Hard Or Soft?

Many years ago I heard an interesting question put to Grandmaster Ip Chun,

“Is Wing Chun a hard or a soft style?”

Now you may have some thoughts on this yourself, thinking well this is obvious, or is it?

Obviously some styles are easy to characterise as Hard or Soft;

Hard styles;

Karate

Thai Boxing

Kick Boxing etc.

Soft styles;

Tai Chi Ch’uan

Qi Qong

and even Judo

But Wing Chun is not so easy to categorise, as Sifu described in his answer.

“Is Wing Chun a hard or a soft style?”

“It’s both. Soft in its deflection but Hard on its impact”.