Ip Man

Quick Facts

Date of Birth10/1/1893

Date of Death12/2/1972

Country of OriginHong Kong

Also known asIp Kai-man, Yip Man

Biography

Ip Man, born Ip Kai-man, was born on 1 October 1893 in Foshan, Guangdong Province, under the Qing dynasty. His parents were Ip Oi-dor and Ng Shui. He is known as a Wing Chun master who taught the style in Hong Kong from the nineteen-fifties and whose students included Bruce Lee.

He began training with Chan Wah-shun, sources differ on whether he was 9 or 13. After Chan Wah-shun's stroke in 1909 he continued with Ng Chung-sok and also trained with Leung Bik until his death in 1911.

He arrived in Hong Kong in 1950, at first unemployed and briefly working in a restaurant. In the nineteen-fifties he began teaching Wing Chun to escape poverty. The school was based successively on Castle Peak Road in Sham Shui Po and on Lee Tat Street in Yau Ma Tei. He adjusted the Siu Nim Tau form, arranged the Mok Yan Jong exercises and passed on the Baat Cham Dao. In 1967 he founded the Ving Tsun Athletic Association with his students. He trained among others Bruce Lee, Leung Sheung, Lok Yiu, Wong Shun-leung, Victor Kan, William Cheung, Moy Yat and Lo Man-kam.

In 1916 he married Cheung Wing-sing, who died in 1960. They had sons Ip Chun and Ip Ching, who were also his students, and daughters Ip Nga-sum and Ip Nga-wun. He died on 2 December 1972, according to other sources 1 December, in Mong Kok in Kowloon, Hong Kong, of laryngeal cancer.

Early life

Ip Man was born on 1 October 1893 in Foshan to Ip Oi-dor and Ng Shui as the third of four children of a wealthy family. He had an older brother Ip Kai-gak, an older sister Ip Wan-mei and a younger sister Ip Wan-hum, and received a traditional Chinese education. His son Ip Chun later said that the family mansion in the films was more lavish than the real house.

He began training Wing Chun in Foshan with Chan Wah-shun, with sources giving his age as nine, eleven or thirteen, and Ip Man himself mentioned eleven in an interview. Around the age of fifteen or sixteen, with the help of a relative, Leung Fut-ting, he moved to Hong Kong and studied at St. Stephen's College.

Training and teachers

According to Wikipedia, Chan Wah-shun taught him for about three years and Ip Man was his sixteenth and last student. When Chan stopped teaching after a stroke in 1909, his second oldest student Ng Chung-sok took over the training. According to the family version told by his son Ip Ching, Ip Man continued in Hong Kong with Leung Bik, son of Leung Jan, until his death in 1911.

In Foshan, according to Dan Knight's biography, he met Yuen Kay-shan of another Wing Chun lineage and allowed him to teach his son Ip Chun the first form, Siu Nim Tau. In 1945 to 1949, according to historian Benjamin Judkins, he worked in the Kuomintang-backed Foshan martial arts association and trained fellow police officers there.

Contribution and innovations

According to the Hong Kong Ving Tsun Athletic Association, Ip Man began teaching in Hong Kong in 1950 and the first class had about eight people, among them Leung Sheung, Lok Yiu and Lau Ming. The school moved several times, among others to Yau Ma Tei, Lei Cheng Uk Estate and from 1961 Castle Peak Road. In 1964 he closed the gym, continued teaching by arrangement and urged his students to found an association. Seven appointed students founded the Ving Tsun Athletic Association in 1967, according to his handwritten note on the proposed name on 24 August 1967, and in 1968 bought permanent premises on Nullah Road.

According to Andrew Hang Lum Ma, in the nineteen-fifties he accepted students selectively. Ip Man also wrote an account of the origin of Wing Chun, cited as one of the oldest written accounts of the style. Six weeks before his death he asked his sons and the student Lau Hon Lam to film his practice, but because of weakness he managed to demonstrate only the forms Siu Nim Tau, Chum Kiu and practice with the wooden dummy.

Legends and documented facts

The films with Donnie Yen presented Ip Man as a policeman and hero who defeated Japanese soldiers during the Japanese occupation. Only postwar police service in Foshan in 1945 to 1949 is documented, and the fights with Japanese characters are, according to Wikipedia, film dramatization. During the occupation, according to the kwokwingchun.com chronicle, he taught a small group in 1941 to 1943 in the back of a textile mill, not the whole factory.

The story of Leung Bik defeating the young Ip Man and then teaching him rests on family narrative, and Ip Man himself described it differently in an interview. Bruce Lee is often called his main student, but in a letter to Wong Shun-leung of 11 January 1970 he called himself, according to Wikipedia, technically a student of Ip Man and said that he had learned kung fu mainly from Wong.

Rumors of opium addiction and of work as a secret agent are disputed according to Wikipedia, and the association's official history is silent on them. We have not been able to find a documented quotation with an exact source.

Legacy

Ip Man died in December 1972 in Mong Kok of throat cancer at the age of 79, Wikipedia gives 2 December, another source 1 December. After about six months of debate his student Wong Shun-leung was elected chairman of the association. His son Ip Chun, born in 1924, taught Wing Chun in Hong Kong from 1967 and became chairman of the association. The younger son Ip Ching published the book Ip Man: Portrait of a Kung Fu Master in 2001 with Ron Heimberger.

The Ip Man Tong museum was opened in the Foshan Museum on 9 November 2002. The Hong Kong Ving Tsun Athletic Association calls itself the association of his lineage and estimates that thanks to his students and their students more than a million people practice Wing Chun. In November 1999 it held the first world Wing Chun conference with more than 800 participants and on 8 November 2025 celebrated 75 years since the start of his teaching in Hong Kong.

Teachers, students and family

Associated Martial Arts

Kata and forms

Organisations

• VINGVing Tsun Athletic AssociationCo-founder · 1967

Filmography

A screen role does not mean the person actually practises the art — that is listed above.