June 23, 2025 • 58 mins
In this episode of Great Karate Myths: Debunking the Legends, the team pivots from Okinawan dojos to southern Chinese training halls to dissect one of martial arts’ most romanticised systems: Wing Chun. Through lived experience and rigorous scrutiny, the conversation explores three central questions:
The Great Karate Myth
- Is Wing Chun a real-world self-defence system?
- Is it a cinematic fabrication built on legends and wire-fu choreography?
- Or… is it actually something else entirely - a lost weapon system hidden in plain sight?
The Great Karate Myth
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Welcome back to Great Karate Myths, Debunking Legends, the
show where martial arts folkloregets to reality check it didn't
know it needed. Tonight we're shifting focus
from Okinawan dojos to the smokytea houses and training halls of
southern China. Because here's the truth.
You can't talk about karate's origins without tracing its
(00:25):
lineage through the myths. Of Kung Fu.
At the heart of today's episode is Wing Chun, a system shrouded
in rebellion, romance, and rapidfire punches.
Was it born from real world St combat?
Was it sculpted on the sound stage for cinema legends?
Or is it something else entirely?
Let's dive into the great Kung Fu myth and uncover what's
(00:50):
behind the lineage, the legends,and the layers we don't usually
talk about. Mike's over to Nathan.
Let's begin. Thank you, Chenier.
Well, Wing Chun. Well, what does it mean?
Yeah, it's even the name is inaccurate.
And a lot of the Wing Chun mythology that's it is is is
(01:14):
tied up with the Fung Siyuk legends of White Crane and it it
just follows the same mythological structure.
So received quotes wisdom is that that the styles created by
a Buddhist nun called Ungmoi andUngmoi was allegedly one of the
(01:37):
five elders of the destroyed Shaolin Temple along with the
person that gave their name to the to the white eye eyebrow
style Bakhmei to Zhang Bakhmei was at the arrival style and is
still to this day a rival style to to Wing Chun.
(02:00):
But the allegedly the nun Ong Moi, one of the five elders, the
survivors of the Shaolin Monastery, taught a student, a
woman called Yim Wing Chun, who was allegedly being bullied by a
suitor, an errant marriage proposal person.
(02:28):
And the story goes that Umm Moi taught you the art of, of, of
Kung Fu so she could defend her.Again, it's a it's a very far
fetched, complicated story. You know, a whole style of Kung
Fu being passed on to Yun Wing Chun by Umm Moi.
But, and this by the way, it is to give this a this is all all
(02:50):
allegedly in in the 16th century.
So yeah. And it kind of it's it's it's
backdated. So we're looking at late Ming
early Ching Dynastine material that's backdated and and given a
storyline. Now you know, I'm I'm I'm not an
(03:11):
amateur in this. So I spent an inheritance
following Wing Chun. So I, I, I switched from karate
in the mid 70s to a discovered ring channel.
I pursued the top. I pursued look, I'd train with,
(03:35):
I don't know, Kunwar chat, Victor Khan, Simon Lau.
I would go and and and Robbie Gardner, Robin Gardner, who's
probably not as well known as, but Etsy, one of them most
creative and intelligent thinkers I've ever met in the
field of martial arts, who I'm grateful having learned from
(03:59):
him. He was actually a student of he
actually was a housemate with William Jung, who's notorious
quite extremely famous. So I had that connection with
William chewing and of course Conrad Chuck, Victor Khan and
Simon Lau and I also so courtesyof very good, very person.
(04:26):
I have great listing for a Nino Bernardo through him, I got to
meet and train with the legendary Wong Shengling.
So and then of course, I, I had my Wing Chun forms corrected by
the founder of Wing Chun or the founder of the the legendary Yip
(04:49):
man, but I not him, but but his eldest son Yip Chun, who I also
learned from. I can't say I was a long term
student. I can say that he did teach.
He did stay at my house and teach me.
I remember him saying it was, itwas quite inspiring.
(05:11):
He said to me, this is what my father showed me and this is
what I'm showing you. So yeah, out of the horse's
mouth. So I've, I've had some, you
know, legendary instructors, quite frankly.
So it's not that I don't know the subject.
So having established that I wasabsolutely obsessed with with
(05:35):
Wing Chun and as I say, I spent,I spent an inheritance pursuing
it and for for some 16 years, once we as a group, we, we
changed over. We used to be a Wing Chun group.
But once I began to examine karate, once I got a handle on
(05:56):
karate, I thought, I'm going to look at the ring Chun again.
Now I know that there's academically a risk of making
assumptions. So you you find something in one
academic or one field and you can't assume that you can just
(06:16):
transpose it to another field. So I never made that assumption.
But it's interesting that if youlook at Winton, if you start
with it's very first formed at Suingham Town, but the small
mind way or you can, there are many translations if you
(06:36):
actually look at it and it's pigeon toed stanks and it's very
sort of blocky, methodical sort of process.
Yes, I have to ask that question.
It's a very strange way to to plot out and start how to deal
with a no holds barred combat method.
(06:58):
It's a very strange way to cut to the chase now and it and and
this will run rough with a lot of people, but it it when you
actually analyse it as I've done, it's a weapon system.
(07:22):
Wow. OK, Yeah, ho.
Ho ears are going to roll, tearsare going to roll.
What weapon is it then, Nathan? Oh well, there's a connection.
It's the Barton dot cutting broad.
(07:43):
It's a broad sword. It's is.
It delineate and highlights exactly precisely how to train
and not use a pair of broadswords carelessly called
butterfly swords. That's the butterfly swords.
If you look at the, it's a Chinese euphemism for or a
Cantonese euphemism, because the, the swords, when they're
(08:05):
drawn back to the, the chest, tothe side of the chest, the
cutting edges are upwards and itresembles butterfly rings.
That that's where that came from.
It's not really an English translation at all.
It it, it's, it really refers tothose, the position that though
how those broad swords appear when as a pair, they're drawn
(08:27):
back to the side of the chest, which is the starting position.
So yeah. But to answer your question,
Tom, it's a pair of the broad swords.
So you're you're saying the the famous Sudan Tau form and it is
(08:51):
famous. We've seen footage of it man
performing it empty handed and and you're saying it's it should
be weapons if the weapons fall. The same.
(09:16):
The same Herculean thing. Happened with the karate cater.
Somewhere along the line the theuse of the weapons has was some
reasoning was stopped, but the form and the forms were
continue. The forms practise continued and
(09:36):
so we could kind of speculate why that was the case.
Kev, you you've got a winking background.
Yeah. So I've got a participant.
Yeah, not, not as much as there's Nathan obviously, but I
did it did it for about about years ago for about the best
part of the year. Then then we did it with and
(09:57):
then Dale took over the club andthen trained with him.
But then I, I, I, I quite enjoyed it.
I enjoyed the the sticking handsaspects to it.
But the more he looked at it, the, the more unbelievable it
became as a, as a system really.I mean, it didn't, didn't really
(10:17):
sound, it didn't look convincing, especially things
like the chain punch and things like that.
It's not very convincing really,is it?
Yeah. And once you saw say the later,
the later discoveries it's made,it makes a lot of sense.
Yeah. And and of course you've got the
the same thing, but the blockingyou have, which you have in the
(10:38):
karate. So again, doesn't you know, it
doesn't really work. We know it doesn't work.
So yeah, that was that was my, my experience really.
So you mentioned the chain punchthat says that rapid fire punch
that you strike by moving the hands over the top of one
(10:59):
another along the centre line. How does that relate to your
discovery, Nathan? So if you, I had a very, a good
friend who was an unlikely friend because he was a really
tough guy. I mean, back in the day.
(11:21):
So where am I now? We're in the, we're in the
middle 80s. We're in about 86.
He was ranked Amateur Boxing Association, a British ABA, he
was ranked #11 so Eddie reeling,he was well to say how
(11:46):
experienced he was. There used to be a club in the
city he lived in that it ran very late at night and it was a
place where all of the doorman and bouncers and where they went
after work to unwind. And he was the doorman there.
(12:09):
OK, so and physically he was so as a boxer, he was a really good
boxer. And I had my Doris wonderful
Wing Chun experience. I'd had a lot of experience.
So here I am supposedly an expert, you know, was graded at
(12:29):
a high level. And you know, the first time
I've we'd agreed to have a go together, he threw me.
So he, he threw me a head guard and I asked, I enquired, I asked
him, where's, where's your head guard?
(12:52):
He said to me, I won't need one.It was quite intimidating.
It was also very intimidating when he, he, he shut the, the
door of the, it was my own training hall built in my own
gardening. And he bolt, he shut the door
and bolted it. And so I put the head guard on
(13:13):
and we had, we, we were gloved up.
We gloved up. And so then we, we, we began
and, oh, I think it was just a few seconds.
Within a few seconds I had, yeah, I found myself on the
(13:34):
floor with a chipped tooth and later it was revealed I was
suffering from concussion. It was just a few seconds,
really. So the ringtone expert was
completely knocked to the ground.
The man had a punch like a meal kick and it was a great
(13:56):
awakening after that. He was kind of to give me some
instruction in boxing, which wasn't new to me because I, I,
as a police cadet and I, I had boxed, but not to the standard.
And that this, that this man andcould demonstrate, could teach
to, could demonstrate. And that was a big awakening.
(14:18):
So to, to the chain punch, whichwas the question, the sort of
punching down the centre line. It's a great theory, absolutely
rubbish in reality. Yeah, we did back in the day,
multi style, multi discipline. I had a friend to the late Ricky
(14:40):
Williams. He was, I think he was a seven.
