I’ve often heard of the Lee Shing Families methods referred to as Pien San, or Side Body Wing Chun.
Has anyone out there trained in these methods?
Do you already have pien san in your Wing Chun training?
I’ve also, obviously, read the Chu, Ritchie, Wu book that mentions Lee Shing as being a student of Fung Sang. Other sources also include the legendary Ng Jung So, Fung Yee Min, Koo Siu Lung, Chan Wah Shun, Yiu Chui, Lok Yiu, Jiu Wan and Ip Man as having something to do with Lee Shings learning.
I myself can’t prove any of this. They’re just ideas I’ve read and only heard others talk of very rarely.
It’s my understanding that Lee Sing learned Pien San WCK while in China from the Fung family, and the Yip Man WCK after he moved to HK. He seems to have taught his students the Yip Man curriculum (Siu Nim Tao, Chum Kiu, Biu Jee sets), and then the Pien San material as an additional curriculum (which some called Dai Nim Tao, as in Pien San, Dai Nim Tao is the name of one of the short sequences).
I had already read this article, and although it has some good infformation I still feel like it doesn’t really do Lee Shing justice at all.
Highlighting a curriculum like this must cause questions among practitioners. All I’m saying here is that I ‘know’ that Ip Mans Wing Chun has Pien San in it and it’s not just Lee Shing who trained this idea. The extra-stuff was Lee Shings methods from Fung Sang and others! A lifetimes collection of experiences!
With respect, why would you think Lee Shing taught his students Ip Man & Pien San styles separately? And what does ‘Pien San’ actually mean to you?
Unfortunately, as most of us can only hang on to the memories of conversations with our teachers, collecting and actually writing these stories is no easy task Rene!! As you must well know.
I do have more, albeit from a single source, but this is also where I think the general Wing Chun popularity stakes kick in big time. Joseph Man was also very like Lee Shing, as he rarely promoted himself and, in a way, sat back and watched his juniors spread the art of Wing Chun in London and the UK.
He spent (almost!) every day of his Martial Art life studying and training with Lee Shing, from 1965 until 1991 and I met him in 1993 when he was actually looking for some new students. We would stay up late just chatting about life and memories, and I have to say that there were very few people still there with me!!
If you would really like to know more about this humble Masters life I could always make some enquiries on your behalf. I’ve got enough of my own notes to fill a few books, but most is related to my own Sifu and the way he trained his students from 1978 onwards.
I was actually hoping that more people would post with their own experiences of Lee Shing, but it’s becoming more obvious that very few westerners ever met him…
Are you saying that Yip Mans Wing Chun has added Pien San Wing Chun in its system ? If so who added it to the Yip Man system Yip Man or did they get it from Lee Shing ?
All I’m saying here is that I ‘know’ that Ip Mans Wing Chun has Pien San in it and it’s not just Lee Shing who trained this idea. The extra-stuff was Lee Shings methods from Fung Sang and others! A lifetimes collection of experiences!
[QUOTE=Firehawk4;822801]Are you saying that Yip Mans Wing Chun has added Pien San Wing Chun in its system ? If so who added it to the Yip Man system Yip Man or did they get it from Lee Shing ?[/QUOTE]
This is a question I was hoping for others to answer! I’m not saying anything has been added.
This discussion has led me to the wingchunkuen sites forum also, trying to understand what all this chat about ‘Pien San Wing Chun’ is all aboout as I understand Uncle Gohs student published a book talking of these concepts.
I feel that I’m gradually seeing that other families have other ideas here, and are quite defensive about certain topics. Fung Sang is held as being a source of PSWC, and as Lee Shing learnt from him people refer to his methods as Pien San.
I’m not disagreeing with that, I’m trying to understand ‘why’ Fung Sangs WC is referred to as Pien San?
When I say I ‘know’ that Ip Man WC has PS in it, I’m referring to Pien San as I know it, being ‘slant/angle body’. This maybe viewed as a speciality to some families, but to me it’s just another term. In the LSWC curriculums I have covered, we have 'Gin (front) Pien (angle) and Juk (side) San methods, and I would have thought if I wanted a version to be called ‘Side Body’ the term would be ‘Juk San WingChun’?
