Wing Chun
When
Yip Man was thirteen years old he started learning Wing Chun from Chan
Wah-shun (陳華順). Because of his sifu's old age, Yip Man had to learn much
of his skills and techniques from his master's second eldest disciple Ng
Chung-sok (吳仲素). Three years into Yip Man.s training Chan Wah-shun died.
One of his dying wishes was to have Ng continue training Yip. At the age
of 15 Yip man moved to Hong Kong with help from Leung Fut Ting, a
relative. At age sixteen, Yip Man attended school at St. Stephen's
College in Hong Kong. It was a secondary school for wealthy families and
foreigners who lived in Hong Kong. According to Yip Man's two sons,while
at St. Stephen's Yip Man intervened after seeing a foreign police
officer beating a woman. The story goes that the Police officer tried to
strike Yip Man who used his martial arts to strike the officer down, at
which point Yip Man and his classmate ran to school. The classmate is
said to have told an older man who lived in his apartment block. Yip Man
was invited to see this man and the man asked Yip Man what martial art
he studied. The man then asked Yip Man to show him his first 2 forms (Sil
Lim Tao and Chun Kiu). The man then told Yip man that his forms were
.not too great. Yip Man was then invited to Chi Sau (a form of training
that involves controlled attack and defence), Yip Man saw this as an
opportunity to prove his Kung Fu was good, but he was beaten after just
a few strikes. It turned out that the old man was his master's elder
fellow-disciple (and so, by Chinese tradition Yip Man's martial uncle),
Leung Bik (梁璧), son of his master's master Leung Jan (梁贊). After that
encounter, Yip Man continued his training lessons from Leung Bik. By the
age of 24, Yip Man had returned to Foshan, his Wing Chun skills
tremendously improved.
In Foshan, Yip Man became a policeman. He did not formally run a Wing
Chun school, but taught several of his subordinates, his friends and
relatives. Amongst those informal students, Lok Yiu, Chow Kwong-yue (周光裕
(六仔)), Kwok Fu (郭富), Lun Kai (倫佳), Chan Chi-sun (陳志新) and Lui Ying (呂應)
were amongst the most well-known. Chow Kwong-yue was said to be the best
student among his peers, but eventually he went into commerce and
dropped out of martial arts all together. Kwok Fu and Lun Kai went on to
teach students of their own. Wing Chun in the Foshan and Guangdong area
was mainly passed down from these two individuals. Chan Chi-sun died
young, and Lui Ying went to Hong Kong. Neither of them took any
students.
Yip Man went to Kwok Fu's village house during the Japanese Occupation.
He only returned to Foshan after the war, to once again take up the job
of a police officer. At the end of 1949, after the Communist party won
the Chinese civil war, being an officer of the Kuomintang, he decided to
escape to Hong Kong without his family when the Communists had come to
Foshan.
In Hong Kong, he opened a martial arts school. Initially, business was
poor because his students typically stayed for only a couple of months.
He moved his school twice, to Hoi Tan Street (海壇街) in Sham Shui Po, and
then to Lee Tat Street (利達街) in Yau Ma Tei. By then, some of his
students were skilled enough that they were able to start their own
schools. Among the first were Leung Sheung, Lok Yiu, Chu Shong-tin, and
Wong Shun Leung.
Some of Yip Man's students and descendants compared their skills with
other martial artists in combat. Their victories over other martial
artists helped to bolster Yip Man's reputation as a teacher.
In 1967, Yip Man and some of his students established the Hong Kong Ving
Tsun Athletic Association (香港詠春拳體育會). In 1972, Yip Man suffered throat
cancer and subsequently died on the 2nd of December that same year.
Within the three decades of his career in Hong Kong, he established a
training system for Wing Chun that eventually spread across the world
Taken from
Wikipedia