He was, he was graded in Okinawa, but he had a, one of
his students devised a measure that we could press on a long
bag to measure the impact of a, of a punch.
(15:00):
So everyone did punches. So we had a Taekwondo person, a
wing to me during the Wing Chun,we had a boxer and a karate
person. The boxers, by far, there were
two of them, actually hit the bag the hardest.
Now we tried to make everybody roughly the same weight, so
they're all weighing in at middle weight.
(15:20):
The boxers hit the bag harder than anyone else The the person
that hit the bag the weakest with the least impact and power
was yours truly with his Wing Chun chain punch registered the
lowest score to my embarrassmentof you know for the participants
(15:41):
a complete disaster. So if you then put take the
chain punch position and you putin the cane stress a pair of
broadswords cutting edge forwardand you imagine them going
against the ubiquitous Chinese battlefield spear, for example,
not the only weapon it was designed to go against.
(16:02):
Then chain punching down a straight line is ferocious, is
formidable, and you know the person on the receiving end is
going to be lucky if he doesn't lose fingers or you know the
entire risk is going to be absolutely destroyed.
That's the purpose of the chain punch, and it is utterly deadly.
(16:23):
That's the purpose. But it requires those
broadswords will be deployed, employed, deployed.
You got to think of the broadswords as well as two razor
sharp cleavers as well. And so you you don't need, you
don't need to throw out a reallypowerful punch.
(16:47):
That razor sharp meat cleaver isgoing to cut with, with not
much. So you can be really fast.
So 5 or 6 chain punches, it doesn't matter what it comes
into contact with, it's going toabsolutely annihilate like
Nathan said, fingers, wrists, arms and all the rest of it.
And so and, and that that devastating, it becomes really,
(17:10):
really devastating that technique only with the weapons
there, as Nathan's already said.Yeah, he also explains why it's
only done over the top, isn't it?
It's not reversed, is it? It's never wonder why.
Well, you see, that's a really good point because and that's
(17:32):
why you need the forms, because you need to be able to
coordinate those two blades because they're so sharp that
there is a risk of cutting yourself.
And so the forms training and the use of practising turning
the blades and moving the bladesat close quarter, it's a real
skill that needs time and needs effort.
(17:54):
And so having a system to cultivate those skills is
exactly the order of the day when you're using 2 razor sharp
swords at close quarters. And so you start to get the
reason for the Wing Chun system existing in the 1st place.
And I think it's also important to distinguish what the wing
(18:18):
trans system actually consists of.
And it's the Sowlam Tau, the Chung Q, the BU G form and the
MOOC Yanjong form, the wooden dummy form, the the the 6 1/2
point pole form and the, and theBartramdo form were added later
and are not part of this system that we're we're talking about.
(18:40):
And so, and, and that's another conversation as well, why
they're there and what and, and how they got there.
But yeah, Nathan. Yeah, yeah.
The what's not understood is that the the Sulan child of
Tumkur and the beauty, they are the the broad swords and the
(19:00):
broad sword form that was added later.
Is it completely inferior to thequality of the three forms that
comprise the the the the Wing Chun and interesting.
It's so hard for the world to think about this, but it's
interesting that the late great Bruce Lee, the the actor and
martial artist you know, was disappointed with and his his
(19:27):
view on. I can't quote exactly, but I can
paraphrase the once the fluid man crammed and distorted,
cramped and distorted by the classical men on as far as I'm
referring to the Wing Chun formsthe ringtones backgrounds that
he'd had, He might have been extending that further.
(19:51):
For example, karate forms it it it if you so look at the the the
ringtones structure. Look at the first form, the
pigeon toed not need stance fromwhich the practitioner doesn't
move. You can see that that a set of.
(20:14):
Arm and hand and positions are being trained.
The question is what are they because The thing is developed
in the chum queue or the bridge seeking searching for the bridge
from the second form of room chain and then further refined
and developed in the third form beauty thrusting fingers.
(20:37):
I had a good experience of beingin training with Yeah man's
eldest son, he suggested. And then just in a conversation
that the ringtone probably couldhave been 1 long form Tsunam Tao
Champion Beauty joined together.You know, I, I, I considered
(20:59):
that myself. Why did you sort of finish the
first form and then reopen, openthe Stanton, do the opening all
over again for the second form and and and and the same for the
third form. And I, you know, believe to this
day that the the ringtone is not3 forms.
It's just one form in three sections.
(21:21):
Now how do the we get to imagineit was weapons?
Going there, Nathan, because it was you that did it.
Well, it really came from understanding the original
Sanchin, which is found in the Waiti Ryu, not the Miyagi Chojin
(21:44):
Sanchin of Goju Ryu, but the thethe Waitiyu, the original open
handed Sanchin in terms of its function.
And looking at it, you know, we understood that Section 1 did
the primary thing that the yeah that the exponent or
(22:05):
practitioner or learner would need to know and be able to do,
which is the the site will be intwo positions, either the
pommel, the nub at the end, forward or backwards, the two
basically 2 basic orientations for that weapon or tool.
And Section 1 of the of the Sanchin teaches the practitioner
(22:31):
how to flip, how to change that from 1 grip to to to to the
other. There are only two
possibilities, you know. So the Section 1, the the
primary teaching is how to switch that, how to flip it and
then deploy the weapon. And it, it occurred to me
(22:56):
looking at I've done that sodiumtowel for years.
I've done it since I was a teenager.
The bent wrist going forward, the, the so-called some, but the
the three breast of Buddha, you know, comprising of the wrists,
which we'll, we'll probably we'll look at that on on film at
(23:19):
some point and, and make that available to be seen.
It followed the same format as the Waititi Sanchin.
In other words, the first thing that the individual needs to
learn in this thing in in the ringtone system is how to flip
the weapon, how to change the weapon.
(23:42):
Now you see that in the bachang do form the the bachang do form
is in a later edition. It's a pale poppy and I don't
think it originates with the theringtone at all because the
ringtone systems already coveredthat.
And the Sulum Tau it does exactly the same.
(24:02):
Sorry, takes the exact same approach as the Waiti Sanchit in
that Section 1. So that would be the first part
of the Sulum. Tau teaches the fundamental
skill of flipping the weapon exactly in in the same way as
the Waiti Sanchit teaches the fundamental skill of flipping
(24:22):
the weapon so that you can use the weapon in both orientations.
And that was the key to looking at that serum town, something
that I'd done since I was a teenager.
Now I'm head towards 70. I've been doing it, I've been
under, I've been exposed to it for my entire adult life.
(24:44):
And it makes perfect sense that in both the weighty in the
Sanchin of the of Kalate and there's Julian Tao of of Wing
Chun, they're both involved withA2 or a weapon, and the primary
skill is to be able to flip themso that you can use them in both
(25:04):
of their orientations. Lovely.
You mentioned Buttom Dao. 8 cutting gourd swords.
That's that's that is literally what was this is the thing.
It's a red herring there that there's a a broad sword form
attached to the image and makes it look, you know, that's an
(25:28):
additional reference form and itsupports the idea that the that
the actual ring Chun is empty hands.
Now, you know, this is, you know, millions of people have
been involved in that, that whole ring Chun.
One of the things that made ringChun famous is that it was the
style the and they should have won Bruce Lee, the movie star
(25:52):
and and national artist, the late Bruce Lee.
Yeah, the iconic face of Chinesemaster, you know, Bruce Lee and
his background was, was ringtoned and and it's globally
believed. Yeah, this, you know, ringtoned
is an unarmed close quarter combat system.
(26:14):
I'm fanning that it seemed ineffective in UFC case
fighting, you know MMA it's completely and it's interesting
that the practitioners of it andI'm not going to do names
totally unable to to deploy the allegedly deadly skills of
(26:39):
Ringtoner in in a combat situation.
It's not because ringtone is ineffective.
It doesn't work. Ringtone is absolutely deadly if
it's using the weapons. Well, it's designed, it could be
useless. Which are the short the so the
baton refers to 8 cutting board swords.
(27:02):
And if you look at it, the wholeidea of eight, it's not that
different from Japanese swordsmanship in the sense that,
yeah, it is always logical and common to consider 88 directions
when using your blade. So the compass point is, is it
(27:24):
just a convenient teaching mnemonic?
You know, those are basically the angles that you can slash
and cut through. You know that that's, that's,
that's really what that's about.You know, those are the
literally angles that that you can use.
And they're obviously they're not going to be measured
(27:45):
microscopically, you know, exactly, you know, 1/8 of a of a
circle, but they're going to be,you know, you're going to cut
down 45 or horizontally or cut upwards, you know, and it's just
a way of so the eight cutting boards or refers to the
directions, the angles that the blades can be used at within.
(28:15):
It it may be the case that the the the the Bartramdo form is
people are going to get annoyed with me.
Keep saying this stage combat asas other Rep.
There are other representations in in the that have rich
connections with the Chinese opera.
(28:37):
Like styles like Honda and Choile foot are probably stage
combat rather than real fighting.
And they have a, you know, a represent, you know, forms that
produce stage fighting with butterfly swords.
And what you find in the in the Wing Chun forms that Nathan's
(28:59):
talked about is a very, very concise and brutally effective
method of fighting with those swords for real at close
quarters, which looks nothing like stage combat.
And there are some very, very important skills to master in
that, in those forms. Yeah.
