RIP Wong Jack Man

Discussion on the three big Chinese internals, Yiquan, Bajiquan, Piguazhang and other similar styles.

RIP Wong Jack Man

Postby shawnsegler on Thu Jan 10, 2019 10:29 am

Another one passes into history.

RIP.
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Re: RIP Wong Jack Man

Postby everything on Thu Jan 10, 2019 10:46 am

RIP Wong Jack Man.

A master of taijiquan and xingyiquan whose fight led Bruce Lee to find wing chun inadequate and develop jkd (which for some reason didn't seem to incorporate the big 3 ima) - It seems to me it's a famous fight that is a high profile victory for taijiquan, as well as an impetus for some of the jkd ideas having such an impact on ma in general and modern mma).
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Re: RIP Wong Jack Man

Postby windwalker on Thu Jan 10, 2019 11:02 am

A teacher of a good friend of mine.
Very interesting some of the stories
about him.

Kind of funny some of the comments he made about the movie done on his interaction with BL.
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Re: RIP Wong Jack Man

Postby wayne hansen on Thu Jan 10, 2019 12:40 pm

He must have been quite an age
Would love to hear some of those stories
The reason Bruce didn't include the 3 internals in JKD after his defeat was he didn't know any
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Re: RIP Wong Jack Man

Postby GrahamB on Fri Jan 11, 2019 1:54 am

No, his first martial art was Wu style Tai Chi Chun from his father. He knew about all internal styles.

The reason he didn't include them in Jeet Kune Do (beyond a lot of Taoist and Zen philosophy, which he did include) is that - (and brace yourself for this) - he didn't think they were much use for actual fighting.
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Re: RIP Wong Jack Man

Postby wayne hansen on Fri Jan 11, 2019 7:15 pm

You seem to know more than me
What was his Wu style lineage
How long did he train
Who were his ba kua and hsing I teachers
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Re: RIP Wong Jack Man

Postby Steve James on Fri Jan 11, 2019 7:34 pm

Well, there are a lot of stories about what BL learned. Afa whether he incorporated tcc into his art (i.e., jkd -not movie-fu), the symbol he chose for his art puts the "taichi" symbol at the center. Yep, there are other arts that use the symbol. In fact, tcc doesn't have a symbol. And "tai chi" is a universal concept. However, saying that Lee didn't include tcc (?) because he didn't find it useful implies that one should be able to see tcc in his fighting. I would argue that Lee's entire martial philosophy was based on making whatever he used his own. The "Classical mess" was the attempt to express a martial art rather than express oneself.


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Re: RIP Wong Jack Man

Postby Steve James on Fri Jan 11, 2019 7:38 pm

And, RIP Wong Jack Man.
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Re: RIP Wong Jack Man

Postby Graculus on Fri Jan 11, 2019 7:47 pm

As far as Wong Jack Man goes, at the time of his fight, I believe his major style was Beishaolin (Gu Ruzhang's style) – he concentrated on the internal styles (as passed down in that line) more as he got older. He agreed not to use his kicks (for which Beishaolin was famous) in the fight with Bruce.

Bruce Lee, of course, researched aspects of this or very similar styles such as Ching Wu, and evidence of this can be seen in his notes and on film. Was this because of the fight or was it because he wanted something more flamboyant for the movies? – I don't know. I haven't seen any evidence that he had any serious relationships to any 'internal' teachers of note (and from what I know of the Hong Kong martial arts scene in those days, getting 'in the door' was not as easy as it is now), and considering his age when he left Hong Kong, I doubt he had much exposure to high level taiji.


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Re: RIP Wong Jack Man

Postby windwalker on Fri Jan 11, 2019 9:47 pm

shawnsegler wrote:Another one passes into history.

RIP.


Interesting how a tribute to one of the early pioneers of
Chinese martial arts becomes talk of what took place.....

Does it matter.

Image
Lau Bun (left) and TY Wong were enforcers for the Hop Sing Tong in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and oversaw the neighborhood’s martial arts culture for more than a quarter century. Having largely predated the modern era of martial arts media, their pioneering careers often go unnoticed. (Lau Bun photo courtesy of UC Berkeley, TY Wong courtesy of Gilman Wong)


A high school friend of mine treacher was TY Wong long since passed,
his and others stories never got much press outside of china town.

https://chinesemartialstudies.com/2016/ ... n-america/

For those interested the link has some history and perspective back in the day.

BL studied a lot of philosophy
a major influence


If I were foolish enough to give you a system and if you were foolish enough to
follow it, you would merely be copying, imitating, conforming, accepting, and
when you do that you have set up in yourself the authority of another and hence
there is conflict between you and that authority.

