Wong Shun Leung has been called
many things by people in the martial arts world. England's
'Fighters' magazine called him, "...a communicator and
teacher of Wing Chun par excellence"; Jesse Glover, the
first American student of the late Bruce Lee, wrote in his
book 'Bruce Lee's Non-Classical Gung Fu' that Wong Shun
Leung "...is one of the greatest Wing Chun teachers in the
world"; Bey Logan, editor of the British martial arts
magazine 'Combat' wrote that "...Wong Shun Leung is far
more important as a Wing Chun teacher in his own right than
just a figure in the life of Bruce Lee. He deserves better
than to be in anyone's shadow"; America's 'Black Belt'
magazine simply called him "...a Wing Chun
phenomenon."
Which ever way you want to look at it, there is no denying
that Wong Shun Leung is possibly the greatest living
representative of the dynamic Chinese fighting art of Wing
Chun, the man who put Wing Chun on the map in the late
'fifties and early 'sixties in his well publicised
challenge matches against representatives of all the major
combat arts in Hong Kong. He is the man who can rightly
claim to have been the late Bruce Lee's teacher, and to
have influenced the development of Lee's personal art of
combat, Jeet Kune Do. His ego is such, however, that Wong
Shun Leung prefers to be known simply as a teacher, a sifu,
and he refuses to accept accolades such as "master" or
"grandmaster", terms which he believes are worthless
because they have been abused so readily in recent
years.
Wong Sifu, in his own typical fashion, usually downplays
his "deadly" image by stating that, "I can't fight very
well and my Kung Fu is not very good." He decries the
claims of other so-called "masters" by emphasising that it
matters not whether one is the son of a grandmaster, or
that one knows "every deadly move known to man." In his
opinion it is far more important that one must practise
hard, to "become the master of the art, not its slave." To
Wong Sifu it makes no difference how senior you are, but
how good you are. He considers that Wing Chun is a SKILL,
not an ART, and he sees nothing wrong with using ones
skills.
In comparing skills and art, Wong Sifu has been quoted as
saying, "...if A and B have a fight and B gets knocked out,
then everyone knows that A won. There's a winner and a
loser. However, in music, you can like someone's guitar
playing or not like it and it doesn't matter. Because it's
an ART, you can't PROVE that one painting or piece of music
is better than another. However, in Kung Fu, you can prove
your skill in such a way that there is no doubt! This is
the difference....in other ARTS, beauty may be in the eye
of the beholder, but in MARTIAL ART, the only judgement is
whether or not it works!" Statements such as this one are
characteristic of the very down-to-earth approach that Wong
Sifu has to combat, and he certainly has the fighting
record to back up such a beliefs.
Wong Shun Leung began his training in the martial arts
while in his early teens. He tried his hand at several
styles, including Western boxing, in which he developed a
real interest, an interest which he still maintains today.
Wong Sifu considers boxing to be very practical for the
street because boxers learn to give and take punishment
right from the word go, concentrating on attacking instead
of "chasing the opponent's hands" like many of the
classical Kung Fu styles do. He probably would have still
been boxing now if it hadn't been for two particular
incidents which changed his approach to combat once and for
all.
Firstly, while sparring with his boxing coach one
afternoon, Wong accidently landed a damaging blow to the
face. In a rage, the coach began pounding Wong until,
bleeding from nose and mouth, Wong managed to gain the
upper hand, eventually knocking his coach out cold. After
this event, Wong lost all respect for his boxing coach and
never went back for another lesson. Wong's father and
grandfather had both been doctors of traditional Chinese
medicine and were well acquainted with members of Hong
Kong's martial arts community so that from a very early
age, Wong had heard hundreds of tales of the exploits of
various local heroes. His grandfather had even been a good
friend of Chan Wa Sun, the first of his future instructor
Yip Man's Wing Chun teachers, so Wong was aware of the
fighting art of Chan the "money-changer" (Jau Chin Wa) from
Fatsaan.