(29:19):
That's all I say on on Chinese Opera today, I promise.
Looking at this historically nowwe know there's no written
records. There's nothing.
They're, they're all going to, you know, we're going to go,
well, where's the evidence? Where's the evidence?
There's no written records. How do you know, given that
(29:43):
we've already stated, you know, the kata, other manuals, the
form, other manual. We've already said that at a
previous podcast. Yeah.
What? What do you suppose the use of
it would a bit be? Why are you learning it?
I suspect it was probably for training militia.
(30:10):
I don't think it was, you know, there's, there's quite good
records from the Ming dynasty of, of military training methods
and, and there's a lot of manuals and there's a good bit
of history around that, what themilitary training actually
looked like. And you don't find any mention
of it in of the, of butterfly swords in that respect.
(30:32):
But so it's just we're only speculating here, but the area
that was in that it was in had huge amounts of they were
private armies, private militiasand vast amounts of pirates.
So I expect that the truth of what they were who was training
with these methods probably liessomewhere in between militia and
(30:55):
pirates and private armies. It might speak to the invite.
Sorry, Nathan. It might speak to the
environment that it was used in that it's this this very concise
close quarter method in the blades.
So my it's interesting. We could speculate on what the
environment was that it was usedin.
(31:16):
It's almost certainly not battlefield because there's no
footwork. There's no footwork for fighting
in on the battlefield. And it doesn't appear to be the
way that you move around and theobject of getting to the corner
and cutting and you know, we cango into all that stuff for the
gates and the centre line and things like that, but it doesn't
(31:39):
appear that it would be a very effective on a battlefield.
So we could speculate where it was used as well.
I just didn't throw one more quick thing in as well.
Just in terms of the history. I just wanted to pull out one of
the Jenga blocks from right at the bottom bottom of the pile.
And that Nathan mentioned uh Moiat the beginning.
(31:59):
And uh Moi's actually was actually a fictional character
from a style of fiction called Wuja, which is martial fiction,
which was immensely popular in the in the Ming Dynasty.
And and she was actually one of the villains of the story.
(32:19):
She actually sails out. Shaolin.
So yeah, it's kind of over time been taken.
It's like taking a comic book, isn't it a superhero from a
comic book and 200 years later they've become a fictional
person. But yeah, it's it's DC Comics.
That's exactly what the Moi and and the buck buck by two Jung,
(32:43):
the founder of white Eyebrows Kung Fu Buck me same thing.
It's these. These are DC comic.
Heroes or villains, Yeah, yeah. What's really interesting in in
that genre of fiction as well isthat they make reference in, you
know, famous Rouge novels like the Watermargin and, you know,
(33:07):
Journey to the West and and all the rest.
They make reference to real martial rituals and Taoist
rituals and reference to real martial arts and things like
that. So there is this kind of
crossover where, you know, they're drawing on like, you
know, a story about like Rocky draws on boxing.
(33:27):
You know, the martial fiction inmean China drew on real, you
know, inspiration from real martial arts.
So you get you get little bits and pieces here and there pop
up. And so it's trying to discern
what was, what's real history orwhat's history, what's fiction
(33:48):
and what's, you know, what's opera and all.
And so it takes time to unpick that.
But as we've said before, the primary source is the forms.
So you can ask, as Nathan alwayssaid, ask the forms.
And, and so you're going back and practising those Ring Chun
forms, you get a sense of, of how the butterfly swords would
be used and what the possibilities are.
(34:10):
And so when you start to look atother things like hunger or
choile foot and the way they're used to butterfly swords, you
can. Kind of deduce that they were
more like opera Kung Fu than forreal fighting and and things
like that. Yeah, well, if you if you when I
(34:30):
was learning and I mean, I, thisis, you know, I'm a man that was
obsessed with the subject. So it took over my entire life
and I looking at. So there were lots of other
martial arts around which I was really exposed to.
I did, you know, met lots of people who practised other arts
(34:56):
and so I saw that the toilet foot was really expensive.
The Hungarian and the Hung Kuning, they're always arguments
over which is the, you know, right, which is the hunger.
Let's just terms hunger. Hung Kun.
It's the Hung family going through.
But if you look at it, it is, asTom says, it's, it's quite
(35:20):
theatrical. It's big movement, lots of, you
know, interesting, excited, exciting movements.
It's very those arts are very expressive, whereas ringtones
like knock kneed sort of tight little movements that that you
know, in no way were they elegant or, you know, you know,
(35:44):
ringtones was pretty rubbish fordemonstration.
So so sort of no disrespect intended here.
They're boring compared with theKongard, you know, compared with
the two lay foot and and and theother Kung Fu styles you know,
were dynamic and expressive and expensive and had lots of
(36:06):
interesting movements. Ringtoned quite frankly didn't
have it was blocky and tight, not need and it's quite not not
not really good demonstration material.
They trusted it, believed in it,loved it and lived with it and
accepted that it was. I believe that there was
(36:28):
something very special about it.And as as any practitioner that
takes us, takes on a style, does, this is my style, this is
my family, this is my way, this is my stuff.
And I love it. And if you don't know what it is
because we didn't know what it was and it's, it would probably
be arrogant to sound arrogant tosay, well, most people don't.
(36:52):
I you know, it is the evidence is there that this is what
you're dealing with is a weapon system that is, is based on the
use of the broadsword and it's aan incredibly systematic
approach to cataloguing and and teaching how to use and deploy a
(37:17):
pair of razor sharp brawl swords.
And that's exactly what it does as the as the forms unfold,
culminating in the dummy form, which you described as something
to sort of harden the arms and so on.
(37:37):
There's lots of stuff said aboutit, none of most of which I
don't agree with. Another way of looking at that
the wooden man, which is a wooden post with two arms at
sort of shoulder height and one abdomen height and a sort of a
curved leg, you know, low, whichis muscles are very familiar
(38:04):
with it. It's it it you know, it's to
harden the arms. Look, your arms don't really get
hard. You can booze them, you can
callus them, but they're they'rejust arms and you, you know, an
individual with quote hardened arms, they're still prone to the
same. If anyone that's I've broken
(38:26):
both arms and both legs. So I know what factors are.
And it doesn't matter how fit strong young, how much I used to
use the wooden dummy in the way that I was taught.
It still didn't stop me getting a broken arm and we're just
(38:48):
fleshing blood. It's not the tool for hardening
the arms. And what it is is an impact like
a butcher's block. It's an impact target that these
that the broad swords can be used against with full power.
It's the only opportunity to getfull power training in the
(39:09):
deployment of these of the of the broad swords.
And the interesting thing is they're made originally they
were made of something called muktor wood.
And the muktor wood incredibly expensive.
It's like paying for teak or lignum viti, really expensive
wood. The muktor why was why, you
(39:30):
know, to to to quote harden yourarms or or do training deals.
Yeah, pine would be OK Pine ass would be good.
Any indigenous Chinese semi hardwood doesn't even need to be
a hardwood because it's just arms, you know, arms, but it's
muck tower wood. Why muck tower wood will like a
(39:55):
chopping block in a in a westernbutcher's.
If you know anyone that's ventedinto the butcher's sees that the
the block. With all the marks in it, and it
tends to get a bit hollowed out in the middle as it gets wiped
down and cleaned and scraped andscrubbed.
But it's a hard wearing item, which is what the Mukhtar would
(40:19):
was. But even then, if you look at
it, the arms were interchangeable.
You could take the peg out of the back, pull the arm out,
which is perfectly practical because you could then replace
the parts that were really goingto take the most damage, which
would be the arms. So the the sticking out arms,
(40:40):
three of them could be replaced and and obviously the body would
be solid and would be there to you know, it wouldn't need to
be. Why would you need to change it?
You, you, you wouldn't would, yes, it would take damage, but
not to the extent the arms would.
(41:00):
So those arms are completely replaceable.
And the wood was more colour wood, very, very, extremely
hardwood. And again, I'll repeat the
question. If you're banging your arms
against it and training, why do you need, why do you need that
expensive hardwood? You don't.
(41:22):
What can members do? Love you.
Sorry, no go on here. No can just remember us doing
the in the training in wing chime.
We used to, we used to actually bash our arms together.
I don't know what the hell that was really about.
It's toughening your arms up. I can remember.
(41:43):
It's a lovely, you get lovely feedback from cutting and you
know, really letting go with those cuts against the dummy.
You get all that feedback in thegrips, in your structure and
you've got something to do. You know, some of the techniques
involve pressing or hinting with, with one blade and cutting
(42:03):
with the other. So you get to really drive into
with the leverage and the pressure with one arm and the
hack away with the other one. And you can get all that
feedback into your stance and posture and structure.
So it's it's super. It's it's it's funny that now
(42:24):
you can buy pads to put around your wooden dummy to make it
softer to hit. Yeah, yeah, I.
Was. I was just thinking beasts do
that exercise in go Giroux as well.
The bashing the arms together. I don't know what.
(42:46):
Yeah, it's quite amusing really.It's a toughen your arms up.
No, just bloody hurts. But there's a massive, you know,
contradiction in Wing Chun in that you're trying to build
sensitivity in the sticking hands, but then you're trying to
toughen and harden your arms anddesensitise them by banging them
on the dummy. So which is it?
(43:10):
That we we, we we will need to revisit that the the sticking
hands things because it's an integral.
This is part of Wing Chun, but it needs to the it's origin and
the the fact that if you actually look at it so as I was
taught it, the essence was tan bong and fook.
