Ving Tsun Articles Collection by David Peterson & al.pdf

WONG SHUN LEUNG

黃淳樑

8 May (June?) 1935 – 28 January 1997

Wing Chun Personified

Trained by the late grandmaster Yip Man, teacher to the great Bruce Lee, Wong Shun Leung is perhaps best-

known as the wing chun man who routinely challenged anyone of any style and lived to tell about it.

by David Peterson

The following article was previously published within the pages of “Inside Kung-Fu” magazine (Vol.18/No.2) as ‘Wong

Shun Leung: Wing Chun’s Living Legend’. It is reproduced here in its original form as a tribute to Sifu Wong, who

passed away on January 28th 1997 - the Author.

Hong Kong-based Wing Chun instructor, Wong Shun Leung, has been called many things by people

in the martial arts world. England's 'Fighters' magazine called him, "...a communicator and teacher

of Wing Chun par excellence"; Jesse Glover, the first American student of the late Bruce Lee, wrote

in his book 'Bruce Lee's Non-Classical Gung Fu' that Wong Shun Leung "...is one of the greatest

Wing Chun teachers in the world"; Bey Logan, editor of the British martial arts magazine 'Combat'

wrote that "...Wong Shun Leung is far more important as a Wing Chun teacher in his own right than

just a figure in the life of Bruce Lee. He deserves better than to be in anyone's shadow"; America's

'Black Belt' magazine simply called him "...a Wing Chun phenomenon."

Which ever way you want to look at it, there is no denying that Wong Shun Leung is possibly the

greatest living representative of the dynamic Chinese fighting art of Wing Chun, the man who put

Wing Chun on the map in the late 'fifties and early 'sixties in his well publicised challenge matches

against representatives of all the major combat arts in Hong Kong. He is the man who can rightly

claim to have been the late Bruce Lee's teacher, and to have influenced the development of Lee's

personal art of combat, Jeet Kune Do. His ego is such, however, that Wong Shun Leung prefers to

be known simply as a teacher, a sifu, and he refuses to accept accolades such as "master" or

"grandmaster", terms which he believes are worthless because they have been abused so readily in

recent years.

Wong Sifu, in his own typical fashion, usually downplays his "deadly" image by stating that, "I

can't fight very well and my Kung Fu is not very good." He decries the claims of other so-called

"masters" by emphasising that it matters not whether one is the son of a grandmaster, or that one

knows "every deadly move known to man." In his opinion it is far more important that one must

practise hard, to "become the master of the art, not its slave." To Wong Sifu it makes no difference

how senior you are, but how good you are. He considers that Wing Chun is a SKILL, not an ART,

and he sees nothing wrong with using ones skills.

In comparing skills and art, Wong Sifu has been quoted as saying, "...if A and B have a fight and B

gets knocked out, then everyone knows that A won. There's a winner and a loser. However, in

music, you can like someone's guitar playing or not like it and it doesn't matter. Because it's an ART,

you can't PROVE that one painting or piece of music is better than another. However, in Kung Fu,

you can prove your skill in such a way that there is no doubt! This is the difference....in other

ARTS, beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but in MARTIAL ART, the only judgement is

whether or not it works!" Statements such as this one are characteristic of the very down-to-earth

approach that Wong Sifu has to combat, and he certainly has the fighting record to back up such a

beliefs.

Wong Shun Leung began his training in the martial arts while in his early teens. He tried his hand at

several styles, including Western boxing, in which he developed a real interest, an interest which he

still maintains today. Wong Sifu considers boxing to be very practical for the street because boxers

learn to give and take punishment right from the word go, concentrating on attacking instead of

"chasing the opponent's hands" like many of the classical Kung Fu styles do. He probably would

have still been boxing now if it hadn't been for two particular incidents which changed his approach

to combat once and for all.

Firstly, while sparring with his boxing coach one afternoon, Wong accidently landed a damaging

blow to the face. In a rage, the coach began pounding Wong until, bleeding from nose and mouth,

Wong managed to gain the upper hand, eventually knocking his coach out cold. After this event,

Wong lost all respect for his boxing coach and never went back for another lesson. Wong's father

and grandfather had both been doctors of traditional Chinese medicine and were well acquainted

with members of Hong Kong's martial arts community so that from a very early age, Wong had

heard hundreds of tales of the exploits of various local heroes. His grandfather had even been a

good friend of Chan Wa Sun, the first of his future instructor Yip Man's Wing Chun teachers, so

Wong was aware of the fighting art of Chan the "money-changer" (Jau Chin Wa) from Fatsaan.

Wong recalled some of the

stories he had been told about

Chan Wa Sun, and of Chan's

teacher, the legendary Fatsaan

Jan Sinsaang (Dr.Leung Jan, a

noted herbalist in the nineteenth

century, renowned for his

unrivalled fighting skills) and

he decided to seek out a Wing

Chun teacher to see what the

system had to offer him. As it

turned out, friends of his older

brother were learning Wing

Chun so it was arranged that he

would go to see them train. To

cut a long story short, Wong

ended up having a match with

the man who was to become his

teacher, the late grandmaster

Yip Man, after initially having "held his own" with a couple of the junior students at the school, and

was very soundly beaten. From that moment onwards, Wong Shun Leung became a devoted

member of the Wing Chun clan and within a year had single-handedly elevated the Wing Chun

system from the position of an obscure, virtually unknown, southern Chinese martial art, to that of a

real force to be reckoned with.

