Grandmaster Tse’s Wing Chun Note 422

Studying with Sīfú 師父 – Part 9

Sīfú’s 師父 home is quite small when you compare it apartments in the UK.  You can imagine, Hong Kong is very small and there are a lot of people, so housing is very limited. Most people rent an apartment in a block of flats. Sīfú’s studio flat, there is only the living room where students can Chī Sáu 黐手, especially if they are doing it aggressively. The rest of the students had to stand to the side and watch. Generally, if two pairs of students started doing Chī Sáu, then if one pair started “fighting”, then the pair being gentle would stop and give space to the one fighting and just stop and watch. Of course, we did not have many people in the class, and so if two seniors started to Chī Sáu, the juniors would stay to the side and watch. When I was junior, the seniors were Yeung Sam Hing 楊三兄 – Third Brother Yeung and Thomas Chan 陳壽強. Whenever they practised together, we knew there would be a fight! So, we just all stopped and watched them. One-time Sīfú told us to watch them and told us, “Whoever moves less is better.! Then we noticed Sam Hing moved less and Thomas moved a lot.