(43:32):
So that's the bent hooked wrist.The bong sell the ring arm and
the palm up and tan bong and fook were the I was taught the
essence and and and that's fine.But the rest, it's funny.
If you look at the, the three forms and the dummy, none of it
ever gets reflected in the sticking hands and the bot.
(43:55):
And you've got all of those techniques, a huge catalogue of,
of movements and a range of movements at angles that just
don't appear in people can't. I've spent three years trying to
put all of the techniques from the ringtone forward into the
sticking hands. And it, it, it was a complete
(44:18):
desire and a abysmal failure. Couldn't do it.
And, and the, the, the people that I worked with it an entire
club. So I, I, I can remember the
number because it stuck in my head.
There were 20-3 other people besides myself who were trying
to fit these, the, the ring toneforms somehow into the sticking
(44:43):
hands and you had all sorts of things like the whisking hands,
the, the facts. So the, the cut to the side,
180° cut, you know, how could you get that?
Well, you had to completely shift your position, you know,
relative to your, your, your, your sticking hands, opponent or
partner, You know, just, it was impossible.
(45:06):
You know, 23 of us, 24 of us, including myself, just couldn't,
couldn't do it. You know, we spent so I
personally spent three years on that project to try and get the
try and get all of the ring timetechniques, including the 108 or
the depending on your teacher orbelief system, 108 or 116.
(45:30):
I personally believe it's 116 wooden man techniques.
Trying to get that into this, into the sticking hat
impossible. Couldn't do it, couldn't create
the the situation or the circumstances in which those
things would occur. The gun cells and the gun cells
when you then take a pair of butterfly knives and you do a
(45:52):
gun cell, you know, the top handcutting in the bottom and you
know, it's difficult to describe, but suddenly with the
with the broad swords, it's devastating, absolutely
horrendous, dangerous, terrible.Anyone on the receiving end of
(46:15):
that would be tougher. I think that to just to quickly
revisit the it's one stage up from policing.
So it's one stage up from the side.
But I think the environment is got a connection with the
maritime. It's a maritime.
(46:36):
I think it's a maritime environment.
I think it's it is possibly on deck on the ship most more
likely, I think on the key and Ithink it's potentially part of
guarding people don't well people who am I talking about?
There was a massive shipping trade, absolutely millions of
(47:02):
tonnes, the tonnage of the, the,the commerce in China, Ming
guinsey was mind blowing and allof it needed the leasing and
garden. I, I, I can't yet supply the
evidence I want to supply, but I, I am suggesting here that the
(47:23):
broad swords were involved in the control of, of, of, of
freight and shipping that sort of environment.
And as Tom says, it's not a battlefield because, you know,
bigger weapons would be standardswords and other weapons that
(47:45):
would be, well, firearms. Absolutely, absolutely.
Tom and firearms, cavalry. You mentioned it before, but
remind us, what century are we looking for?
When is this always happening? Oh, good question.
Literally, I think we're lookingat the all of this in my view is
(48:07):
Ming, it's Ming dynasty. We're looking at the 16th
century. We're looking at the late Ming.
It could be early mid Ming, but it's we're looking at so 15
something. That's what we're we're, we're
was. You know, I think it's worth
mentioning that when the Ming Dynasty was overthrown and
(48:32):
became the Qing Dynasty. There was a weapons ban there.
And so you know where we're speculating on why these martial
arts have survived without the weapons, there was an actual
weapons ban there. And that may account that may
account for it or one of the reasons that might be part of
the bigger picture of why Wing Chun carried on as a practise
(48:57):
without the weapons and then developed sticking hands later
on down the few generations. And that you know, and the same
with the way chief forms that they were practised unarmed in
China and and found their way toOkinawa and became karate.
It's quite it's quite bizarre tothink about how that happened.
(49:17):
But the scale of warfare, famine, disease, you know,
millions and millions of lives were lost over the course of few
100 years and so. It doesn't take a lot for
knowledge like what, you know, using a pair of butterfly swords
to become completely lost. Yeah, yeah.
(49:42):
The civil, the civil war, interesting.
It ran parallel with with absolute plague and famine.
So you had the civil war, which ultimately the Mantus were
sorry, the the dynasty changed from the Han people to the
Manchu, the northerners, and that was a massive culture
(50:06):
shift. And the Manchu's were I didn't
want to judge them, but they they are the ones that imposed
that Rep and ban that you described when he stole my
Thunder there, Tom that that that I can't find any other
culture. And as anthropology is actually
(50:28):
my subject, I can't find anotherculture.
And you know, if anyone knows ofone, please let us know.
Let me know that actually has training regimes for weapons
without the weapons being present.
But the, the Mantu weapon ban isactually creates that unique
(50:50):
environment and circumstance in which to, to continue the
tradition and and keep the teaching and the knowledge that
people would create the weapon form the movements, catalogue
the movements without the weapons being present because
they can't, you know, they, theycan't be fined or imprisoned or,
(51:13):
you know, because the, you know,the use of a weapon meant well,
the punishments were brutal. They were things, you know,
amputation of limbs and horriblethings.
But I can't find it that sort ofa weapons being practised
without the weapons anywhere else historically on the planet.
(51:35):
And it's interesting because Tomknows a bit about the German
fencing and, and, and the Germans and the Europeans had
fencing manuals. I can turn that over to you just
for to. Elaborate on that, Tom.
But they had fencing manuals. I there's not one to my
knowledge that performed the fencing movements without the
(51:56):
sword. Yeah, there's great, There's
some superb organisations that are that are taking these
European mediaeval martial arts of Europe and these training
methods and working out from themanuals how these methods were
performed and practised and thencreating a recreational
(52:19):
practises out of them, which is absolutely fantastic.
And you can see that on Emo and Gladiatory Scholar Gladiatory as
another great channel to look at.
And as well, essentially the same thing is that these forms
are manuals and they they found their way to Okinawa.
They found their way to Hong Kong later on, but found their
(52:43):
way there. But there's this, there's a
there's this, what connects themall is we've got these weapons
manuals without the weapons. And it's.
Yeah. So it's sort of trying to
understand why that might be thecase in speculating on it until
if some evidence survives or or something to help us kind of
(53:06):
line that up. Properly.
I suspect there are more forms as well.
I suspect there are others. Elsewhere, but it's keeping an
eye out for them. Yeah, but I think to round up
the the idea of the of styles, lots and lots of styles is can
(53:29):
appear to be confusing. But the PAC may the toilet PAC
May is quite if you look at the PAC, if you look at the nine
step push the Galbao toy toy of but may it's very, very similar
to Santin. So you can see a Santin based
practise. So I would I would say that
suggests that pack may has its roots in an original system of
(53:55):
of weapons. But when you get to hung guard
toilet foot and the rest of those that all that very
flowery. And I think Tom is absolutely
right. These are all demonstrating
pieces. They're Chinese opera theatre
and they are not that why it's so difficult to see how they can
work practically, but again, whythey won't work in the fish site
(54:18):
or MMA or UFC. You know you're not going to see
Ongar or any of the traditional so-called.
Kung Fu styles. So 2 reasons.
One is if you're looking at something like Buckme or Wing
Chun, they are weapons sets, weapons forms, weapons based.
If you look at any of the flowery styles, they're demon
(54:41):
demonstratives. They are theatrical.
They are not actual combat systems and they're based on
part weapons. And this is that people haven't
been only to make them work. Now there will be diehards out
there who are really going to dislike what we are saying here
(55:01):
and disagree with us, but it remains the case that we have
not seen any of the traditional Kung Fu styles used effectively
in any kind of. And it's interesting that in the
MMA and the UFC, you know practitioners aren't wearing
gloves. So the old excuse that the
(55:21):
boxing gloves would destroy all the exotic hand positions and
that that doesn't hold any water.
And the excuse that the techniques are too deadly or
dangerous and eye gouges and groyne kicks can't be used
anything. You know, who knows where a
kick's directed in an MMA match?Yeah, they're not seeing rings,
(55:44):
run and hung guard and toilet front being used in any kind of
freestyle fight. You're always going to get
someone coming back and say, well, it's not meant for the the
ring, it's not meant for the MMA.
It's meant for the streets. It's meant for the alleys.
If you can't make it work in in an you know, it's an environment
(56:07):
like the MMA arena where someone's going to stop the
fight before you get too hurt, then you know I'm going to make
it work. What about kicks?
There's a close, short low kick in the form.
The ringtone practitioner and and.
The best example is in the dummyset.
(56:30):
The ringtone practitioner is basically kicking usually the
inside or the outside of the knee.
So it's you've got 2 blades being deployed simultaneously, 2
meat cleavers, butchers, knives and and.
But there's a knee kick that's that's brought into play, which,
(56:51):
which is designed to to ruin theposture of your of the opponent,
making him even easier to totally destroy with the with
the broth of these are brutal weapons and and and ring China
is a devastating system. No question, absolutely no
(57:12):
question. It's far more lethal in its
proper application than ever imagined by the people that want
to use it as an unarmed art. It's not it's not an unarmed
art. It's not an unarmed art.
It's deployed with these with two two razor sharp by a broad
swords absolutely devastated andthat's all the time we have.
(57:36):
For today, thanks for listening to Great Karate Myths.
Debunking the legends. Today, we stripped back the
mystique of Wing Chung, exploring its supposed origins,
cinematic allure, and the provocative idea that it was
never meant to be an unarmed system at all.