Maybe what we’re looking at here is a different character for ‘Pien’, but I doubt it.
A contributor to the wingchunkuen forum suggests that the Fung Family Pien San Wing Chun is characterized by their use of Chuk Ging. Has anyone any thoughts on this? Does anyone actually practice this ‘Chuk Ging’?
This is a question I was hoping for others to answer! I’m not saying anything has been added.
—My opinion and my opinion only…There has been some WCK taught in the past that was based mostly on standing square to the opponent and going right up the middle to overwhelm his defenses. Very little pivoting or angling was used. I’ve heard it said that this was Chan Wah Shun’s approach because he was a big strong guy and could get away with it easily. This would be “square body” WCK…in a sense. “Side body” refers to the shifted position where one shoulder is further forward than the other (not square). So you could say that in contrast to the “square on” “up the middle” approach, the Pien San approach is to stand in a “shifted” position and use angles. But very few modern WCK practitioners use the “square on” approach. Most sifu teach and use angling. This may be what has given rise to the idea that Yip Man’s WCK includes “Pien San”. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Yip Man learned WCK from Ku Lo village and incorporated it into his system. It just means that his system has more options than just standing square to the opponent and charging up the middle.
So okay, let me add a tidbit of information on this topic that actually raises more questions than it answers - but what do you expect…this is wing chun! :rolleyes:
To begin, whether you believe it or not, William Cheung has always claimed that his “side body” Traditional Wing Chun was taught to him by Yip Man privately. Now hold that thought for a second…
and let’s switch our focus to Moy Yat, another Yip Man student (I spent 8 years training with him). He taught the “square body” stance with some angling. Period.
However, there is one (and only one) photograph that appeared in one of his books that needs some pondering. The book was entitled KUNG FU FOR YOUNG PEOPLE and was published by Moy Yat himself (very few copies were made). It was done somewhere between September, 1973 and May, 1975. (When I joined in May, 1975 the book was already in existence - and Moy Yat came to America in September, 1973).
And the photos in the book are of John Cheng (Moy 4), Douglas Lee (Lee Moy Shan) - both American students of Moy…and a few photos of John’s girlfriend at the time - and all of the photos entail these three people doing various aspects/moves of wing chun. (Ving Tsun)
In one sequence of photos wherein John’s girl is demonstrating several wing chun stances…there’s a pic of her in what is clearly a side body stance.
In all my 8 years (and from what I’ve seen of Moy Yat’s wing chun from others who trained with him after I left)…I’ve NEVER seen a side body stance being used.
So where did Moy Yat get it from?
And did he really know how to use it?
I think we’ll never know.
And btw…even though Moy wrote the book it was published under Douglas Lee’s name (since he did most of the bankrolling of the book).
Unless you’re referring to the moving stance he taught (with punches) that was meant to train the dragon pole horse stance. That’s probably it. But that’s not the side body stance.
To begin, whether you believe it or not, William Cheung has always claimed that his “side body” Traditional Wing Chun was taught to him by Yip Man privately. Now hold that thought for a second…
and let’s switch our focus to Moy Yat, another Yip Man student (I spent 8 years training with him). He taught the “square body” stance with some angling. Period.
—When I started learning WCK back in 1983 from this forum’s very own Joy Chaudhuri, the “side body” position and use of a pivot to get there was predominant. Joy taught me Augustine Fong’s curriculum, and the same was true when I had the opportunity to learn from Master Fong directly. Augustine Fong makes heavy use of the “side body” positioning. I can only assume the same is true of his teacher…Ho Kam Ming, who learned directly from Yip Man. This is why those original magazine articles that William Cheung wrote years and years ago explaining why he was right and everyone else was wrong really turned me off on him and his system for many years to come. In those articles he showed pictures of the “wrong” way…which was the “straight body” approach mentioned previously. In the pictures of the “right way” he showed a pivoted rather than square on alignment and the use of angles. This confused me, since the WCK that I was learning made full use of such pivoting and angling and did NOT do what Cheung labeled as “wrong.” I don’t know about Moy Yat’s WCK, but Augustine Fong’s WCK (and by implication Ho Kam Ming’s WCK) includes a heavy component of what we have been referring to generically on this thread as “Pien San”.
