By John Crescione

Deceptive Hands of Wing Chun by Douglas Wong, printed in 1976.Printed by Unique Publications, Wong's brother Curtis, runs the whole Inside Kung Fu Magazine show. The book gains notoriety for publishing the Chum Kiu form with a lot of kicks added in. Wong covers 3 different versions of Wing Chun's history, then goes into gate theory and positions from the front and side, various hand blocks and strikes and a relatively in depth section on chi sao, single and double as well as strikes, counters and kicking in chi sao. This also makes this a 1st in Wing Chun books for that time period.

The bulk of the small book is on the Chum Kiu form, with no explanation on how to use it for fighting, it's chi sao applications or theories. The end of the book has a chapter on free fighting techniques, as well as photos of a steel multi arm and leg wooden dummy and a promise on a series of books on chi gerk, weapons, Dummy, Biu Jee and blindfolded chi sao.

They were never written or released. Here again, purists would laugh at the stances and gross inaccuracies in techniques and positioning. But for 1976,with NO easy to get knowledge available, everything was a plus.

There you have it. The first books written in English on Wing Chun in the mid 70's and marketed to the "general" and "martial arts" public. In the 90's,we're a lot more spoiled. Information is easier to get from books, magazines, Internet and videotape. And we've become a lot more spoiled and less tolerant of how people display and play their Wing Chun Kuen. We would trash many of the above books for the stances, techniques, positions, sloppiness and incorrectness by today's standards.

But we didn't have today's high tech, computers, CD ROM etc. Nor did we have the multitude of open and various Wing Chun schools to chose from or compare with.

What we did have was HOURS of non-stop punching, Siu Lim Tao, Chi Sao, pain and self-discovery.

I think we had it better then.