Wong recalled some of the stories he had been told about
Chan Wa Sun, and of Chan's teacher, the legendary Fatsaan
Jan Sinsaang (Dr.Leung Jan, a noted herbalist in the
nineteenth century, renowned for his unrivalled fighting
skills) and he decided to seek out a Wing Chun teacher to
see what the system had to offer him. As it turned out,
friends of his older brother were learning Wing Chun so it
was arranged that he would go to see them train. To cut a
long story short, Wong ended up having a match with the man
who was to become his teacher, the late grandmaster Yip
Man, after initially having "held his own" with a couple of
the junior students at the school, and was very soundly
beaten. From that moment onwards, Wong Shun Leung became a
devoted member of the Wing Chun clan and within a year had
single-handedly elevated the Wing Chun system from the
position of an obscure, virtually unknown, southern Chinese
martial art, to that of a real force to be reckoned
with.
Now 55 years old, Wong Shun Leung has been involved in Wing
Chun for over 38 years, constantly working to develop and
pass on the skills of the system to literally thousands of
students. These days he spends at least three months of
every year travelling to various places around the world,
spreading his interpretation of Wing Chun in an honest,
effective and realistic manner. Wong Sifu is a realist when
it comes to combat, advising his audiences that martial
artists are not invincible, and that sometimes the best
solution when surrounded by villains is "...run away!" It
is foolhardy, he suggests, to believe that training in the
martial arts will enable a person to dispose of a group of
attackers without raising as much as a sweat.
"If someone practises any martial art," says Wong, "then
that person must become stronger and more durable than
someone who hasn't practised. So if you are punched you are
able to take a lot more punishment than a normal person. I
have been hit many times, as have all of the great martial
artists that I know of. So we are not supermen, but we can
take a lot more. Any martial artist who says that he does
not get hit is lying to himself!"
To him, fighting
is like a game of chess; just as one cannot expect to win a
game of chess without firstly sacrificing one or more
pieces, so one cannot expect to be victorious in a fight
without sustaining some kind of injury, even if only a few
bruises. Several jagged scars on his knuckles, as well as
scars from a knife on his arm and forehead attest to this
belief. When it comes to combat experience, Wong Shun Leung
could tell many tales, but with his usual modesty he tends
to downplay this aspect of his career in martial
arts.
It is a well-known fact in Hong Kong, however, that from
around the time Wong Sifu was 18 until about the age of 24,
he took part in countless challenge matches (referred to in
Cantonese as bei mo) against fighters from virtually every
style of martial art in the colony. Bruce Lee credited Wong
with hundreds of victories, but conservative estimates
suggest something along the lines of at least 50 to 60 such
matches, with Wong always emerging as the winner. So
successful was he that the local Hong Kong press picked up
on his exploits and one enterprising reporter (now a
resident in Australia) actually went out and arranged
fights for him against non-Chinese as well, including a
250lb Russian boxer named Giko!
In the press reports Wong became known as Gong Sau Wong,
meaning the "King of the Challenge Fight," the sound wong
meaning both "king" as well as being the same as his
surname (although a different written character). The term
gong sau was actually coined by Wong during an interview
conducted at the time and means literally "talking with the
hands," a very apt description of exactly what he did. When
pressed about these matches while being interviewed in
Australia two years ago, Wong Sifu responded by saying, "I
didn't actually learn Wing Chun just to go out and fight.
Kung Fu should really be used as a way of protecting
yourself in circumstances where you are physically
threatened.
"After I learnt the skills of Wing Chun from Yip Man I
often had the opportunity to test them. By experimenting
with my skills I could discover their limitations and how
they compared with other disciplines and so improve myself.
After a time of this experimentation I learnt that I needed
to rely less on the fighting part to get that
self-satisfaction and feeling of achievement." It was also
during this period of experimentation that Wong Shun Leung
introduced Bruce Lee to the experience of the challenge
fight. In the first of Lee's matches, Wong coached him
between rounds, encouraging Lee to continue when it seemed
that he was about to give up.
The result was a victory that possibly changed the course
of Lee's life and certainly began the development of the
martial arts superstar whom the world was later to
discover. Grandmaster Yip Man, on hearing of the event, was
said to have told Wong, "Fortunately you accompanied him to
the venue and encouraged him to go on with the match. This
trial of martial skill may be a decisive influence on him
in the future. If someday Bruce Lee succeeds, the credit
should rightfully go to you." In discussing this period in
Lee's life, Jesse Glover wrote, "Wong was four years senior
to Bruce in Yip Man's clan and Bruce studied privately for
a year and a half under both him and Yip Man" and that Wong
was "...the man most responsible for the development of
Bruce Lee." Glover also wrote, "In '59 Bruce told me that
Wong was the greatest fighter in the Wing Chun style, and
that he had successfully defeated all challengers."
