Yip Man
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You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (August 2008)
葉å•
Foshan, Empire of Great Qing of China
Hong Kong
Yip Man (traditional Chinese: 葉å•; simplified Chinese: å¶é—®; pinyin: yè wèn, Cantonese Jyutping: jip6 man6; alternative spelling Ip Man; also known as 葉繼å•; 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.
[edit] Biography
Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (August 2008)
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 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 (æ¢ç’§), 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.
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, Chow Kwong-yue (周光裕 (å…ä»”)), Kwok Fu (éƒå¯Œ), 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 a 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é”è¡—) 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 (é¦™æ¸¯è© æ˜¥æ‹³é«”è‚²æœƒ).
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 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.
As of 2008, there is talk of a biopic film pertaining to his life, currently titled "Ip Man (film)".[citation needed]
[edit] Quote
"徒弟é¸æ“‡ä¸€å€‹å¥½å¸«å‚…, 固然困難, 但師傅é¸æ“‡ä¸€å€‹å¥½å¾’弟, æ›´åŠ å›°é›£ã€‚" - It is difficult for a student to pick a good teacher, but it is more difficult for a teacher to pick a good student.[citation needed]
[edit] Lineage
- See also: Branches_of_Wing_Chun
sibak Leung Bik (æ¢ç’§)
Yip Man (葉å•)
