–Preface–

The following text is part of a series documenting my time in Tucson, AZ, in the Spring of 2025, for Augustine Fong’s Wing Chun Gung Fu Federation Annual Seminar. The series is broken into short digestible parts, some describing my experience in Tucson generally, and some with detailed notes from the seminar.

Sunday, 27 April, 2025 – Morning:

This morning the temperature had dropped considerably. I stretched and ate my delicious pork and shrimp spring rolls. I performed a gongfu tea sit to prepare my mind. I put on an extra layer, as the room inside the hotel was a little chilly. I set out with my earbuds in. No sooner did I reach the street, then I realized the extra layer was entirely unnecessary. Oh well.

There were fewer lizards during this walk, and I arrived at the school before I knew it.

I had some built up some hopes and expectations for this day, but I was conflicted as to how to approach them. There’s a fine balance between proactive attendance and receptive learning. I had hoped for more teaching materials. I have a very old copy of Sifu Fong’s curriculum from the 1998 seminar, which I have largely followed all this time. I have since rewritten this curriculum with Yale Romanization of Cantonese terms and cleaned up the organization. I was hoping for something more like this – some curriculum paperwork or notes. All we got this year was a single page which listed out the entire system in a series of categories. We were on day three, and we hadn’t even got to the Chahm Kiuh or Biu Ji forms, let alone the wooden dummy and the weapons, and all the drills, and so on. It was all coming to an end too soon. This thought was looming over me as the day began.

Speaking of notes and curriculum. There seemed to be a rumor going around about a book being written. I never heard specifically what this book was about.

The Seminar:

Sifu Fong opened up again with questions. We spent a considerable amount of time going over minute details of Siu Nihm Tauh, and covered various other topics.

Sifu Fong re-iterated the importance of developing defense first in chi sau. Once the defense is solid, then learn to stop blocking.

Someone asked if we can use kicks to attack? Sifu Fong responded, “Sure, why not?” “You can kill with anything.” And, “if you’re natural, you can do anything you want.” Even though I knew this, I liked hearing it from the master. So often I find people surprised that Wing Chun uses this or that strike or kick or block. There are stereotypes around the art, resulting from overemphasis on specific areas, and an abundance of students who don’t train past the first or second form. I often describe Wing Chun as the MMA of China (I know there is San Da, but Wing Chun predated that).

Sifu Fong qualified that last idea by saying that any strike is fine, so long as the arms and body work together.

There was more talk about the “empty mind.” Again, it is a calm focus, it is not actually empty.

The Seminar – Chahm Kiuh Notes:

The combination of motions is the final development in coordination, or gongfu.

There are always three repetitions of techniques within the forms. This helps to balance both sides, and each of the three is slightly different. This difference seemed to be new to a lot of people, including me. It seemed Sifu Fong had done some refinement here. This reminded me a little of the Trigrams and Hexigrams of the Yi Jing, or Book of Changes.

I generally considered the first section to be a seung laan sau with pivot stance, and some obvious elbow strike applications. Sifu Fong said the upper laan sau controls the opponent, while the lower was an elbow strike. The second pivot led to a paak sau elbow strike, and the third to a laap sau elbow strike. The first pivot was from a long bridge position. The second two pivots were paired together and faster.

The jip sau section had a lot of variations, so much so that we practiced this for some time. The first jip sau is the standard, raising tok sau and lowering jaht sau. The tok sau palm of the second jip sau was angled inward. This was the same for the third jip sau. This way, the second and third gave some angular variations.

The part immediately following the jip sau section, the wuh sau jing jeung, was also treated as a form of jip sau. The jing jeung was a fingers-up version, with the wuh sau facing the body, to catch the forearm. This reminded me of the jip sau as we often practice it in the laap sau drill, whith two chopping hands, one extending at the opponent’s elbow, and one retracting at the opponent’s wrist. I mentioned this to another instructor there, Marc, who agreed, but informed me that some of the old drills were not practiced anymore. The third jing jeung was different because the other hand goes to chamber. Sifu Fong suggested this is a situation in which the jing jeung might meet the shoulder, while the chamber hand performed a laap sau, throwing the opponent to the ground.

We practiced finding all of these jip sau variations from the pun sau, or chi sau roll.

The second section, which begins with the laan sau jing geuk, was altered or refined to be a hammer fist instead of a simple laan sau.

For each bong sau in the second section, the body rotated slightly further, while the bong sau structure remained the same, giving some variation in the bong sau angle-of-attack.

When the bong sau drops to seung taan sau, the elbows should connect with the body.

At the end of the second section, after the drill punch and straight punch, the hand returns to a fuhk sau, not a jaht sau. The tyut sau, or shucking hand, after this is called “po jong,” which I took to mean, “break the center.”

In the third section, the seung bong sau looked a little different to me. It was as though the seung taan hands first dropped, and then rolled to seung bong. When returning to seung taan sau, the elbows dropped, and the hands came straight up.

There is a complete repetition of seung bong sau and seung taan sau three times prior to seung jaht sau. I normally practiced with with three repetitions of seung bong sau, and only two repetitions of seung taan sau.

At the end of this third section, instead of a left and right wang geuk, the stance is re-centered, and then you perform a left and right jing geuk, and a left and right wang geuk. That’s a total of four kicks.

More to follow…