This is very different from the old school Chinese thinking, according to which you chose a good school, work hard and impress your sifu enough to be allowed to do bai si and become his disciple, then you study his art, not others.
...or is it really so different? Every one of those old masters had a functional knowledge of other systems ...often picked up on the sly, testing their arts with friends from other lineages or systems. My old sifu insisted that his art was complete and the only art we should study or teach.
And yet many times in the early years, in private, he would let down his guard and demonstrate bits of Hung Gar, Choi Li Fut, Karate, and Judo. Definitely more than you could learn without having practiced.
Many have speculated that Yip Man similarly practiced and exchanged knowledge with others to further develop his technique, but because of this traditional approach where you would not "betray" your lineage, he used the "Leung Bic" story to cover for any changes he made and in this way allowed his old instructor and Si-Dai, Ng Chun So, to save face. He may also have learned actual material from Leung Bic. I don't know.
Anyway, I suppose I reflect contemporary Western culture when I say that your sifu's openness makes a whole lot of sense to me. Heck, maybe not even Western culture. John Wang also seems to favor learning several arts.
