A Noteworthy Event

As I stood outside my son’s primary school at the end of the school day, children ran around joyfully  under the bright sun, parents chatted among themselves, and a young pre-school toddler played with his older brother.

 

The toddler ran towards the road, a car was driving along it. He was too far away for any of the parents to reach. Hidden by trees, I do not know if the driver could see him. Hearts pumped.  Then a shout delve through it all, a shout so driven and focused that it seemed to slice through all sound and movement.

 

Then Silence.

 

The complete silence of no-action. It seemed that the whole universe was brought to a standstill. Child, Parent, Bird, and even Air paused to take note. More importantly, so did the car.

 

The moment passed. The child collected. The car continued. Uncertainty about what had just happened buzzed in the air. Some smiles. Some embarrassment. Some awe.

 

What I witnessed was the power of the shout. Never before had I witnessed it in so pure a form.  The Japanese call the study of it Kiai Jutsu, it’s a worthy avenue to explore!

The History of Wing Chun Kuen

Wing Chun Kuen’s history has, like many martial arts, been passed down verbally rather than through documentation, making it difficult to confirm or clarify the differing accounts of Wing Chun’s creation.  

 

A popular version of the story Wing Chun Kuen’s creation to the reign of the Emperor Kangxi (1662 – 1722) After escaping the destruction of the Fujian Shaolin Monastery by Qing forces, the Abbess Ng Mui fled to the distant Daliang mountains on the border between Yunnan and Sichuan. One day, she came upon a fight between a snake and a crane. She took the lessons she learned from observing the fight between the two animals and combined them with her own knowledge of Shaolin boxing to create a new system. She taught this system to a young woman who was being harassed into a marriage with a local warlord, the young woman’s name was Yim Wing Chun. Yim Wing Chun used Ng Mui system to successfully defend herself from the warlord. Yim Wing Chun eventually married a man she loved, Leung Bok-Chao, to whom she taught the fighting techniques that Ng Mui had passed on to her. Husband and wife in turn passed the new system on to others.

 

Source: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wing_Chun

 

For a great reference book concerning Wing Chun Kuen’s oral and documented history ‘Complete Wing Chun: The Definitive Guide to Wing Chun’s History and Traditions’ by Robert Chu, Rene Ritchie and Y. Wu is highly, highly recommended.

Wing Chun Kuen in film - The Prodigal Son

The ’history’ of Wing Chun Kuen has been the story line of several Hong Kong martial arts films, one such film was realeased in Britain as ‘The Prodigal Son’ ,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prodigal_Son_(film).

It’s a film full of great ‘Movie Wing Chun Kuen’, so if you ocassionally like putting up your tired feet after a night of training and turning on the DVD player this is a martial art film I would certainly recommend you buy.

This is the final fight between the Wing Chun Kuen hero Leung Jan and the fated Ngai Fai.