WC linage differences

[jon]

Just a curiousity im hoping some of the dedicated wing chunners on the board on the board might be able to answer.

Ive played around in my time with quite a few Wing Chun exponents at various levels of skill.
Im always intreagued at the little differences and variances which seem to occur between the different linages.
This quite commen in most fighting based arts to my understanding as at some point people begin to make a system there 'own' and as such tailor it to there own personal needs. As such im certainly not trying to get at what is the 'true' method but am more interested in the how and why the little differences occured.

What im hoping is people might be able to provide is a shortlist of some of the unique or 'special' features of the various WC linages.

Im not trying to start a war here so please no 'our way is right others are wrong'.

Anyway thanks to all who post and im especialy intersted to hear from people who have actively put in time in different linages schools.

[PaulH]

I'm in a unique position to answer your question as my distant ancestor Long Nose mind seal this knowledge to me from the great misty past. In the beginning there is only one WC, but as people test their knowledge in a hostile and resisting environment , the WC knowlege divides into two grand ultimates or extremes, i.e., fighters and theorists. The descendants of these two ultimate WCs have a little mixture of both though in varying degree giving rise to 4 main approaches: Aggressive all the way, Passive is the Way, Aggressive passive is of the Way, Passive aggressive is for the Way. Anyway, the later descendants of these four great Ways become 8, 16, 32, 64,...1024 main WC lineages of today.

On a side note, many WC people mistake Bruce Lee for a hard core muscle bound maniac JKD guy. If you examine his many popular books, you can see clearly that Bruce is a 1st order theorist as well as extremely soft. Hence his action have that ultimate hard and explosive power. Soft is hard. "Be water, my friend!" Let me know if you need further incontestable proofs that Bruce is WC - the no Ways as my Way. Ha! Ha!

Regards,

[whippinghand1]

Each lineage doesn't really have a "feature". There are a myriad of WC instructors, but of course, only a few lineages. If the highest living levels of all the lineages were to get together, you'd probably find that they wouldn't vary that much, only in the execution of the actual techniques. You'd probably find that the principles of Wing Chun, and attitudes toward training would be the same.

It's when you're dealing with a lower level instructor that the variations are drastic. It's so far down the line of other interpretations and modifications stemming from notions of what fighting and a "real situation" is, and how Wing Chun relates to it. Modifications and usually removals are made because "it doesn't work in a real situation". This is often indicative of someone who doesn't understand his WC. Every technique in a form relates to another aspect of another form, and therefore relates to some notion of fighting using Wing Chun. If that relationship can't be made, obviously that person is not an authority of WC, and is not an appropriate representation of his lineage (if that's what you're looking for).

[PaulH]

WhippingHand1 is also a good illustration of lineage difference question. It's the relational thing. You have Whipping Hand who is the real Sigung Whip, then Enter the Whip as Senior Whip, and now WhippingHand1 as junior Whip. There are many lineages of whips but feel like only one whip when you have been whipped too many. Ha! Ha!