The Real Wing Chun

[jacksawild]

I'm not sure I like the snobbery involved in one school over another based on lineage and closeness to the greats. Here are my reasons:

When Ng Mui developed what we call Wing Chun she didn't see any importance in calling it one thing or another it was simply a collection of scrapping techniques which proved effective against larger adversaries. This is clear because when Wing Chun (the person) asked Ng Mui the name of the style she invented Ng Mui revealed that it had no name and so she named it after her first student. With this traditional story the knowledge being given to us is that it does not matter what we call it or where we learned it, what is important is that it works.

The philosophy of Wing Chun is more important than the techniques.

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line and thus the direct route is the fastest.

This simple saying is full of wisdom, it tells us to cut away the chaff and concentrate on our goal which is improving in our fighting.

I can understand why people want to differentiate between classical wing chun and what has been added since. Bruce Lee, for example, broke away from wing chun and reluctantly named his own style something else (like Ng Mui, he would have preferred not to get bogged down by styles and systems). All this energy in arguments is wasted, wing chun is tested in the field, it is a combat art and not a dance or set movements.