What is a kung fu master?
The title Master is being used by so many unqualified people. How have they managed to get this title? Who gave them the title? Nowadays people of all ages can call themselves a master without any authority. They spend a few months or a few years training abroad and then come back calling themselves a master. Opening training schools and teaching without understanding the art and the skill of teaching others, not only ruins the art but the students too. Imagine training with someone for years and later finding out he was not genuine. How would you feel as a student when you had put your faith and trust in him? With so many people calling themselves “master” or‚ “grandmaster” nowadays, it has become something that is of no importance.
People like me who have worked all their lives to reach the level feel that it has no meaning and it is degrading to the art and its principles. It’s okay to open a school to start up a business but you must be true to yourself and the students, otherwise you can ruin the lives of others. It seems that they have no idea what a master and student relationship really is.
Understanding the basic respect for the one who taught you is not known; once they get their black sash they are gone. Yet to me it’s just the beginning of their journey.
People have now gone power mad, wanting everything too quickly, opening schools all over the place just for financial gain, without any concern for other people’s feelings. Let me define the word Master in Chinese (Sifu).
A master is a man of great experience in his skills, knowledge, and perfection of the art, after years of hard work and guidance he received from his master.
The title will be given to him once his master feels that he is the person who is morally able and kind enough to carry on the tradition of the art. By then he should possess the art of energy treatment after years of harnessing the art.
If a student of mine wants to be an instructor. They will be tested by me regularly to make sure they are following the right path so that the art of Wing Chun can progress to the next generation.
If they decide after a while to go their own way (as we live in a free society which I embrace), then they will not be allowed to teach under my name. It took me a lifetime of sacrifice, hard work, dedication and nearly forty-five years to reach my goal. I am not interested in quick financial gain to ruin it. I just want to teach and learn, and improve more, not only my martial art skills but also simply in being a human being on Mother Earth.
There are people nowadays who claim they had taught me this or that in my younger days, and want to make themselves feel superior to me, as I am now a well known master in martial arts worldwide — they just want to put me down.
To me this is childish; in those times I loved to train with lots of different martial artists to further my experience, and wanted to see how different styles work in order to further my skills. At the end of the day I did train in Malaysia with a few Taoist priests in the temple and with my uncle in energy and martial arts, but most of my training skills and knowledge were taught to me by my Master Lee Shing. To me he was my only master and I am so grateful to have met him and learnt from him.
The reason my Master taught all his skills to me but not to others is because I believed in him and was always grateful for his kindness in teaching me and if ever there were problems, like challenges from others, I was always there. While most of his other students always made excuses not to be there, I am sure my Master knew who was his true student not by words but by actions. My popularity is not due to the fact that I trained with a famous master, or claim to be teaching the right lineage or original ways, but is due to my belief in showing the world what Wing Chun and The natural method are, in a truthful way.
Now I just want to pass on these skills to the next generation.
