The Opening Post
Not long ago, I started reading Malcolm Gladwell at the recommendation of my friends and colleagues. For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Gladwell, he is the author of popular non-fiction books “Outliers”, “Tipping Point”, “ David and Goliath”, “ Blink" and host of the No.1 podcast “Revisionist History”. Most importantly, he is a brilliant thinker who enjoys visiting old ideas with a new perspective, or as he calls it “Exploring something that everyone remembered but misunderstood or overlooked”.
Inspired by Mr. Gladwell, I thought I would begin writing about Wing Chun in a similar fashion. I find most of his ideas to be applicable in so many aspects of Wing Chun. I found many of the history of Wing Chun were distorted, many of its techniques misunderstood and its application misused. I plan to explore and revisit many of these topics in my blog. So in each post, I may borrow ideas or view points from Mr. Gladwell's publications or podcast, and apply it to Wing Chun.
Being born in the city of Hong Kong during the 1980s and raised by a father who studied martial arts since before my birth, I heard stories, legends and ideas about martial arts at an early age. But it was not until my early twenties that I began to take my martial arts interest a little more seriously. In 2007, I joined the Houston Wing Chun Association and began working with Mr. Humphrey Wong. A few months later, Mr. Wong introduced me to Sifu Kenneth Chung at the quarterly seminar held in Houston, Texas. My first impression of Sifu Kenneth Chung can be summarized in a three-letter word “Wow”. Sifu Chung is intelligent, sociable and full of stories. With 40+ years in Wing Chun, he has honed his Wing Chun, and just as importantly, his teaching to almost perfection. Thanks to Sifu Chung, I was afforded an opportunity to see what Yip Man’s Wing Chun may have looked like.
This blog is dedicated to Sifu Kenneth Chung, and my late teacher, Mr. Humphrey Wong.