Introduction

I am providing testimony of my personal experience of the Wing Chun Boxing Academy, as it existed in the early to mid 1990s, as a historical case study only, including historical facts regarding events experienced, and my own interpretations and opinions on the culture within the club as well as the technique taught. I have also attempted to be critical of my own behaviour as an assistant instructor within the club. I am focussing on the period of 1992 to 1996 only. I have not met either of them nor attended either of their classes since then and it is not for me to speculate. A long time has passed since then.

This article was first published in 2008. I have rewritten and reorganised the information in May 2024, removing repetition and irrelevant information. The purpose of this case study is primarily to document how something like it worked on a psychological level, showing the overall progression, and characteristics common to other groups or organisations with similar elements. It may or may not still be historically relevant. I included my interpretations on the kung fu technique, for historical reasons, even though I think it is less interesting and arguably more subjective in nature, and many only be of interest to wing chun practitioners. I have removed any testimony from third parties from this article on account of potential reliability issues and to respect the spirit in which the information was provided, and apologise to anyone whose testimony I shared in this article previously without permission.

The Wing Chun Boxing Academy, comparised of two separate schools, one run by Sid Sofos (Fatshan) and one by his older brother Andrew Sofos (Shaoshan - now called SAS Martial Arts Academy - short for Sifu Andrew Sofos?) Both schools were located in Tottenham, London. Sid trained new students up to senior instructor level at his Fatshan studio adjacent to the football ground. Andrew's school called Shaoshan was run initially in his garage and later relocated to a local industrial estate unit, and was for beginners and intermediates only, as Andrew was himself a student of Sid in his senior class at Fatshan. The top students at Shaoshan would then be selected to move over to Fatshan to train with Sid. Andrew also ran the school's classes at a couple of Universities in London, and would invite some of the top students to train at Shaoshan. I trained at Shaoshan for roughly 3-4 years and at Fatshan for roughly 1 year, from 1992 to 1996 so a total of around 4 years.

I started off going to Andrew Sofos' Wing Chun classes at UCL in 1992, and was invited to start training at his private studio in his garage in Tottehnam which I accepted. I trained there consistently except for a gap of 2 months owing to illness, and holidays, until 1994 or 1995 after which time I was invited to start training at Sid's Fatshan school in the senior students class, which is the class below the instructors' own class, where I trained for a year or so. Initially when I started training, I thought what I was being taught was really impressive, although didn't understand what the instructors were doing with their 'freefighting' and I didn't think it looked good and swore my kung fu would never become like that.

The longer you were there, the more conditioned you felt to accept whatever they told you, stop asking questions or subjecting what you were doing to scrutiny, overlook what you knew were untrue statements or lies, to feel indebted to them for teaching you anything, to feel guilty about things that weren't your fault, and to excessively try to please the teachers who were rarely satisfied, and view what you were being taught as being the best thing ever. The culture was rather alien to me, overly strict, aggressive and often we felt like we were being unreasonably scolded and made to feel guilty. However, I really wanted to get good so I overlooked it and persisted. I was pressured into never missing a lesson, training when we were ill, paying for lessons even when we weren't able to attend, pressured into becoming an assistant instructor, pressured into flyposting for the academy, encouraged to distrust all other martial arts schools, having to deal with angry outbursts, false accusations and mood swings, unreasonable demands etc. The method of training, to be 'relaxed' and let the instructor man handle you and slap you around without resisting was a form of abuser/abused conditioning in itself.

One time when me and a fellow student friend of mine were in the studio alone with one instructor, he started telling us about some of the things that had been going on with Sid, which sewed the seeds of doubt about the academy in my mind. This friend of mine in the class below me at Shaoshan left the academy shortly afterwards and started training Wing Chun elsewhere. He told me that his new Sifu's style was much better. I was interested and thought he might be right, but still thought my technique was good enough and that it was a waste to learn from scratch, so I persisted. I did however start attending Wing Chun seminars by other masters in 1996, to see grandmasters in action, including William Cheung and Yip Chun, which opened my eyes further to how my technique could be improved, particularly with reference to stance, and it was very strange to see how other Wing Chun teachers and students conducted themselves, which was very different to how things were with Sid and Andrew.

I left the academy at the end of 1996 for work reasons as an opportunity came up in Scotland, and it was not until I trained in a Wing Chun class in Glasgow that I realised just now flawed my technique was. I had become more aggressive as a person and an adrenaline addict, even less able to relax and insecure about different things to before. It was an incredible relief to have left the academy and not to have to deal with the bullying from the instructors anymore, and I never experienced such a culture in martial arts schools since.

