Is there a difference?
YES there is if we go far enough back there clearly is a difference.
Although they are very clearly sister arts, “Weng Chun” clearly was developed with Fujian White Crane as its main source and “Wing Chun” was developed by a fusion of Fujian White Crane and Emei.
What makes all of this confusing is that in History the name eternal spring “Weng Chun” was also used by some Wing Chun families (please keep in mind we are talking about the Chinese characters here) even the late GM Ip Man used Eternal spring for a period of time as his Sifu Chan Wha Sun was from the Eternal spring Lineage.
The reason some not so educated people think that “Weng Chun” stems from Hung Gar is because some of the families during the course of History introduced some Hung Kuen moves in the later added forms.
One only has to study the original Kuen Kuits to see the facts and truth. Fou-Float, Cham-Sink, Tan-Swallow, To-Spit are crucial main concepts in Fujian White Crane as well as “Weng Chun” to name a very small example.
The late GM Ip Man fused some “Wing Chun” and “Weng Chun” together in his system taking info from Dai Dak Lan and so did some others before him in Fatshan’s Yuen Wo, making the matter even more confusing.
In the near future I will release a video on my Sifu Sergio Channel about this subject.
Yours in Wing Chun
Sifu Sergio
PS: By the way, I realize that in the past when my research was still ongoing I had a slightly different viewpoint on the subject. See one of my first articles in Wing Chun Illustrated Magazine. That’s what a real researcher encounters during his voyage to the truth as more and more hard facts reveal themselves the opinion has to change for otherwise he would not be a real researcher.