Yeah, the story is definitely extremely hard to follow. I was trying to remember the plot and realized that I can't even get it straight without watching it myself haha.
I think he has a Xing Yi and maybe some Bagua background, and story goes that he thought that the wing chun knives and pole were really cool so he wanted to fold in whatever he knew into those weapons and showcase them. Those Donnie Yen Ip Man movies really made wing chun the "cool" thing to do.
I remember my dad sent me to a class to learn wing chun at the local mall in Beijing. I was maybe 10 or 11 at the time and the only students there were middle schoolers. The "master" had a huge photo on the wall of him in midair kicking or something like that and never showed us a single move. We were taught by his one disciple (who I'm pretty sure was a high schooler) who just made us chain punch for 20 minutes and then showed us how to slap the wooden dummy with maximum gusto. I saw the "master" maybe three times total, and he was always dressed in a silk suit and didn't say anything, just sort of watched us and nodded.