WRITTEN BY THE LATE GRANDMASTER IP MAN
葉問宗師親撰《詠春源流》真跡
The text in Chinese was a rough draft written by the late Grandmaster Ip Man and was supposed to be the preface for the purpose of organizing the "Ving Tsun Tong Fellowship" once upon a time. However, the Ving Tsun Tong Fellowshp had never been come in existence. In stead, the "Ving Tsun Athletic Association" was finally established on 24, August 1967.
The founder of the Ving Tsun Kungfu System, Miss Yim Ving Tsun was a native of Canton China. As a young girl, she was intelligent and athletic, upstanding and manly. She was betrothed to Leung Bok Chau, a salt merchant of Fukien. Soon after that, her mother died. Her father, Yim Yee, was wrongfully accused of a crime, and nearly went to jail. So the family moved far away, and finally settled down at the foot of Tai Leung Mountain at the Yunnan-Szechuan border. There, they earned a living by. All this happened during the reign of Emperor K'anghsi (1662-1722). At the time, kungfu was becoming very strong in Siu Lam Monastery (Shaolin Monastery) of Mt. Sung, Honan. This aroused the fear of the Manchu government, which sent troops to attack the Monastery. They were unsuccessful. A man called Chan Man Wai was the First Placed Graduate of the Civil Service Examination that year. He was seeking favour with the government, and suggested a plan. He plotted with Siu Lam monk Ma Ning Yee and others. They set fire to the Monastery while soldiers attacked it from the outside. Siu Lam was burnt down, and the monks scattered. Buddhist Abbess Ng Mui, Abbot Chi Shin, Abbot Pak Mei, Master Fung To Tak and Master Miu Hin escaped and fled their separate ways. Ng Mui took refuge in White Crane Temple on Mt. Tai Leung (also known as Mt. Chai Har). There she came to know Yim Yee and his daughter Yim Ving Tsun. She bought bean curds at their store. They became friends. |
Ving Tsun was a young woman then, and her beauty attracted the attention of a local bully. He tried to force Ving Tsun to marry him. She and her father were very worried. Ng Mui learned of this and took pity on Ving Tsun. She agreed to teach Ving Tsun fighting techniques so that she could protect herself. Then she would be able to solve the problem with the bully, and marry Leung Bok Chau, her betrothed husband. So Ving Tsun followed Ng Mui into the mountains, and started to learn kungfu. She trained night and day, and mastered the techniques. Then she challenged the local bully to a fight and beat him. Ng Mui set off to travel around the country, but before she left, she told Ving Tsun to strictly honour the kungfu traditions, to develop her kungfu after her marriage, and to help the people working to overthrow the Manchu government and restore the Ming Dynasty. This is how Ving Tsun kungfu was handed down by Abbess Ng Mui.
After the marriage, Ving Tsun taught her Kungfu to her husband Leung Bok Chau, and he passed his kungfu techniques on to Leung Lan Kwai. Leung Lan Kwai passed it on to Wong Wah Bo. Wong Wah Bo was a member of an opera troupe on board a junk, known to the Chinese as the Red Junk. Wong worked on the Red Junk with Leung Yee Tei. It so happened that Abbot Chi Shin, who fled from Siu Lam, had disguised himself as a cook and was now working on the Red Junk. Chi Shin taught the Six-and-a-half Point Long Pole Techniques to Leung Yee Tei. Wong Wah Bo was close to Leung Yee Tei, and they shared what they knew about kungfu. Together they correlated and improved their techniques, and thus the Six-and-half-point Long Pole Techniques were incorporated into Ving Tsun Kungfu.
Leung Yee Tei passed the Kungfu on to Leung Jan, a well known herbal doctor in Fat Shan. Leung Jan grasped the innermost secrets of Ving Tsun, and attained the highest level of proficiency. Many kungfu masters came to challenge him, but all were defeated. Leung Jan became very famous. Later, he passed his kungfu on to Chan Wah Shan, who took me as his student many decades ago. I studied kungfu alongside my kungfu brothers such as Ng Siu Lo, Ng Chung So, Chan Yu Min and Lui Yu Jai. Ving Tsun was thus passed down to us, and we are eternally grateful to our kungfu ancestors and teachers. We will always remember and appreciate our roots, and this shared feeling will always keep our kungfu brothers close together. This is why I am organizing the Ving Tsun Fellowship, and I hope my kungfu brothers will support me in this. This will be very important in the promotion of Kungfu.
| Yip Man 葉問 | |
 Young Yip Man | |
| Born | 1 October 1893 Foshan, Empire of Great Qing of China |
|---|---|
| Died | 2 December 1972 (aged 79) Hong Kong |
| Cause of death | Throat cancer |
| Other names | 葉繼問, Yeji Q |
| Occupation | Martial arts practitioner |
| Title | Gung-Gung |
| Children | Ip Ching & Ip Chun |
Yip Man (traditional Chinese: 葉問; simplified Chinese: 叶问; pinyin: yè wèn, Cantonese Jyutping: jip6 man6; alternative spelling Ip Man; also known as 葉繼問; 1 October 1893-2 December 1972) was the first martial arts master (Chinese: Sifu) 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 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 (吳仲素). After three years Chan Wah-shun (陳華順) 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 a secondary school for wealthy families and foreigners who lived in Hong Kong.
According to some traditions, one day one of his classmates challenged him to try his martial arts skill with an older man. The man beat him with a few strikes. It turned out that the old man was his sibak Leung Bik (梁璧), son of his sigung Leung Jan (梁贊). 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.
In Foshan, being a police officer, Yip Man didn't formally run a Wing Chun school, but taught to several 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 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 arts 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 went to Kwok Fu's village house.
After the war, he returned to Foshan to be a police officer again.
At the end of 1949, 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. 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 (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 trained to a sufficiently high enough skill level 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).
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 in addition to the above, William Cheung, Lo Man Kam (Yip Man's nephew), Moy Yat, Leung Ting, and his two sons Ip Chun and Ip 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.
