30-1-09: IP MAN AND ME (part three)

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Wong Shun-leung Sifu and his student, Stephen Chiau, crouching at front left, looking at camera#1, Alex To and I looking at camera#2... Go figure!

David Peterson with his teacher, the late, great Wong Shun-leung

At last! : A gravestone for this great martial hero.

Memories of my beautiful springtime (continued):

I first became acquainted with David Peterson when I was editing Combat magazine. At the time, it was the best-known of the British martial arts publications, and so we used to get story submissions from near and far, ranging from the wild to the wonderful.

I started receiving these well written articles, accompanied by clear, professional photos, from this guy Peterson from prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /Melbourne, Australia. (I remember looking for it on a map…) He didn’t want to be paid for his work, his motivation seemed to be simply to promote Chinese martial arts. We had an existing connection in that he was a student of Wong Shun-leung, and I was (tenuously, I admit!) a grand-student of the same master. However, David would also submit articles about other Melbourne-based Chinese kung fu experts. He was known to be fluent in Chinese, which I found very impressive. He even used to call up and chat about the state of the Wing Chun nation. I thought very highly of him, but, at the time, didn’t see how we could meet as he didn’t visit the UK and I had no plans whatsoever to go Down Under.

Then came one of those bizarre, life-changing ‘phone calls: Your real parents are Australian! Your sister is a famous singer! Your step-father is a famous martial arts master. The hits just kept on coming… Having grown up an adopted child to middle class English parents, this was something of a shock to the system. I set off on a journey of discovery to my new home town, which turned out to be Melbourne, Australia…

Apart from my immediate and newly discovered family, the only other person I knew there was David. It turned out that both he and my step-father Tino had been on the Melbourne Martial Arts Council (or some similar august body), and knew each other well. I called him from the old family house in Lime Avenue, and he came to visit, along with his then heavily pregnant wife Cecilia. We hit it off in person as we had by mail and ‘phone, and remain great friends to this day.  

On each successive visit to Melbourne, I had the pleasure of spending time with David, and tracking the changes in our training and lives. We visited the set of Jackie Chan's film First Strike, up in Fall's Creek, to watch Chan master the use of the mono-ski.

I wish I’d had the chance to work on Mr Nice Guy, which was shot in Melbourne. My step-father’s student, Richard Norton, played the main bad guy, and David worked on the film translating the Chinese script into English, and vice versa. Unfortunately, I was stuck in Hong Kong working for Media Asia, and couldn’t come up with a convincing excuse for a meeting with Jackie in Australia!

David and I have a lot in common. We're both members of the DKFM (Divorced Kung Fu Men) club! In terms of his martial arts practice, I envy David in that he found his perfect teacher early, in the form of Grandmaster Wong Shun-leung, while I found mine later, when I started studying under Mak Chi-kong Sifu. (Well, as the saying goes, 'when the student is ready...')

 When I finally saw David in Hong Kong, the event was a very sad one. As I mentioned last month, Master Wong Shun-leung passed away unexpectedly, and I was invited to attend his funeral service. I believe that, as is so often the case with kung fu dynasties, there was some political discord in the wake of his passing.

Regardless of this, David made it his life’s mission to communicate the legacy of his late teacher. I was honoured to write the foreword to his first book about Wong Sifu, ‘Look Beyond The Pointing Finger’, and I’ve been fascinated to see the DVDs of David’s seminars that are now available for devotees of Wing Chun (and other interested parties!). (For further information, check outwww.wslwingchun.com)  

For a long time after Wong Shun-leung’s passing, there was no gravestone to mark his resting place at Lam Tin Permanent Chinese Cemetery. I know, because I lived just down the road, and used to jog there on Sunday afternoons to pay my respects. I was at a film festival in Udine with another of Wong Sifu’s students, Stephen Chiau, and he was shocked to learn of this, and offered to pay for a headstone himself if necessary. I’m happy to report that there is now a headstone for this great master, and I’ve attached a picture of it.

By my recollection, it was through David that I first met the mercurial Philip Ng, another Alivenotdead-er, a Wing Chun/Choy Li Fut expert-turned-actor, formerly based in Chicago. I got Philip an early gig on Twins Effect, and we worked together on the mighty Dragon Squad.

David himself is similarly passionate about kung fu cinema, and has been a key figure in the promotion of Donnie Yen’s Ip Man in the Australian market. That masterpiece should turn on a whole new generation to Wing Chun, and I hope David’s school benefits. You can contact him atdmp@cgs.vic.edu.au.

I could fill several more pages with stories of the wonderful Wing Chun characters I’ve encountered, but maybe I’ll wait for the release of Ip Man 2 for that!