Wong Shun Leung is not just a gifted fighter and excellent
teacher, he is also a doctor of traditional Chinese
medicine, and a self-taught calligrapher whose writing is
greatly prized by those who appreciate such talent. He
enjoys reading classical Chinese poetry, eating fine food,
sipping a glass of good brandy with friends and sharing
amusing anecdotes and jokes with his students. Bey Logan,
in his article 'Bruce Lee's Teacher' wrote, "The first
thing you notice is how normal he looks. He looks too
short, too friendly to be the legendary Wong Shun Leung
Sifu. It is only the way he moves, the way he watches, that
reveals the nature of the discipline he has
mastered.
"Next, you're surprised by his keen sense of humour. Many
Westerners seem to cling to the idea that a Sifu must be a
very old, very solemn man. There is none of the
stereotypical Master Po-figure about Wong Shun Leung. He is
very funny." But as well as being a very friendly, amusing
and approachable man, Wong Sifu is first and foremost an
exponent and teacher of combat with quite definite views on
the purpose and function of Kung Fu. Being the one student
of Yip Man to have taught for him rather than go out and
open his own school, Wong was able to truly absorb all that
his teacher had to offer, the result being that he, above
all other pretenders to the throne, could rightfully claim
to be the inheritor of the system. Instead, Wong simply
gets on with the task of teaching, letting his skills and
experiences speak for themselves.
On the subject of self-defence, Wong says, "If you learn
Kung Fu, your purpose is to fight. If you can't fight and
win, how can you defend yourself? Therefore, if you want to
defend yourself, you must train until you can overpower
others." In an article on him which appeared in 'Black
Belt' magazine, Wong said, "Wing Chun Kung Fu is a very
sophisticated weapon... nothing else. It is a science of
combat, the intent of which is the total incapacitation of
an opponent. It is straightforward, efficient and deadly.
If you're looking to learn self-defence, don't study Wing
Chun. It would be better for you to master the art of
invisibility." Strong opinions indeed, but then Wong Shun
Leung bases such opinions upon many years of experience in
what could only be described as real combat. He views many
of the practices of modern martial artists as little more
than games. Although he realises that the days of the
challenge fight are well and truly over, he looks upon
their passing with an element of sadness, not because he is
an advocate of violence, but because today's generation of
martial artists are missing out on realistic training, and
he sees the kinds of sparring exercises common to most
styles as being a poor substitute for the realities of
street combat.
Wong Sifu is constantly warning his students against the
dangers of blindly following an instructor, copying every
move he or she makes and accepting everything that they say
as gospel. "You must become the master of your system, not
its slave” is his often repeated motto. Using art as an
example yet again, Wong Sifu says, "...Kung Fu is like
painting a picture. When you learn to paint from your
teacher you cannot be exactly the same as he or she because
there are differences in age and experience, and so there
must be personal differences.
"A person's nature and physique influences the way in which
one does things. Besides, if you do things exactly the same
way your teacher does them, you're just copying, not
expressing yourself and will therefore not improve
yourself." He is not suggesting by these words that the
Wing Chun student should go out and invent his or her own
way of doing things. On the contrary, Wong Sifu is a firm
believer in passing on and practising the skills of Wing
Chun exactly as he himself learnt them. However, he accepts
the fact that all people are different, having different
levels of ability and so on, and therefore adopts the more
realistic approach of passing on the essence of Wing Chun
in the form of its concepts and basic principles with which
the students are then free to interpret and utilise in
their own particular way.
