Views of Wing Chun in China?

[-disciple-]

I have a sad story for you here today. I was eating sushi at my favorite restraunt, and was talking with the chefs, all of which who are chinese.

I started asking them about Kung Fu, and if they had learned any chinese martial arts etc. They told me no, not really, that they had learned some in China from fathers or uncles, etc, but they didnt know very much.

I was then told there are two things that are number one in china-- Bruce Lee, and Shaolin. Shaolin is the best. They raved about shaolin. I then asked them about wing chun, and they told me that wing chun is *insert noise here* *thumbs down* and that wing chun has no respect in china. nobody practices wing chun. Everyone is Shaolin. Shaolin is the best. One guy said wing chun is ok for girls, because they look good when they do wing chun. But it is a weak martial art. Shaolin is everything. I must tell you, i was summarily embarressed by this, and there disrespect for wingchun, and a tad bit peeved. Is this really How the chinese population views wing chun? As a portion? As a whole? I always thought of wing chun as a time honored and respected CMA, with a legacy that extended for centuries. Am I wrong? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Oh yeah, and the chinese guys are definately chinese, even though i know they work at a sushi restraunt. One had come from china 20 years ago, another 5 years ago, and another 2 years ago, and they all agreed that wing chun...sucks.

[Ernie]

First ,
have you seen the quality of the wing Chun in china , not so hot
and i would have to agree as for as stories go i was coaching a group at the park
and were i live there are allot of Chinese people so we often have the other styles doing there thing in the morning .

well a guy pulled over in his car and walked up , watched us train for a while [nothing out of the norm ] then he figured out i was the guy telling people what to do .
he proceeded to tell me how both his mother and father trained in wing Chun almost all there lives so he knows what'' real wing chun'' as he put it is supposed to look like and was amazed that what he saw me[a non chinese] doing and the level of intent in which we trained was what he remembered . yet now he said people at home [china] have quit on wing Chun and the ones doing it are all weak .he was really sad ,,,,but i reassured him there is plenty of people out there still training hard ,,,,,,,

it was a strange encounter

i think he said it was all about wushu back home

oh well

[couch]

I have a sad story for you here today. I was eating sushi at my favorite restraunt, and was talking with the chefs, all of which who are chinese.

I started asking them about Kung Fu, and if they had learned any chinese martial arts etc. They told me no, not really, that they had learned some in China from fathers or uncles, etc, but they didnt know very much.

I was then told there are two things that are number one in china-- Bruce Lee, and Shaolin. Shaolin is the best. They raved about shaolin. I then asked them about wing chun, and they told me that wing chun is *insert noise here* *thumbs down* and that wing chun has no respect in china. nobody practices wing chun. Everyone is Shaolin. Shaolin is the best. One guy said wing chun is ok for girls, because they look good when they do wing chun. But it is a weak martial art. Shaolin is everything. I must tell you, i was summarily embarressed by this, and there disrespect for wingchun, and a tad bit peeved. Is this really How the chinese population views wing chun? As a portion? As a whole? I always thought of wing chun as a time honored and respected CMA, with a legacy that extended for centuries. Am I wrong? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Oh yeah, and the chinese guys are definately chinese, even though i know they work at a sushi restraunt. One had come from china 20 years ago, another 5 years ago, and another 2 years ago, and they all agreed that wing chun...sucks.

I went to this Korean restaurant today and all the Chefs were Japanese. I asked them if they liked Karate and they said that nobody in Japan are doing Karate anymore because it's a sport and not real self-defense. They did, however say that karate is good for fat people, because their fat shakes when they reverse-punch. I can't believe that the Japanese said this about their traditional art.

Oh yeah, they said that everyone trains Capoeira their now. It mad deadly.

[Ernie]

I went to this Korean restaurant today and all the Chefs were Japanese. I asked them if they liked Karate and they said that nobody in Japan are doing Karate anymore because it's a sport and not real self-defense. They did, however say that karate is good for fat people, because their fat shakes when they reverse-punch. I can't believe that the Japanese said this about their traditional art.

Oh yeah, they said that everyone trains Capoeira their now. It mad deadly.

the days of tradition went out with in the 70's
people are result driven now , especially the younger generation , only the baby boomers and handful of confused kids still by into the pj and slippers idea

[reneritchie]

If the people weren't from Foshan or Guangzhou or thereabouts, they probably don't know anything about Wing Chun.

Bruce Lee and Mao were famous in the PRC, and people knew the yellow jammies, but they didn't know much about his MA. He was just a movie star who made it big, and to them that was paramount.

