Authority in Kung Fu (Wing Chun)

What I am going to discuss in this article may upset some people.  Recently in one of many Wing Chun online groups a debate about the real fighting skills arose. Certain master and lineage he belongs to was brought to the discussion and I pointed out that master, according to his own statement, never had a fight in his life, never practiced for fighting and his style is designed for everything else except fighting. Regardless of the fact that I just quoted the ”master” mentioned above, that I presented his own words, several of his followers asked me where my authority comes from? Authority to quote something that was publically said?!  Authority to have my own opinion?!  Seems that I need authority to even participate in an open debate if I have opinion that is different from the opinion of other participants. But the real question is, where does any kind of authority in Chinese Martial Arts come from?

World of kung fu is dominated or at least people pretend that it is dominated by old Confucian family system. Individuals were embedded in a network of relationships based on formality, hierarchy, social roles, and obligations. In traditional family compliance with formal norms of behavior is expected. Everyone had to accept the hierarchy and duties of the Confucian family, and whoever refused to do so was considered an outsider, an outcast, despised by his parents and relatives for not fulfilling their obligations. What is expected of every family member is compliance with ancient norms.

In traditional Confucian family as well as in Kung Fu family, authority does not come from any form of real competence. Amount of knowledge or skill is completely unimportant, what is important is inherited place in particular social network, being a family or kung fu school\style. In traditional Confucian family older person always have higher place in the social hierarchy and his opinion is always more important and have more value than the younger person. Family member will always have higher place than the outsider. Place of Kung Fu style grandmaster will be inherited by the eldest son, not by the best fighter, person with highest level of skills and knowledge (that is one of the reasons why there are so many self-proclaimed grandmasters). It doesn’t matter if the person has any real skills or knowledge, if his father is a founder of the style, he will be next head of the style even if he doesn’t have any skills at all, and he will be respected never the less.

That is the reason why there are so many grandmasters and masters who projects their authority to their subordinates which comes from their place in social hierarchy, not from the real skill or knowledge. Sadly this hierarchy and authority was accepted on West as well without any question and that is a consequence of the fact that majority of people interested in Kung Fu on West share certain psychological features,but that is a subject for another article.