–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.

The Seminar – General Notes:

I asked about the plum flower footwork. Sifu Fong said there wasn’t really much cultural significance to the plum flower. It was simply a guide for placing your feet when practicing footwork. An entire room could be filled with the plum flower pattern to practice movement on.

There is no internal or external martial arts. All martial arts have aspects of each. My personal opinion on this is that the terms internal and external don’t really mean what they are taken to mean. But I digress.

The Seminar – Muhk Yahn Jong Notes:

As we began to look at the dummy form, Sifu Fong drew some diagrams on the white board. Basically, the dummy has three primary horizontal triangles. The first extends from the sides of the dummy to a point at the center, between the two dummy arms. The other two each extend from the sides of the dummy to the ends of each of the dummy arms. On the white board, Sifu Fong drew a semi-circle around the dummy to show how the footwork should follow a circular pattern, to maintain the correct distance from the dummy, rather than moving on a horizontal plane in front of the dummy.

Sifu Fong used the diagram to illustrate how the hands always work together and have equal distance between contact points. This seemed to make sense as he demonstrated it, but I am struggling to understand it now. I’ll have to play with this concept while I have a dummy in front of me.

Sifu Fong asked Rob, who I trained with on Saturday, to perform the dummy form empty-air (that is, without the dummy), in front of everyone. Having done this numerous times in front of students, I knew that it was no easy feat. Numerous times I have lost my way, and had to redo the form from the start at normal speed to get on the correct path. Anyway, I was impressed by how well he did. Sifu Fong clearly had a laugh about it when he got stuck. It was entertaining.

The form was then performed on an actual wooden dummy. I particularly noticed a small addition to one of the final sections. The section, as I normally practiced it was taan da jaht da on both sides, then gaang da jaht da both sides. This new version was taan da, paak (outside) da, laap (inside) da on both sides, and then gaang da, jaht da (drill punch), paak da (hah kyuhn) on both sides.

We discussed the dummy size. The upper arms should be at approximately chest level, or the level of the chopping arm. The lower arm should be the level of a gaang sau. The leg should be like a bent knee on a standing leg (the lower part being vertical). Sifu Fong acknowledged that students will rarely find a perfectly sized dummy, and that they should practice on different sizes anyway, to learn to adjust.

The Seminar – Some Final Notes:

Siu Nihm Tauh handles the vertical plane.

Chahm Kiuh handles rotation and the horizontal plane.

Biu Ji handles expansion and contraction.

Muhk Jong handles adjusting around an opponent in a circular manner.

Sifu Fong used a money analogy to encourage people to teach. He said not to hoard the money for later generations, or it will spoil them. Share you wealth, and teach as you go.

During the seminar, I had picked up on some interesting trends in Sifu Fong’s school. After talking with some instructors about how certain drills are no longer practiced, but rather are incorporated directly into two-hand chi sau, such as the laap sau drill, and single-sticky hands, and after a comment about a “twenty motions” list, I asked further. Apparently, there is a set of techniques which are practiced in a two-person setting. This reminded me a lot of a drill I developed many years ago, in which I listed just about all the single-hand techniques, and ordered them in a way which seemed natural for two-person practice. We used it briefly while I was teaching.

More to follow…