Wong Sifu also enjoys dispelling the many myths that shroud
the martial arts, myths that give martial arts a bad name
and detract from their credibility. "Martial artists are
not people who learn magical powers to become mystical
monks like the movies portray them to be. A lot of Kung Fu
styles have in the past lived off reputations of having
some secret level that you can eventually attain and,
unfortunately, some instructors have maintained these
ridiculous ideas." He cites an example from his younger
days when he was involved in a fight that had erupted
between a friend of his and another man. He defeated the
person in question and was about to leave the scene when
the guy, still lying on the ground, called out, "Hey little
fella, don't go! I've already given you the dim mak (death
touch). You're doomed!" Wong then adds, "That was around
thirty-five years ago and the dim mak hasn't worked yet..."
Once, when asked by a journalist for an Australian magazine
about the existence or non-existence of dim mak techniques
in Wing Chun, Wong Sifu jokingly replied, "You might kill
yourself if you touch yourself," and then in a slightly
more serious tone, "Besides, if a person is moving very
fast, it's almost impossible to touch some small areas with
such precision."
Wong Shun Leung is indeed a rare breed of man. He doesn't
try to exploit his reputation as one of Hong Kong's most
formidable streetfighters, nor his influence on the career
of the late Bruce Lee. He doesn't go around telling
everyone how good he is, nor does he run down other
instructors and styles. Despite his obvious skill he is not
a pretentious man and his school in Hong Kong is small and
drab, containing none of the mod cons found in most Western
schools, just an excellent teacher who embodies all the
qualities one could ever hope for in an instructor.
He has dedicated his life to the advancement and
understanding of Wing Chun, "spreading the word" everywhere
from Melbourne to Munich, establishing schools wherever he
goes, teaching anyone willing to listen to what he has to
say regardless of race, colour or creed. Wong Sifu is the
enemy of all who make false claims about Kung Fu and the
friend to everyone searching for the truth about combat and
themselves. He has been described as "... an appropriate
example of a man who has become his art and vice-versa. He
started as a gifted fighter, studied both the physical and
mental aspects of Wing Chun, and finally became Wing Chun
spiritually.
"He's a man who can be either soft-spoken or out-spoken
depending upon the situation at hand. He has learned to
understand his own limitations and thereby the limitations
of others. His demeanour is calm, relaxed, and his intent
unwavering. He is philosophy without embellishment, like an
old sword that doesn't appear dangerous at first, until
you've tasted its razor edge." Wong Shun Leung Sifu is Wing
Chun personified, a living example of what can be achieved
by anyone willing to devote all their energy into the
practice and understanding of their chosen field of
endeavour. The fact that he refuses to accept such praise
makes him all the more deserving of it. Why he has achieved
the level of expertise that he has is due to a very simple
philosophy:"My aim," says Wong, "is to better myself with
each day of training."
Reprinted with permission from author David Peterson
(Unfortunately Wong Shun Leung has passed on since the
above article was written about his amazing skill. To give
the master his proper farewell, I have included another
article by David Peterson that memoralizes the great Wong
Shun Leung-Paul Bax)
WONG SHUN LEUNG: THE LEGEND BEHIND THE LEGEND
-Recalling the Life of Bruce Lee’s
Teacher
by
David Peterson
January 28th 1997 was a very sad day for the martial arts,
and indirectly, for fans of Hong Kong cinema, specifically,
for fans of the legend that is Bruce Lee. On that day, wing
chun kung-fu master, Sifu Wong Shun Leung, 61, teacher and
friend of the late martial arts superstar, lost his fight
for life following a massive stroke and ensuing coma that
had befallen him some 16 days earlier. Considered by many
to be a fighter and instructor of unparalleled skill, Sifu
Wong was renowned for earning the title of Gong Sau Wong
(“King of Talking with the Hands”) after surviving
countless beimo, or “comparison of skills”, throughout the
50s and 60s, emerging every time as undefeated and
undisputed champion. These were not tournament fights as
conducted in the West, with rules, protective equipment or
time limits. Instead, they were full-on fights between
representatives of the various schools of combat in Hong
Kong, and Sifu Wong is said to have “let his hands do the
talking” by winning the majority of these “contests” within
just three punches! In one such match, arranged by a
reporter working for a prominent Hong Kong newspaper of the
day, Wong (who stood barely 5’6” tall and weighed in at
around 120lbs) easily defeated a visiting Russian boxer
named Giko, a giant of a man who weighed over 250lbs and
stood some twelve inches taller than the dynamic wing chun
exponent.
