Yip Man a master or something else

Stories about Yip Man’s unparalleled kung fu skills are widely known as well as stories about how good teacher he was. Every year Yip Man and his skills become little better although he died almost half a century ago. Every generation of students add a little more to his legend, every year more stories appear about his martial exploits. For many people Yip Man is much more than a man, he is a deity they worship unconditionally. As it is often case among kung fu practitioners very few people are able to think about Yip Man through the filer of critical thinking and put him in a realistic context not only of the time and culture he lived in but also in a context of an ordinary human being which has proven to be an impossible task for majority of his followers.

So let’s look Yip Man and his life through the lens of real historical evidence and common sense that comes from critical thinking.

As it was said Yip Man is today celebrated as one of the best kung fu fighters of all times. Not only that, he was also regarded as an extraordinary teacher and even full time philosopher and philanthropist. Sadly, non of this is true.

If want to present only real, historically accurate and verifiable data about Yip Man’s life we will find our self in the situation where we can offer very little to nothing. Besides that Yip Man was born, lived and died in certain time frame and that he had taught wing chun everything else is simply very hard to prove.

If we start with Yip Man’s young age we find very hard to find out how long he spent with his first teacher Chan Wah Shun. In older books we can find that he started to practice wing chun when he was 13 or 14 and that he spent only 6 months with old teacher and then he continued to learn from Ng Chan So for less than two years until he left to Hong Kong. In later years , time Yip Man spend with Chan Wah Shun and age he started training was slowly changed and today’s “official “ version written by Yip Chun, Yip Man’s son is that his father started training when he was 9 and stayed with old teacher full 4 years. Training with Ng Chan So didn;t change drastically in following years but from less than 2 years became full 2 years or 2,5 years according to different sources. All the data we have about Yip Man’s young life and training come from his sons and close students. Oral sources are the most unreliable sources of information and this is a clear example why. Over time , “sources” felt uncomfortable with their original claims and then changed them the best they could. Let’s admit , for most of people who spent decades to learn Yip Man’s style, his less than two years   training looked really inadequate. On the other hand 6 and half years looks much better. Feeling that even that is not enough, Yip Man or his students invented a story about Leung Bik to add more time to his learning process and to find explanation for their claims of his superior kung fu. Of course, it is impossible to prove Leung Bik was a real person and even if he did exist( he did not but let’s assume he did for the moment), Leung Bik would never teach Yip Man. Yip Man was no family, they didn’t have same social circles and even if they did meet by some impossible odds , Leung Bik would never invite Yip Man, nor anyone else to be his student, simply in China of that period teachers could not invite anyone, students actually had to request to be accepted .  So when we clean all the hype and outward lies about Yip Man’s learning period we can conclude that he probably learned for about  two years. Could he learn complete system in two years? Probably yes because Wing Chun of that time was much simpler and had much less content than today. What was the quality and level of his art? We will never know, we have no recordings of his performance and we have no evidence he had any fights. Of course there are a lot of “oral” evidence about how good fighter he was but all those stories are just that, stories and they are fairly exaggerated and hard to believe. For example the story when Yip Man supposedly broke a revolver with his fingers. A weapon made to withstand pressures much higher than any human can possibly achieve no matter what skill he posses was broken by fingers of a fairly small man, it is simply physically impossible. Or another story where Yip Man as police inspector engage a fight with a dangerous criminal although he had a lot of police officers around him who cornered the criminal and were ready to arrest him. All police operates by same basic principles and only in the moves a brave inspector engage a fight where he can be killed despite his fellow officers can apprehend the criminal with little to no effort. No one in the right mind would do such a thing, no one would risk his life if it is not really necessary, in this case if criminal would assault police officers he would probably be killed, definitely not engage the fight with a police inspector who had family, children and was extremely wealthy and would be really stupid of him to risk his life. All stories about Yip Man’s supposed fights are just like this, they have no support in reality , actually go against common sense and on top of all we have no evidence these fights ever happened.

Yip Man was extremely wealthy, belonged to the highest social circles and had good connections everywhere. He simply had no need to put his life and his health in danger, even more, wealthy Chinese people of the time would do anything to make their life as comfortable as possible. Just as today we don’t see billionaires like Bill Gates fight, people of same wealth and social status of the past did not fight. That is why so many unbelievable stories were invented by Yip Man’s students, to give him credibility as a kung fu master and teacher. Unfortunately, invented by people who never fought , these stories have no support in reality and later each new generation of students added a little more making these stories a total opposite of what they suppose to be.

 Everything about Yip Man and his life is exaggerated to enormous proportion. Chinese culture allows to exaggerate things or even lie in order to give “Face” to ancestors. In reality neither Yip Man nor Win Chun have real historical significance . While other styles in republican period had thousands of followers , Wing Chun didn’t have even 50 people all together in period from 1911 to 1948. Wing Chun was completely unknown to outsiders , like so many other styles and was not popular as people tend to believe today. Real world is different from the orld of myths and legends. Having a successful kung fu school at that period as a matter of political influence, connections and of course money. Challenging a master from another school would probably result in retaliation with serious consequences , we have several examples that happened , the most famous case is Baji master Li Shu Wen who was poisoned because he challenged and won over several other masters. People who had successful school with many students had good political connections and also had been connected to various lucrative businesses , not always completely legal , they were influential ad dangerous people, challenging them would only bring troubles. 

