Weng Chun ... Your thoughts?

[Minghe]

Been reading the Leung Ting Book "Roots of Wing Tsun" and the section on what he refers to as "Weng Chun Bak Hok".

What are your thoughts on this style and any link it may have to Fuzhou White Crane and or Wing Chun?

 

[KPM]

That book is notoriously inaccurate from an historical perspective. I would take everything in it with a grain of salt!

 

[Minghe]

Yes I kind of gathered that. I'd still be interested in people's views of Weng Chun and if there is a Crane or Wing Chun connection though?

 

[zuti car]

It is a mix of wing chun and hung gar, simple as that . About Crane connection, all southern arts have some connection , but the question is to what style exactly . Today's popular crane styles lie Minghe , Zonghe , SHihe ... all of them are formed in the last decades of 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century ,so they are either younger than wing chun or at least they are developed in same period of time.. How older styles of white crane, who actually influenced wing chun and other arts, looked like we don't know today ,because these styles either evolved in something else or disappeared

 

[geezer]

It is a mix of wing chun and hung gar, simple as that . About Crane connection, all southern arts have some connection , but the question is to what style exactly . Today's popular crane styles lie Minghe , Zonghe , SHihe ... all of them are formed in the last decades of 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century ,so they are either younger than wing chun or at least they are developed in same period of time.. How older styles of white crane, who actually influenced wing chun and other arts, looked like we don't know today ,because these styles either evolved in something else or disappeared

What you are saying is that 20th Century Wing Chun and 20th Century White Crane systems probably all have at least something of a common ancestor back in the early 19th century or before, ie a "missing link".

But you also say that nobody knows what this looked like. Well, you are sooo wrong. I did a quick Google search of "Missing Link" and found this:

 

[zuti car]

This is wrong missing link, although he is a good fighter . If there is some fish kung fu then this would be a piece to finish the puzzle

 

[kung fu fighter]

Been reading the Leung Ting Book "Roots of Wing Tsun" and the section on what he refers to as "Weng Chun Bak Hok".

What are your thoughts on this style and any link it may have to Fuzhou White Crane and or Wing Chun?

It's Yong Chun white crane

From Shaolin to Ving Tsun - Ving Tsun Chinese Martial Arts Community - Nan-Shaolin - YouTube

 

[Marnetmar]

Weng Chun Bak Hok is White Crane, just using cantonese terminology. Also yeah Roots of Wing Tsun isn't a very accurate book.

The modern Chi Sim "Weng Chun" systems you see from people like Cheung Kwong on the other hand, are actually hybrid styles (I used to disagree with this until I researched further). They're preserved by the Tang, Dong and Lo families and are derived from Fung Siu Ching's Wing Chun along with the martial arts experience each family already head.

The Tangs incorporated Sun Chow Bart Kuen (whatever the hell that is) into it, the Los incorporated Hung Gar, and I'm not sure what the Dongs did with it. Anyway they combined their styles with each other at some point, Andreas Hoffmann went all McDojo with it and that's where Weng Chun comes from.

 

[zuti car]

Chan Yiu Min also mixed his wing chun with hung gar and also called it weng chun .

 

[dlcox]

Yong3 永 Forever, Eternal, Perpetual
Yong3 詠 Sing, Hum, Chant

Both have been used interchangeably by Hong Chuan (Red Boat) & Bai He (White Crane). Yong is a "White" character, similar in shape and phonetically the same. Many were illiterate so when a literate person wrote it down it was uncertain as to which character should be used. 永 is generally considered the original character and is the one recorded in the Wu Bei Zhi and Tong Ren Zhi books on Bai He Quan. Many nowadays use 詠 to refer to Red Boat and 永 to refer to Village as a way of creating an individual identity. 100 years ago or more I don't think that they cared about individuality as much, to them it was all simply 拳, add pre-fix to create variant branch. It wasn't until the late 1920's, early 1930's that teaching martial arts became en vogue in the Foshan area, prior to then it was seen as an activity engaged in by criminals, pirates, bandits, gamblers, medicine hawkers and militia. As the economy stabilized and grew the pastime became more and more popular, to get the patronage of the local population many "Histories" were created. This was to make the art "Older", "Different", "Separate" etc. as a way of "standing out in the crowd" to attract business. Over the years as individuals researched the origins of the art and drew conclusions on what they thought to be truth, aspects were altered and infused with these findings. Again labels were affixed, marketing employed and viola! Weng Chun, Ving Tsun, Weng Shun, Wing Chun, Ving Tjun etc.......

 

[Vajramusti]

Yong3 永 Forever, Eternal, Perpetual
Yong3 詠 Sing, Hum, Chant

Both have been used interchangeably by Hong Chuan (Red Boat) & Bai He (White Crane). Yong is a "White" character, similar in shape and phonetically the same. Many were illiterate so when a literate person wrote it down it was uncertain as to which character should be used. 永 is generally considered the original character and is the one recorded in the Wu Bei Zhi and Tong Ren Zhi books on Bai He Quan. Many nowadays use 詠 to refer to Red Boat and 永 to refer to Village as a way of creating an individual identity. 100 years ago or more I don't think that they cared about individuality as much, to them it was all simply 拳, add pre-fix to create variant branch. It wasn't until the late 1920's, early 1930's that teaching martial arts became en vogue in the Foshan area, prior to then it was seen as an activity engaged in by criminals, pirates, bandits, gamblers, medicine hawkers and militia. As the economy stabilized and grew the pastime became more and more popular, to get the patronage of the local population many "Histories" were created. This was to make the art "Older", "Different", "Separate" etc. as a way of "standing out in the crowd" to attract business. Over the years as individuals researched the origins of the art and drew conclusions on what they thought to be truth, aspects were altered and infused with these findings. Again labels were affixed, marketing employed and viola! Weng Chun, Ving Tsun, Weng Shun, Wing Chun, Ving Tjun etc.......

 

[Vajramusti]

Interesting essay.