You feel you must do such and such a thing because you have been told to do it and yet you are incapable of
doing it. You have your own particular inclinations, tendencies and pressures
which conflict with the system you think you ought to follow and therefore there is
a contradiction.

So you will lead a double life between the ideology of the system
and the actuality of your daily existence. In trying to conform to the ideology, you
suppress yourself - whereas what is actually true is not the ideology but what you
are.

If you try to study yourself according to another you will always remain a
secondhand human being.


J. Krishnamurti


If one looks at what BL wrote, Krishnamuriti, seems to be echoed in much of his writings.
Last edited by windwalker on Fri Jan 11, 2019 9:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: RIP Wong Jack Man

Postby wayne hansen on Fri Jan 11, 2019 11:31 pm

Yes I can pick the sources of a lot of Bruce's writing
The little bit of tai chi I see him doing is yang not Wu as stated earlier
If he had studied Wu in Hong Kong at that time it would have been with either CTH or the family
If it was CTH I'm sure he would have had some of it in JKD
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Re: RIP Wong Jack Man

Postby meeks on Thu Jan 17, 2019 3:01 pm

So was the fight between BL and WJM because he didn't want BL to teach non-Chinese?
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Re: RIP Wong Jack Man

Postby marvin8 on Thu Jan 17, 2019 5:00 pm

meeks wrote:So was the fight between BL and WJM because he didn't want BL to teach non-Chinese?

Not according to others.

Excerpt from "BRUCE LEE VS. WONG JACK MAN: FACT, FICTION AND THE BIRTH OF THE DRAGON," http://fightland.vice.com/blog/bruce-le ... the-dragon:

Charles Russo wrote:
Image
TY Wong (standing, 2nd from right) with his teenage students in his Kin Mon Physical Culture studio on Waverly Place in Chinatown. Notice his one white student (Noel O'Brien) on the top right, who followed Al Novak in a steady stream of non-Chinese students that TY taught throughout the 1960s. (Photo courtesy of Gilman Wong)

“Chinese-Only…?

The long-held rationale for Bruce Lee’s fight with Wong Jack Man has asserted that top brass in Chinatown took exception to Bruce teaching non-Chinese students kung fu, and sent Wong Jack Man over to Oakland as an enforcer to settle the matter with fists. This theory, which was rendered in heavy-handed fashion in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, has always been completely void of details as far as who exactly took exception. If anyone in Chinatown was to make this call, it would likely have come down from Lau Bun or TY Wong. Yet, there is not only scant evidence to support this, but developments at the time prove highly contrary to this perspective.

When asked about the idea that Chinatown sought to reprimand Bruce for teaching non-Chinese, Al Novak—a hulking WWII veteran and close friend of James Lee—shrugged it off, “I think that’s mostly made up.” Novak would know, because by 1960 he was a white student regularly training with TY Wong at Kin Mon in Chinatown without incident. A few years later, TY took on Noel O’Brien, a local Irish teenager. In Hung Sing, Lau Bun was training a Hawaiian named Clifford Kamaga, and also showing no open opposition to his senior student Bing Chan, who was accepting all types of students at his own newly-opened school just a couple blocks away in Chinatown.

Image
Lau Bun (2nd from top right, with glasses) standing with Hop Sing Tong members and a Lion Dance squad in Marysville, California, during Chinese New Year celebrations in 1961. Lau Bun's Los Angeles colleague and noted kung fu master Ark Wong (2nd from top right) would eventually give a formal interview to Black Belt Magazine in 1965 expressing that he was open to teaching all types of students, regardless of race. (Photo courtesy of UC Berkeley)

Of course, the situation was not without nuance. Bruce Lee’s early classes, particularly in Seattle, were indeed groundbreaking for how diverse they were, in terms of both race and gender. And the Chinese-only martial arts code was a very real policy that existed for decades, and one that had surfaced against Bruce at various early points in his life. Yet the code was in its final throes by the 1960s. In fact, in early 1965 (very shortly after Bruce’s showdown with Wong Jack Man) Ark Wong, a well-respected kung fu master in Los Angeles, gave a high profile cover story interview to Black Belt Magazine in which he said in explicit terms that he was open to taking on any type of student willing to learn from him.

So for as tangible as the exclusion code had been, martial artists from the Bay Area—including many of Bruce’s colleagues—widely express skepticism at the idea of it being the core reason for that particular fight.
“It was never about that,” says Leo Fong, a versatile veteran martial artist who knew the landscape well. “It really had to do with Bruce’s personality.”
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