Wooden Dummy 108

In our system we have three empty hand forms consisting of 108 movements each, a 108 movement wooden dummy form and two weapons forms that have a combined total of 108 movements. The pole has 26 movements and the knives have 82 movements. Ip Man mus have enjoyed playing with numbers.

Other than the Wang Kiu system, it seems rare these days that people do the 108 form and instead they do the 116 version which is of course just as good. Some people feel it’s better because it adds a few movements but others feel there is no significant difference and furthermore without the sticking hands and distance training just some movements learned on the dummy can’t really be applied.

One day when Master Wang Kiu was at my house, he noticed a poster on the wall. He said “what are you doing with a picture of my brother on your wall?” I didn’t know it was a picture of his brother Wong Si Wing doing the 108 version of the wooden dummy. Some Hong Kong martial arts magazine had done an interview with Wang Kiu’s brother (Mandarin spelling of Wong) and published some photos of him doing he 108 version of the wooden dummy that he learned from Ip Man.

Since Wong Si Wing learned at a later time from Wang Kiu, it seems that Ip Man was teaching both versions of the dummy still. Wang Kiu said that Ip Man often changed things around and Duncan Leung said the same thing. I think all teachers of any subject do that anyway. I doubt that anyone knows what Yim Wing Chun’s Wing Chun was like or even if she really existed.

Once I was in a Chinese bookstore in Vancouver reading some Wing Chun book. We got to talking and he said that he also practiced Wing Chun but not in the way everyone else does it. He said what people practice now is a ladies version of the art and what he learned was called Fong style Wing Chun which came from her husband.

Wang Kiu said that most fights in Hong Kong were won with just a few movements from section one of the wooden dummy. It has everything you really need.

For our beginning students we teach section one of the wooden dummy because we can make many fighting drills out of it. Section one starts with the Tan sau and neck hit, followed by the neck pulling hand followed by the Bong sau or Wing hand. After that we vary the sequence all over the map. They say that the Wing hand is Wing Chun’s weakest hand but out of it can come the most variety of techniques. Even the Bong sau or Wing hand can already be translated into various hitting techniques. Emin Boztepe said the that the Wing hand should not even be seen as it is an instantaneous transitional movement occurring at the very close range. It was never meant to be some kind of a block as is shown in the movies. It is definitely a signature movement for Wing Chun though and when used in the form of a Kwun sau where one had is a Wing hand and the other a Tan sau then the Wing hand does stand out.

Some video I just saw on “Black Flag Wing Chun” has a whole different slant on the Bong sau and Lap sau drill. My first teacher Patrick Chow said in his day the Bong sau was not the preferred hand in the single sticking hands exercise. He used the inside Tan sau instead. Which he said was less passive and can right away be an attacking hand.

When Robert Vogel junior visited me from Amsterdam, he was able to attack very effectively with the basic coming forward Tan sau to the neck no matter how you tried to stop it.

Here is a $20 wooden dummy made from things you can get at Home Depot.

Choy Lee Fut Style

The most popular Kung Fu style in Hong Kong before Ip Man arrived was the Choy Lee Fut style. This style was the last major Kung Fu style to have been invented sometime in the eighteen hundreds. Choy Lee Fut consists of more than 116 different forms since it is a combination of the best ideas from 18 other major Kung Fu styles of combat. It uses all the traditional weapons from the various Chinese arts and the forms also included various weapons against various other weapons. At first the Choy Lee Fut people and the Wing Chun people were bitter enemies, fighting weekly battles with each other. Choy Lee Fut has both close range and distance or far range fighting. It is a more comprehensive art than Wing Chun, which is more specialized in it’s training methods. The Choy Lee Fut style has a variety of dummies that they train on. Below is a photo of one of their training dummies.