From chain punches to butterfly swords, we've questioned the
lineage, debunked the legends, and open the door to a radical
(57:59):
reinterpretation. If you're enjoying the journey
through martial arts mythology, follow us.
Leave a review, share, and let us know which myths you want to
see tackled next. Until next time, keep
questioning the legend.
Welcome back to Great Karate Myths, Debunking Legends, the
show where martial arts folkloregets to reality check it didn't
know it needed. Tonight we're shifting focus
from Okinawan dojos to the smokytea houses and training halls of
southern China. Because here's the truth.
You can't talk about karate's origins without tracing its
(00:25):
lineage through the myths. Of Kung Fu.
At the heart of today's episode is Wing Chun, a system shrouded
in rebellion, romance, and rapidfire punches.
Was it born from real world St combat?
Was it sculpted on the sound stage for cinema legends?
Or is it something else entirely?
Let's dive into the great Kung Fu myth and uncover what's
(00:50):
behind the lineage, the legends,and the layers we don't usually
talk about. Mike's over to Nathan.
Let's begin. Thank you, Chenier.
Well, Wing Chun. Well, what does it mean?
Yeah, it's even the name is inaccurate.
And a lot of the Wing Chun mythology that's it is is is
(01:14):
tied up with the Fung Siyuk legends of White Crane and it it
just follows the same mythological structure.
So received quotes wisdom is that that the styles created by
a Buddhist nun called Ungmoi andUngmoi was allegedly one of the
(01:37):
five elders of the destroyed Shaolin Temple along with the
person that gave their name to the to the white eye eyebrow
style Bakhmei to Zhang Bakhmei was at the arrival style and is
still to this day a rival style to to Wing Chun.
(02:00):
But the allegedly the nun Ong Moi, one of the five elders, the
survivors of the Shaolin Monastery, taught a student, a
woman called Yim Wing Chun, who was allegedly being bullied by a
suitor, an errant marriage proposal person.
(02:28):
And the story goes that Umm Moi taught you the art of, of, of
Kung Fu so she could defend her.Again, it's a it's a very far
fetched, complicated story. You know, a whole style of Kung
Fu being passed on to Yun Wing Chun by Umm Moi.
But, and this by the way, it is to give this a this is all all
(02:50):
allegedly in in the 16th century.
So yeah. And it kind of it's it's it's
backdated. So we're looking at late Ming
early Ching Dynastine material that's backdated and and given a
storyline. Now you know, I'm I'm I'm not an
(03:11):
amateur in this. So I spent an inheritance
following Wing Chun. So I, I, I switched from karate
in the mid 70s to a discovered ring channel.
I pursued the top. I pursued look, I'd train with,
(03:35):
I don't know, Kunwar chat, Victor Khan, Simon Lau.
I would go and and and Robbie Gardner, Robin Gardner, who's
probably not as well known as, but Etsy, one of them most
creative and intelligent thinkers I've ever met in the
field of martial arts, who I'm grateful having learned from
(03:59):
him. He was actually a student of he
actually was a housemate with William Jung, who's notorious
quite extremely famous. So I had that connection with
William chewing and of course Conrad Chuck, Victor Khan and
Simon Lau and I also so courtesyof very good, very person.
(04:26):
I have great listing for a Nino Bernardo through him, I got to
meet and train with the legendary Wong Shengling.
So and then of course, I, I had my Wing Chun forms corrected by
the founder of Wing Chun or the founder of the the legendary Yip
(04:49):
man, but I not him, but but his eldest son Yip Chun, who I also
learned from. I can't say I was a long term
student. I can say that he did teach.
He did stay at my house and teach me.
I remember him saying it was, itwas quite inspiring.
(05:11):
He said to me, this is what my father showed me and this is
what I'm showing you. So yeah, out of the horse's
mouth. So I've, I've had some, you
know, legendary instructors, quite frankly.
So it's not that I don't know the subject.
So having established that I wasabsolutely obsessed with with
(05:35):
Wing Chun and as I say, I spent,I spent an inheritance pursuing
it and for for some 16 years, once we as a group, we, we
changed over. We used to be a Wing Chun group.
But once I began to examine karate, once I got a handle on
(05:56):
karate, I thought, I'm going to look at the ring Chun again.
Now I know that there's academically a risk of making
assumptions. So you you find something in one
academic or one field and you can't assume that you can just
(06:16):
transpose it to another field. So I never made that assumption.
But it's interesting that if youlook at Winton, if you start
with it's very first formed at Suingham Town, but the small
mind way or you can, there are many translations if you
(06:36):
actually look at it and it's pigeon toed stanks and it's very
sort of blocky, methodical sort of process.
Yes, I have to ask that question.
It's a very strange way to to plot out and start how to deal
with a no holds barred combat method.
(06:58):
It's a very strange way to cut to the chase now and it and and
this will run rough with a lot of people, but it it when you
actually analyse it as I've done, it's a weapon system.
(07:22):
Wow. OK, Yeah, ho.
Ho ears are going to roll, tearsare going to roll.
What weapon is it then, Nathan? Oh well, there's a connection.
It's the Barton dot cutting broad.
(07:43):
It's a broad sword. It's is.
It delineate and highlights exactly precisely how to train
and not use a pair of broadswords carelessly called
butterfly swords. That's the butterfly swords.
If you look at the, it's a Chinese euphemism for or a
Cantonese euphemism, because the, the swords, when they're
(08:05):
drawn back to the, the chest, tothe side of the chest, the
cutting edges are upwards and itresembles butterfly rings.
That that's where that came from.
It's not really an English translation at all.
It it, it's, it really refers tothose, the position that though
how those broad swords appear when as a pair, they're drawn
(08:27):
back to the side of the chest, which is the starting position.
So yeah. But to answer your question,
Tom, it's a pair of the broad swords.
So you're you're saying the the famous Sudan Tau form and it is
(08:51):
famous. We've seen footage of it man
performing it empty handed and and you're saying it's it should
be weapons if the weapons fall. The same.
(09:16):
The same Herculean thing. Happened with the karate cater.
Somewhere along the line the theuse of the weapons has was some
reasoning was stopped, but the form and the forms were
continue. The forms practise continued and
(09:36):
so we could kind of speculate why that was the case.
Kev, you you've got a winking background.
Yeah. So I've got a participant.
Yeah, not, not as much as there's Nathan obviously, but I
did it did it for about about years ago for about the best
part of the year. Then then we did it with and
(09:57):
then Dale took over the club andthen trained with him.
But then I, I, I, I quite enjoyed it.
I enjoyed the the sticking handsaspects to it.
But the more he looked at it, the, the more unbelievable it
became as a, as a system really.I mean, it didn't, didn't really
(10:17):
sound, it didn't look convincing, especially things
like the chain punch and things like that.
It's not very convincing really,is it?
Yeah. And once you saw say the later,
the later discoveries it's made,it makes a lot of sense.
Yeah. And and of course you've got the
the same thing, but the blockingyou have, which you have in the
(10:38):
karate. So again, doesn't you know, it
doesn't really work. We know it doesn't work.
So yeah, that was that was my, my experience really.
So you mentioned the chain punchthat says that rapid fire punch
that you strike by moving the hands over the top of one
(10:59):
another along the centre line. How does that relate to your
discovery, Nathan? So if you, I had a very, a good
friend who was an unlikely friend because he was a really
tough guy. I mean, back in the day.
(11:21):
So where am I now? We're in the, we're in the
middle 80s. We're in about 86.
He was ranked Amateur Boxing Association, a British ABA, he
was ranked #11 so Eddie reeling,he was well to say how
(11:46):
experienced he was. There used to be a club in the
city he lived in that it ran very late at night and it was a
place where all of the doorman and bouncers and where they went
after work to unwind. And he was the doorman there.
(12:09):
OK, so and physically he was so as a boxer, he was a really good
boxer. And I had my Doris wonderful
Wing Chun experience. I'd had a lot of experience.
So here I am supposedly an expert, you know, was graded at
(12:29):
a high level. And you know, the first time
I've we'd agreed to have a go together, he threw me.
So he, he threw me a head guard and I asked, I enquired, I asked
him, where's, where's your head guard?
(12:52):
He said to me, I won't need one.It was quite intimidating.
It was also very intimidating when he, he, he shut the, the
door of the, it was my own training hall built in my own
gardening. And he bolt, he shut the door
and bolted it. And so I put the head guard on
(13:13):
and we had, we, we were gloved up.
We gloved up. And so then we, we, we began
and, oh, I think it was just a few seconds.
Within a few seconds I had, yeah, I found myself on the
(13:34):
floor with a chipped tooth and later it was revealed I was
suffering from concussion. It was just a few seconds,
really. So the ringtone expert was
completely knocked to the ground.
The man had a punch like a meal kick and it was a great
(13:56):
awakening after that. He was kind of to give me some
instruction in boxing, which wasn't new to me because I, I,
as a police cadet and I, I had boxed, but not to the standard.
And that this, that this man andcould demonstrate, could teach
to, could demonstrate. And that was a big awakening.
(14:18):
So to, to the chain punch, whichwas the question, the sort of
punching down the centre line. It's a great theory, absolutely
rubbish in reality. Yeah, we did back in the day,
multi style, multi discipline. I had a friend to the late Ricky
(14:40):
Williams. He was, I think he was a seven.
He was, he was graded in Okinawa, but he had a, one of
his students devised a measure that we could press on a long
bag to measure the impact of a, of a punch.
