Grandmaster Tse’s Wing Chun Note 419

Studying with Sīfú 師父 – Part 6

It felt so good learning something correctly. I am sure that since the day we are born we will all feel like this. Once we fall in love with something, we will always be excited when we find someone who can explain it better and give us a clear direction. This is how I felt. I was learning properly from a famous master and in my mind the best teacher! It was more than I could have dreamed. Sīfú Ip Chun 葉準師父 was my favourite Sīfú and my lucky star (but I will tell you more about that later).

I was influenced by Bruce Lee a lot and so I liked to fight. At first I thought Kung Fu was just for fighting and so I would meet up with friends who had learnt other styles of fighting or martial art and test myself. Some of them had learnt Boxing, Taekwondo, Choi Lee Faat 蔡李佛, Hung Kuan 洪拳 and Lama Kung Fu. We would occasionally hurt each other, but as we were friends it was never serious. Now, when I practised Chī Sáu 黐手 with my new Wing Chun brothers, I had the same attitude and fought with them quite a bit. Sometime I beat them and sometimes the seniors beat me. But, gradually I understood that Chī Sáu was not just about fighting, it was about learning to feel your opponent’s energy. Then I really started to learn Chī Sáu. It was not just fighting, it was leaning and practising with your brothers and sisters to improve our Wing Chun. Then if we need to use it for fighting, we can use less energy in order to win.