Wing Tsun History

Part 1: WingTsun, "Beautyful Spring" – the story of a fascinating martial art
Part 2: Ng Mui creates a new fighting system
Part 3: From Yim Wing Tsun to Wong Wah Bo
Part 4: Leung Jan, the "King of Wing Tsun"
Part 5: Chan Wah Shun, Yip Man's first teacher
Part 6: Moving East to West
Part 7: British Addition

From Yim Wing Tsun to Wong Wah Bo

Wing Tsun eventually married her fiance Leung Bok Chau and managed to pass to him the art of the new system which she had learned from Ng Mui. It was said that her husband, Leung Bok Chau, was himself a pugilist before their marriage, who liked practising the art of fighting in his leisure time. After their marriage Wing Tsun talked much about theories of martial arts to her husband. At the beginning her husband paid little attention to what Wing Tsun told him, thinking that he himself knew the art of fighting and that Wing Tsun was, to him, only a feeble woman. But then Wing Tsun strove to find opportunities to practise fighting with her husband and managed to defeat him time after time. It was only then that Leung Bok Chau realised that his wife was not a weak young woman, but a skilful mistress of the art of fighting. From then on he admired his wife's techniques and would very often practise the art of fighting with her. He also called his wife's kung-fu system the "Wing Tsun Kuen", in honour of his wife.
Later Leung Bok Chau passed the techniques of Wing Tsun Kuen to Leung Lan Kwai, a herbal physician of osteology, who never mentioned to anyone of his knowledge of kung-fu skills. That was why even his relatives and close associates were ignorant of his skills in Wing Tsun Kuen. This secret was revealed to people only when, once, he assisted in driving back a group of fighters who attacked a single unaided pugilist. Anyway, he always refrained from boasting of his skills, bearing in mind the forerunner's commandment of "not to make public the skills of Wing Tsun Kuen".

Wong Wah Bo and Leung Yee Tei

It would be necessary to re-write the history of Wing Tsun Kuen if Leung Kwai had never made known his skills to anyone. But happily by a lucky chance, he did pass his skills to Wong Wah Bo, an actor who played the role of the "hero" in an opera troupe. At that time, actors in opera troupes were known by the Chinese as "followers of the Red Junk". Wong Wah Bo was one of these Red Junk followers at the time when he encountered Leung Lan Kwai, by whom he was accepted as a disciple. Leung Lan Kwai never intended to take a disciple. It was Wong Wah Bo's upright character and sense of justice that appealed to Leung most deeply and so he was allowed to learn kung-fu from Leung Lan Kwai.
It was a common thing that most of the Red Junk followers knew the art of fighting. In their shows, they had to put on a heavy facial make-up, which kept them from being recognized. That was why at that time many of the followers of the former Siu Lam Monastery were disguised as Red Junk followers to keep secret their real identity from the Manchu Government. A good example of this was the Buddhist Master Chi Shin, one of the Five Elders of the Siu Lam Monastery.
Master Chi Shin, who escaped from the siege of the Siu Lam Monastery by the Manchu soldiers, was disguised as the cook of the Red Junk to avoid being arrested. But it was difficult to keep a secret. Sooner or later a man would eventually disclose his secret to those he thought reliable. Master Chi Shin was not an exception. His identity was finally revealed to several Red Junk followers who had a sense of justice. They did not inform the government of the existence of this "wanted criminal", on the contrary, they tried, and succeeded, to protect him on several dangerous occasions, because they were among those righteous people who hated the Manchu Government and were working secretly to overthrow it by means of organising secret societies and taking subversive action. So Master Chi Shin then became their hero. He taught them the art of fighting, teaching them the Siu Lam System, to get them prepared for fighting the Manchu soldiers when the time came.
Among Master Chi Shin's disciples on the Red Junk, there was one by the name of Leung Yee Tei, who was worthy of mention. Leung Yee Tei was not an actor of the opera troupe, but a sailor of the Red Junk, a poler, to be precise, who used a long pole to guide the junk into a desired position.

Of all the techniques demonstrated by Master Chi Shin, the one Leung Yee Tei admired most was the "long pole techniques". It was lucky for Leung Yee Tei, that Master Chi Shin was an expert of the "Six-and-a-half-Point Pole Techniques", and thought that Leung Yee Tei was worthy of being instructed in the techniques. Now to come back to Wong Wah Boh, he was working in the opera troupe on the Red Junk where Leung Yee Tei was the poler. Wong Wah Bo admired the Six-and-a-half Point Long Pole Techniques of Leung Yee Tei, and Leung Yei Tei admired the Wing Tsun Kuen techniques of Wong Wah Bo. So they both had something to learn from the other, as well as something to teach each other. In this way, they exchanged their techniques. As a result, Leung Yee Tei also became a successor of the Wing Tsun System, and the Wing Tsun System had therefore absorbed to itself a set of weapon techniques – the Six-and-a-half Point Long Pole Techniques, in addition to its Eight-Cutting Knives (Bart-Cham-Dao) Techniques. As Leung Yee Tei and Wong Wah Bo helped each other in learning the techniques, they realized that they could improve their own techniques, they realised that they could improve their own techniques by adding to it what they had learnt from the other. For example, they found that they could greatly improve the Six-and-a-half Point Long Pole Techniques if they added to it some of the Wing Tsun Kung-fu concepts. They then added to it the Chi-sau (Arm-clinging) training way, and by doing so they gave birth to a new training colled the "Pole-clinging Exercises" (Chi-Kwun). Further more, to improve the practicability of the long pole, they decreased the "portal-width of the hands", and changed the advancing steps of the pole-stance into those of the boxing stance.

Next: Leung Jan, the "King of Wing Tsun"