MA in general took a huge hit in the PRC. Those who knew real MA (as opposed to the acrobatic/opera blend that became Wushu) had to hide, train in secret, and hope the Red Guard didn't beat them to death or shoot them for giggles.

Still, you can find plenty of crappy in Hong Kong, North Am., and pretty much everywhere, including China, and go on a lot of forums, even nowadays, and you'll find people dissing Wing Chun, Kung-Fu in generall, and pretty much every MA.

There were and are some excellent WCK people in China, both technically and combatively (the two are not always mutual, and you need both because some fighters can't teach/coach worth a dang).

But Ernie is right in that many kids, Chinese kids included, seem to have little interest in traditional MA anymore.

[anerlich]

Rene is correct.

My own short Asian travels indicate that there is little of anything there that is probably not available in any large city in any country at the same or superior standards from immigrant Chinese or their students.

I did see some excellent Chinese KF practitioners in early morning visits to Peoples Park in Shanghai, but the really good ones were in ther 50s or older back in the early 80s. An oldish lady doing full splits and a complex form that looked like Bagua with double hooked swords. Breathtaking.

The youngsters were mainly doing basic Xingyi or Taiji. We met Sun Lu-Tang's grandson, but he hardly had supernatural powers.

as Rene said, the Cultural Revolution seemed to smother KF in China, and it was only in the 70's and 80's that the older generation of practitioners started to come out from underground.

[Liddel]

Dont discount the fact that many people of the 'old' days (hehe when everything was black and white ) used kung fu to further their lives or just survive.

It was a trade, a marketable skill that could be used as a source of income.
Learn from a good master, become well known in your area and start your own school.

Today pepoles choices are different and more varied.

Now a days there are many more opportunities for people and education is more available for the lower class people who may have not been able to afford it long ago which has seen a decline in kung fu.

Also from what my sifu told me it became more difficult to be allowed to practice kung fu in the 60's - 80's in HK, rules and regulations (licence) came into place that made it more difficult.

Education has become more of a choice for many parents rather than kung fu as a sole source of income.

Some Idiots (IMO) thimk Gm Ip taught Kung Fu to support a opium habbit, but to me this was a a natural choice to sell a valuable skill he had to eat and survive after the goverment took most (if not all) of his possesions away.

Times have changed in most parts of the world which has impacted how we live our lives. And specifically for this discussion, kung fu has been affected also.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - I appreciate and realise the value of VT Kung Fu and thats all i need.

[Phil Redmond]

My Chinese friends say the TKD is gaining popularity in China among younger people. They don't think kung fu is any good. IThough there are good my experiences fighting in and watching full contact matches it seems that many "westerners" are taking kung fu more seriously and are therefore better fighters as a whole. (When I say westerners I mean people born or raised in the West regardless of ethnic origin).
Phil

[reneritchie]

When I was in Guangzhou the PRC army was promoting TKD. Some old timers were all into it too because they thought the colored belts were a better commercial model.

[-disciple-]

That just makes me sad, because ive fallen in love with wing chun in the past couple of months, and just eat, breathe, and sleep it. I train as much as i can daily, and to hear that traditional MA in the country which they originated no longer have the same respect just makes me sad.

Hopefully, in a couple of years, i can prove those chinese who thought wing chun to be weak wrong. But for now, i guess i'll just have to listen to them smashing on wing chun. Oh yeah, when i told them that bruce lee started in wing chun, and that he never completed the form, they laughed at me and asked me who told me that. I said my sifu, and they told me he made it up to make wing chun look better. Oh well...

[CFT]

Just shows how ignorant they are.

Your average person on the street in China has no more in-depth knowledge about kung fu than the average person on the street in the West.

[YongChun]

I think humans are just humans. We like the things we know about and discount all else. Even most Wing Chun people will discount Karate, Taekwondo, Capoeira, Hung style, Tai Chi, Aikido and most everything else including someone else's Wing Chun art. The reason is that we are not in contact with good fighters from these styles and so we just can't form a reasonable judgement. It takes long enough for a Wing Chun practitioner to appreciate and fully understand his own art so what can we understand from other arts that we just see glimpses of?

I found when Chinese people from China are exposed to Wing Chun, they like it. I went to China and taught a few interested people Wing Chun. They really liked it. Also here we have various University students from China who really enjoy Wing Chun. None of them think to practice Shaolin because they know you start that at age 4 and have to train it day and night.

