In October 2001 Windy City Wing Chun was proud to bring Wing Chun Master Augustine Fong. This marked the second time Windy City Wing Chun brought Master Fong to Chicago. The topic of this seminar was Street self-defense, Chi sau and bridging the two together. 

The seminar started off with a question & answer session. The question of, “How do you fight with Chi sau. Sifu Fong explained how Chi sau is just a training tool. Chi sau is not sparring. One must learn the principle of chi sau and learn to apply that to fighting. Another questioned that was asked was about the 13 principles of wing chun. Sifu Fong explained how sometimes you use some of the principles and there are times you use all of the principles. Other questioned asked were on chi sauing with people taller than you. Sifu explained how you should sink more against a taller person and play your own game. Another question asked, “Is weight lifting good for wing chun?” Sifu explained that it is fine if you know how to use the muscle. If you don’t know how to use the muscle it you will be limited. 

Next Sifu started from the very beginning of Wing Chun. He started to talk about the sinking of the dan tien. Sifu brought a few of the students up to help him demonstrate. Sifu helped correct the students. The abdomen must be relaxed. The back must be straight and there should be natural tension on the legs. Once Sifu corrected the stance he had a battle of the wu sau’s. Needless to say, Sifu won. 

Sifu then fielded questions of how Wing Chun is applied in real street situations. Sifu answered questions on what is Wing Chun’s answer to punches, palms, and kicks. How does a Wing Chun man fight verse a boxer, karate, Tai kwon doe, wrestling, arm locks and anything else people could come up with. Try as people could, Sifu had a counter for everything. Sifu explained that as long as you play your own game, you’d do fine. Don’t get caught up in playing the other person’s game. 

We then started with the hands on part of the seminar. The first thing practiced was Man Sau (asking hands). One person would go in and punch the other person. The second person would then have to try to stick and redirect the initial punch and subsequent punches. After initially trying with punching, Sifu explained there are other ways to do asking hands. The students then practiced pak da and lop da. Again, the second person was to try to stick to the first. Sifu then had the students’ practice ‘shooting’ on their partner. Shooting is when a wrestler were to try to grab your legs. 

Sifu then went into the second part of the seminar, Chi Sau. Sifu started with a brief review of chi sau. Sifu gave his water bottle example. If you hold up you hand and another person holds up their hand and you put a bottle of water in-between your hands. One person leads and the other tries to ‘stick’. As each person moves you want to prevent the bottle from breaking. One wants to try to keep the correct amount of pressure so the bottle doesn’t drop. The students weren’t sitting for long. Sifu had the students start off with some chi sau walking. After that the students were practicing different attack combinations on each other. Sifu continued to walk around and assist the participants all day long. Sifu would do chi sau with anyone who asked. 

Sifu finished up the seminar with some final Q & A. Sifu was, as usual; very generous with the amount of information he gave. Sifu held nothing back. The seminar participants walked away with a lot of information.