(15:00):
So everyone did punches. So we had a Taekwondo person, a
wing to me during the Wing Chun,we had a boxer and a karate
person. The boxers, by far, there were
two of them, actually hit the bag the hardest.
Now we tried to make everybody roughly the same weight, so
they're all weighing in at middle weight.
(15:20):
The boxers hit the bag harder than anyone else The the person
that hit the bag the weakest with the least impact and power
was yours truly with his Wing Chun chain punch registered the
lowest score to my embarrassmentof you know for the participants
(15:41):
a complete disaster. So if you then put take the
chain punch position and you putin the cane stress a pair of
broadswords cutting edge forwardand you imagine them going
against the ubiquitous Chinese battlefield spear, for example,
not the only weapon it was designed to go against.
(16:02):
Then chain punching down a straight line is ferocious, is
formidable, and you know the person on the receiving end is
going to be lucky if he doesn't lose fingers or you know the
entire risk is going to be absolutely destroyed.
That's the purpose of the chain punch, and it is utterly deadly.
(16:23):
That's the purpose. But it requires those
broadswords will be deployed, employed, deployed.
You got to think of the broadswords as well as two razor
sharp cleavers as well. And so you you don't need, you
don't need to throw out a reallypowerful punch.
(16:47):
That razor sharp meat cleaver isgoing to cut with, with not
much. So you can be really fast.
So 5 or 6 chain punches, it doesn't matter what it comes
into contact with, it's going toabsolutely annihilate like
Nathan said, fingers, wrists, arms and all the rest of it.
And so and, and that that devastating, it becomes really,
(17:10):
really devastating that technique only with the weapons
there, as Nathan's already said.Yeah, he also explains why it's
only done over the top, isn't it?
It's not reversed, is it? It's never wonder why.
Well, you see, that's a really good point because and that's
(17:32):
why you need the forms, because you need to be able to
coordinate those two blades because they're so sharp that
there is a risk of cutting yourself.
And so the forms training and the use of practising turning
the blades and moving the bladesat close quarter, it's a real
skill that needs time and needs effort.
(17:54):
And so having a system to cultivate those skills is
exactly the order of the day when you're using 2 razor sharp
swords at close quarters. And so you start to get the
reason for the Wing Chun system existing in the 1st place.
And I think it's also important to distinguish what the wing
(18:18):
trans system actually consists of.
And it's the Sowlam Tau, the Chung Q, the BU G form and the
MOOC Yanjong form, the wooden dummy form, the the the 6 1/2
point pole form and the, and theBartramdo form were added later
and are not part of this system that we're we're talking about.
(18:40):
And so, and, and that's another conversation as well, why
they're there and what and, and how they got there.
But yeah, Nathan. Yeah, yeah.
The what's not understood is that the the Sulan child of
Tumkur and the beauty, they are the the broad swords and the
(19:00):
broad sword form that was added later.
Is it completely inferior to thequality of the three forms that
comprise the the the the Wing Chun and interesting.
It's so hard for the world to think about this, but it's
interesting that the late great Bruce Lee, the the actor and
martial artist you know, was disappointed with and his his
(19:27):
view on. I can't quote exactly, but I can
paraphrase the once the fluid man crammed and distorted,
cramped and distorted by the classical men on as far as I'm
referring to the Wing Chun formsthe ringtones backgrounds that
he'd had, He might have been extending that further.
(19:51):
For example, karate forms it it it if you so look at the the the
ringtones structure. Look at the first form, the
pigeon toed not need stance fromwhich the practitioner doesn't
move. You can see that that a set of.
(20:14):
Arm and hand and positions are being trained.
The question is what are they because The thing is developed
in the chum queue or the bridge seeking searching for the bridge
from the second form of room chain and then further refined
and developed in the third form beauty thrusting fingers.
(20:37):
I had a good experience of beingin training with Yeah man's
eldest son, he suggested. And then just in a conversation
that the ringtone probably couldhave been 1 long form Tsunam Tao
Champion Beauty joined together.You know, I, I, I considered
(20:59):
that myself. Why did you sort of finish the
first form and then reopen, openthe Stanton, do the opening all
over again for the second form and and and and the same for the
third form. And I, you know, believe to this
day that the the ringtone is not3 forms.
It's just one form in three sections.
(21:21):
Now how do the we get to imagineit was weapons?
Going there, Nathan, because it was you that did it.
Well, it really came from understanding the original
Sanchin, which is found in the Waiti Ryu, not the Miyagi Chojin
(21:44):
Sanchin of Goju Ryu, but the thethe Waitiyu, the original open
handed Sanchin in terms of its function.
And looking at it, you know, we understood that Section 1 did
the primary thing that the yeah that the exponent or
(22:05):
practitioner or learner would need to know and be able to do,
which is the the site will be intwo positions, either the
pommel, the nub at the end, forward or backwards, the two
basically 2 basic orientations for that weapon or tool.
And Section 1 of the of the Sanchin teaches the practitioner
(22:31):
how to flip, how to change that from 1 grip to to to to the
other. There are only two
possibilities, you know. So the Section 1, the the
primary teaching is how to switch that, how to flip it and
then deploy the weapon. And it, it occurred to me
(22:56):
looking at I've done that sodiumtowel for years.
I've done it since I was a teenager.
The bent wrist going forward, the, the so-called some, but the
the three breast of Buddha, you know, comprising of the wrists,
which we'll, we'll probably we'll look at that on on film at
(23:19):
some point and, and make that available to be seen.
It followed the same format as the Waititi Sanchin.
In other words, the first thing that the individual needs to
learn in this thing in in the ringtone system is how to flip
the weapon, how to change the weapon.
(23:42):
Now you see that in the bachang do form the the bachang do form
is in a later edition. It's a pale poppy and I don't
think it originates with the theringtone at all because the
ringtone systems already coveredthat.
And the Sulum Tau it does exactly the same.
(24:02):
Sorry, takes the exact same approach as the Waiti Sanchit in
that Section 1. So that would be the first part
of the Sulum. Tau teaches the fundamental
skill of flipping the weapon exactly in in the same way as
the Waiti Sanchit teaches the fundamental skill of flipping
(24:22):
the weapon so that you can use the weapon in both orientations.
And that was the key to looking at that serum town, something
that I'd done since I was a teenager.
Now I'm head towards 70. I've been doing it, I've been
under, I've been exposed to it for my entire adult life.
(24:44):
And it makes perfect sense that in both the weighty in the
Sanchin of the of Kalate and there's Julian Tao of of Wing
Chun, they're both involved withA2 or a weapon, and the primary
skill is to be able to flip themso that you can use them in both
(25:04):
of their orientations. Lovely.
You mentioned Buttom Dao. 8 cutting gourd swords.
That's that's that is literally what was this is the thing.
It's a red herring there that there's a a broad sword form
attached to the image and makes it look, you know, that's an
(25:28):
additional reference form and itsupports the idea that the that
the actual ring Chun is empty hands.
Now, you know, this is, you know, millions of people have
been involved in that, that whole ring Chun.
One of the things that made ringChun famous is that it was the
style the and they should have won Bruce Lee, the movie star
(25:52):
and and national artist, the late Bruce Lee.
Yeah, the iconic face of Chinesemaster, you know, Bruce Lee and
his background was, was ringtoned and and it's globally
believed. Yeah, this, you know, ringtoned
is an unarmed close quarter combat system.
(26:14):
I'm fanning that it seemed ineffective in UFC case
fighting, you know MMA it's completely and it's interesting
that the practitioners of it andI'm not going to do names
totally unable to to deploy the allegedly deadly skills of
(26:39):
Ringtoner in in a combat situation.
It's not because ringtone is ineffective.
It doesn't work. Ringtone is absolutely deadly if
it's using the weapons. Well, it's designed, it could be
useless. Which are the short the so the
baton refers to 8 cutting board swords.
(27:02):
And if you look at it, the wholeidea of eight, it's not that
different from Japanese swordsmanship in the sense that,
yeah, it is always logical and common to consider 88 directions
when using your blade. So the compass point is, is it
(27:24):
just a convenient teaching mnemonic?
You know, those are basically the angles that you can slash
and cut through. You know that that's, that's,
that's really what that's about.You know, those are the
literally angles that that you can use.
And they're obviously they're not going to be measured
(27:45):
microscopically, you know, exactly, you know, 1/8 of a of a
circle, but they're going to be,you know, you're going to cut
down 45 or horizontally or cut upwards, you know, and it's just
a way of so the eight cutting boards or refers to the
directions, the angles that the blades can be used at within.
(28:15):
It it may be the case that the the the the Bartramdo form is
people are going to get annoyed with me.
Keep saying this stage combat asas other Rep.
There are other representations in in the that have rich
connections with the Chinese opera.
(28:37):
Like styles like Honda and Choile foot are probably stage
combat rather than real fighting.
And they have a, you know, a represent, you know, forms that
produce stage fighting with butterfly swords.
And what you find in the in the Wing Chun forms that Nathan's
(28:59):
talked about is a very, very concise and brutally effective
method of fighting with those swords for real at close
quarters, which looks nothing like stage combat.
And there are some very, very important skills to master in
that, in those forms. Yeah.
(29:19):
That's all I say on on Chinese Opera today, I promise.
Looking at this historically nowwe know there's no written
records. There's nothing.
They're, they're all going to, you know, we're going to go,
well, where's the evidence? Where's the evidence?