I heard that in the Phillipines Taekwondo is more popular than the native Escrima/Arnis/Kali arts. Taekwondo looks good, it has competitions and it hurts less than getting smashed with a stick. In Korea there seems to be a trend to learn Thai boxing now because it works on the street within six months. A high ranking Hapkido teacher I know converted entirely to teaching Thai boxing in Korea now.

I think diversity is good and that it doesn't matter if other people don't like Wing Chun. Wing Chun isn't everything. It doesn't have everything that other arts offer. These days it doesn't have the fighting reputation it once had and it just doesn't look that good. The media is somewhat responsible for what arts are popular. The media had a lot to do with the popularity of Hong Kong Wing Chun in the days of Bruce Lee.

If we can generate good people then slowly the word about Wing Chun will spread. But the world has changed. Everything is available to look at these days. Attention spans are shorter.

At one time Wing Chun had the characteristics that it was very easy and quick to learn. A year or two was all it took. Now with the commercialization of Wing Chun and the implementation of ranking systems the teaching can be stretched out to 5, 10 or even 20 years. This is neither good nor bad, it's just a change.

I don't find that there are many people who train like people in the old days who sometimes came 7 days a week. People like that were good but even they eventually quit martial arts. Priorititis like making money and having a family of course became much more important. For most Chinese you talk to, this is the priority, Kung Fu is considered a waste of time because it doesn't make money.

Now I see a lot of people coming just once a week but they are committed to that and come year after year. Progress is slower but it's steady. So in the end maybe it's good.

[Hendrik]

I have a sad story for you here today. I was eating sushi at my favorite restraunt, and was talking with the chefs, all of which who are chinese.

....... I must tell you, i was summarily embarressed by this, and there disrespect for wingchun, and a tad bit peeved. Is this really How the chinese population views wing chun? As a portion? As a whole? I always thought of wing chun as a time honored and respected CMA, with a legacy that extended for centuries. Am I wrong? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Oh yeah, and the chinese guys are definately chinese, even though i know they work at a sushi restraunt. One had come from china 20 years ago, another 5 years ago, and another 2 years ago, and they all agreed that wing chun...sucks.

Who cares what others said, it is the WCK within oneself that is matter. They can agree wCK is the best in the universe but if the WCK within oneself sucks it means nothing.

IMHO, dont look outward for others approval, you will be always living in miserable enslave by others. Instead train and study so that whatever art one is cultivating speak for itself. and no one has to know because more than that is about EGO. and when it comes to EGO everyone (me include) will think they are the best. who will give you a thump up better then him/her beside one's own mom?

Dont be sad but set yourself free and empower yourself. stand on your own feet and it doesnt matter what others said. as for lean on others, that always yield to disapointment and enslavery by others. dont give your power away. The power of approval but learn to empower yourself.

That is the first lession in SLT --- Trust oneself and work dillegently, and one shall know one self best. nothing should move your heart, keep training.

IMHHHHO

[Jam_master]

That just makes me sad, because ive fallen in love with wing chun in the past couple of months, and just eat, breathe, and sleep it. I train as much as i can daily, and to hear that traditional MA in the country which they originated no longer have the same respect just makes me sad.

It all depends on who you talk to, generation wise. I had a similar experience with a young chinese kid at a local restaurant I frequented. We got into a discussion about kung-fu, and he just made a lot of half ass highly opiniated comments about how if your a westerner you automatically don't know real kung-fu, and also argued about rooftop fights not ever having existed. He was totally dismissing what I knew or said, until his older uncle corrected him on one count and that was that rooftop figts did happen, and to challenge someone in those days you would stomp your foot 3 times in front of the guy you wanted to challenge. I got to say, I was somewhat releived that I had someone else who he respected to shut him up!LOL But, all in all I learned something. You have just as much unimformed chinese as you do here in the states, and your going to hear the same kind of views and opiniated comments you hear already here in the west so don't sweat it. Follow and continue your own path to truth and enlightenment and forget about what others say or think. You know best what you need or are lacking.

Keep Jamming!

M

[YungChun]

Just because someone is from China does not mean they know anything or have an opinion that is correct or shared by the majority of Chinese. Many Chinese think Tai Chi is not a martial art; others think it is the 'Grand Ultimate Fist'... 8) Neither view would seem to jive with today's reality and like was mentioned depend on location, age and experience of the opinion holder. Most of the Chinese I meet that have MA experience think Muay Thai is good.. But who cares what anyone else thinks anyway?

WCK has Shaolin roots and was the only formal training Bruce had so it must be great!