doesn’t mean that he is some lofty fighter that can fly through the air kill people with only a touch! :wink:

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[QUOTE=Graham H;1271484]My ideas and my system are in conjunction with the ideas of Philipp Bayer who was taught by WSL and WSL was taught by YM. Whether it is the same or a close representation of what YM practiced and taught really doesn’t concern me.[/QUOTE]

It’s good that you are honest when saying it doesn’t concern you. It shouldn’t, as you have no way of knowing one way or the other. Yet you continue to talk about ‘closed door students’ (mainly referring to Leung Ting, I suppose) and say what they do is BS and that they (he) didn’t learn much from Yip Man. Which is something you also have no way of knowing.

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[QUOTE=KPM;1271486][B]

But there are many other varieties of Wing Chun other than Yip Man Wing Chun. I practice Pin Sun Wing Chun. So it is not unreasonable for someone to qualify what Wing Chun they actually practice for purposes of some clarity when speaking with others. At least calling it “Yip Man” Wing Chun puts someone in the ballpark and people will generally have an idea of what they do and that it is different from Pin Sun WCK, Sum Nun WCK, etc.

Too often everyone assumes that “Wing Chun” means the Yip Man variety and all of its off-shoots. Your posts sound that way as well. But in a world where more and more people are doing Wing Chun that didn’t originate with Yip Man, using the “Yip Man” designation when talking about your Wing Chun is useful.[/QUOTE]

I wasn’t aware we were discussing “other” lineages of Wing Chun. My apologies. I must have missed it. :confused:

I have practiced another Foshan lineage of Wing Chun and can honestly say it was more of a mess than some of the worse YM lineages I have seen. Maybe I was just unlucky.

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[QUOTE=HybridWarrior;1271478]Good post. I agree for sure. I wonder if those two think they are because their father was (?) And that somehow this makes them default to that title?
Dunno…[/QUOTE]

Students of a sifu recognize their teacher
as a sifu. A grandmaster is such to their student’s students.

Ip Chun and Ip Ching have taught several generations of their students… so they are grandmasters to their grand-students.
I do not do their versions. My sigung Ho Kam Ming spent quality time including class time, lessons, discussion of principles and extensive chi
sao with IpMan and for a long time, regularly keeping in touch. And, Ip Man used to come to his school. That is fairly close to Ip Man wing chun. Jiu Wan, WSL , Leung Shun and TST were also good students of a true grandmaster.

On a side note- yeas IMWC is not the only wc. But without IM the attention to wing chun probably would not be the same.
Ip Man’s wing chun at it’s best is very conceptual. Speaking for myself, I would not have been attracted to other
variations of wing chun which has produced their own practitioners.

I have no problem with people practicing other varieties of wing chun except the spamming.Its a big world.There is room and time to tolerate each other.

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[QUOTE=BPWT..;1271490]It’s good that you are honest when saying it doesn’t concern you. It shouldn’t, as you have no way of knowing one way or the other. Yet you continue to talk about ‘closed door students’ (mainly referring to Leung Ting, I suppose) and say what they do is BS and that they (he) didn’t learn much from Yip Man. Which is something you also have no way of knowing.[/QUOTE]

Correct but I listen to people with more know then you and I put together and they say the same things.

It’s quite funny really. I had an feeling you would jump in at some point. I’ve no time to discuss Leung Ting. In my world he really is insignificant and has done more bad things to the system than most.

If LT was all we had I would not be practicing Wing Chun. Fortunately I am lucky he is not. He shines a bad light on Yip Man Kung Fu IMO

So I guess this is where the thread heads down so that’s all I have to say…

Ciao

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@ Graham

Yes, people always talk, I guess. But if you’d grace us with a little more info it would be appreciated (rather than just issuing an insult and then leaving the thread without backing up why you believe what you believe).

Did you meet with WSL and he told you that Yip Man had told him that LT learned nothing much from him?
Or did you hear this from PB, who heard it from WSL, who heard it from YM?
Or did you hear it from PB and it’s his opinion only?
Or did you hear it from other WSL students who, like PB, never actually met YM?

