Yip Man
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Yip Man (葉問 in pinyin: ye4 wen4; in Jyutping: jip6 man6 aka 葉繼問 1893-1972) was the first master (sifu) to teach the martial art of Wing Chun openly. He had several students who later became famous in their own right, including Bruce Lee.
Yip Man was the last Wing Chun student of Chan Wah-shun when he was 70 years old. He was the second son of a very wealthy family in Foshan, Guangdong, and received an exceptional traditional Chinese education.
When Yip Man was thirteen years old he started learning Wing Chun. Because of his sifu's old age, Yip Man learned most of his lessons from his second sihing Ng Chung-sok. After three years Chan Wah-shun died, but one of his dying wishes was to ask Ng to continue with Yip's training.
At age sixteen, Yip Man went to Japan for a short time and attended school at St. Stephen's College in Hong Kong, which was an upmarket secondary school for wealthy families and foreigners who lived in Hong Kong.
The Chinese students at the school Yip Man attended were often bullied by the physically larger and stronger Caucasian and Indian students, so Yip Man endeavoured to change the attitude of those bullies. One day one of his classmates challenged him to try his martial arts skill with an older man. The man who Yip Man competed against was beaten within a few strikes. It turned out that the old man was his sibak Leung Bik (梁璧), son of his sigung. After that encounter, Yip Man continued to learn from Leung Bik.
At age 24, Yip Man returned to Foshan, and his Wing Chun skills had improved tremendously while he had been away. His fellow students believed he learned a different kind of martial art and treated him as a traitor to Wing Chun. Even though Money Changer Wah was very skilled at Wing Chun, he was not well educated and could not communicate as well with his students as Leung Bik could.
In Foshan, Yip Man didn't formally run a Wing Chun school, but taught Wing Chun to several children of his friends and relatives. Amongst those informal students, 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 the most well known. Chow Kwong-yue was said to be the best student among his group of pupils, but he eventually went into commerce and dropped out of martial art all together. Kwok Fu and Lun Kai went on to teach students of their own and the Wing Chun in the Foshan and Guangdong area was mainly descended from those individuals. Chan Chi-sun died young, and Lui Ying went to Hong Kong; neither of them taking on any students.
During the Japanese occupation of China, Yip Man refused several invitations to become a trainer for the Japanese troop. Instead, he went back to Hong Kong and opened a martial art school. When he initially began the school, business was poor because students stayed for a couple of months and never returned. He moved his school 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 that time some of his students were quite well trained to such a high skill level that some of them even started their own schools.
Some of Yip Man's students and descendants tested their skills with other martial artists in combat. Their victory over other martial artists helped to build up 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). Bruce Lee, perhaps one of Yip Man's most famous pupils, studied under him from 1954 to 1957. When Yip Man retired, the business of the sports association was run by his last student Leung Ting.
In 1972, Yip Man suffered from throat cancer and subsequently died on December 2 of that year. As a fitting obituary for the man, within the three decades of his career in Hong Kong, he established a training system for Wing Chun that eventually spread across the world.
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Source
www.Leungting.com (http://www.leungting.com/Chi/Feature02.htm)
Quote
"徒弟選擇一個好師傅, 固然困難, 但師傅選擇一個好徒弟, 更加困難。" - It is difficult for a student to pick a good teacher, but it is more difficult for a teacher to pick a good student.
Lineage
| Lineage in Wing Chun | |
| sifu | Chan Wah-shun (陳華順) |
| other teachers | second sihing Ng Chung-sok (吳仲素) sibak Leung Bik (梁璧) |
| Yip Man (葉問) | |
| known students in Foshan: (probably informal) | * Chow Kwong-yue (周光裕 (六仔)) Kwok Fu (郭富) Lun Kai (倫佳) * Chan Chi-sun (陳志新) * Lui Ying (呂應) |
| known students in Hong Kong: | Leung Sheung (梁相) (first) Lok Yiu (駱耀) Chu Shong-tin (徐尚田) Chiu Wun (招允) Lo Man-gum (盧文錦) Moy Yat (梅逸) his son Ip Chun (葉準) his son Ip Ching (葉正) Yip Bo-ching (葉步青) Wong Shun-leung (黃惇樑) Cheung Chek-hing (張卓慶) Ho Kum-ming (何金銘) Bruce Lee Siu Yuk-man (蕭煜民) Ho Luen (何聯) Leung Ting (梁挻) (last) others too numerous to list |
| * denotes end of line with no student | |
External Link
- the school started by Yip Man still carries on the tradition (http://www.vingtsun.org.hk)