Yip Man
was born on
October 1st, 1893. He was the first martial arts master to
teach the Chinese martial art of Wing Chun openly. He had
several students who later became martial arts teachers in
their own right, including Bruce Lee.
Yip Man (alternative spelling Ip 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 attend 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. According to one story, 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
beat him with a few strikes. It turned out that the old man
was his sibak Leung Bik, 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.
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,
Kwok Fu, Lun Kai, Chan Chi-sun and Lui Ying 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 train the Japanese troops. Instead,
he returned to Hong Kong and opened a martial arts school.
When he initially began the school, business was poor
because his students typically stayed for only a couple of
months before leaving. He moved his school to Hoi Tan
Street 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
trained to a sufficiently high enough skill level that they
were able to start their own schools.
Some of Yip Man's students and descendants compared their
skills with other martial artists in combat. Their victory
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.
Bruce Lee, Yip Man's most famous pupil, studied under him
from 1954 to 1957. When Yip Man retired, many of his
students were themselves teaching Wing Chun, including Wong
Shun Leung, William Cheung, Lo Man Kam (Yip Man's nephew),
Moy Yat and his two sons Yip Chun and Yip Ching.
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.