Chen Qing Jun

Keep Learning; Keep Growing

- Zhang Tianyu

YUEN CHAI WAN is generally known as the father of Vietnamese Wing Chun. However, he also passed on a somewhat different version of his art to his Chinese students. We managed to find and interview one of the extremely rare descendants of Yuen Chai Wan Wing Chun, Sifu Chen Qing Jun.

Could you please give our readers some background information about yourself?

I learnt and practise a type of Foshan Wing Chun, which descends from Yuen Chai Wan, who was the older brother of Yuen Kei Saan. My Sifu, Wan Haang Gin, was originally from Nanhai, Guandong, but he spent a part of his life in Vietnam. There, he spent five years learning Wing Chun from Yuen Chai Wan.

Later, my Sifu left Vietnam and went to Guangxi province in China where he became a personal guard of a local, patriotic general. My Sifu was not interested in fame or wealth, which is the reason he never opened a school. Instead, he just passed on his art to a few disciples.

In 1966, he was living in Guangzhou where he took on myself, and three Sihing-dai as his disciples. I was taught by him for almost seven years, during which he passed on all his Gung Fu knowledge and skills to me. Nowadays, to honour a promise given to my Sifu, I teach a few dedicated enthusiasts privately, to keep the tradition alive.

How was the training under your Sifu?

My Sifu was very strict. We had to go to his home six times a week, where we had to spend and train for five to six hours every time. We had to follow his instructions to the letter, unquestioningly and even though we trained very hard, he still thought that we didn’t meet his standards.