Here’s a video from 2012 of me playing hands with a student who learned Wing Chun from me in the past.

In 2012 this student has not learned from me for a few years. In between he had learned from masters in China and Hong Kong. Since I was in China for a meeting we met and played hands.

I am using the concept of knives as hands in the above video. However, this may make no sense.

However, now I have a video of my playing the knives ad-hoc so this should make clear the idea.

Observe, how the knives are played with stepping and angling to evade a weapon like the long pole, so that I can close in, take away the advantage of the pole’s reach, then I can crowd in and apply the knives techniques.

Transpose this idea to the hands and watch how I used the same steps to evade, close in and apply the emptyhand techniques.

In this sense, the knives are the hands and vice versa.