Grandmaster Yip Man History

Grandmaster Yip Man was born October 1893 and died December 1972 at the age of 79 years. Grandmaster Yip Man spent his whole life as champion of the cause of Wing Chun Kung Fu. He was responsible for advancing Wing Chun Kung Fu to it's eminence today. Throughout the world, students of Wing Chun Kung Fu continue to publish articles about Grandmaster Yip Man, his life and achievements.

He was born on October 14th 1893 in the Ching Dynasty (Kand Shoui - September 5th in the Chinese calendar) in Fut Shan town in Kwong Tung province which was then in Lam Hoi county. So Yip Man's birthplace is often referred to as Lam Hoi in Kwong Tung. Grandmaster Yip Man's father was called Yip Oi Dor, his mother was Ng Shui, he was one of four brothers and sisters. His brother was called Gei Gak (Grandmaster Yip Man was originally called Gei Man). His sister's name was Wan Mei (Sik Chung).

No other name is spoken in wing chun circles with greater reverence than that of Grandmaster Yip Man. A teacher of the art until his death in 1972, Yip Man moved Wing Chun from an obscure fighting system known only in China to a world-renowned style of kung fu studied by thousands.

Yip Man was the first Sifu ever to open a Wing Chun school accessible to the general public. No one was more surprised over the rapid and intercontinental spread of the art than Yip Man himself. Now it is practiced from Wales to Malaysia with strong followings in Australia and the United States. Also, the Wing Chun Yip Man taught has become the grand irony of the martial arts world it has acquired its recent popularity in spite of Yip Man's own insistence that it be taught to only Chinese students for the sake of maintaining its heritage and purity.

Yip Man's began with his training under Chan Wah Soon, the first of three wing chun masters to instruct him. Yip Man approached Chan while they both resided in Fatshan, Kwangtung Province, with a request for acceptance as one of Chan's disciples. The Year may have been 1895, making Yip twelve years old at the time. A biography of Chan in the Wing Chun Archives puts him in Fatshan working as a money changer--hence his nickname Jow Chien ("Money Changer") Wah--and teaching wing chun on the side, by some accounts for a total of thirty-six years. Yip carried three hundred pieces of silver with him to his meeting with Chan, thinking to buy an apprenticeship in wing chun with the money. Chan, believing the boy must have stolen the money from his parents, escorted Yip back home to discover the truth of the matter. To his astonishment, Yip's parents reported that the young Man had saved up the coins on his own. Man had been born to a wealthy family, his father Yip Oi Doh being a respected and influential member of the merchant class in Namhoi County, so Man's legitimate access to that kind of money was certainly a possibility. Upon discovering this evidence of Man's ambition and determination, Chan accepted him as both his youngest and his final student. Yip trained under Chan until Chan's death in 1905, thereafter continuing His wing chun with Ng Chung So, one of Chan's top disciples. After two more years of study, Yip left Fatshan for Hong Kong and enrolled in St. Stephen's college at Stanley to pursue an academic education.

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Grandmaster Yip Man
1893-1972