Wong almost single-handedly put this previously low-profile
martial art in the public spotlight, gaining great prestige
for his teacher, the late grandmaster, Yip Man. Wong’s
reputation as an invincible fighter also attracted the
attention of the young Bruce Lee, who had only recently
joined the Yip Man wing chun school after having been
introduced to the system by his friend, William Cheung, who
was later to become a prominent, some might say
controversial, spokesman for the wing chun clan. Initially,
Lee had trained with his friend Cheung, but when Cheung
left for Australia to further his education, Lee became the
protegé of Wong Shun Leung who, at almost six years his
senior and assistant instructor at the school, commanded
the young (around 16 years of age) Bruce Lee’s unwavering
respect.
In the beginning of their student/teacher relationship,
Wong found the young Lee to be quite lazy in his approach
to training, consequently his progress in the art was
relatively slow. It wasn’t too long, however, after
witnessing first hand the devastating effectiveness of
Wong’s skills, that Lee began to take his wing chun
training far more seriously. In fact, Lee was so keen to
learn from Wong that he even found devious ways of
monopolising his sihing’s teaching time. Wong was, at the
time, running training sessions out of his home (his father
had helped him to set up a small area for this purpose), as
well as helping his teacher Yip Man conduct the classes at
the kwoon. After unsuccessfully approaching Wong for
private lessons, the young “Little Dragon” found another
method of getting his own way.
On more than one occasion, after school was finished for
the day, Lee would rush over to Wong’s house in order to
arrive before his sihingdai. Later on, Sifu Wong would
often recount this story to his students, this writer
included, saying how Bruce would check that he was indeed
the first to arrive, afterwhich he would make up some
excuse to leave for a while, whereby he would head
downstairs to wait for his classmates to arrive. Sitting on
the steps, looking dejected, he would greet his friends
with the news that Wong was ill, out on an errand, or
otherwise indisposed, then walk with them down the street,
even going as far as to help them board a bus for home.
Once he was sure that they had all departed the scene,
Bruce would double back to Wong’s to take advantage of what
was now a private lesson. Eventually, Wong became aware of
this little ruse and, according to others of that era, gave
his young disciple an especially realistic lesson, complete
(so the story goes) with black eyes, split lips and a
bloody nose!
Despite his awesome reputation as a fighter, Wong was not a
violent man per se, but he revelled in the chance to test
his skills and the effectiveness of Yip Man’s art. “I
didn’t actually learn wing chun just to go out and fight.
Kung-fu should really be used as a way of protecting
yourself in circumstances where you are physically
threatened”, he was quoted as saying in an interview
conducted in Australia some years ago. “After I learnt the
skills of wing chun from Yip Man, I often had the
opportunity to test them. By experimenting with my skills I
could discover their limitations and how they compared with
other disciplines and so improve myself.” It was during
this period of “experimentation” that Wong Shun Leung first
introduced Bruce Lee to the experience of the beimo and in
the very first of Lee’s matches, Wong (who was actually
refereeing the fight) coached him between rounds, urging
him to continue when it had appeared that Lee was about to
give up the fight.
It could be rightly said that the resulting victory changed
the course of Bruce Lee’s life, certainly it heralded the
beginnings of the training regime that would see him become
the martial arts superstar that the world was to discover
many years later. It is reported that grandmaster Yip Man,
on learning about what had transpired, took Wong aside and
said, “Fortunately you accompanied him to the venue and
encouraged him to go on with the match. This trial of
martial skill may well be a decisive influence on him in
the future. If someday, Siu Lung (Bruce) succeeds, the
credit should rightfully go to you.” In writing about this
period in Lee’s life, Jesse Glover (his first American
student) stated, “Wong was four years senior (in training)
to Bruce in Yip Man’s clan and Bruce studied privately for
a year and a half under both him and Yip Man.” Glover also
wrote that Wong was “...the man most responsible for the
development of Bruce Lee”, and that “In ‘59 Bruce told me
that Wong was the greatest fighter in the wing chun style,
and that he had successfully defeated all
challengers.”
