Wow! I have to scratch my head a bit over some of the responses on this thread. I felt the need to respond to a few of them.
The above statements generalise that farmers and the lower classes lack intelligence, and that entertainers are necessarily smart. And that merchants are as smart as doctors. Might have been so back then, but highly questionable whether it is now.
—He was obviously talking about “then”, not “now.” And it wasn’t a statement on intelligence, it was a statement on educational level.
Another WC internet celebrity seems to think that WC has gone backwards since 1850 and we’ve lost a lot of stuff since then. All the smart people must have got left out of the loop. Or all the smart people got too smart for their own good and decided to take that sh*t to their graves.
—Internet celebrity? Robert hasn’t had any kind of internet presence for several years now. He no longer participates regularly on the forums and hasn’t even updated his own webpage in a couple of years. And you got all that from that simple passage I quoted? He simply said that to be good at Wing Chun you have to use your brain as much as your fists. Nothing was said about whether we are worse off or better off than our predecessors.
knife is stabbing toward a MA guy’s heart, he has only 1/10 second to make the right decision. If he has to think about whether he should use “Tan Shou”, “Fu Shou”, or “Bon Shou”, he would be dead.
—Once again, how do you derive that idea from the passage quoted? Robert is talking about training and understanding Wing Chun at a certain depth. He never implied that you were supposed to stop and think about each move before you did it. That’s just a ridiculous statement.
He says doctors, merchants and actors are of more substance, and farmers are stupid? That’s pretty funny. None of those ‘persons of more substance’ would have been able to feed themselves without farmers to provide for them.
—And again! How do you arrive at that conclusion from his statement? Where did he say farmers are stupid? Obviously farmers worked long hard days and had little time left over for either education or training in martial arts. This was not necessarily the case for the merchant class, and certainly not the case for the “upper class.”
oh my gosh, talk about fluffing a **** filled pillow. “thinking mans art”? It’s not mathematics, it’s stuffing your fist into someones face and stomping on their knee.
WTF is there to think about. Just repeat stuff til you have skill and then apply. Not much thought required.
—“Fluffing a **** filled pillow”??? Really??? You think it’s that simple? Ok. If you guys don’t respect what Robert Chu has to say, how about some quotes from someone else? This one is from Wong Shun Leung in David Petersen’s book. Wong Shun Leung knew a thing or two about fighting and referred to Wing Chun as a “skill” rather than an “art.” He had a no-nonsense approach to fighting. Yet even he said:
[I]Wing Chun teaches you how to think. People find that its concepts can be applied in other areas of their life.
They (students) don’t understand how to apply the concepts of Wing Chun. This means that the students are concentrating too much on the individual technique rather than seeing the whole situation. They cannot appreciate the theory that would otherwise suggest an appropriate technique.
A lot of Wing Chun is in the mind. The actions or movements are not that important. What Wing Chun teaches is that it is more important to use what is in your head.
Wing Chun is an expression of concepts. Wing Chun does not have to be done to the letter. Only enough needs to be done to fulfill the requirements of the theory. [/I]
I think I’ll stick with Robert Chu and Wong Shun Leung. If you guys can’t see the wisdom in their words, that’s OK. To each his own.