Now 55 years old, Wong Shun Leung has been involved in Wing Chun for over 38 years, constantly

working to develop and pass on the skills of the system to literally thousands of students. These

days he spends at least three months of every year travelling to various places around the world,

spreading his interpretation of Wing Chun in an honest, effective and realistic manner. Wong Sifu is

a realist when it comes to combat, advising his audiences that martial artists are not invincible, and

that sometimes the best solution when surrounded by villains is "...run away!" It is foolhardy, he

suggests, to believe that training in the martial arts will enable a person to dispose of a group of

attackers without raising as much as a sweat.

"If someone practises any martial art," says Wong, "then that person must become stronger and

more durable than someone who hasn't practised. So if you are punched you are able to take a lot

more punishment than a normal person. I have been hit many times, as have all of the great martial

artists that I know of. So we are not supermen, but we can take a lot more. Any martial artist who

says that he does not get hit is lying to himself!"

To him, fighting is like a game of chess; just as one cannot expect to win a game of chess without

firstly sacrificing one or more pieces, so one cannot expect to be victorious in a fight without

sustaining some kind of injury, even if only a few bruises. Several jagged scars on his knuckles, as

well as scars from a knife on his arm and forehead attest to this belief. When it comes to combat

experience, Wong Shun Leung could tell many tales, but with his usual modesty he tends to

downplay this aspect of his career in martial arts.

It is a well-known fact in Hong Kong, however, that from around the time Wong Sifu was 18 until

about the age of 24, he took part in countless challenge matches (referred to in Cantonese as bei

mo) against fighters from virtually every style of martial art in the colony. Bruce Lee credited Wong

with hundreds of victories, but conservative estimates suggest something along the lines of at least

50 to 60 such matches, with Wong always emerging as the winner. So successful was he that the

local Hong Kong press picked up on his exploits and one enterprising reporter (now a resident in

Australia) actually went out and arranged fights for him against non-Chinese as well, including a

250lb Russian boxer named Giko!

In the press reports Wong became known as Gong Sau Wong, meaning the "King of the Challenge

Fight," the sound wong meaning both "king" as well as being the same as his surname (although a

different written character). The term gong sau was actually coined by Wong during an interview

conducted at the time and means literally "talking with the hands," a very apt description of exactly

what he did. When pressed about these matches while being interviewed in Australia two years ago,

Wong Sifu responded by saying, "I didn't actually learn Wing Chun just to go out and fight. Kung

Fu should really be used as a way of protecting yourself in circumstances where you are physically

threatened.

"After I learnt the skills of Wing Chun from Yip Man I often had the opportunity to test them. By

experimenting with my skills I could discover their limitations and how they compared with other

disciplines and so improve myself. After a time of this experimentation I learnt that I needed to rely

less on the fighting part to get that self-satisfaction and feeling of achievement." It was also during

this period of experimentation that Wong Shun Leung introduced Bruce Lee to the experience of the

challenge fight. In the first of Lee's matches, Wong coached him between rounds, encouraging Lee

to continue when it seemed that he was about to give up.

The result was a victory that possibly changed the course of Lee's life and certainly began the

development of the martial arts superstar whom the world was later to discover. Grandmaster Yip

Man, on hearing of the event, was said to have told Wong, "Fortunately you accompanied him to the

venue and encouraged him to go on with the match. This trial of martial skill may be a decisive

influence on him in the future. If someday Bruce Lee succeeds, the credit should rightfully go to

you." In discussing this period in Lee's life, Jesse Glover wrote, "Wong was four years senior to

Bruce in Yip Man's clan and Bruce studied privately for a year and a half under both him and Yip

Man" and that Wong was "...the man most responsible for the development of Bruce Lee." Glover

also wrote, "In '59 Bruce told me that Wong was the greatest fighter in the Wing Chun style, and

that he had successfully defeated all challengers."

Wong Shun Leung is not just a gifted fighter and excellent teacher, he is also a doctor of traditional

Chinese medicine, and a self-taught calligrapher whose writing is greatly prized by those who

appreciate such talent. He enjoys reading classical Chinese poetry, eating fine food, sipping a glass

of good brandy with friends and sharing amusing anecdotes and jokes with his students. Bey Logan,

in his article 'Bruce Lee's Teacher' wrote, "The first thing you notice is how normal he looks. He

looks too short, too friendly to be the legendary Wong Shun Leung Sifu. It is only the way he

moves, the way he watches, that reveals the nature of the discipline he has mastered.

"Next, you're surprised by his keen sense of humour. Many Westerners seem to cling to the idea that

a Sifu must be a very old, very solemn man. There is none of the stereotypical Master Po-figure

about Wong Shun Leung. He is very funny." But as well as being a very friendly, amusing and

approachable man, Wong Sifu is first and foremost an exponent and teacher of combat with quite

definite views on the purpose and function of Kung Fu. Being the one student of Yip Man to have

taught for him rather than go out and open his own school, Wong was able to truly absorb all that

his teacher had to offer, the result being that he, above all other pretenders to the throne, could

rightfully claim to be the inheritor of the system. Instead, Wong simply gets on with the task of

teaching, letting his skills and experiences speak for themselves.

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: