Chan Wah-shun (陳華順) nicknamed Money Changer Wah (找錢華),
was a student of the Wing Chun grandmaster Leung Jan (梁贊).
Chan ran a coin changing stall near Leung Jan's
herbal medicine clinic (贊生堂) on 筷子街 in Foshan. Chan was a very robust person; due
to his profession, he had to carry very heavy loads of coins everyday around town, and built up very strong muscles over the
years. Legend says that he was able to split several copper coins by the grip of his palm. He had studied martial arts from
others before learning Wing Chun and was agile and strong.
He had been an admirer of his neighbor Leung Jan and politely
greeted his idol every time they met on the street. He had begged to become a student of Leung Jan numerous times but consistently
was turned down.
Leung Jan only had few private students at the time including his two sons, Leung Chun (梁春
liang2 ?; loeng4 ?) and Leung Bik (梁壁 Liáng Bì; loeng4 bik1) and another student Woodman
Wah (木人華). Woodman Wah got his nickname from allegedly breaking the Wooden dummy during practice. Leung
Jan only taught his students behind closed door of his clinic after business hours. Chan was not discouraged by the repeated
rejections. He often hid outside the clinic to peek at Leung Jan's teaching through the cracks on the doors. Unauthorized
sneaky learning of martial art is a taboo in China and is considered a form of stealing. Watching from a distance didn't
work out without getting the verbal instructions and explanations. So Chan figured out a different way to learn. He made friend
with Woodman Wah and learned from him informally. Since Chan was very good martial art material, he picked up very quickly
from Woodman Wah because he had been watching for an extended period already. The brief instructions from Woodman Wah pieced
the puzzle together.
One day while Leung Jan was out enjoying tea, his two young sons were in charge of the clinic.
Woodman Wah and Chan entered the clinic. Leung Chun didn't believe Chan was any good without formal training and challenged
Chan to spar. Chan was good enough to make Leung Chun lose his balance and break his father's favorite chair as he fell.
They put the chair back together hoping Leung Chun's father would not notice. When the chair fell apart as Leung Jan sat
on it, the youngsters had to tell the truth about what happened. Leung Jan asked Woodman Wah to summon Chan. Woodman Wah thought
Chan was in deep trouble, so he advised Chan to flee. When he told his master that Chan was missing, Leung Jan knew what the
young men were thinking. Leung Jan explained that he just wanted to see if the Wing Chun student who he had never met was
as good as his son claimed. The surprised Chan's dream came true; he finally became a formal student.
Chan was not
as well educated as the Leung's children, however, he had a talent for martial art. As a result, he did Wing Chun better
than his fellow students despite his late start. Because of his profession, he had many opportunities to use his Wing Chun
skill to defend his business, and actually got more combat experience than his sifu. He often represented his sifu to take
challenges and took victory beautifully.
The Qing government once recruited Chan to be the head coach of the army. Chan
turned the offer down. Like his sifu, they both were unwilling to give up their day job. Wing Chun was just their hobby. He
also picked up De Da (跌打) healing techniques from his sifu. He opened a healing clinic and closed down his coin
changing business. Like his sifu, Chan didn't open a martial arts school. Within his 36 years of teaching Wing Chun as
a hobby, he only had 16 students.
He admitted his last student Yip Man when he was 70 years old. He died three years
after Yip Man became his student. He asked his second student Ng Chung-sok to continue Yip Man's trainning after his death
in 1906 or 1909.
Yip Man (葉問 in pinyin: yè wèn; in 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, from 1903 till 1906 or 1906 till 1909. 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. 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 upmarket secondary school for wealthy families and foreigners who lived in Hong Kong.
According
to one story, 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. After that
encounter, Yip Man continued to learn from Leung Bik from about 1908 till 1912 when Leung Bik died. At age 24, Yip Man
returned to Foshan, and his Wing Chun skills had improved tremendously while he had been away. His fellow students believed
he learned a different kind of martial art and treated him as a traitor to Wing Chun.
In Foshan, Yip Man didn't
formally run a Wing Chun school, but taught Wing Chun to several children 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 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 art 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 returned to Hong Kong and 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 was 5'2"-5'4"
tall and weighed about 110-120 pounds and despite that, he was able to beat Leung Sheung (who was a master in Dragon Style
and Choy Li Fut) who was 5'10" and 210 pounds in a friendly match. Thereafter Leung Sheung became Yip Man's
first Hong Kong student.
Yip Man 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.
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 Leung Sheung, Lok Yiu, Wong Shun Leung, Tsui Shun Tin, William Cheung, Lo Man Kam (Yip Man's
nephew), Moy Yat 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 and Wing Tsun that eventually spread across the world.
Leung Sheung, Yip Man's first and most prized student, one of the four best students of
Yip Man, began training intensively with Ip Man from 1949 till 1955 (Yip Man was about 56 years old when he began teaching
Leung Sheung, Leung Sheung was about 31 years old), he taught from 1956 right up till his death in 1978. He was a strong
proponent of the internal connection approach.
(MUCH OF THE LEGEND OR HISTORY ABOVE WAS ADAPTED FROM
WIKIPEDIA)
