Today is the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year so I have a little time to take a look at the topics I put up for My Kung Fu Chatter.

I didn’t know how many chapters I had until I listed them down and found that I have 50 chapters. And these do not include those topics that came to mind but I did not list down as most of the topics come to mind when I don’t have the smartphone or pen handy to list it down. If I can’t remember it again it is probably a topic that is good to write about but not compelling enough for me to must write about it.

Below are the 50 chapters in no particular order :-

Introduction
Play the Game
The Three Prohibitions
The 7-Point Hands
Tricks of Speed and Power
Low Percentage, High Percentage
SLTB
LOL LOL
You Don’t Know Until You Know You Don’t Know
Iron Palm
The Dong Way
Mao Shan White Magic
Bye Bye Hand
No Money, No Honey
Scent of the Internal
Genius of Charp Chui Angle
Bad for Health
This Mysterious Art
Fate or Not
Got Chi?
To Chamber or Not to Chamber
WYSIWYG
White Belt Forever
Greedy to Hit
Reference Standard
Lonely is the Path
Kata The Key to Flow
Transmitting a Live Art
Using EDC for Self Defense
Nash Equilibrium and Why All Styles Are Equal
Worshiping the Dead
The Fulcrum & The Poleman
Making Sense of BJJ
Seeds of NGK Pole
Spearing Stability
Breathe
Being a Student Again
Making Sense Till It Does Not
Best Time to Learn
Lessons from Koryu Katas
Soft & Pliant Hands
The Yum, The Chau & The Sau
The Unchanging Sameness
Kill Buddha
Countering Internal Power
What I Learned from Cross Training
Science Speak
10,000 Repetitions
The Importance of Forgetting
10,000 Hours

Some are style specific topics, some are sub-topic of a style, a number are general topics and across styles. Some topics have been completed. Many are ideas that I quickly put down in a summary so that I can remember what I wanted to write about.

The topic list is likely to keep growing because ideas can be suggested by what I read or triggered in the midst of training or thinking through a training issue. For example, someone posted a picture of Yang Cheng Fu side by side with two pictures of Cheng Man Ching.

The topic that these three pictures triggered is something I have touched on when teaching but now I think it will make an excellent idea for a 51st chapter which I tentatively called “Flying Elbow and the Resist Reflex” but after thinking it over I might change it to “Training The Propensity to Resist” as this reflected my learning experience.

Some topics may end into two or three chapters. Some might be taken out if they are repeating the same thing in another topic. I try to keep the number of topics to no more than 100 so that I have to stop somewhere.

Continuing to write the chapter.

I am using the example of the centerline vs median line vs central line to lead into what the chapter really is about, a chatter about a little known style of Wing Chun. A style that impresses many first time viewers with its soft, flowing movements that is reminiscent of Tai Chi.

A big wind is blowing from the east. A cooling wind that blows in some information that could shed a little more light on this system that is transmitted by road instead via the waterways which is how the other Wing Chun systems entered Fatshan.

Update – I completed the chapter. 75% of the 12 pages was on this lesser known style of Wing Chun, a style many have heard of but so little is known.

I will write another chapter on what I learned in this style. The information I learned was like a general formula of Wing Chun which can be used to understand other Wing Chun styles. I never learned another Wing Chun style after this style.

One of the very first things we learn in Ip Man style Wing Chun is the centerline (Chung Seen, 中线). In Yuen Kay San Wing Chun their centerline is called the meridian line (Jee Ng Seen, 子午线).

Why the difference in name?

Is it a case of tomahto tomayto?

In the chapter You Don’t Know Until You Know You Don’t Know I take a look at this question. I conclude that the trio of centerline, central line and meridian line are the same thing.

However, in one lineage there is a difference between centerline and meridian line. They also have a more sophisticated and delineated way of mapping out the lines of attack and defense.

One of the mapped lines remind me of how TWC folks explain their central line. The difference is that in TWC when explaining the central line instead of positioning their body squarely they would turn the body to do so.

However, in this one lineage they can explain the difference between centerline, meridian line and this line that reminds me of the central line while the body is facing square on. To them to tomahto is not tomayto.

This is a case of what I would call you don’t know until you know what it is that you do not know.

P.S. – if you wonder why you have never heard of this information the reason is because this lineage has gone out of their way to keep their knowledge away from the public. Their late grandmaster had noted that fellow students can end up not talking to each other when a style becomes famous and the politics come along with it.

Yesterday out of the blue the idea of writing about my experience with Mao Shan magic came to mind.

So I started to write about it last night and this morning I finished a draft on Mao Shan magic for My Kung Fu Chatter.

Why I have this topic in My Kung Fu Chatter is because :-

a) My schoolmate who was a fellow Pok Khek Kuen practitioner under a different master introduced me to it.

b) I expected that learning how to use this one particular Mao Shan magic would be a useful skill and looking back, yes, there have been a few times when it helped. It still does.

I am not a believer in the use of talisman except for this one Mao Shan talisman which has proven to work. Why it works, how does it work – I have no idea. I have tried it on myself many times, used it others too whether fellow worker or someone I just met.

This talisman should not work, should not work. I can’t find a logical explanation for why it would work.

Except for the inconvenient truth that it works. Believe it or not.

I have been penning a few chapters for My Kung Fu Chatter. Some like the chapter “Genius of Charp Chui Angle” is an idea that came up when I was watching a video on the Wing Chun Bong Sao from this lady Kung Fu Kendra on Facebook.

Other chapters such as “Being a Student Again” is a works-in-progress. Today I wrote the longest chapter “No Money, No Honey” that is part of a few chapters on my learning of the Dong style Tai Chi.

The next chapter I want to write is “The Dong Way” on how I was taught by my teacher in the learning of push hands. I still use what I learned from him today. It is a kind of structured yet unstructured way of learning.

Another chapter on Ngok Gar Kuen entitled “This Mysterious Art” needs an ending to temporarily finish off the chapter. Yet another chapter on the Ngok Gar 7-points hand is half finished. I still need to write a section on the practice of the 7-points hand.

In 5 weeks time the year of the Wood Dragon will be upon us.

A dragon year is normally regarded as an auspicious year. The National University of Singapore estimated that between 1960 and 2007 Singaporean Chinese births increase by 9.3 per cent in Dragon years but fall by 7.8 per cent in Tiger years in relation to non-Chinese births.

Will 2024 be an auspicious year for the individual and businesses? Will this be the year I complete something that I have been keeping in mind for years?

For years I have been thinking that I should write down what I know, at least the stuff that I have been unable to pass on to students. It’s not that I won’t teach them but they have not gotten to the point where I can begin to tell them about it and they can make sense of the information.

I started writing My Kung Fu Chatter in November 2023. I don’t write everyday but the topics and contents come to mind daily.

Many times my monkey mind chatter comes faster than I can write down the topic title. At times the content began to write itself as soon as I started to think of the topic.

If I had a word processor in my mind there would be many more chapters but unfortunately no. If I can remember the topic then I will write it. I just let the ideas flow. Let them come, let them go.

I will write about what comes to mind instead of focusing on one particular style. Though it will be like an overview of different topics, within each topic there will be specifics. Each topic added together will paint an overall picture.

Because a chatter is an informal talk I will not bog it down with too specific details. I want to keep it free flowing, more like the way I would talk to another person instead of a formal piece of writing.

I can see the topics being organised under general headings such as Tai Chi, Wing Chun, Ngok Gar Kuen, Baguazhang, BJJ, FMA, etc. I counted 32 chapters at the time of this post. Some chapters are style specific. Many more are general observations.

Time to get off this post.