Attitude and Bullying

Andrew explained that only beginners classes would be run at the Universities, and that after a term or so, one had to start training at his private studio, Shaoshan, in Tottenham, in order to be taught more advanced techniques and for more advanced training. Some students considered this rather pushy and 'cultish', and indeed the classes at his private studio were more expensive (as well as the transport and time involved to get there and back). It is likely that is was partly for financial reasons, to make more money out of the rather poor students, but also that he was more able to psychologically condition the students in private which was not possible to such a degree at the college as outside observers could watch (and possibly complain). I myself as an instructor noticed a change in the character of the students as they started to train at Shaoshan, they would lose some of their relaxed attitude, and be more 'pliable', more obedient and brainwashed, and be slightly more stressed and shellshocked looking; rushing around everytime one said something in a loud voice.

Army style atmosphere in classes. Students were bossed around and shouted at frequently by the Sifu and instructors. The Sifu would demand respect from his students rather than earning it. The Sifu would bully his instructors into how he wanted his school run, and the instructors would in turn bully the students into how to act, and how to treat their teacher.

Students were conditioned to be overly aggressive and sharp as this was perceived as confidence and strength, but in reality made for insecure and stressed people. The adrenaline high was perhaps to imitate natural and relaxed confidence. Real relaxed and calm confidence comes from belief in what you are doing, through repetition, where you don't have to convince yourself all the time about it. Although 'stillness' was mentioned in classes, the classes were not conducive to this at all, and the focus was on pushing students to the point of cracking up and throwing them around without their resisting and being pliable, rather than breaking down their technique at a slower pace and improving it in a relaxed and positive atmosphere.

Ironically, by bullying students so much, it has the opposite effect of relaxation and results in tension all over the body. A relaxed but energised atmosphere is far more conducive to better martial arts training. Distracting an opponent is a key skill in Wing Chun which was not taught at the Wing Chun Boxing Academy.

Senior instructors were from what I could gather encouraged into edgy, intense or violent professions such as being bouncers or debt collectors.

The instructors would frequently complain to the students in the class about having to touch the students arms too much and if the students arms weren't completely relaxed and allowing them to execute the moves they wanted to do on you in freefighting, as they felt it ruined their own fluidity and made their arms stiffer. So you would feel a bit guilty regularly during freefighting about resisting too much.

After a few months of attending the college classes, I had been off sick for a whole month, off college completely and unable to train or do any exercise. I explained to Andrew that I'd been ill and fatigued after a bout of influenza (i.e. PVFS). When I finally came back to college and joined the class again, I was told by the instructors that Andrew thought I had abused my slot at Shaoshan, and that I was being lazy and disrespectful for not turning up and banned me from his private studio for a few months, only allowing me to attend classes at the University. The weren't prepared to listen to my explanation of my out of the ordinary health problems, and just interrupted me and talked over me, and seemed to assume I was lying. I felt quite insulted by them and the whole episode, but still persisted and showed my dedication to the school, which was the point I should have walked away. Having low self-esteem I persisted. Eventually I was allowed back into Shaoshan again after I had proved my commitment and sincerity at the college class and shown myself 'worthy'.

Everyone from the intermediate class to the senior class in Shaoshan and Fatshan was required to go flyposting around North and North East London, including myself. It always involved at least one person with a car, who would drive 2 others with him, carrying a pot of glue and brush, which would often spill out in transit and make a mess of their car. There was no way to get out of this, I tried arguing with the instructors a few times about it but they were not taking no for an answer. This would happen after lessons when you were tired and wanted to go home, and instead you'd add on half an hour to your return home, starving and thirsty, having to flypost in a designated area. It was really annoying and we'd put up posters in all sorts of areas, mostly where existing posters were up, where they had paid for the advertising space. We'd slap half a dozen of our posters on top of theirs.

On night, we were putting up the posters in a semi-residential area and we saw the police walk towards us. The other two guys were standing in the middle of the pavement with nowhere to go so they just stood there and waited to be collared or given a ticking off. I was close to the corner, so I just casually turned around, carrying the pot of glue and brush, and walked towards the corner and after I turned round the corner I made a run for it, and the police were quick to run after me, although they never actually told us to stop. After running down the next street, it was a dead end and I had nowhere to go, so I just pressed myself up against the wall on the turn at the end of that road and a few seconds later the police appeared and looked at me and I apologised and said we would desist from doing it again (at least that night!) They were more concerned that we were up to something else. So I think I was lucky to have been let off.