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[QUOTE=Graham H;1271493]I’ve no time to discuss Leung Ting.[/QUOTE]

And yet when you come to the forum and post, you consistently make negative reference to him. You have no time to discuss him, but you seem to keep finding the time. :rolleyes:

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[QUOTE=BPWT..;1271495]Yes, people always talk, I guess. But if you’d grace us with a little more info it would be appreciated[/QUOTE]

Info one way or the other won’t compare to a possibly eyeopening firsthand experience of the approach Graham feels is on a completely different level.

People will love and defend what they do all their life if that’s all they ever know. But the people who have switched systems and share the same opinion and could never go back likely number in the thousands. I suppose it’s possible not everyone will have the same experience and opinion, but that point of view will never be understood through discussion alone.

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I agree, LFJ.

But Graham’s talk of others being BS, and how he’s heard this, that and the other about LT and what he learned/didn’t learn from YM should at least be explained with reference to who Graham actually heard this from. Otherwise the only BS is that coming from Graham himself.

As Graham never met YM, and I doubt that Graham met/spent much time with WSL - I find it more than likely that this nonsense comes from PB (a man with a grudge against LTWT, and someone who himself never actually met YM).

I never heard that WSL and LT were best buddies, but they were both alive and learning from YM at a time that intersects. There are photos of the two of them together (WSL and LT) at events. LT makes reference to WSL in his books (positive reference to WSL’s fighting ability), and there is (or once was) a WT sign above LT’s school (hand written calligraphy) that WSL wrote and gave to LT as a gift when LT opened his own school.

It is not impossible, I suppose, but I find it hard to believe that WSL would himself have said that LT “learned next to nothing from Yip Man” (Graham’s assertion, based on hearing it from ‘someone’).

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I don’t know or care much about stories because they are just that. It doesn’t matter who told what to whom. Experience speaks louder than any testimony.

The point is if someone trains in one system and then switches to another and finds it to be on such a different level that nothing in the previous system is logical to them anymore (an understatement), then this would only cause them to have doubts about how much the founder of the previous system learned. It wouldn’t compute that such a skilled master would end up teaching something like that to their “last closed-door disciple” when what a previous student taught is on such a different level.

Of course this doesn’t conclusively prove anyone’s story true or false, technically. But it’s strong enough for those who’ve had the experience to form very strong opinions. Until one also has that experience those opinions may not make much sense.

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[QUOTE=LFJ;1271523]I don’t know or care much about stories because they are just that. It doesn’t matter who told what to whom.[/QUOTE]

Well, I think if I said to you that I’d heard someone senior in the YMWCK family say that “WSL learnt next to nothing from Yip Man”, you’d probably ask me who said it. Of course, if it was just me saying it that would be dumb. Just like Graham is dumb for saying it and then not saying who he heard it from. Though I think we all know :rolleyes:

[QUOTE=LFJ;1271523]Experience speaks louder than any testimony.[/QUOTE]

Sure, I agree. My experience with LTWT from Hong Kong has been a positive one. I haven’t trained in every WCK lineage, but I know people (far better and more experienced than me) who have trained LTWT and also spent time with a direct student of WSLVT - and still carried on learning LTWT. Which is fine with me - just like it is fine with me that you train WSLVT, and Graham trains PBVT. My problem is not with who people train with… my problem is with Graham’s lies.

[QUOTE=LFJ;1271523]The point is if someone trains in one system and then switches to another and finds it to be on such a different level that nothing in the previous system is logical to them anymore (an understatement), then this would only cause them to have doubts about how much the founder of the previous system learned.[/QUOTE]

Well, this is the eternal argument/debate, isn’t it? All I would say is that Graham has never studied LTWT the way it is taught in Hong Kong. So what is his training point of reference when calling LTWT bullish!t? Is he basing this on training he’s done with people who left the EWTO? If that’s the training point of reference you are meaning, then he’s sitting backwards in the canoe and paddling the wrong way.

I’ve never studied PBVT… so I don’t call it BS. I’d say it looks different to what I do, but I wouldn’t call it BS.