There's no written records. How do you know, given that
(29:43):
we've already stated, you know, the kata, other manuals, the
form, other manual. We've already said that at a
previous podcast. Yeah.
What? What do you suppose the use of
it would a bit be? Why are you learning it?
I suspect it was probably for training militia.
(30:10):
I don't think it was, you know, there's, there's quite good
records from the Ming dynasty of, of military training methods
and, and there's a lot of manuals and there's a good bit
of history around that, what themilitary training actually
looked like. And you don't find any mention
of it in of the, of butterfly swords in that respect.
(30:32):
But so it's just we're only speculating here, but the area
that was in that it was in had huge amounts of they were
private armies, private militiasand vast amounts of pirates.
So I expect that the truth of what they were who was training
with these methods probably liessomewhere in between militia and
(30:55):
pirates and private armies. It might speak to the invite.
Sorry, Nathan. It might speak to the
environment that it was used in that it's this this very concise
close quarter method in the blades.
So my it's interesting. We could speculate on what the
environment was that it was usedin.
(31:16):
It's almost certainly not battlefield because there's no
footwork. There's no footwork for fighting
in on the battlefield. And it doesn't appear to be the
way that you move around and theobject of getting to the corner
and cutting and you know, we cango into all that stuff for the
gates and the centre line and things like that, but it doesn't
(31:39):
appear that it would be a very effective on a battlefield.
So we could speculate where it was used as well.
I just didn't throw one more quick thing in as well.
Just in terms of the history. I just wanted to pull out one of
the Jenga blocks from right at the bottom bottom of the pile.
And that Nathan mentioned uh Moiat the beginning.
(31:59):
And uh Moi's actually was actually a fictional character
from a style of fiction called Wuja, which is martial fiction,
which was immensely popular in the in the Ming Dynasty.
And and she was actually one of the villains of the story.
(32:19):
She actually sails out. Shaolin.
So yeah, it's kind of over time been taken.
It's like taking a comic book, isn't it a superhero from a
comic book and 200 years later they've become a fictional
person. But yeah, it's it's DC Comics.
That's exactly what the Moi and and the buck buck by two Jung,
(32:43):
the founder of white Eyebrows Kung Fu Buck me same thing.
It's these. These are DC comic.
Heroes or villains, Yeah, yeah. What's really interesting in in
that genre of fiction as well isthat they make reference in, you
know, famous Rouge novels like the Watermargin and, you know,
(33:07):
Journey to the West and and all the rest.
They make reference to real martial rituals and Taoist
rituals and reference to real martial arts and things like
that. So there is this kind of
crossover where, you know, they're drawing on like, you
know, a story about like Rocky draws on boxing.
(33:27):
You know, the martial fiction inmean China drew on real, you
know, inspiration from real martial arts.
So you get you get little bits and pieces here and there pop
up. And so it's trying to discern
what was, what's real history orwhat's history, what's fiction
(33:48):
and what's, you know, what's opera and all.
And so it takes time to unpick that.
But as we've said before, the primary source is the forms.
So you can ask, as Nathan alwayssaid, ask the forms.
And, and so you're going back and practising those Ring Chun
forms, you get a sense of, of how the butterfly swords would
be used and what the possibilities are.
(34:10):
And so when you start to look atother things like hunger or
choile foot and the way they're used to butterfly swords, you
can. Kind of deduce that they were
more like opera Kung Fu than forreal fighting and and things
like that. Yeah, well, if you if you when I
(34:30):
was learning and I mean, I, thisis, you know, I'm a man that was
obsessed with the subject. So it took over my entire life
and I looking at. So there were lots of other
martial arts around which I was really exposed to.
I did, you know, met lots of people who practised other arts
(34:56):
and so I saw that the toilet foot was really expensive.
The Hungarian and the Hung Kuning, they're always arguments
over which is the, you know, right, which is the hunger.
Let's just terms hunger. Hung Kun.
It's the Hung family going through.
But if you look at it, it is, asTom says, it's, it's quite
(35:20):
theatrical. It's big movement, lots of, you
know, interesting, excited, exciting movements.
It's very those arts are very expressive, whereas ringtones
like knock kneed sort of tight little movements that that you
know, in no way were they elegant or, you know, you know,
(35:44):
ringtones was pretty rubbish fordemonstration.
So so sort of no disrespect intended here.
They're boring compared with theKongard, you know, compared with
the two lay foot and and and theother Kung Fu styles you know,
were dynamic and expressive and expensive and had lots of
(36:06):
interesting movements. Ringtoned quite frankly didn't
have it was blocky and tight, not need and it's quite not not
not really good demonstration material.
They trusted it, believed in it,loved it and lived with it and
accepted that it was. I believe that there was
(36:28):
something very special about it.And as as any practitioner that
takes us, takes on a style, does, this is my style, this is
my family, this is my way, this is my stuff.
And I love it. And if you don't know what it is
because we didn't know what it was and it's, it would probably
be arrogant to sound arrogant tosay, well, most people don't.
(36:52):
I you know, it is the evidence is there that this is what
you're dealing with is a weapon system that is, is based on the
use of the broadsword and it's aan incredibly systematic
approach to cataloguing and and teaching how to use and deploy a
(37:17):
pair of razor sharp brawl swords.
And that's exactly what it does as the as the forms unfold,
culminating in the dummy form, which you described as something
to sort of harden the arms and so on.
(37:37):
There's lots of stuff said aboutit, none of most of which I
don't agree with. Another way of looking at that
the wooden man, which is a wooden post with two arms at
sort of shoulder height and one abdomen height and a sort of a
curved leg, you know, low, whichis muscles are very familiar
(38:04):
with it. It's it it you know, it's to
harden the arms. Look, your arms don't really get
hard. You can booze them, you can
callus them, but they're they'rejust arms and you, you know, an
individual with quote hardened arms, they're still prone to the
same. If anyone that's I've broken
(38:26):
both arms and both legs. So I know what factors are.
And it doesn't matter how fit strong young, how much I used to
use the wooden dummy in the way that I was taught.
It still didn't stop me getting a broken arm and we're just
(38:48):
fleshing blood. It's not the tool for hardening
the arms. And what it is is an impact like
a butcher's block. It's an impact target that these
that the broad swords can be used against with full power.
It's the only opportunity to getfull power training in the
(39:09):
deployment of these of the of the broad swords.
And the interesting thing is they're made originally they
were made of something called muktor wood.
And the muktor wood incredibly expensive.
It's like paying for teak or lignum viti, really expensive
wood. The muktor why was why, you
(39:30):
know, to to to quote harden yourarms or or do training deals.
Yeah, pine would be OK Pine ass would be good.
Any indigenous Chinese semi hardwood doesn't even need to be
a hardwood because it's just arms, you know, arms, but it's
muck tower wood. Why muck tower wood will like a
(39:55):
chopping block in a in a westernbutcher's.
If you know anyone that's ventedinto the butcher's sees that the
the block. With all the marks in it, and it
tends to get a bit hollowed out in the middle as it gets wiped
down and cleaned and scraped andscrubbed.
But it's a hard wearing item, which is what the Mukhtar would
(40:19):
was. But even then, if you look at
it, the arms were interchangeable.
You could take the peg out of the back, pull the arm out,
which is perfectly practical because you could then replace
the parts that were really goingto take the most damage, which
would be the arms. So the the sticking out arms,
(40:40):
three of them could be replaced and and obviously the body would
be solid and would be there to you know, it wouldn't need to
be. Why would you need to change it?
You, you, you wouldn't would, yes, it would take damage, but
not to the extent the arms would.
(41:00):
So those arms are completely replaceable.
And the wood was more colour wood, very, very, extremely
hardwood. And again, I'll repeat the
question. If you're banging your arms
against it and training, why do you need, why do you need that
expensive hardwood? You don't.
(41:22):
What can members do? Love you.
Sorry, no go on here. No can just remember us doing
the in the training in wing chime.
We used to, we used to actually bash our arms together.
I don't know what the hell that was really about.
It's toughening your arms up. I can remember.
(41:43):
It's a lovely, you get lovely feedback from cutting and you
know, really letting go with those cuts against the dummy.
You get all that feedback in thegrips, in your structure and
you've got something to do. You know, some of the techniques
involve pressing or hinting with, with one blade and cutting
(42:03):
with the other. So you get to really drive into
with the leverage and the pressure with one arm and the
hack away with the other one. And you can get all that
feedback into your stance and posture and structure.
So it's it's super. It's it's it's funny that now
(42:24):
you can buy pads to put around your wooden dummy to make it
softer to hit. Yeah, yeah, I.
Was. I was just thinking beasts do
that exercise in go Giroux as well.
The bashing the arms together. I don't know what.
(42:46):
Yeah, it's quite amusing really.It's a toughen your arms up.
No, just bloody hurts. But there's a massive, you know,
contradiction in Wing Chun in that you're trying to build
sensitivity in the sticking hands, but then you're trying to
toughen and harden your arms anddesensitise them by banging them
on the dummy. So which is it?
(43:10):
That we we, we we will need to revisit that the the sticking
hands things because it's an integral.
This is part of Wing Chun, but it needs to the it's origin and
the the fact that if you actually look at it so as I was
taught it, the essence was tan bong and fook.
(43:32):
So that's the bent hooked wrist.The bong sell the ring arm and
the palm up and tan bong and fook were the I was taught the
essence and and and that's fine.But the rest, it's funny.
If you look at the, the three forms and the dummy, none of it
ever gets reflected in the sticking hands and the bot.
