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Chief Instructor
Master Xuan (Shwen) has over 100 years of accumulated experience in martial arts. With just Wing Chun alone, he has been practicing for over 50 years.
Master Xuan began studying Judo at the age of 11 in 1963, practicing for 4 years. In 1968, he joined Park Jong Soo's Taekwondo Institute, and trained until 1975. In 1970, he began studying Wing Chun under Sifu Wong Siu Leung, who was GM Wong Shun Leung's student. In 1972, he quit collage to just study martial arts. In the afternoon, he trained 2 hours in Taekwondo; in the evening, he trained 3 hours privately under Sifu Nelson Chan, who was a protégé of GM Moy Yat. At night, he attended Sifu Wong Siu Leung's group class for 3 hours.
In 1975, he moved to Vancouver and studied under Sifu Winston Wan, who had trained under GM Leung Sheung and GM Lok Yu. All his grandmasters were top students of Great Grandmaster Ip Man.
In 1993, he went to San Francisco for a year, where he studied Wu-Style Taiji under Master Zhou Ruixin from Hanzhou, China. In 1994, he moved to Thailand where he took up Qigong and Yang Taiji, while teaching Wing Chun privately to a handful of students. In 2007, he took up Chen Taiji under Master Lu Yong, who was the second generation student of Chen Fa Ke.
When he lived in Thailand, he was unable to find any Wing Chun masters who were comparable to what he had in the past 25 years. This was the turning point of his Wing Chun journey. He decided to teach himself as if he was a total beginner, and reexamine everything that he had learned before. He took everything apart and studied every piece microscopically. He took into account that Wing Chun was developed 350 to 400 years ago, and that much information had gotten lost in translation, passing down from one generation to another; therefore, refining the status quo would not be sacrilegious, but rather respectful for recovering Wing Chun to its original state. The task, he found was not as difficult as he thought it would be, when he realized that all the information was encrypted and embedded in the Wing Chun forms. Deciphering it would mean discovering Wing Chun as the founders had meant it to be. From hence, Master Xuan has dedicated his life in decrypting the Wing Chun forms, and sharing the information to those who are willing to learn.
Wing Chun is one of the youngest fighting arts developed in China; therefore, you can presume that the founders had examined other arts, and had borrowed the best parts from them to merge into one compact system. In other words, it was one of the earliest mixed martial arts. The founders created it as a universal fighting art rather than a rigid system and culture. So, Bruce Lee's open-thinking was not unique, but was influenced by Wing Chun's original concept ... a universal art developed for individuals.
Master Xuan teaches his students to explore and discover Wing Chun for oneself, and to use it according to one's own structure and experience.
Check out the homepage of the Xuan Wing Chun Academy (International headquarters) at www.xuanwingchun.com
Senior Instructor
Shifu Buchli speaks German (as well as basic french and italian), and will be helping in guiding the German-speaking students.
I'm looking forward to working with some of you, either in person or via live online sessions!"