Originally posted by KennethKu
With all due respect, what is ridiculous is the notion that Bruce Lee came up with JKD on day 1, that everything Lee ever touched was JKD. Just like everybody else who has invented or created or discovered something meaningful, Bruce Lee learned, experimented, discarded, and refined in an evolving process. If you asked Ted Wong, Bruce Lee's last private student as well as one of his closest friends, he would tell you that what Bruce Lee taught when he was in Seattle (all the Jun Fan stuffs) was vastly different from what he later taught when in LA. In the early days when in Seattle (supposedly what your instructor was involved in), Lee was more leaning to Wing Chun and other Chinese Kung Fu stuffs. His horizon boraden widely in time. JKD is the refined product, an improved version of Jun Fan. However, Bruce didn't leave a lot of materials, in terms of techniques, regarding JKD to be passed on. (His JKD Bible, "The Tao of JKD" is at least 30-40% nothing more than Lee's half-baked attempt at philosophy.) He wasn't thinking of preserving JKD as he wasn't thinking of dying so soon. JKD was a work-in-progress. So later on, people who want to make a living teaching JKD, find that JKD is very simple and there isn't much to teach, hence you can't really charge a lot of sessions. (JKD is simple, and you can ask Ted Wong to verify this.) So, they dig up Jun Fan and BINGO! You can make a lot of money teaching ChiSao and other Wing Chun stuffs that take forever to play around before the students wise up. The reality is, at the end, Lee deemphasized ChiSao. This comes straight from his confidents and private students, Takimura and Ted Wong's mouths. These two are his diehard loyalists and would never distort Lee's legacy.