Ray’s Wing Chun Lesson #1

I joined the UBC WIng Chun club in Vancouver in January of 1982. I only found out about the club in December. The club had been in existence since September of 1981 so I had to catch up on about three months worth of Wing Chun. Of course it helped that I had some martial arts background but even the beginning students of Dr. Khoe knew a lot more Wing Chun than I did.

Dr.  Khoe lesson #1 for Ray: January 15th 1982

1.      Warm ups
2.      Siu Lim Tao
3.      Single sticking hands
4.      Turning the stance and punch right and left
5.      Double sticking hand
6.      Chum Kiu – second form
7.      Tan, or Pak or Lap vs the straight punch
8.      Double sticking hands – Gum sau technique
9.      Counter to Gum sau – Lan sau from Chum Kiu
10.   Pros and cons of various Fook sau types
11.   Lap sau vs Lan sau counter drill
12.   Training turning with Chum Kiu punches
13.   The live dummy vs the wooden dummy
14.   Charge in with Tan sau and Punch

The class before me started to train in September of 1981 and had about three months of Wing Chun at this point in time.  The class was about 4 hours long after which we all went out to a Chinese restaurant for soup. This was the routine.

We always did the “Little Idea form” for 15 minutes, single sticking hands for 15 minutes then rolling hands for 20 minutes (no fighting mixed in – just working on the stance, the suppleness and relaxation and the elbow position and being centered). 

After that some things from the forms would be drilled.  Each lesson covered a lot of material. I had some Wing Chun background but didn’t really know the form or anything about sticking hands.

The teacher Dr. Khoe was always very serious. Mostly we learned from each other and didn’t practice that much with the teacher.

He always said to relate everything in Chi sau to the forms. He felt that you needed the stuff from all the forms to effectively function in Chi sau. That’s why he taught relatively quickly.

He said most people in Hong Kong learned the whole system in a year or two but then repeated the whole system from square one several times each time picking up more details about the art.

Yip Man did not spoon feed the students or explain that much unless he liked you or you paid high tuition.

Dr. Khoe’s teacher, Wang Kiu learned everything quickly too as did Bruce Lee.

Dr. Khoe had private lessons once a week in Wang Kiu’s kitchen. Bruce Lee learned mostly from Wong Shun Leung at Wang Kiu’s house. Wang Kiu was an expert at Preying Mantis his father was also a Hung style expert.