CHINA> Profiles
|
CHINA> Profiles
|
|
WingTsun master fighting to the finish
By Zhao Xu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-27 10:39 But before all this, Leung remembers Germany, which he visited back in 1976, invited by an admirer whom he had met only through letters. "The man was called Keith Kernspecht, and only after my arrival did I realize that he was also a karate practitioner and in fact the first person to introduce karate to the German police force," says Leung. It would not be the last time Leung found himself face-to-face with a kungfu professional eager to be won over yet harboring absolutely no illusions. "I had to fight, and fight hard, for myself, for WingTsun and for Chinese martial arts," he says. And not all people are well-intentioned. One such trouble-seeker was a burly black US Army veteran named Richard Guerra, known by his fellow soldiers as "Tiger". Charging onto the stage in the middle of a demonstration given by Leung in California in the 80s, the karate black-belt demanded a duel. However, what had first promised to be ferocious showdown between two kungfu men was cut short as Leung entered the fight with no hint of aggression, and turned the tables. With wrists and limbs as lithe and slippery as an eel, Leung proved ever elusive for his opponent, who found Leung's lightning strike hard to evade.
"WingTsun is not about intimidating, it is all about engaging," says Leung. "At the heart of it lies a genuine sense of humility - always take your enemy seriously." However, what he didn't know at the time was that Guerra was actually a "wounded man", haunted by horrible memories of the Vietnam War. "All the hostility could be explained by his deeply disturbed mind," says Leung. "After the fight, he asked to be my student, and eventually managed to find peace with himself." Many of Leung's overseas students have later become his most ardent devotees, opening up regional WingTsun schools at his behest, and accompanying him on his annual world tour . A few years ago, Leung received a letter from an American woman, informing him of her husband's death. It turned out that the husband once learned a few moves from the master, after having suffered serious facial injuries in a vicious shooting. "He made sure I knew that our encounter more than 20 years ago had not been forgotten," Leung says. "And he did this on his deathbed." Thanks in part to the ubiquity of his students, Leung has "penetrated" even the most secret of foreign special police and task forces. These include the FBI and US Marine Corps, SEK of Germany, RAID of France, NOCS of Italy and the Anti-Terrorist Squad of India, for whom he has designed WingTsun classes. Emergencies have occurred, although not quite in the way Leung expected. While training Egyptian parachuters in the early 1980s, the master found his students kept missing classes. Embarrassed, he made enquiries and was told that a mini warfare had just broken out on the Egypt-Israel border. While he does enjoy the occasional fame, Leung still prefers the quiet, uncluttered life of teaching, the latest addition to his students being his youngest son. With glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, the thinly-built, academic-looking boy reminds Leung of his own teen days, before WingTsun "tempered and steeled" him. "When I was young, I was very slim, which made me an easy target for street bullies," recalls the benign master. To the utter amazement of his tormentors, every time, a greatly-outnumbered Leung fought back. Along the way, the little boy sustained a bleeding nose and a few bone fractures. But he never lost sight of a life-long motto. "Give up, and you are a loser. Fight, and you still have a chance to win."
|
