Ip Man Wing Chun Union

Ip Man Wing Chun Union

Dedicated to teaching the Ip Man Wing Chun system as passed
in the direct lineage of the Ip Family!

           Ip Man Family Wing Chun

              Grandmaster Ip Man taught Wing Chun publicly in Hong Kong
               for less than fifteen years, from (1950 – 1964), he taught privately for several years
afterwards. There were only twenty-two years from the time Ip first began teaching publicly
until his death. During this time Ip Man taught many students, some were businessmen,
some were laborers, some educated individuals, some just teenagers.

Not all of the students who trained under Ip Man completed their training. Some students
were too young to appreciate the principles and theories that Ip taught. These students
were far too interested in learning how to beat up the rival gangs in Hong Kong, to spend
time studying the deeper aspects of Wing Chun, so their training only scratched the surface
of this Kung Fu system.

Bruce Lee is a student who fell into this group. You can read accounts of the famous
rooftop fights he participated in while in Hong Kong. These accounts describe how Bruce
and his classmates would meet rival gangs from other Kung Fu schools on the rooftops of
apartment buildings and fight to see whose Kung Fu was better. In our minds eye we see an
Image of the Bruce Lee we are all familiar with in those fights. One imagines the Bruce Lee
we knew from the movies, and can see him dominating those encounters. But wait, we are
not talking about the same man here. During this time period he was just a teenager, boy of
about fifteen or sixteen, fighting with other teenagers. These were not fights between two
masters, but between two teenagers who had limited training. This should change our
whole perspective on these stories of Bruce fighting on the rooftops.

Since the Bruce Lee of those stories was a teenager. That means we have to look at Bruce
Lee’s training in Wing Chun in a whole new light. Bruce trained with Ip Man from 1955 –
1959, brake out your calculator and you will came up with four years. That’s not four years
of the Bruce Lee from "Enter the Dragon" training with Grandmaster Ip Man one-on-one.
That’s four years of a teenage Bruce Lee being just another face in the crowd, in a class with
adults who were serious about understanding the deeper aspects of the system. If you were
the teacher, who would you devote more time to teaching?

Bruce was born on Nov.27th, 1940 this would have made him fourteen or fifteen when he
began training with Grandmaster Ip Man. When he left Hong Kong for America in 1959,
Bruce was eighteen years old. So ask yourself, just how much Wing Chun did Bruce Lee
know?

It has been reported by such notable classmates of Bruce Lee’s as Hawkins Cheung, that
Bruce had only the first two forms and part of the Dummy set. This would account for the so-
called weaknesses Bruce found in Wing Chun. Any system will have weaknesses if you
have not been exposed to the complete teachings of that system. When Bruce first came to
America he was teaching what he knew of the Wing Chun system, which he called Jun Fan
Gung Fu. Bruce had to fill in the gaps he found in his system due to the fact that his training
was incomplete. The rest is history, but this leads us to other questions.

If Bruce Lee did not complete the Wing Chun system, who did. Bruce Lee’s death created a
unique situation in the world of Wing Chun. Bruce did not really get famous in America until
after his death. When people became aware of Bruce after the release of "Enter the Dragon,"
they became interested in his background. People wanted to know what system of Kung Fu
he had studied, and who had taught him. This was when most people first heard of Wing
Chun and Ip Man, but Ip Man had passed away just seven months prior to Bruce. This is
where it becomes complicated. Grandmaster Ip Man did not have a ranking system. There
were no actual records of who had completed the system, and who had not. This meant a
great business opportunity for some people. With Ip Man gone, and the sudden interest in
Wing Chun, anyone who had ever trained with Ip Man could open a school and get in on the
money to be made. Even unscrupulous instructors who had not completed their training in
the Wing Chun system. As you can see, this makes finding the real thing a little difficult.
Where do you turn?

The Wing Chun system has three empty hand forms, The Siu Lim Tao, Chum Kiu, and Biu
Jee. There is one additional empty hand form performed on a training apparatus called the
Mook Yun Jong, or Wooden Man Dummy. To complete the system there are two weapons
sets, the Luk Dim Boon Kwun or 6 1/2 point pole, and the Ba Chom Dao or Eight Slashing
Broadswords form. If one were to take a look at any number of Wing Chun instructors who
trace their lineage back to Ip Man, one would find that their first forms are usually pretty
much the same. The Second form varies some, and the third form, dummy set, and weapons
sets are usually quite different. Since most of these Sifu's in some way trace their lineage
back to Ip Man, there can only be a few reasons for the differences. Either; one, they are
changing the forms purposely, two, they have very bad memories, or three, they have to
make up sections of Wing Chun they did not learn. So this still leaves us with the original
problem mentioned above. How do we get the authentic Wing Chun as taught by Ip Man?

A wise man once said "to understand the fruit, go back to the root" so the best way to get
the authentic teachings of the real Wing Chun system is to get as close to the original
source as possible. As mentioned above, there are many instructors who trace their lineage
back directly to Ip Man, so how do you choose? Nearly every time you open a martial arts
magazine you can read claims from one or more of these instructors as being the only one
to learn the secrets from Sifu Ip, or the only one to ever be taught the real system.
It is important for the prospective student to find the correct and complete system. Wing
Chun has survived into the modern era because it is an effective system of self-protection
built on solid principles and techniques. Learning an incomplete version of this system will
most likely lead the practitioner to a bad end. As was recorded in the Councils of the Great
Yu, 2255 BC "Follow what is right and you will be fortunate. Do not follow what is right and
you will be unfortunate. The results are only shadows and echo’s of our actions."

Wing Chun is a system set up in such a way that everything you learn today is dependent
upon the foundation you built yesterday. Everything you learn tomorrow will be dependent
on the soundness of what you learn today. This is the reason that it is important that what
the student is learning is the real and authentic teachings of the Warriors and Masters who
have come before us. We must make sure that we are not being taught ad-libbed teachings
of a fraudulent instructor who is unwilling to admit that his Wing Chun education is
incomplete.

So how do we sort through all the smoke and mirrors and find the real thing. Well, the
answer is really quite simple. Ask yourself this question, if I were the master of a kung fu
system, who would receive the most attention of all my students? Who would have the
greatest opportunity to see not only what I taught in class, but also how I lived my life, how I
myself applied the principles I teach? Who would get the benefit of the most private time
with me, and be able to get their questions answered just about any time of any day?

Grandmaster Ip Man had two sons, The oldest was Ip Chun, and the youngest and most
athletic Ip Ching. Both trained with their father. Many instructors claim to have been "closed
door" students of Ip Man. You do not get any more "closed door" than father and son. You
can bet your life’s savings that both of these men received the best Ip Man had to offer. Ip
Ching began training in Wing Chun at an early age, then later, lived and taught side by side
with his father from 1962 until Ip Mans death in 1972.

Today the Ip Man Wing Chun system as passed through the lineage of BOTH sons of Ip Man
is being spread by the instructors of the Ip Man Wing Chun Union. The IMWCU is headed by
an instructor who is certified at a Master Level in the direct lineage of Both of Ip Man's sons,
thru their senior instructor Samuel Kwok. Headed by an instructor who is the author of the
only book on the Ip Man family system to carry the FULL ENDORSEMENT of both sons, and
placed in the IP MAN MUSEUM in Foshan, China. To become or find an INSTRUCTOR of this
great system contact us for more information.