I’m sure you’d agree that Ho Kam Ming spent much time with Yip Man. But Graham and Kevin have panned Joy’s Wing Chun. Presumably because it is not the same as PB’s. What about Leung Sheung? Are people from his school training the way WSL guys do? They are not. Yet LS spent many years learning from YM. What about Tsu Sheung Tin? Many years with Yip Man - but his Wing Chun looks different to WSL’s, no?

Would you question “how much the founder of the previous system learned” for all of these teachers?

[QUOTE=LFJ;1271523]It wouldn’t compute that such a skilled master would end up teaching something like that to their “last closed-door disciple” when what a previous student taught is on such a different level.[/QUOTE]

But is it on a different level?

When we talked about Chi Sau and I said that in the LTWT system it is teaching us to strike and to control bridge work, for example, yourself and Graham disagreed. That’s fair enough, as your WSL method sees things differently. But the definition and description I gave in previous discussions (from a LTWT perspective), the descriptions you disagreed with, fit not just with LT’s understanding but also fit closely with what LS, TST, HKM, etc, taught/teach. They fit well with what Hawkins Cheung teaches, too. They also fit, often very closely, with WCK lines outside of the YM line.

They are all wrong? Only WSL is correct, in your opinion? What doesn’t compute, to me, is that such a skilled master would end up teaching only one person the correct way. Or is WSL wrong and all the others and their methods are correct?

I don’t like to think of any of those scenarios in absolute terms.

Rather, I would not say that WSL’s method is wrong. It is just his method, based on what he was taught and how he interpreted that and then developed it - based on his own experiences and understanding. If you train that method and find it logical, that’s great.

I’d say the same for Leung Ting, the same for TST, the same for LS, etc.

[QUOTE=LFJ;1271523]Of course this doesn’t conclusively prove anyone’s story true or false, technically.[/QUOTE]

Indeed. So maybe people who bandy around the word “Bullsh!t” when describing LTWT should not do so. Especially in Graham’s case… he’s never even studied it. :rolleyes:

[QUOTE=LFJ;1271523]But it’s strong enough for those who’ve had the experience to form very strong opinions. Until one also has that experience those opinions may not make much sense.[/QUOTE]

Well I agree. Again, until Graham spends some time learning the LTWT Hong Kong method, he should reserve judgement on it. If he were to do so (actually learn it) and then reached the conclusion that it’s BS… okay.

I might not agree with him, but I’d respect his opinion because he’d actually be in a place to make a real judgement. As opposed to him listening to PB bad mouth the LT system when he, Graham, pops over to Germany occasionally to attend a seminar.

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Kung fu lineages don’t lend themselves to uniformity. Teachers cannot enforce norms beyond their own schools, pretty much, and that’s not always a bad thing.

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[QUOTE=BPWT..;1271528]Sure, I agree. My experience with LTWT from Hong Kong has been a positive one. I haven’t trained in every WCK lineage, but I know people (far better and more experienced than me) who have trained LTWT and also spent time with a direct student of WSLVT - and still carried on learning LTWT. Which is fine with me - just like it is fine with me that you train WSLVT, and Graham trains PBVT. My problem is not with who people train with… my problem is with Graham’s lies.
[/QUOTE]

Far be it from any of us on the forum to cast doubt upon the supreme almighty enlightened master of the universe (or the whatever similar title bestowed upon LT as rank before he was forced to remove it due to laughter injuries ) OR any of his underlings with similar Star Trek like titles.

Now someone NEEDS to do a dubstep remix of the KK slow flow chi sau vids.

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[QUOTE=Faux Newbie;1271531]Kung fu lineages don’t lend themselves to uniformity. Teachers cannot enforce norms beyond their own schools, pretty much, and that’s not always a bad thing.[/QUOTE]

Agreed. Unfortunately a lot of WC people approach the system more like a religious cult and can’t accept different points of view. This is especially true when it comes to personalities like William Chung and Leung Ting each of whom made exaggerated claims and tried to establish themselves as the preeminent figure in WC (WT).

Now Graham might not accept this, but like many here I have been exposed to a few different lineages. I also had the opportunity to train personally with LT. It is true that he has made exaggerated claims. It is also true that he has some truly exceptional skills and a very interesting perspective which has contributed to the overall body of knowledge in the the “universe” of WC/WT/VT.