Discussion starter

[yak sao]

I posted this on my Wing Tsun facebook page. I thought I would share it here to get some discussion going on your thoughts about WC.


We’ve all heard the expression: “It loses something in the translation”.
Nowhere is this truer than in Wing Tsun. The terminology we use in WT to convey our structure has been misinterpreted to the point that many people think they are doing WT because they are using WT techniques.

Let me stop you right there. There are no WT techniques. When WT was developed back in the day, the founders knew the best way to convey this new way of fighting was not to fill their students’ heads with a laundry list of artificial techniques that they could miraculously pull out of thin air when they needed them in an emergency. They knew the best way was to hardwire these body mechanics directly into the body so that they became reflexes.

Unfortunately most WT practitioners do not speak Cantonese, so this concept has been lost to many. What was designed to be used to convey an idea of movement has been corrupted to rigidly place students into dead structures.
Tan sau is not a technique. Neither is pak sau,fook sau, bong sau, etc….. These are momentary disruptions, deformities if you prefer, of our punch as it seeks the center. The Jum sau (sinking arm) is not a structure that is set in stone that has to be done just so, or it doesn’t work. The jum sau is a concept of sinking your arm to disrupt the opponent’s attack as you continue your own attack forward toward the center.

But because we do not speak Cantonese, we have taken these representative structures that are taught to us in our forms to convey these ideas of movement and turned them into dogmatic, dead structures that must be adhered to.
Don’t misunderstand what I am saying here. I am in no way saying we throw form out the window. Those of you who train with me know I can be downright anal about how the Siu Nim Tao, Chum Kiu and so on should be performed. But that is only to reinforce these body mechanics into our muscle memory, so that when we flow through ( not to ) these various structures, we have optimum leverage, balance, control….
When used, these structures are momentary snapshots of a split second in time…they are not nouns but verbs.

 

[geezer]

I hear what you are saying, and there's a lot of truth there. Still, I'm not sure if it can all be attributed to the language barrier. Native speakers of Cantonese often make the same error of looking at the external appearance of techniques rather than seeing through to the underlying structure, energy, or function that they express. It may be worse when dealing with Westerners, but you will see plenty of poor, or perhaps better to say, "superficial" takes on WC being practiced by Chinese individuals too. You know, as Bruce Lee put it, looking at the finger and missing out on "all that heavenly glory".

 

[yak sao]

I hear what you are saying, and there's a lot of truth there. Still, I'm not sure if it can all be attributed to the language barrier. Native speakers of Cantonese often make the same error of looking at the external appearance of techniques rather than seeing through to the underlying structure, energy, or function that they express. It may be worse when dealing with Westerners, but you will see plenty of poor, or perhaps better to say, "superficial" takes on WC being practiced by Chinese individuals too. You know, as Bruce Lee put it, looking at the finger and missing out on "all that heavenly glory".

I agree. As I was writing that, I thought of that exact thing, which is why we have so many different takes on one man's (Yip Man) teachings.
When I was training with EB, one thing that he said quite a bit was a lot of people just don't get WT. He wasn't saying if you don't understand WT you're stupid, just that it takes a certain mindset to get the finer points of what the training is trying to accomplish.

 

[wtxs]

Even native speaker had problem with some of the terminology. An good example: Chum Kiu - some interpret the character "Chum" as "seek" or to make contact, other interpreted it to be "sink". You can seek the bridge (opponent's structure) control it and destroy it, or you can just destroy your opponent's structure (sinking the bridge).

 

[yak sao]

Even native speaker had problem with some of the terminology. An good example: Chum Kiu - some interpret the character "Chum" as "seek" or to make contact, other interpreted it to be "sink". You can seek the bridge (opponent's structure) control it and destroy it, or you can just destroy your opponent's structure (sinking the bridge).

When I first started training WT, I remember hearing that. I always equated it to someone misunderstanding their Chinese speaking teacher. They thought they were saying "sink the bridge" instead of "seek the bridge".
Interesting how even within the native language there is room for interpretation.

 

[Vajramusti]

I posted this on my Wing Tsun facebook page. I thought I would share it here to get some discussion going on your thoughts about WC.


We’ve all heard the expression: “It loses something in the translation”.
Nowhere is this truer than in Wing Tsun. The terminology we use in WT to convey our structure has been misinterpreted to the point that many people think they are doing WT because they are using WT techniques.

Let me stop you right there. There are no WT techniques.
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Agree with much of what you are saying. Cantonese has many more subtle tones than Mandarin
and even native speakers can mishear sounds that are close to each other-including the chum for sinking and the chum for seeking.
Also bong sao etc are action verbs not simple descriptive nouns. Lots of "broken telephones" in wing chun depending on who heard what from whom and who trained with whom how often and for how long.

joy chaudhuri

 

[mook jong man]

We have to call the structures something , it just makes it easier when teaching.
Otherwise we'd be saying "Ok everybody we are going to work on that thingy that looks like a chicken wing and after that we'll do the palm up thingy like your begging for a dollar.

But technically Yak Sao is right , the terms don't really describe static structures, only the whole process of the arm turning from Bong Sau to Tan Sau is really Tan Sau.
But as I said we have to call them something , it just makes it easier when teaching.

 

[yak sao]

We have to call the structures something , it just makes it easier when teaching.
Otherwise we'd be saying "Ok everybody we are going to work on that thingy that looks like a chicken wing and after that we'll do the palm up thingy like your begging for a dollar.

But technically Yak Sao is right , the terms don't really describe static structures, only the whole process of the arm turning from Bong Sau to Tan Sau is really Tan Sau.
But as I said we have to call them something , it just makes it easier when teaching.

It is so much easier to use the Cantonese words than their English counterpart. But I do think it puts people in the "this is a thing, not an action" mindset if we don't stay on top of it.

The other night at class, one of the instructors was having trouble getting one of the students to do one of the drills.He was using Cantonese terms: fook sau, wu sau, tan sau, etc. I went over and said "OK, now let's put what you're doing into English"

Instead of fook sau I told him toi control his partner's arm from on top, instead of wu sau I told him to keep his protecting hand up and instead of tan sau I told him to disperse his partner's punch past him and hit.

And when I put it into those terms...where he could actually think about what was taking place instead of recreating some sort of artificial structure, while filtering it through his mind in a language he doesn't speak, he got it immediately.