ABSTRACT
The systematic field-work for this paper was conducted over a threemonth period at the Wah Que Studio of Kung Fu. Wah Que means ‘for everyone’ in Chinese, Ark Wong is fond of saying, and he has been teaching Kung Fu to everyone there since about 1964, when he was one of the first teachers to open his doors to students who were not Chinese. Although he is sensitive about filming, he is generous with his apparently limitless knowledge of Kung Fu, and holds a short session of his class at the end which is devoted to teaching responses to different attacks. In the two years I have been there, he has never done the same thing twice in these sessions. What I don’t believe I have emphasized in the body of this paper, however, is that it is possible to learn how to fight without actually fighting, and to do this by means of acting the various formal single-person exercises. How this happens I am not fully sure, but as Ark Wong says, ‘When you are experienced, your body knows how to move.’
