Master Tse’s Wing Chun Note #176

Wing Chun Ancestor Instruction II 詠春祖訓 Pt 1

The second ancestor instruction is “Understand loyalty and courtesy. Love your country and respect your parents 明禮義愛國尊親.” If you watch the Ip Man葉問movies or the Wong Fei Hung 黄飛鴻 movies we see that the master is always very gentle, polite and courteous. When we have a high position and more power we should be more gentle. It is like our Chi Sau, we should be gentle first, until we know the situation, then you want the best way to defeat or control your opponent. We should always be gentle and nice particularly when we have good Wing Chun skill. We do not want people to see us as rough, violent bullies.

Courtesy is important in traditional Chinese education which follows Rujia 儒家 (Confucian) ethics. For thousands of years Chinese people have followed Rujia to be polite and gentle. There are five major ethics, compassion仁, loyalty義, courtesy禮, wisdom智 and trust信. We should follow these ethics as they will help you be a nice person and then you are following the Wing Chun Ancestor Instructions.