On another occasion, when we were putting up posters in Stoke Newington or Dalston at 1130 at night, with one of the fellow students complaining as he had to drive back to Hemel Hempstead that night and get up for work in the morning, he got really scared as the atmosphere was a little hostile and one of the local residents started arguing with us, telling us to get lost etc. Also, I never heard of anyone being turned away from the school as it was too full, Andrew just crammed them in like sardines if necessary. Demonstrations conducted at the universities in London were over the top and showy and often led to complaints from students.

One time we were given flyers to hand out to people going into and coming out of Finsbury Park tube station. There was a group of 3 of us. One young Chinese man we tried to give a flyer to said he was already doing wing chun, and when we pressed him on who with, he seemed to think we were either trying to start an argument with him or pressure him into joining our club like some Christian groups do on the streets, so we said we were just interested and wanted to talk about it. So he reluctantly started telling us he was training with Simon Lau in South Kensingston, which is ironically where Sid and Andrew first started. He then made his excuses and left. Whilst we did not want to appear that we were trying to talk him into checking out the Wing Chun Boxing Academy, it was my understanding that that was our low key objective to at least try to steer the conversation in that direction if possible, which in the end it wasn't without being rude. I am fairly sure we all thought Simon Lau (Yip Man/Lee Shing lineage) was probably no good based on what Sid and Andrew had said about other schools, but wanted to appear to be friendly. None of us expressed any particular interest in Simon Lau after the conversation ended.

Whenever I came in to help instruct the Sunday class at Shaoshan, when I was in the changing room with the main instructor, it always felt like some sort of 'sharpness contest', with each instructor having to 'outdo' the other in terms of appearing to be mentally sharp. One time I was in there with the most wired of the instructors, who worked as a motorbike courier, and the whole vibe and banter made the sole student in the changing room laugh. The other instructor was trying to make me look bad, and flexing, I wasn't having any of it. I was just trying to mind my own business whilst not showing any sign of weakness but still remaining like 'one of the people' and treating the students as equals on a social level which was a difficult enough feat at the best of times with all the weird head games going on. One time, on my evening off, I was sat at home, completely exhausted, watching TV and getting stoned, looking forward to going to bed early, and the chief instructor at Fatshan phoned me up and insisted I get on the tube from Islington up to Tottenham to do a poster run. I really didn't want to do it but dragged myself up there. Apparently the other students used to just lie when this sort of thing happened. I was too much of a mug and was being honest. So I turned up to Fatshan and sat down and was told I had to wait for the student's class to finish before he could drive us down to Archway. Then I had one of the instructors staring at me as I sat there, trying to look sharp as opposed to stoned and exhausted, he kept coming back and looking me up and down. If I said the whole experience was quite an imposition, it would be an understatement. That basically took up half my evening and I got attitude as well.

Sid during the Sadler's Wells kung fu show invited a teenager onto the stage to fight with him. He somehow expected the kid to do freefighting and tried. The kid resisted and didn't move his arms. Sid performed various moves, including a pak sau etc to collapse one of his arms and strike him, but he couldn't shift his arms. He became frustrated as he kept expecting the kid to respond with 'freefighting' and pump his centre line without any explanation. Eventually he lost patience and tried to sweep him (couldn't think of anything else to do) and even that didn't work because he was resisting. Eventually he hit him on the nose and gave him a nose bleed! I have experienced many other styles of Wing Chun that work whatever the opponent and his or her state of relaxation. You don't have to 'force' the move to make it work, if it has natural strength through structure, it will work with no effort at all.

I was asked to help instruct the odd class at Fatshan, Sid's studio, specifically, a women's self defence class and also a children's class. At each class, the chief instructor could see that I was hyped up and ready to push the class really hard, as I had been conditioned to do with the normal classes at Shaoshan, but the instructor took me aside and asked me to 'go easy' on the students in these two classes, as they were potentially vulnerable and perhaps a little 'sensitive', i.e. not to be abused. Presumably then the usual amount of hostility and spite that was not acceptable in a women's self defence class was perfectly acceptable for a 'normal' class with a mainly young male membership. On some level there was a recognition that the way of instructing and leading the regular classes was 'bullying' and 'unacceptable'.

On Sid's old web site, he states that whilst he has associated with various celebrities over the years, he prefers to teach local kids from poorer backgrounds. What does 'associated' really mean though? Met once? Also, Sid and Andrew tended to target local youths in the Tottenham area as they were less educated about martial arts, and those that did not leave after the first lesson tended to be those who had never done any martial arts before nor how other schools operated; and also students at the two Universities that Andrew taught at, generally attracting the more weak willed.