As fate would have it, circumstances arose that lead to
Bruce having to leave for a new life in America, curtailing
his opportunity to train with Wong. For the next several
years, apart from the occasional visit by Lee to Hong Kong
for filming or family visits, his relationship with Wong
was restricted to a steady stream of letters between
teacher and student. Many of these letters still survive
today, and in one such letter Lee wrote, “Even though I am
(technically) a student of Yip Man, in reality, I learned
my Kung-fu from you.” Over the years, Lee would strive to
be able to overcome the skill of his teacher, using Wong’s
level of expertise as the yardstick by which he measured
his own development as a fighter, but try as he might,
Bruce Lee was never able to defeat Wong Shun Leung in
combat.
Many of the personal fighting concepts by which Lee would
eventually become famous for can be traced back to the
lessons that he learnt from Sifu Wong and, even after
obtaining both fame and fortune from his martial arts and
film careers, Lee never forgot where his roots were,
spending whatever time he could with his teacher when back
in Hong Kong during the final years leading up to his own
premature demise. Sifu Wong once spoke to me of an occasion
when he and Lee began to discuss their favourite topic
early one evening, retiring to the hallway while their
wives sat with their children watching the television. At
7.00am the next morning they were still there, having
talked, trained and tested their martial theories right
through the night!
Lee was keen to involve Wong in his movies, offering him a
part in “Game of Death”, specifically the role that was
later to be played by basketball star Kareem Abdul Jabbar,
that of Lee’s final opponent at the top of the “Tower of
Death” at the end of the film. “My character was to have
beaten Bruce,” Wong told Bey Logan in a 1986 interview for
Britain’s ‘COMBAT’ magazine, “...but he would still have
managed to kill me! I told him that I didn’t want to go and
die in my first movie!” Wong also added that, “...(besides)
I wasn’t in dire financial straits at the time, so I didn’t
have to do the film (just) to make money.”
However, Lee wasn’t one to give up easily and, when
shooting “Enter the Dragon” in Hong Kong, he invited Wong
to come “on location” to discuss the fight scenes. Anyone
viewing the documentary “Bruce Lee: the Man and the Legend”
can briefly observe Wong on the “Han’s Weapon Room” set,
“sparring” with an extra, and reacting to punches thrown by
Lee himself. Over the years Sifu Wong was involved in a
number of film and television projects, including the movie
“Bruce’s Fingers” in 1976, starring Bruce Lee look-alike
Bruce Le (Lu Hsiao-lung), in which Sifu simply played
himself, the hero’s instructor. He was also the wing chun
consultant and action choreographer for the film “Stranger
From Shaolin” (aka: “The Formidable Lady From Shaolin”)
starring Michelle Yim, and a Hong Kong television
mini-series called “The Story of Wing Chun”.
Sifu Wong Shun Leung also “starred” in a training video on
his style, entitled “Wing Chun: the Science of In-fighting”
which was produced as part of a series of instructional
tapes in the early ‘80s. He also occasionally authored
articles on his beloved wing chun for a number of
Chinese-language martial arts magazines, and was the
subject of several articles and interviews in magazines all
over the world. A number of these articles were concerned
with his famous pupil, Bruce Lee, and delved into the
relationship between the two of them, attempting to
determine his role in the career of the superstar, and
often attempting to extract controversial views on Lee and
other wing chun practitioners. Always the diplomat, Wong
would never allow himself to be drawn into such
discussions, preferring to either restrict himself to
positive comments, or else choosing to make no comment,
dismissing the enquiry with a wry smile.
On the whole, Wong preferred to downplay his role as Lee’s
instructor, not wishing to take advantage of someone else’s
achievements. Instead, he just got on with the job of
passing on the skills of wing chun which he constantly
tested and refined over the years, adhering to the motto
“To improve myself with each days training.” In addition to
teaching Kung-fu, Sifu Wong was a practitioner of the
ancient Chinese art of tit dar (“bone-setting”), the
traditional method of treating sprains, bruises, dislocated
and broken bones (a very useful skill, considering his line
of work!) He was also an accomplished self-taught
calligrapher with a profound knowledge of ancient forms of
writing unknown to many modern Chinese, with which he would
spend many hours writing classical poetry as a form of
relaxation and self-improvement.