Let’s not forget that Yip Man and other top wing chun names of that time were opium addicts, like Ng Chan So and his students from Yiu family, Yuen Kai San…They probably weren’t full time junkies , just recreational users bt still…using heavy drug like opium definitely influence physical abilities and changes  personality.

As we can see Yip Man led quiet life of wealthy upper class and practiced his art with other members of the same class. Wing Chun, as well other arts was not practiced for practical purposes but as sign of prestige and wealth as well as a sign of patriotism and national pride.

 We can summarize Yip Man’s life before his escape to Hong Kong in just one sentence, he led quiet, leisured life and practiced kung fu because that was a fashion of the time.

  After communists took over Yip Man escaped to Macao leaving his family behind. He gambled away all his family wealth and became basically homeless until friends brought him to Hong Kong and gave him shelter. While this episode is mentioned in his biography no one actually pay any attention on it but this actually gives us great insight what kind of person Yip Man was. He left his family in a situation where they could be killed any moment and he left alone with the money he had. Instead to use that money to save his family he gambled all away and then started to heavily use opium. Without other people who gave him food and place to stay in Hong Kong he would probably die.

How and why Yip Man started to teach Wing Chun?  It was out pure necessity, he hadn’t any real skills, he couldn’t do any real job, not even work physical jobs because he was already too old and he never worked hard before. Only option for him to survive was to sell kung fu people willing to pay for it. During his life Yip Man was not well known nor very popular teacher in Hong Kong, nor Wing Chun was respected and well known style. In his 20 years long teaching career, Yip Man had around 200 students. Other schools in that period had thousands of students. Yip Man became popular after his death solely because he had connection to Bruce Lee. Wing Chun was fairly unknown style even in Hong Kong until Bruce Lee died and kung fu craze exploded aover the world. If Bruce Lee had practiced some other kung fu style Yip Man would be forgotten today and his style would probably not exist anymore.

Now, let’s see what kind of teacher Yip Man was. We can see a great degree of difference even the arts of his students. Most of them justify that by the claim that Yip Man taught everyone differently according to his abilities and understanding. While that may be the case there are so any variations and differences in even basic principles and techniques. All other Wing Chun lineages are pretty consistent over time, you can clearly tell what is Yuen Kai San’s or Snake Crane Wing Chun by watching forms and basics, no matter of the particular line of succession in given style everyone is doing same things , have same forms , although training and application can vary, still it is clear what style is in question. In case of Yip Man there are so many differences in almost everything and to make things more interesting, those variations we can find only with Yip Man’s direct students. Later generation follow the known pattern of other  styles  so we can clearly say what is Leung Ting’s WT or Wong Shun Leung ‘s style, they did not pass their styles the way they claim Yip Man taught them.

Why Yip Man taught different people differently is an open question. While claim that he taught everyone according to his ability is valid, it is the fact that most of the teachers are doing the same. It is also suspicious that different students have different knowledge about same things. Either Yip Man taught completely different styles to different people or he didn’t actually taught much. Second is probably closer to the truth because according to Yip Man’s students he would teach very little and then let students practice that for a long time, just like “old times” teachers. For example, there is a certain lineage of Yip Man’s style that is famous for their “advanced” kicking techniques. How they became famous for that? Well, according to founder of that lineage Yip Man payed him a visit one day and showed his some kicking techniques on wooden dummy!!! ONE DAY, showed him something he base his style on in one visit, seriously??!!! We can just from that example how little Yip Man actually showed to his students.  We can see that Yip Man’s Wing Chun is much simpler than other styles and lack a lot of elements that can be found in other styles. According to his own students Yip Man was an opium user till the end of his life. While many followers praise Yip Man’s simplification of the art as something positive and advance, the probable reason behind that was no intention to modernize the art. Being a heavy drug user he probably couldn’t remember all the things correctly and he taught what he could remember at the particular point, that is why there are so many differences among his students, he taught what he could remember at the certain point and also was he in the mood to show more or less details. Many of his students later being aware of enormous gaps in their knowledge supplement their styles from other sources. For example Leung Ting learned from Sum Nung, Chu Song Tin borrowed things from Tai Chi Chuan and Ba gua , William Cheung invented his style him self , many of the students exchanged bits and pieces they got from  Yip Man to make their styles more complete. No one stayed more than 3 years in Yip Man’s school ( although few students claim differently, older sources show they changed their stories in recent times). Even at slow pace Yip Man was teaching he didn’t have enough material to teach for more than a three years. Later, styles developed to such extent that Yip Man’s students have material to keep someone occupied for 20 or more years, and that says a lot about them.

As we can see Yip Man was not a fighter and he was not particularly good teacher as well. His only accomplishment in the field of martial arts was a connection to Bruce Lee. Generations of people were unfortunately cheated by learning incomplete, watered down style without any real substance. Many became aware of this fact and while no one wants to admit it publicly, more and more people from Yip Man’s style are leaving that art and learning other , older, more complete and more traditional Wing Chun styles.