All of the instructors in the old school magazine that I first saw after joining Shaoshan disappeared from the academy with the sole exception of the Fatshan chief instructor who had been there for a decade I believe, whom Sid used to pick on incessantly, pretending it was in a joking way. I do not know the circunstances in which all the other instructors of that generation left. The chief instructor eventually left, and according to a friend of his, was a frail shell of the person he used to be, a nervous wreck.

Several of the instructors would get occasionally into drunken Friday night street fights, from what they told me on the Sunday classes I was helping to instruct, and on many occasions came off worse (whether fighting people with limited or no martial arts experience), despite years of kung fu training. One would have thought that even a few months of training of an 'excellent, practical and effective' style would render one virtually untouchable to attack by the untrained street thug.

The academy hosted a show at Sadler's Wells in 1996. It was to raise money for the victim's families and survivors of the Dunblane (unfortunately misspelt 'Dumblane' on the first issue of fliers) massacre in Scotland in 1996, where a psychotic individual shot dead a number of children at a primary school. The first scene of Sid's show was a mock up of an terrorist embassy siege, and one of the instructors walked to the front of the stage and fired a real submachine gun at the audience (using blanks). How this was legally performed I am not sure, but hosting a show with actual firearms and mock violence and killing could perhaps be considered grossly inappropriate considering the circumstances of the actual massacre. After the show all the students of the school who attended (forced to attend and bring their relatives too) were talking about it and wondering why it was done. It is likely Sid thought that seeing guns and hearing shots was exactly what they needed, to break the association of fear around it (the same way that if you fall off a horse, you should get back on it again rather than be afraid thereafter). I can understand that, however, with minors and such an incident, it is questionable whether this was the right approach.

The kung fu shows organised by Sid and Andrew were arranged by their students and instructors. During these shows, and also at gradings, the instructors would almost scold the audience if they weren't showing enough applause. At Sadler's Wells, one of our instructors came onto the stage and started gesticulating and with his arm in an upward motion and mouthing words at us silently whilst looking at us in an aggressive manner, as the small group of fellow students I was in was quite near the front (it was almost empty at the front so this instructor focussed his antics in our direction), so we felt like we had to 'make some noise' and compensate for there being so few people occupying the seats up front, that had presumably been given away to football contacts etc.

Sid and Andrew arranged their class timetable so that the senior instructors' class ran very late. And they would get home well after 1am. During week nights. In preparation for kung fu shows, the instructors would routinely only sleep a few hours a week. This was seen as being 'tough'. The instructors looked like total wrecks and some turned a curious shade of green. Sleep deprivation is a common theme amongst religious cults. Anyone who knows anything about oriental medicine, especially Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) knows that staying up late is an unhealthy practice for anyone, according to the cycle of Qi, which Sid demonstrated a distinct lack of understanding of in my opinion when he presented this to his students at a class. In addition, sports professionals will tell you that the best time to work out is in the late afternoon or early evening, according to the raised temperature of one's body clock. Training in the early hours of the morning is counter productive as the body is gearing up to sleep, not perform at its peak. Perhaps this was some attempt by Sid to make his serious kung fu sessions seems more hardcore or more 'illicit', 'naughty' or 'happening', as many teenagers associate late night activity with 'fun' and being 'crazy'.

Sid and his instructors made one feel very awkward and guilty about missing a single lesson, let alone leaving the school. Years of conditioning meant that one had to find a good excuse to leave, be it total physical debilitation or geographic relocation! And significant sums of money would be expected as leaving presents to keep them sweet.

Sid was no stranger to foul language. Or losing his temper. He would frequently shout and scream at his punchbag of a chief instructor.

Both Sid and Andrew used to badger their instructors about various matters just before their instructor class started, which was immediately after the senior student class. Often it would involve making telephone calls. Rather than do so in an organised manner, Sid or Andrew would have a go at their instructor or instructors, who would then subsequently feel obliged to get on the telephone immediately. For example, one night the chief Shaoshan instructor was harrassed by Andrew to make some calls to ex-students to try to sell them tickets to the kung fu show. This took place at 10:30 to 11:00pm, at which time the calls were not exactly welcome!

On frequent occasions, after Sid or Andrew had had a go at their instructors about something, the instructors would then pick on the nearest student or students they came across about something or other, regardless of whether it was appropriate to do so or not and whether it made any sense.

