I was lucky enough to catch the joint seminar Sam Kwok organised last year. The seminar was both practical and realistic, and applications were stressed. The message was, there's no point in training one way and fighting another.

It was lovely to see Yip Ching and Tsui-Suen Ting come together. Their chi sau was breathtaking and while casually chatting about their experiences, they simply blew all the younger guys away. Once contact was broken they would explode forward, following the concept of 'Lat sau ching choi' which translates as 'Stay with what comes and thrust forward when released'. This fundamental law is often forgotten, ignored or passed over. Flashy tricks will only work if your opponent's basics are weak. In reality, people never let themselves get hit about all day long. You might have one chance, perhaps, and that's it! Teaching in class is different. Students are encouraged to attack freely and if I were to close them down each and every time they attacked, then they'd learn little.

Anyway it was nice to attend the seminar and enjoy the meal afterwards, when many different Wing Chun practitioners all sat together around one table. A rare event, it seems!

Why so much acrimony and politics in Wing Chun community? A vexed question, but one which needs addressing. Of course, people are the problem - people and their greed, envy and preoccupation with labels such as 'traditional', 'modern', or 'modified'. To me, it seems a redundant historical debate!

At given points, Wing Chun has been added to, not modified. The pole or the butterfly knives, or perhaps Leung Jan's attempts at simplification are examples of the sort of modifications I mean. At the time these modifications were introduced we might have seen them as modern, whereas today they are seen as traditional. Progress means an on-going development of what has previously existed.

There is also an interesting debate about the Yip Man family tree. Having been taught by Yip Man does not automatically guarantee that a student is any good. A great teacher does not always and of necessity produce great students! Indeed, some of Yip Man's students were greater than others. Yip Man taught all students according to weight, height, size and disposition, so what they all acquired is subtly different, sponsoring lines of development with different emphases. The result is that some lines of Wing Chun now appear to some as vastly different from others. Just to complicate matters, there are also, of course, lines of development which have completely by-passed Yip Man. However, the same concepts underpin all these various strands of Wing Chun practice and at bottom, the differences are generally superficial anyway!

The only relevance in all this, so far as I can see, is whether or not the individual practitioner is any good. The Chinese ask, 'Can you do it or not?' and this, to me, is the only thing that matters. I've seen Yip Ching's and Tsui-Suen Ting's stuff and it works. Period.