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.