BaiSao: Wing Chun's Taproot

BaiSao, a little-known exercise Yip Man used to demonstrate Wing Chun to strangers, becomes a window into Wing Chun theory, tying together ChiSao, Wooden Man, and fighting applications. Revealed is the amazing depth of thinking behind a sparkling, casual, but totally absorbing 10-20 second "elevator speech" demo of the martial art that gave Bruce Lee his start. This unique book is structured around quotations from Wang Kiu, the least-known of Yip Man's original core students. Written to resemble a college course, with "lecture/demo", "reading", and "lab" sections, with about 200 photos, BaiSao introduces Maier's YumCha series, evoking an atmosphere of out-of-class discussions where training becomes illumination, treating Wing Chun as a principle-based art of generating and solving puzzles. Wang's sole American student, Maier focused his Ph.D. work on Wing Chun's "Tactical Cognition", evident in suggestive threads into logistics, task analysis, concept mapping, motion analysis and cognitive science.