There was a trend amongst students to constantly pay their respects (putting one's palm and fist together) to Andrew or Sid during a class, whenever they explained anything, as if he was doing them a favour by telling them anything. If one did not show one's respects properly after each sentence or meaning, then the instructors would start to have a go at all the students. Thus the students were bullied and pressured into doing this constantly during any explanations, to the point where it became totally ridiculous. In addition, every time a pair of students touched hands, they had to pay their respects also. In all other Wing Chun classes, it is common practice to pay one's respects before entering the Dojo or training area, and then before leaving, and rarely in between, and when training elsewhere I was told to stop doing it all the time several times.

I met Sid's first wife and her new husband whilst working for a London Borough council in the mid 90s, and she seemed very nice and had nothing bad to say about Sid whom she had been with in the 1980s I assumed.

Sid had a habit of practising his moves on his senior instructors and using them as punch bags. This became much worse after the 90s and classes became much more violent. This is certainly not normal practise in martial arts in general.

Andrew forced and pressured everyone to come in to train at Shaoshan even when they were ill. Ironically Andrew himself had to take a year or so off Wing Chun in his early training days as he was chronically ill, so you'd think he'd have more empathy when others were ill. Perhaps he resented the fact that this was when Sid overtook him in skill, as they had both started training with the same Sifu at the same time. Whatever the reason, it was totally unreasonable and idiotic to make people train when they were ill. Myself and many other students discussed this very matter, and the common experience was of feeling horrifically ill and awful for the first half of the lesson, and then finally starting to feel better again towards the end of the lesson. The next day, one would feel worse than one had before one attended the class, so the net effect was to drag out the duration of the illness (influenza, cold etc.)

A year or two later, I was asked by Andrew during the class in front of everyone if I had practised in my spare time, and I said yes I had, and that I practised 10 Sil Lim Tao forms every day. Perhaps they weren't performed quite as slowly in the first half as they should have been (a common student error) but that's what I was doing every day. Andrew then accused me of lying in front of the whole class, which was not only hurtful but extremely humiliating. He did not give me the benefit of the doubt of either of these occasions, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't being malicious and trying to gaslight me! Sid never accused me of lying about anything from memory. It was only ever Andrew and his Shaoshan instructors.

I was asked by Andrew's instructors to telephone the school to say hello and ask how their classes were going when one was on holiday! I did this, when I was at my grandmother's house in mainland Europe, thinking I was doing a good deed and I was immediately accused of not being on holiday at all but skiving off as the chief instructor at Shaoshan thought the line sounded too good. Another time, when I was visiting relatives in the same country, one of the instructors said he had a relative in the same country - quite some distance away from where I was staying - and he asked he to contact them and ask if they needed anything. I'm not sure what was being implied here but it sounded ridiculous and fortunately they never answered the phone when I rang them.

Andrew had a habit of humiliating or punishing an individual in front of a class. This was mainly reserved for the students who were regarded as second tier compared to his instructors who had proved their loyalty, who were normally but not always saved this humilation and disrespect in front of others. Normally Andrew tried to keep his cool and appear respectable and calm/enlightened at the college classes, and reserved most of his temper tantrums and bad behaviour for those in his private studio Shaoshan, as you would expect, but on occasion he lost his temper at the college classes. Andrew was emotionally incapable of dealing with certain types of situation or expressions of softness or weakness, and couldn't handle it. He would respond in a childish, negative and aggressive manner, as if to trample out such expressions of softness or weakness as he preferred to suppress them in himself and in others.

Sid would humiliate people and pick on people in front of everyone, even more than Andrew, and especially certain favourite victims, particularly his chief instructor. This practice does nothing for the instructor's psychological wellbeing but also makes all the students feel uncomfortable.

At both Shaoshan and Fatshan, at the senior classes, you were harrassed by the instructors to not only clean the studio, but to hurry up in the changing room and get out quickly, as the instructors wanted to start their class as soon as possible, as it would be getting late and the instructors' class often went on for a very long time past its scheduled finish time in the early hours of the morning so I understood. It strikes me that the schedule should have been more reasonable. After class when you'd be feeling relaxed and relieved and chatting to other students, you'd have to deal with the instructors being pushy and sometimes scolding you for chatting and not getting changed quickly enough.

