Wing Chun historical significance

Many people will be disappointed by the true range of Wing Chun historical significance but facts do not care about anyone’s feelings. So what is really the truth about Wing Chun and its significance in common history of China? The answer is none what so ever.  Same goes for all other Kung Fu styles.

There is almost no evidence how martial arts looked like before Ming dynasty. There are not enough evidence for the Ming dynasty either but what we know is that martial arts at that period put accent on weapon fighting and “empty hand”  techniques , yet alone complete styles didn’t exist. Only military officers trained full time, main forces were retrained before every campaign. Soldiers were trained to fight and maneuver in organized groups , cavalry as well as foot soldiers, archers trained their skills  and of course 20%  of tropes used fire arms.

When Ching took over power in China they kept military organization intact and that stayed unchanged until the end of Ching rule. Kung Fu in a shape known to us today didn’t exist until the end of Taiping rebellion.  Most Kung Fu styles were literary invented in a period between 1850 to 1930. There are no styles older than 1850’s that put accent on empty hand fighting and period between 1850 and 1900 was transition period where most of the old weapon oriented styles transformed in empty hand styles. This change was influenced by social, economic, technological and political factors. Wing Chun is no exception , it was invented somewhere during 1850”s and slowly changed until got its final form somewhere between 1900 and 1940.

Let’s go back to historical significance of the style. Wing Chun became popular due to premature death of Bruce Lee. His untimely death brought him planetary popularity and caused a set of events known as “Kung Fu Craze” that made Chinese martial arts extremely popular during the second half of 1970’s and 1980’s.  Bruce’s death also brought planetary popularity to a style he had practiced in Hong Kong during his teens, particularly to Yip Man’s brunch of the style although at the time of his death Bruce Lee abandoned Wing Chun completely and had developed his own, unique fighting system.

Before this Wing Chun was just one of many kung fu styles practiced in Hong Kong and not particularly popular or even known. Unlike some other styles like Choy Lee Fut or Hung Gar which had thousands of followers , Wing Chun had only few hundred followers in a period between 1940’s to1970’s . Before that time Wing Chun was just obscure style practiced by few dozen people and virtually unknown outside its own circles. Before 1900. there were not more than 20 people who practiced the style, maybe not even that much. Between 1900 and 1940 the number of people involved in Wing Chun was maybe close to 50. Compared to Hung Gar, Choy Lee Fut, Tibetan Crane, Fujian cranes, Tai Chi, Ba Gua, and others Wing Chun was completely insignificant. The truth is Wing Chun was unknown to wide martial circles and there is no mention of the style in the sources of that period. Newspapers, books, personal correspondence, government notes, police records ( about famous fights)…nothing.  

At the very beginning, only few people on the boats practiced an art which will later became Wing Chun. These few people after Taiping rebellion sought refuge in various places and in return taught few other people. The only thing that even remotely resembles to a Wing Chun club was held by Leung Jan. It was more the elite club for local businessman than martial establishment . Anyway, Leung Jan had between 9 and 12 students ( exact number will never be known) and other from his generation had maybe one or two students, all in all around 20 people before 1900. Since most of these people taught openly it is obvious they didn’t participated in Taiping rebellion and they were not in hiding , free to spread their arts. We know very little about this period. We don’t even know how Leung Jan’s original art looked like or what was the name of his art. There is no record of Wing Chun from this period what so ever. Wing Chun people from this period weren’t involved in any historical event , they were all members of wealthy class and they stayed out of trouble. As we can see in a period from the end of Taiping rebellion till the end of the Ching dynasty  Wing Chun had no influence on anything beside their own lifes.

Republican period was golden age of kung fu which spread and development was widely supported by government. That is also a period when most of the kung fu legends (better known as histories) were invented to boost national pride and give the desirable view of the events from the period of Ching dynasty rule that supports nationalism, patriotism and heroism of Chinese people.   Kung fu flourished in this period, many new styles were created ( known as old rediscovered  secret styles) and kung fu became available to many people spread by the government via organizations like Goushu or Ching Wu. Of course there was also a lot of local schools who taught on massive scale, kung fu at that time was an excellent source od income and entire wars were led for the territory and students. There is a lot of official documents and press sources about fights between schools and organizations. Wing Chun on the other hand was completely out that story which is kind of normal, why would school with 100 people worry about the style with 20 active members at  any given time. Wing Chun people kept them self out of the eye of others, which was very smart at the time because serious injuries or even killings were not uncommon practice. Big organizations with thousands of students used them as the army to deal with competition. All kinds of political connections were used to leave much of these things out of the interest of the law enforcement. As we can see, Wing Chun had no influence on kung fu history and development in republican period, simply there were not enough active members to make any impact on the events in Kung Fu history and history in general.

