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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 already 70 years old.
Yip Man was the second son of a very wealthy family in Foshan.
He received good traditional Chinese education.
He was only thirteen when he started learning Wing Chun.
Due to his sifu's old age, Yip Man mostly learned his lessons from his second sihing Ng Chung-sok.
His sifu died after three years.
But one of his sifu's deathwishes was to ask Ng to continue Yip's training.
At age sixteen, Yip Man went to Japan briefly.
Then he went to school at St. Stephen's College in Hong Kong.
It was an upscale secondary school for wealthy families and foreigners in Hong Kong.
Chinese students in the school were often bullied by the bigger and stronger Caucasian and Indian students.
Yip Man changed the attitude of those bullies.
One day, one of his classmates challenged him to try his martial art skill with an older man.
He 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, he continued to learn from Leung Bik.
At age 24, Yip Man returned to Foshan.
His Wing Chun skills had improved tremendously since he left Foshan.
His fellow students thought that he learned a different kind of martial art and treated him as a traitor to Wing Chun.
Even though Money Changer Wah was more skilled at Wing Chun, he was not well educated and failed to communicate well with his students as well as Leung Bik could.
In Foshan, Yip Man didn't formally run a Wing Chun school.
However, he taught Wing Chun to several kids 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 more well known.
Chow Kwong-yue was said to be the best student among this group.
However, he went into commerce and dropped martial art all together.
Kwok Fu and Lun Kai went on to have students of their own.
The Wing Chun in the Foshan and Guangdong area was mainly descended from them.
Chan Chi-sun died young, and Lui Ying went to Hong Kong.
Neither of them had any student.
During the Japanese occupation of China, Yip Man refused several invitation to become the trainer for the Japanese troop.
He went back to Hong Kong and opened a martial art school.
Business was poor initially.
Student stayed for a couple of months and they 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 then some of his students were quite well trainned.
Some even started their own school.
Some of his students and descendants tested their skills with other martial artists in combat.
Their victory over other martial artists started to build up Yip Man's reputation.
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 became one of Yip Man's students between 1970 and 1971.
As Yip Man aged, the business of the sports association was run by his last student Leung Ting.
In 1972, he suffered from throat cancer and he died on December 2.
Within the three decades of his career in Hong Kong, he established a trainning system for Wing Chun that eventually spread around the world.
(most of the contents above were translated from [1] (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.
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