Andrew and Sid did not allow people to take their own drinks into their studios, but instead got the students to fill up empty plastic water bottles with tap water that they kept in the kitchen and they were drunk by everyone. This was considered 'brotherly/communal provision.' Not only did this probably increase the number of colds and cases of the flu amongst students, but probably spread herpes too. Reusing the bottles over and over was probably unhygienic in terms of the growth of bacteria also, and the bottles were just rinsed out at the end of classes, and as far as I was aware, never washed up or sterilised (they were were when I was an assistant instructor), and I don't think they had time to dry out in between classes as they were used at least 3 times a week and were kept indoors away from sunlight. I never experienced anything like this at any other martial arts class. In contrast, they did not have such a ridiculous policy at the University classes or I think there would have been complaints. I seem to recall most of us just used the water fountain in the corridor after the class.

Andrew made his instructors turn up to teach classes on public holidays and bank holidays, and they were not allowed to take an evening off unless they were physically incapacitated. This included Christmas Eve, Valentine's Day, you name it. It made the life of the instructor quite miserable, and family life and social life was considered secondary.

Instructors at both Fatshan and Shaoshan, having been pressured into instructing in a roundabout way - basically after you reached a certain level you were required to help instruct or you'd be kicked out - and pressured into attending every single class that they were designated to attend, often used the time to practise their own techinques on the students taking their classes, rather than merely doing what was in the best interests of the fastest possible learning of the students. Often a student would have various moves performed on him or her, rather than focussing on helping them themselves to practise techniques on the instructor! I did this myself on occasion, usually cutting into the students session time with him and at their expense (usually not in a pleasant way! i.e. being thrown onto the floor or being hit, for no good reason)

I brought my girlfriend along to my 3rd scroll grading, and Andrew, a married man with a pretty wife, was excessively learing at her when I introduced her. This was slightly gross.

During my stint as an assistant instructor at Andrew's school, I was keen to give all the students the best possible lesson, and to help them to improve their kung fu as much as possible. I enjoyed encouraging students to train as hard as possible, and in a slightly sadistic way enjoyed watching them being pushed to the limit and badgering people who looked like they were slacking off or whose arms were aching too much to continue the specific exercise. I was however keen not to hit any student hard, but whilst freefighting with them, did enjoy slapping them in the face frequently. I on occasion felt like 'destroying' the students, physically and mentally. Not literally, but pushing them to the very limit, but in a somewhat negative manner. Feeling total disgust for any physical or mental weakness or imperfect in technique. Such mental urges are not healthy and were no doubt a result of the conditioning at both Andrew's and Sid's schools. I put my hand up and admit the general ethos of the school set me up psychologically for the memoir 'Get In The Van' by Henry Rollins to have a slightly further negative impact on my mental state at the time which put a slightly different slant on the whole instructor ethos that I was party to.

At one lesson at Shaoshan, we finally got to try punching the sand bags on the wall for power training and conditioning the knuckles. It was the first time. Everyone's knuckles bled on the bags. I was getting nervous as my turn to punch was coming up and I didn't want to punch a sand bag with fresh blood soaked into it, for disease transmission reasons. However, I felt pressured into doing it and still query my sanity about that to this day. Each student was forced to punch bloody sand bags on the wall, and break their own skin and mix blood. No one had the guts to refuse. One student sounded calm about it and said he didn't think anyone in the class would likely have HIV. I was not reassured and felt very stressed. After the lesson, rather than apologise, Andrew had a go at the class and told them how disgusted he was at us for having baby skin as if it was our fault that we hadn't pre-conditioned then with bag training in the past. He then said that we weren't to do this anymore. Everyone had to just take it and agree. Doing a small amount over a large number of lessons is the way to actually condition the knuckles and punch so the skin doesn't break and gets tougher.

The feeling of not deserving to be taught the really 'hot' techniques, feeling guilty, never relaxing truly was rife amongst the students. Even when you were on holiday or away, you never quite felt totally relaxed or free. All the students I ever knew did not look forward to the training sessions. Rather, they dreaded them. Like impending doom. It was a fear of the horrible experience of the training session (intense freefighting and 'hassle', ie instructors throwing you around til you can't take it anymore, all the forced work rate etc). It was kinda ok once the warming up was out of the way. It was only after the session that people actually started looking relaxed and smiling, as they felt the sense of achievement and they had a respite for a few days before the next lesson when they could forget about how horrible it would be all over again.

Andrew and his instructors of the day were happy to go along with all of Sid's often unreasonable demands, and were complicit in bullying, brainwashing and so forth. No one stopped these dubious activities or intervened. I was told by one of Andrew's top instructors who used to be my class mate a year before, when he was giving me a lift, that one group of senior instructors from Fatshan and himself were instructed to follow someone in their car all over and intimidate them. Apparently Sid or Andrew had had some argument with them, and left the person scared out of their wits. They said they thought it was funny.

