Wen Hsiu Quan

While a lot of the people I know are on about what is happening in some show called Game of Thrones or Riverdale or the like my series that I follow without fail is this- Dragonball Super Since the first appearance of Dragonball in a Japanese weekly magazine we have first gotten to know the main character Goku as the fearless young boy with amazing strength, a magical fighting staff, a cloud on which to ride and of course- martial arts skills. Dragonball Z showed us the adult Goku- married and well on his way to achieve a transformation that existed only in the legends of his native people, the Saiyans. Dragonball GT is not going to be mentioned in this post. Dragonball and Dragonball Z saw Goku surviving one physical ordeal after the other. Being beaten up, having to train on a planet with 10 times the Earth's gravity and many more challenges. These challenges were all overcome and as they got overcome Goku emerged with some new power level which had greatly enh...

Not so long ago, in a Karate class, one of our Senseis said after a really good class: "This is an art- let's make it look beautiful." We have also heard a reference to "artistic fighters" in other classes. Apparently I, with my love for unorthodox (yet classical) attack and defense patterns and spinning techniques, am labelled as such an "artistic fighter". Is this what being a martial artist is about? Taking a fight and making it look beautiful? I must confess that in my vanity I have often endeavoured to make my sparring matches worth looking at, but that is hardly the main objective of what I practice and what I have learned.    That is also not why any martial art, be it Karate, Kungfu, Judo or anything else is called a "martial art" instead of just a "combat science", "fighting method" or "fighting system". At the moment, for instance, I'd say ...

I realised at the end of a really busy week that tomorrow was going to be the 12th of November. This date holds huge significance to me as a person and I realise that for Wenhsiuquan this is a really important day as well.  On this date in 2002 I have met Chen Yu Chi. Yu Chi, or Carol as she was known to me back then, was 26 at the time. I was 24. I have just finished my LLB exams for that year and showed up for work at the Chinese Restaurant when she had just arrived with her friend Jamie from Johannesburg's OR Tambo Airport. At that time I thought I would get along with all Chinese people in general. I realise now, however, that this woman is a rare breed. This post, however, is not about her as a woman, but about what she had taught me of Chinese martial arts. Looking at Kungfu nowadays I would understand if the public associates it with flowery movements, acrobatics and spectacular techniques. This has been perpetuated by the sport known as W...

Let me say right from the beginning that there is nothing to learn from today's post- unless you are one of those who collect the photos at the bottom every week.  I simply had too much on my mind this last week to form any idea of what to write. Still- I like writing blog posts for my favourite community on G+ and to chat with other martial artists during the weekend. For many of us martial arts make up that part of our lives devoted to going to class, meet other students, train with students, hearing announcements and maybe even chatting with classmates before or after class. It was pretty much like that for me as well until a while ago. Largest part of my life, however, I have trained by myself. I have grown up with lots of examples on how to do it and after-training meditation is still one of the greatest parts of each morning. This is the ultimate me-time... I understand very well that we all have our own experiences of humanity an...

Sun Tzu wrote in the Art of War wrote "If you know yourself you have one third's chance at victory. If you know yourself and your enemy you have two thirds' chance at victory. If you know yourself, the enemy and the battlefield victory is certain." All good and simple until you realise that the time at which you will know all 3 of the above shall very rarely occur. What it tells us about tournaments- where we can leave the battlefield out of the equation since we can safely assume that both fighters would know it ( fighting area, rules etc.) it means that your chances in a tournament should be 50/50 right? Well... if only the outcome of fights or sparring matches hinged on knowledge alone... The fact remains, where fighting is concerned, victory is seldom if ever guaranteed...  This is not only true for fighting, but for many areas in life. Growth, be it in financial investments, business or our personal lives, require the taki...

I remember learning the concept behind chi sao (sticking hands) in Yongchuan or Wing Chun. Although many teachers insist on having one learn and memorise the different defensive positions found in Wimg Chun forms I have found that these positions are naturally occurring events in a sparring match if a student understands the basics. Later- when I have learnt about Shaolin force training, though, I have realised that we cannot just discard basic movements or positions in martial arts. They are practiced repeatedly for a reason. Wing Chun is certainly not the only Chinese martial art that has fixed positions that one learn to move from the one to the other. In fact- Karate and Taekwondo forms have the same thing. Each of these positions represent a certain moment in time. It may be the moment your attacker's arm got lifted to expose his ribs, his fist got knocked downward to expose his upper body or face or that moment of having created just enough space for th...