History of Wing Chun

After escaping the destruction of the Fujian Shaolin Monastery by Qing forces around 1730, the Abbess Ng Mui fled to the Daliang Mountains on the border between Yunnan and Sichuan. Ng Mui often bought tofu at a shop owned by Yim Yee (嚴二). Yim Yee had a daughter named Yim Wing Chun (嚴詠春), whom a local warlord was trying to force into marriage. Ng Mui taught Yim Wing Chun a version of her southern-Shaolin kung fu, which allowed her to drive off the warlord. After completing her training under Ng Mui around 1790, Yim Wing Chun married Leung Bok-Chao (梁博儔) and taught the fighting techniques which Ng Mui had passed on to her. After Yim Wing Chun died around 1840, Leung Bok-Chao passed the new style on to Leung Lan-kwai. Leung Lan-kwai taught six members of the Red Boat Opera Group around 1850, and present-day Wing Chun descends from the six opera-group members: Yik Kam, Hung Gan Biu, Leung Yee Tai, Wong Wah-bo, Dai Fa Min Kam, and Law Man Kung.

The oral history of Yiu Kai dates the creation of Wing Chun to the early 19th century and identifies Yim Wing-chun's father as Yim Sei (嚴四), a disciple at the Fujian Shaolin Temple who avoids persecution by fleeing with his daughter to Guangxi. Yim Wing-chun learned the Fujian Shaolin arts from her father and, from their raw material, created a new style after seeing a fight between a snake and a crane. She married Leung Bok-Chao (梁博儔), a Shaolin disciple like Yim Wing-chun's father, and taught him her fighting style. The couple began teaching Wing Chun's fighting style to others after moving to Guangdong Province in 1815, settling in the city of Zhaoqing.

According to one theory, opponents of the Qing dynasty used the Red Boat Opera Company as a cover to disguise themselves as a troupe of traveling entertainers. Their identities as Chinese opera performers provided cover for martial-arts training, but the flashy moves of opera-style martial arts were not suited to espionage and assassination. Although assassinations would be carried out with poison or knives, their targets were usually protected by bodyguards. Wing Chun was reportedly designed to deal with an opponent who seized rather than struck, silencing the opponent immediately. This would explain technical aspects of Wing Chun, such as its emphasis on close-range combat and its strikes to the throat and diaphragm.

Several other Chinese martial arts originated in Yong-chun and the surrounding area, most notably the Fujianese style of White Crane (one branch of which is called Wing Chun Bak Hok Kuen (永春白鶴拳), Wing Chun White Crane boxing). Li Wenmao (李文茂), an opera performer and leader of the 1854–1856 Red Turban Rebellion in Foshan, is said to have been a Wing Chun White Crane practitioner.

Wing Chun may have been created by the Five Elders of the Shaolin temple whose systems included white eyebrow, white crane, Shaolin, Hung Ga and Choy Li Fut. The technical similarities between Wing Chun and Fujian White Crane suggest that they are related. According to Ip Man's student, Leung Ting: "[The] Wing Tsun System is derived from the Fukien System of kung fu. Their common features are that during fights, pugilists of these systems prefer short steps and close fighting, with their arms placed close to the center, their elbows in and behind the arm and kept close to the flanks to offer it protection. Another characteristic of these two systems of kung fu is, unlike those of Kwangtung Province and Northern China, their boxing forms are rather simple".[3]