A Taiwanese Wing Chun Tradition I Encountered in 2013
In 2013, a friend who knew that I practiced Wing Chun asked me whether I had ever heard of “Taiwanese Wing Chun.”
I said yes. I assumed he was referring to Lo Man Kam's system, which is strongly associated with Taiwan.
He wasn't.
My friend told me that one of his neighbors practiced a Taiwanese system called Wing Chun and offered to introduce us. Initially I wasn't particularly interested. At the time I assumed it was probably another school established during the surge of interest that followed the Ip Man films.
A few weeks later, however, my friend arranged a meeting.
What I found was nothing like the Wing Chun I had expected.
A Very Different Wing Chun
The system was called 五枚詠春拳, and its curriculum was substantially different from the better-known Hong Kong Wing Chun systems I had encountered.
At the time of my visit, I was shown a system containing twelve empty-hand forms.
None closely resembled the familiar Siu Nim Tao, Chum Kiu and Biu Jee forms.
Six were relatively short. To my eyes, they looked somewhat like combinations of the short san sik exercises found in some Wing Chun traditions. The remaining six were considerably longer and required much more space to perform.
The weapons curriculum was also different.
I did not encounter the familiar Wing Chun butterfly knives. Instead, practitioners used two short steel bars, together with a wider selection of traditional Chinese weapons.
There was also no Chi Sao in the form familiar from the Wing Chun systems I knew.
Instead, they practiced contact drills intended to develop immediate reactions when physical contact with an opponent was established.
Familiar Principles in an Unfamiliar System
Despite these differences, certain aspects of the system felt familiar.
There were concepts of short and long bridges, and some of the fighting strategies and footwork reminded me strongly of other Wing Chun systems.
The body structure, meanwhile, reminded me more of Fujian White Crane.
That is a practitioner's observation rather than a historical conclusion. Similar body mechanics cannot by themselves establish a genealogical relationship between martial arts.
Nevertheless, I found the combination fascinating.
Had nobody told me the name of the system, I doubt I would have identified it as Wing Chun simply by watching its forms.
Their Origin Tradition
The practitioners also preserved their own account of the system's history.
According to what I was told, their lineage traced its origins to Ng Mui and reached Taiwan during the period of Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) and his campaign against the Dutch in 1661–1662.
This requires an important distinction.
Zheng Chenggong's campaign against Dutch-controlled Taiwan is historical. The claim that this particular martial tradition arrived with that movement is a lineage tradition, and I have not independently verified it.
I was also told that the system was subsequently preserved within anti-Qing secret-society networks.
The group possessed documents that they believed supported their history. I saw that such documents were preserved, but I did not conduct the kind of examination necessary to establish their age, provenance or historical significance.
I therefore cannot present them as proof of the lineage's seventeenth-century claims.
They are, however, potentially interesting material deserving further investigation.
A Relatively Closed Training Community
Another thing that distinguished the group was its training culture.
My understanding at the time was that membership was relatively closed and normally required an introduction.
Training also contained a significant fighting component.
Saturday evenings were devoted to what the practitioners called “fight night.” Protective equipment was used, but the emphasis was on serious fighting practice rather than simply demonstrating forms.
This was particularly interesting because the system looked very different from the Wing Chun traditions familiar to me while retaining certain tactical ideas that I recognized immediately.
Why I Remember This Encounter
I cannot establish that this system represents an older form of Wing Chun.
I cannot establish its claimed connection with Ng Mui.
And I cannot establish that it arrived in Taiwan in 1661.
Those are historical questions requiring evidence beyond oral tradition and technical comparison.
What I can document is much simpler.
In 2013 I encountered a Taiwanese martial-arts community practicing a system they identified as Wing Chun that was dramatically different from the better-known Hong Kong traditions. They preserved their own forms, weapons, fighting methods, documents and an origin tradition connecting their system with seventeenth-century Taiwan.
That alone makes the system worth recording.
One of the dangers in discussing Wing Chun history is assuming that the traditions most visible today represent everything that existed in the past.
Sometimes the most interesting thing we can do is simply document what we encounter before it disappears.