The conditioning of people in the school meant that although one would know that certain aspects of the school or behaviour of instructors of teachers was highly dubious or totally inappropriate, one would compartmentalise this and somehow it would not affect one's loyalty to the school and would not encourage one to question the school. This is psychologically unhealthy.

There was an overall air of pomposity, self-importance, arrogance and love of power that pervaded the senior instructors and Sid and Andrew at the academy. Arrogance was encouraged as 'confidence'. Some junior instructors who trained only with Andrew sometimes started off as quite nice people, and after moving to Fatshan to train with Sid became more arrogant, aggressive, rude, obnoxious, bitter and nasty. Their 'confidence' was a front to hide the insecurity that lay beneath. There were very few people in the school who had natural relaxed confidence.

Andrew had this unpleasant attitude that came across in his general tone and the way he said it that anyone currently training with him was a somebody, and that anyone who wasn't currently attending classes was a nobody. It was as if the world revolved around this one particular club. Even his senior instructors and loyal students who had trained with him for many years who had to quit as they moved away, were looked down upon and almost with contempt when mentioned. Photos of them were removed from the walls. This was probably an attempt to be 'zen' and be in the here and now, but it did not come across as very 'zen'. I personally found it extremely disrespectful. It was really just an attempt to erase history. If I was going to make fun of Andrew, I would compare it to Stalin removing colleagues who fell out of favour from photographs. I personally think he ought to have honoured his past instructors for their service and dedication to the school, time invested, money spent and the level of skill he believed they had attained in his terms. To have left their pictures up on the wall and if anything put them pride of place. Not to pretend they never existed. However, I do not know the circumstances of their departure, but I got the impression it didn't matter what the reason was, it was viewed negatively. One of our old instructors, a very short from South London, who used to instruct at the Universities, who was very severe but somewhat fair, and more agreeable than the other instructors who I thought were a bit unreasonable, came to visit Shaoshan at the new location on the industrial estate next to White Hart Lane train station. It was great to see him and Andrew was friendly with him. He stayed for about 10 minutes. One of us asked him if he was going to start training again and he was almost disgusted at the thought and said 'I'm not going through all that again'. I was a little confused about the comment at the time. In my experience, with a good school, you can make good progress quickly without having to suffer for years to achieve it because you are building on a solid foundation of structure. But he was pleased that we were progressing in our own way, although his response could have been interpreted as a kind of warning to us that if its not worth it for him to train then its not worth it us either. It was very rare for an ex-instructor to visit the school. It was the only time it happened when I was there as far as I recall. I believe this particular instructor left the school as he moved to Thailand, which he talked about when we saw him.

I invited my boss at work to the Sadler's Wells kung fu show and sold him a pair of tickets for him and his wife. He was the managing director of the company I worked for and had trained in Karate many years before so had a moderate interest in martial arts. He was also an instructor in NLP and body language. He enjoyed the show very much and afterwards a few months later, in the bar, as I was leaving the company, he told me that he could tell by the way Sid treated people on stage and his body language that he was a 'user of people'. I acknowledged that he was probably correct but said I still intended to carry on training. When I first started training at Shaoshan, I really looked up to Sid and Andrew, despite a few incidences of being accused of lying etc. which was really insulting, whereby I made excuses for them. But towards the end of my years of training, I realised they weren't really such great role models and didn't respect them that much and felt they were more to be endured and tolerated in order to get the training done, and tried to keep my head down and get on with the training without attracting additional aggravation above the normal amount.

One Sunday morning at Shaoshan when I was helping to instruct the class, Andrew rolled in slightly late as usual and was in an absolutely foul mood, and was scolding everybody about virtually anything. The head instructor was rushing around trying to do things to please Andrew and one of us was told by him to make Andrew a cup of tea. It did not seem to help and slightly later one of us asked him if he wanted another cup of tea, and he became even angrier and started gesticulating and shouting at the chief instructor that he didn't want any more tea and accused him of trying to make him constipated! The atmosphere of that class was absolutely terrible and no matter what us instructors and students did, it did not help and did not seem to be enough for him..

One time I was assisting with instructing at Shaoshan on a Sunday morning and we had a new student come in, and there was an odd number of people in the class, so I was told to partner up with him. After several minutes of a certain exercise he told me his arms were aching, which was normal for students in their first few lessons, but I encouraged him to keep going. This occurred a few times in the lesson if I recall correctly and he told me he wanted to stop and rest and to consider that it was his first lesson. However, I kept on at him to continue which was unreasonable. I guess it was a new situation for me. I normally dealt with students who'd been training at least a couple of weeks. He did not come back the next week. The other instructors told me this at the next class and said I should have gone easier on him, but I said something to the effect of better to weed out the weak hands earlier on as he'd probably have quit later anyway! And I think they laughed. But in hindsight, I did him a favour as it would not have been in his best interest to have trained with us anyway.

