Author: Rene Ritchie
Summary:
-Some preface by wing chun masters
-Several legends on the founding of wing chun
-History of wing chun in recent centuries
-Basic wing chun concepts and fundamentals
-Forms
-General information on training
-Brief mention of more advanced skills and training
-Glossary of terms
Review:
With a martial art like Wing Chun, it is be difficult to map its origins, since it spans back pretty far in history. The book gives a few different legends on the founders of Wing Chun, though there aren't any sources on the information. Getting into the "History" section, some real people are named, who probably existed; once again, no sources, no interviews, no gleaning of ancient texts, just word of mouth. While it might be the only source of information, I know I have read martial arts books in the past where the author clearly spouts information that is false (taekwondo's origins in taek'kyon, for example). I don't want to mistrust the information given here, but its hard to fully believe it if I don't know who said it.
Getting into the "Fundamentals" section, the book gives some explanation of the methods of attacking, defending, and the like, but not really much on why they do this. Afterward, the book continues to the next section on the opening form and the 12 forms. Though interesting to view, I wish it spent less time on this and more on explanations on the fundamentals, on why this is a better method than other martial arts. Even if there is no comparison, a justification would be good to have. If I wanted to learn Wing Chun, I would get an instructor, or at least buy an instructional manual. I wouldn't buy a history book.
Getting into the "Fundamentals" section, the book gives some explanation of the methods of attacking, defending, and the like, but not really much on why they do this. Afterward, the book continues to the next section on the opening form and the 12 forms. Though interesting to view, I wish it spent less time on this and more on explanations on the fundamentals, on why this is a better method than other martial arts. Even if there is no comparison, a justification would be good to have. If I wanted to learn Wing Chun, I would get an instructor, or at least buy an instructional manual. I wouldn't buy a history book.
The training section was brief and I had been hoping for more. Methods of training, conditioning, some more information on the unique wooden dummy training - justifications for using one - would be really interesting to read but it just isn't there.
I feel like this book had the potential to be really interesting based on its table of contents, but it spent too much time on instruction, which should really fall to a master of the art, and not enough effort was put into the history, fundamentals, methods, and basis of training Wing Chun. Hopefully the next book will be more useful for me. I'll have to wait and see.
I feel like this book had the potential to be really interesting based on its table of contents, but it spent too much time on instruction, which should really fall to a master of the art, and not enough effort was put into the history, fundamentals, methods, and basis of training Wing Chun. Hopefully the next book will be more useful for me. I'll have to wait and see.
Overall Score: 3/5
