The Knives never strike twice – The Staff is never heard twice

Revealing the Secrets of Grandmaster Yip Man’s Wing Chun Baht Jahm «8 Chop» Knives

Chinese Kung Fu is replete with well-worn sayings that have helped popularize their subjects. Wing Chun has its own that says, «The Knives never strike twice – The Staff is never heard twice» – powerful words for the legendary Baht Jahm Knives and Six-and-One-Half Point Staff.

It is often said that weapons are extensions of one’s hands. Using this logic, one could pick up a weapon and utilize it with no other training than perhaps a hand form. Yet this saying is not applicable to the Baht Jahm «Double» Knive: There are many people who study Wing Chun, and they can attempt to wield the knives according to hand techniques, but the results would be far from correct or even useful since the fundamental theories are so different.

The difference lies in real-life combat expectations. The objective of bare-handed attacks is generally to incapacitate an opponent by attacking a bodily weak point such as the head, the ribs, or any place easily injured. In contrast, a weaponized encounter is an immediate, life-and-death situation that is over after the first clash. An exchange is not complex, does not require many motions, or even follow-ups. Quite the opposite. Complex and difficult techniques immediately become useless when one’s fate is decided in an instant. Making matters worse, the inherent pressure and intensity of the moment could easily ruin any fancy technique. Hand or leg techniques allow at least some room for exchange, yet with a weapon, there is no margin for error. It is not necessary to strike a weak point with a blade, as the whole body is a weak point. If even an appendage is wounded by a blade, a counterattack is virtually impossible and the opponent is at your mercy.

It is necessary to compare the Chinese, southern-style «Butterfly Knives» with the Double Knives, since they are both visibly similar and the former is so often used in place of the latter. The application of the Butterfly Knives requires that they be heavy, long, and broad. Techniques require wide motions, with two primary strikes being the chop and the slash. It can also be turned around the crook of the thumb as an effective block.

In contrast, the Double Knives are light, short, and narrow. Motions are more compact, requiring only speed, with little movement to affect damage. Strikes are mainly concerned with using slight wrist flicks to stab, thrust, tap, and slash with just the tip of the blade, only the last 5 to 6 inches of which was sharpened. One particularly vital concept is flowing with and «borrowing» the power of any weapon that impinges one’s blade. Being smaller and lighter overall, these knives also could not block heavy weapons individually, oned needing both in tandem.

There is also a critical difference in the handle design. Because effective stabbing requires perpendicular entry, the handle must be angled to accommodate the limitations of the wrist’s motion. And because each person’s body is a little different, every set of knives must be custom made, and not something that would be mass-produced.

How the Double Knives Became so Revered

In the late 1900s, the city of Foshan in Guangdong province was a well-known center of competition for weapons fighters. Nothing is certain in battle until the deciding blow, but the principles of usage favored the Baht Jahm Knives highly. With nimble and efficient motions, fighters using such knives could give opponents no room for escape, effectively canceling out their larger, sweeping attacks. Longer weapons have the theoretical reach advantage during the initial encounter, but suffered greatly once the gap was closed. On the other hand, the Double Knives could cover and attack against a distance weapon whilst closing the gap simultaneously, allowing one to attack even while not being hit.

This concept is at the heart of the saying, «Knives, though short, reach first.» With the slightest movement and a flick of the wrists, an attack is parried and a counterattack is delivered, not necessarily to the body, but at least to the extremities. Thus follows the truism that an opponent with severed thumbs loses not only the ability to lift a weapon, but also the will to fight. History bears out that the Double Knives were very effective and popular in this regard.

Within the Wing Chun System, it is said that the palms are the most devastating. For the Staff, it is the «Fong Loong» spearing technique. For the Double Knives, it is the «Ngong Tong» uppercut strike. The Double Knife form consists of 8 general parts that each contain a few different moves, but always ends in this uppercut strike, reinforcing its difficulty in execution to good effect, since an uppercutting weapon is difficult to defend against. Grandmaster Yip Man taught the weapons forms to his disciples individually and in private. But knowing form without knowing function is futile, as it is elsewhere. Without the benefit of training in application, students are bound to come to wrong conclusions.

One striking example bears this out: inversion of the knives about the thumb. For anything other than as a salute, the motion is completely useless. Being both narrower and shorter than its sister weapon, Double Knives positioned in this way make for exceedingly poor defense, especially when considering the excess motion involved in flipping the knives.

Just as in the hand forms, stance and stance mobility are pivotal. The Double Knife form contains stances, but there is no better way to learn mobility than in application training. Also vital are strong, agile wrists coupled with hand-eye coordination. One of the training methods taught by Grandmaster Yip Man was to balance a 3 inch piece of chalk across the inside flat of the blade and then in one motion, lower the knife and slash upwards to cut the chalk in two. Better skill meant needing less drop time and distance to perform the cut. It should also go without saying that accuracy is critical in this game of life and death.

Further adding to these basics are the dozen-odd techniques used on a convertible wooden dummy built especially for Double Knife training. In either of its forms, the dummy reinforces horizontal or vertical strikes, respectively. Unlike the classic Wing Chun wooden dummy, this machine has no accompanying form sets, but is meant to seriously test the student’s speed and ability to counter heavy exchanges. «The Knives never strike twice The Staff is never heard twice.» A straightforward statement that exemplifies the power and simplicity of the weapons of Wing Chun. In the end, that is what it is all about. Either you live or you die.

Source: unknown Chinese magazine, p. 34-37.

The Knives never strike twice – The Staff is never heard twice – PDF