(43:55):
And you've got all of those techniques, a huge catalogue of,
of movements and a range of movements at angles that just
don't appear in people can't. I've spent three years trying to
put all of the techniques from the ringtone forward into the
sticking hands. And it, it, it was a complete
(44:18):
desire and a abysmal failure. Couldn't do it.
And, and the, the, the people that I worked with it an entire
club. So I, I, I can remember the
number because it stuck in my head.
There were 20-3 other people besides myself who were trying
to fit these, the, the ring toneforms somehow into the sticking
(44:43):
hands and you had all sorts of things like the whisking hands,
the, the facts. So the, the cut to the side,
180° cut, you know, how could you get that?
Well, you had to completely shift your position, you know,
relative to your, your, your, your sticking hands, opponent or
partner, You know, just, it was impossible.
(45:06):
You know, 23 of us, 24 of us, including myself, just couldn't,
couldn't do it. You know, we spent so I
personally spent three years on that project to try and get the
try and get all of the ring timetechniques, including the 108 or
the depending on your teacher orbelief system, 108 or 116.
(45:30):
I personally believe it's 116 wooden man techniques.
Trying to get that into this, into the sticking hat
impossible. Couldn't do it, couldn't create
the the situation or the circumstances in which those
things would occur. The gun cells and the gun cells
when you then take a pair of butterfly knives and you do a
(45:52):
gun cell, you know, the top handcutting in the bottom and you
know, it's difficult to describe, but suddenly with the
with the broad swords, it's devastating, absolutely
horrendous, dangerous, terrible.Anyone on the receiving end of
(46:15):
that would be tougher. I think that to just to quickly
revisit the it's one stage up from policing.
So it's one stage up from the side.
But I think the environment is got a connection with the
maritime. It's a maritime.
(46:36):
I think it's a maritime environment.
I think it's it is possibly on deck on the ship most more
likely, I think on the key and Ithink it's potentially part of
guarding people don't well people who am I talking about?
There was a massive shipping trade, absolutely millions of
(47:02):
tonnes, the tonnage of the, the,the commerce in China, Ming
guinsey was mind blowing and allof it needed the leasing and
garden. I, I, I can't yet supply the
evidence I want to supply, but I, I am suggesting here that the
(47:23):
broad swords were involved in the control of, of, of, of
freight and shipping that sort of environment.
And as Tom says, it's not a battlefield because, you know,
bigger weapons would be standardswords and other weapons that
(47:45):
would be, well, firearms. Absolutely, absolutely.
Tom and firearms, cavalry. You mentioned it before, but
remind us, what century are we looking for?
When is this always happening? Oh, good question.
Literally, I think we're lookingat the all of this in my view is
(48:07):
Ming, it's Ming dynasty. We're looking at the 16th
century. We're looking at the late Ming.
It could be early mid Ming, but it's we're looking at so 15
something. That's what we're we're, we're
was. You know, I think it's worth
mentioning that when the Ming Dynasty was overthrown and
(48:32):
became the Qing Dynasty. There was a weapons ban there.
And so you know where we're speculating on why these martial
arts have survived without the weapons, there was an actual
weapons ban there. And that may account that may
account for it or one of the reasons that might be part of
the bigger picture of why Wing Chun carried on as a practise
(48:57):
without the weapons and then developed sticking hands later
on down the few generations. And that you know, and the same
with the way chief forms that they were practised unarmed in
China and and found their way toOkinawa and became karate.
It's quite it's quite bizarre tothink about how that happened.
(49:17):
But the scale of warfare, famine, disease, you know,
millions and millions of lives were lost over the course of few
100 years and so. It doesn't take a lot for
knowledge like what, you know, using a pair of butterfly swords
to become completely lost. Yeah, yeah.
(49:42):
The civil, the civil war, interesting.
It ran parallel with with absolute plague and famine.
So you had the civil war, which ultimately the Mantus were
sorry, the the dynasty changed from the Han people to the
Manchu, the northerners, and that was a massive culture
(50:06):
shift. And the Manchu's were I didn't
want to judge them, but they they are the ones that imposed
that Rep and ban that you described when he stole my
Thunder there, Tom that that that I can't find any other
culture. And as anthropology is actually
(50:28):
my subject, I can't find anotherculture.
And you know, if anyone knows ofone, please let us know.
Let me know that actually has training regimes for weapons
without the weapons being present.
But the, the Mantu weapon ban isactually creates that unique
(50:50):
environment and circumstance in which to, to continue the
tradition and and keep the teaching and the knowledge that
people would create the weapon form the movements, catalogue
the movements without the weapons being present because
they can't, you know, they, theycan't be fined or imprisoned or,
(51:13):
you know, because the, you know,the use of a weapon meant well,
the punishments were brutal. They were things, you know,
amputation of limbs and horriblethings.
But I can't find it that sort ofa weapons being practised
without the weapons anywhere else historically on the planet.
(51:35):
And it's interesting because Tomknows a bit about the German
fencing and, and, and the Germans and the Europeans had
fencing manuals. I can turn that over to you just
for to. Elaborate on that, Tom.
But they had fencing manuals. I there's not one to my
knowledge that performed the fencing movements without the
(51:56):
sword. Yeah, there's great, There's
some superb organisations that are that are taking these
European mediaeval martial arts of Europe and these training
methods and working out from themanuals how these methods were
performed and practised and thencreating a recreational
(52:19):
practises out of them, which is absolutely fantastic.
And you can see that on Emo and Gladiatory Scholar Gladiatory as
another great channel to look at.
And as well, essentially the same thing is that these forms
are manuals and they they found their way to Okinawa.
They found their way to Hong Kong later on, but found their
(52:43):
way there. But there's this, there's a
there's this, what connects themall is we've got these weapons
manuals without the weapons. And it's.
Yeah. So it's sort of trying to
understand why that might be thecase in speculating on it until
if some evidence survives or or something to help us kind of
(53:06):
line that up. Properly.
I suspect there are more forms as well.
I suspect there are others. Elsewhere, but it's keeping an
eye out for them. Yeah, but I think to round up
the the idea of the of styles, lots and lots of styles is can
(53:29):
appear to be confusing. But the PAC may the toilet PAC
May is quite if you look at the PAC, if you look at the nine
step push the Galbao toy toy of but may it's very, very similar
to Santin. So you can see a Santin based
practise. So I would I would say that
suggests that pack may has its roots in an original system of
(53:55):
of weapons. But when you get to hung guard
toilet foot and the rest of those that all that very
flowery. And I think Tom is absolutely
right. These are all demonstrating
pieces. They're Chinese opera theatre
and they are not that why it's so difficult to see how they can
work practically, but again, whythey won't work in the fish site
(54:18):
or MMA or UFC. You know you're not going to see
Ongar or any of the traditional so-called.
Kung Fu styles. So 2 reasons.
One is if you're looking at something like Buckme or Wing
Chun, they are weapons sets, weapons forms, weapons based.
If you look at any of the flowery styles, they're demon
(54:41):
demonstratives. They are theatrical.
They are not actual combat systems and they're based on
part weapons. And this is that people haven't
been only to make them work. Now there will be diehards out
there who are really going to dislike what we are saying here
(55:01):
and disagree with us, but it remains the case that we have
not seen any of the traditional Kung Fu styles used effectively
in any kind of. And it's interesting that in the
MMA and the UFC, you know practitioners aren't wearing
gloves. So the old excuse that the
(55:21):
boxing gloves would destroy all the exotic hand positions and
that that doesn't hold any water.
And the excuse that the techniques are too deadly or
dangerous and eye gouges and groyne kicks can't be used
anything. You know, who knows where a
kick's directed in an MMA match?Yeah, they're not seeing rings,
(55:44):
run and hung guard and toilet front being used in any kind of
freestyle fight. You're always going to get
someone coming back and say, well, it's not meant for the the
ring, it's not meant for the MMA.
It's meant for the streets. It's meant for the alleys.
If you can't make it work in in an you know, it's an environment
(56:07):
like the MMA arena where someone's going to stop the
fight before you get too hurt, then you know I'm going to make
it work. What about kicks?
There's a close, short low kick in the form.
The ringtone practitioner and and.
The best example is in the dummyset.
(56:30):
The ringtone practitioner is basically kicking usually the
inside or the outside of the knee.
So it's you've got 2 blades being deployed simultaneously, 2
meat cleavers, butchers, knives and and.
But there's a knee kick that's that's brought into play, which,
(56:51):
which is designed to to ruin theposture of your of the opponent,
making him even easier to totally destroy with the with
the broth of these are brutal weapons and and and ring China
is a devastating system. No question, absolutely no
(57:12):
question. It's far more lethal in its
proper application than ever imagined by the people that want
to use it as an unarmed art. It's not it's not an unarmed
art. It's not an unarmed art.
It's deployed with these with two two razor sharp by a broad
swords absolutely devastated andthat's all the time we have.
(57:36):
For today, thanks for listening to Great Karate Myths.
Debunking the legends. Today, we stripped back the
mystique of Wing Chung, exploring its supposed origins,
cinematic allure, and the provocative idea that it was
never meant to be an unarmed system at all.
From chain punches to butterfly swords, we've questioned the
lineage, debunked the legends, and open the door to a radical
(57:59):
reinterpretation. If you're enjoying the journey
through martial arts mythology, follow us.
Leave a review, share, and let us know which myths you want to
see tackled next. Until next time, keep
questioning the legend.
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