After all the wars in 1948 as many people as could escaped China , mainly to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao. Many Wing Chun practitioners, left without anything started to open schools and teach out of existential necessity. Even then, Wing Chun was pretty unknown and was in the shade of much better known and for a long time popular styles like CLF or Hung Gar. Yip Man had around 200 students in 20 something years long teaching career, other Wing Chun teachers all together didn’t have  that much  because they were more traditional and still kept their style low profile. Yip Man opened his school to everyone.  On the other hand , schools of other styles still had thousands of students and were very well known and popular. Of course there are stories about tremendous fighting skills and fame gained by some Wing Chun people , stories about secret “UNDERGORUND” fights which they never lost . Guess what, every single style have identical story , but no one ever showed even the smallest piece of evidence, no records of any kinds , no gambling tickets (people usually organize this kinds of things for the purpose of placing bets.) Yet we have no records , official or unofficial   about these things , nor we have police or medical records about those hundreds of fights, Such amount of fighting certainly wouldn’t pass unnoticed by police , and so many injured people would certainly left trace in medical records. So, again , we have only legends made decades after real events . To conclude this part, Wing Chun had no significant , if any, influence on Hong Kong kung fu scene from 1950’s till the middle of 1970’s. There was a large number of Kung Fu schools in Hong Kong at time, as it is the case today and only few Wing Chun school. Despite the Wing Chun propaganda the style was not popular, nor well known.

Let’s go back further back in the past and examine the claims about military and antidynastic role of Wing Chun. For a long period of time people believed in Yip Man’s version of history where Wing Chun was invented in Southern Shaolin monastery by the group of extraordinary fighters in order to rebel and over throne the invading Mongolian dynasty. Even a superficial examination of this claim shows that it has no connection to the true events of the time. Southern Shaolin never existed as well as people involved in Wing Chun supposed creation. All of them are fictional characters first appeared in popular literature at the beginning of the 20^th century. Also , it is more than obvious that Wing Chun is totally opposite from military based martial art. Wing Chun is perfect for confined spaces, have limited footwork it is short range style and no military grade weapons and it is concentrated on single person abilities to fight. Military art on the other hand has vast range of footwork for maneuvering on battlefield which includes different kind of marching , running ect., concentrated on fighting in organized group , have little if any “empty hand” techniques and have military grade weapons for fighting in long distance. From historical point of view, Mongolian invasion and domestic resistance are very well documented . All the participants , events , strategies , equipment and even the way of training and applying the skills on battlefield are well documented and there is no mention of wing chun what so ever, simply the art didn’t exist at the time, it was invented few hundred years later.

Supposed connection of the art to secret societies and anti Ching activities is just another try to give the style prestige and significance. There two things important to notice in this claims. First , secret societies is just another name for organized crime groups. Although they claimed they are freedom fighters they didn’t participate in any significant historical event against Ching dynasty. They are today as they were in the past crime syndicates, some more notorious than others, but essentially they never had any role in liberation of China from Mongolians. Second thing is also connected to wrong perception of these groups. People usually have pretty simplistic view , and see them as group of people who do not do anything else but practicing martial arts and plotting against Mongolians, and at some point they invented Wing Chun as the most superior fighting style. Well that is simply not true. They mostly worked in “protection” business extorting money from wealthy Han Chinese or robbing caravans and killing people. They didn’t have any uniform system of training, they just accepted people with the skills they already had. People were bringing vast array of martial styles into these groups. Is it possible that some of the secret society members practiced Wing Chun? It is possible and some of them probably did, but compared to the number of other arts in these groups Wing Chun is pretty insignificant.  The other misconception about secret societies is the fact that some Wing Chun people had to go into deep hiding after Taiping rebellion as the members of the movement. It is automatically assumed that these people were members of some underground anti dynastic movement. This is simply wrong, these people just went into deep hiding after the rebellion was crushed , they were not members of anything. Number of people who trained Wing Chun and were members of Taiping rebellion is extremely small, not more than a few. Wing Chun was developed among one particular group of opera performers and for most of them we know they didn’t participate in Taiping rebellion. Wong Wah Bo, Leung Yee Tai, Yik Kam, Dai Fa Min Kam were not in hiding during opera ban period. The only member we know that was hiding during that time was a Law Man Gung , member of Law family who was founder of Law family style today known as Snake Crane Wing Chun. And that is all about Wing Chun engagement in Taiping rebellion or any other anti dynastic movement.

As we can see, Wing Chun, despite grandiose claims of various “grandmasters” have no historical impact what so ever. It became popular by pure luck and people involved in selling the art used  aggressive marketing to promote their product having no regard for real historical facts.