SIFU JASON LAU
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Grandmaster Jason Lau grew up in
Hong Kong in a martial arts family. Both his mother and father were performers
and martial artists in the famous Chinese Opera. Grandmaster Lau’s mother
trained him in the Northern Shaolin style from the time he could walk, and
drilled him constantly. When he was about twelve years
old, a fellow classmate at LaSalle Academy helped him in a fight against several
English boys. It was during this fight that Grandmaster Lau first saw Wing Chun
in action. He was so impressed, he immediately found a school to learn the
system. Master Jiu Wan accepted him as a student, and he began to train in
secret, fearful that his mother would discover that he was training in another
style. Grandmaster Lau trained with Jiu
Wan until age nineteen, when he left Hong Kong to come to America. He soon
settled in an area of Brooklyn known as Flatbush.
As Grandmaster Lau opened his school and got to know the local merchants, he
discovered that crime in his neighborhood was widespread. He decided to use his
Wing Chun skills to defend his neighborhood. He soon became well known and
appreciated as a vigilante, both by the shopkeepers and the police. As his reputation spread, he came
to the attention of retired General Mitchell WerBell III, who was scouting for
instructors for his counter-terrorist training camp, SIONICS. General WerBell
recruited Grandmaster Lau to teach hand to hand combat at the camp in Powder
Springs, Georgia. Grandmaster Lau so impressed the General with his abilities
that he soon became the camp’s chief instructor and the General’s personal
bodyguard. Shortly after General WerBell’s
death in 1983, Grandmaster Lau again opened a Wing Chun academy, this time in
Smyrna, Georgia. His school and his reputation grew in the Atlanta area, and he
was often featured in news specials and magazine and newspaper articles. In the early 1990s, Grandmaster
Lau was finally able to realize his dream of designing and building a Wing Chun
temple. He and his students labored for two years to build the academy, nestled
in a wooded Atlanta suburb. Grandmaster Lau formed his school into a family. He
treats his students as if they were his sons and daughters, and the students
treat each other as brothers and sisters. The school that he designed and built
is their home. Grandmaster Lau is currently
finishing an instructional Wing Chun video tape for the branches of his family
in New York and Tampa as well as for other serious Wing Chun students.
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