6 months prior to leaving the school, at the beginning of 1996, I underwent a religious conversion, becoming an evangelical Christian. It was not something that was planned or expected. There was a girl who lived in the ground floor flat in my building. I had never spoken to her besides saying hello in passing in the corridor and one Sunday I went over to give out some Fatshan Women's Self Defence leaflets to her. We got talking and she told him that it was Satanic. I thought this was a ridiculous comment and it then became obvious she was an evangelical Christian. We started off debating at the door to her flat, then she invited me in to continue the debate. And whilst she talked at me in a long monologue about passages from the Bible, I had a weird experience involving hallucinations, not being able to understand anything she was saying and a feeling of wanting to run away, which was then followed by a feeling felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I describe this experience in the Christianity section of this web site. I think years of feeling like I was suppressing my softer side left me with a big emotional hole and a means to address this presented itself and I took it, even if it meant taking on a second 'master' and adopting a rather alien set of religious beliefs. I related the story to Sid a few days later (seeing him as a kind of spiritual 'guru'). He didn't comment too much on it at that time. Later when in the changing room all the senior instructors from the class were above present, sitting all around me, and they started discussing it with me, like I was in an intervention, telling me that there was nothing wrong with me but something wierd about this woman, and that I should stay away from her, and that my initial gut instinct (of wanting to run anyway from her) was correct. I can understand their opinion up to a point. I think they interpreted the story as her being some sort of 'Christian witch' or some sort, but either way, I didn't pay attention to her opinion on that matter and carried on training but still remained a Christian. I never saw her around much anyway, as ironically she said as a single woman living alone, she didn't feel safe with men around, even though I was now on the same 'team' and I was trying to encourage her to learn women's self-defence. I've since given up being religious, but the talk from the instructors and Sid was a high pressure situation, and was really not for them to get involved with like that. I think it was because Sid took the 'Satanic' remark personally which is really a predictable put down that Christians come out with about anything other than own branch of their religion that he must surely have been used to.

In the weeks before leaving the academy in the late summer of 1996, I explained to Sid that I was moving to Scotland for work, and would be working in and around Dunblane. As he had put on a show for the kids of Dunblane at Sadler's Wells, he suggested that I should start a wing chun class at the school and teach the kids there. At the time, I believed that the wing chun I was doing was perhaps not the best, and that the stance was flawed, but I was planning on making a clean break from the academy as I was fed up with the whole environment. So whilst it was tempting in one sense to have run my own classes at the school, I wasn't keen on staying in contact regularly and being bossed around remotely over the phone about the class format and curriculum etc. And also I didn't particularly want to teach anyone that style as I would have felt dishonest about it, presenting it as being the best. And additionally, I didn't want to be responsible for encouraging any of the kids to potentially come down to London to join the academy, or perhaps for for Sid get a foothold at the school in this way. So I queried the idea and said that I was only going to be there for a few months, and asked what would happen to the classes and students after I left. Sid was unhappy about my response and said 'let me worry about that'. But I stood firm on this issue as I felt it was not the right thing to do. In a way, in hindsight, it might have been quite amusing to have taught the kids my own version of Sid's wing chun, with 50/50 stance that I was keen on at the time, and never told the academy of my enhancements.

I left the school on good terms with both brothers and the instructors, and gave all the instructors cards with hand written notes etc. and gave a financial gift to both Sid and Andrew. However some 4 or 5 months later, I was feeling rather put out by all the aggravation I had at the school and wrote Sid a matter of factly letter where I told him why his technique was poor giving examples of why, mentioning the 2 week student who nearly bettered me at chi sau, and criticising the bullying etc. According to one of my friends who was in the instructors class, this was read out loud to the instructors by Sid, but changed some of the details, making it up and making it sound like I was verbally abusing them and making purile remarks about their genitals etc. At least two friends of mine from the school, one who was in the instructors' class and one who had already left the academy who had bumped into one of my instructors on the Tube, told me that the instructors wanted to beat me up. However I left the country shortly afterwards for a while anyway for work. My parents were called up by one of Sid's instructors at 11pm, who was angry at the letter, demanded to know of my whereabouts and was told never to call again.