Rather than standing up on his own personal soap box,
proclaiming his own greatness as many of his contemporaries
in the martial arts have tended to do in recent years, Wong
made no such claims and rejected the many grandiose titles
which others attempted to bestow upon him, preferring to
quietly set about destroying the myths and “kungfusion”
associated with the Chinese fighting arts. He taught a
devoted band of followers who travelled from all corners of
the world to obtain his instruction, and he regularly
travelled to Europe and Australia where he conducted
seminars and workshops for the students of his
representatives there. Sifu Wong shared his knowledge with
great enthusiasm, believing that anyone, regardless of
race, colour or creed, was worth teaching. As long as a
person was prepared to work hard, Sifu was more than
willing to call them his student.
Refusing to cash in on his connection with Bruce Lee, or on
his own formidable reputation as a fighter and instructor
par excellence, Sifu Wong insisted that he was a simple
man, with no special talent, and was never one to “blow his
own trumpet”. You were more likely to hear of his past
exploits from other people and on those rare occasions when
he did speak of such events, he would always refuse to name
names or criticise rival styles, his only real gripe being
with instructors who wasted their student’s time with
endless, useless techniques and combat drills. “You can
always get more money (if you run out)” he would say,
“...but you can’t get more time.” On the subject of wing
chun, his most common advise to his devotees was, “You must
be the master of wing chun, not it’s slave”, meaning that
one must take the concepts of the system and make them
work, rather than get bound up in unnecessary analysis and
potentially dangerous limited thinking.
It appeared that, after so many years, Sifu Wong was
finally about to gain the recognition and rewards that had
long eluded him. All manner of book, film and video
projects had been discussed in the months leading up to his
untimely passing, the most significant of these being the
proposed movie, “Story of Yip Man”, starring none other
than comedic sensation Steven Chow Sing Chi, himself a
former student of Wong Shun Leung and a lifelong Kung-fu
fan and Bruce Lee aficionado. Chow had been in training
with his former instructor in preparation for the upcoming
role and had negotiated for Wong to be the technical
consultant on the film. There was also a distinct
possibility that Wong would have an on-camera role and
would most likely be involved in the choreography of the
action sequences.
At the time of Sifu Wong’s death, the 25th anniversary of
Bruce Lee’s death was fast approaching, and there had been
much talk of interviews and book projects, including one
arranged by Steven Chow. Writers and producers from Hong
Kong and around the world had approached Sifu with a view
to include him in their proposed ventures and preliminary
work had been done on at least two of these. Australian
producer, martial artist and Bruce Lee aficionado, Walt
Missingham, was already set to begin shooting at the
beginning of April that year when I had the sad task of
informing him of my teacher’s death. Sadly, this and all
the other projects will now either not take place, or else
will be completed without the input that Sifu’s vast
knowledge and experience would have added to them. More
disappointing still is the realisation that Sifu Wong will
now not be able to personally enjoy the recognition which
was long overdue.
The man whom was often referred to as “Wing Chun’s Living
Legend” is now no longer with us, but his influence will be
felt for many years to come through the efforts of his many
students, both in Hong Kong and around the world. The
members of the world-wide “Wong Shun Leung Wing Chun
Martial Art Association”, this writer included, are
dedicated to spreading the skills and knowledge that has
been passed on to them by this outstanding teacher and
exponent of the art. While Wong Shun Leung was not one to
take flashy titles with any seriousness, always insisting
that to be called Sifu by his students was sufficient
recognition of who he was, in the hearts and minds of all
who witnessed his awesome talent or benefited from his
wisdom and instruction, he was one of the greatest Masters
of wing chun (and the Chinese martial arts in general) in
this, or any other century.
Tragically, like his famous student Bruce Lee before him,
Sifu Wong left us far too early in life, but like Lee,
those of us fortunate to have been touched by his
greatness, whether directly as his students, or indirectly
through the cinematic exploits of his famous pupil and
friend, are all the more richer for having known him. The
“Legend Behind the Legend” may be gone and will certainly
be greatly missed, but Sifu Wong Shun Leung, father,
teacher and friend to so many, will definitely never be
forgotten. The next time that you enjoy watching your film
hero Bruce Lee on the large or small screen, spare a
thought for the great man who inspired him to such
greatness.
Reprinted
with permission from author David Peterson