What Sum Nung said about Yip Man

The Wing Chun clan seems to have an absolute fetish for internecine squabbles. Some
practitioners have an obsession with often utterly trivial and irrelevant details in differing
versions of techniques,. Some have developed strident cults promoting their sifu (often/usually
based on utter fictions). Debates constantly rage over “history” and “lineage”. One can be
guaranteed to be attacked – savaged – very easily – by rabid internet warriors simply by saying
almost anything at all about Wing Chun on the internet. Sifu Sergio recently released a video.
He’s very keen and quite good but he accepts a lot of people as “Wing Chun” that I would never
recognise as Wing Chun. However, Sifu Sergio speaks the truth about Yip Man. His is the best
expose in English thus far!

Perhaps there are reasons for the internecine squabbles of our art: Wing Chun is the single most
popular style of gung fu. (It seems a lot of quite pugnacious and fragile personalities pursue a
study of Wing Chun). A number of very large “Wing Chun” empires have been developed and
their promotion has become not only a business focus but a personality cult of the founder. And
of the followers! These personality cults usually rest on accepting myths those with more
information reject. The followers adopt the stance akin to religious fanatics. In fact, I was
conjecturing recently to one of my students that there seems to be a striking similarity between
the profiles of religious fanatics and fanatical promoters of their version of Wing Chun.

Historical factors contributed significantly to the Western world’s information on Wing Chun as
it first emerged from behind closed doors. To an extent these factors have continued to have a
major impact on how many people still view the art and the attitudes they take towards the
various arts – several quite eclectic or invented and not actually legitimate Wing Chun – that go
by the name. Several versions of “Wing Chun” have been devised recently and “discovered” as
“old” or “secret” lineages. Once one sees them, they are nothing short of laughable – and
decidedly mixed or invented!

Three factors especially seem to me to have had significant impact on distorting what the West
has been told about Yip Man and what was prevented from being revealed to the West – even
until recently.
These were:
1. the migration of numerous young Hong Kong Chinese (most of whom had not learnt even the
whole of Yip Man’s reductionist version of Wing Chun let alone any other). These chaps had
learnt different amounts to differing degrees of proficiency. Many simply devised material to fill
in what they had not learnt from Yip Man or his senior students. Others later made up their
shortfall, either from their friends who were Yip Man style practitioners or from others. Some
were actually very decent people and proficient gung fu practitioners. Some rare few at that time
could be considered very proficient indeed. The fame of their name was usually in inverse
proportion to their skill back then. This is not the point. Comparing versions of Wing Chun is not
the point. Debunking nonsense, sifu idolatory, deification; and ego cults; and, giving credit
where credit is due is the point here! Nonsense – speculation or unexamined regurgitation of
fictitious material; sifu idolatory; deification; and, ego cults ought have no place in modern Wing
Chun. “My sifu is better/more famous than yours”, “my sifu’s art is better/the best” are both
nonsenses measured against the yardstick of “how good is your personal skill level?” and “how
complete is your art?”

The point I am making is that the young immigrants who took their Yip Man version Wing Chun
out of Hong Kong did not have the full art and most had been (carelessly and uncaringly) taught
quite different things. Above all, they had been indoctrinated in the story (most of it fictitious) of
Yip Man. They and the Western martial arts media sprouted the nonsense of “last master of
Wing Chun”; “last grandmaster of Wing Chun” and such nonsensical and incorrect accolades.
Bruce Lee and the ego cult he encouraged during his own lifetime - and which has been milked
for all it is worth by martial arts media ever since - capped this off;
2. the sensation hungry and gullible martial arts magazine and book publishing industries lapped
up anything that would boost sales, readership and distribution so marketed the new, unique
Wing Chun system and eagerly published any information offered them by Chinese students of
Yip (a reverse racism operated then – if the informant was Chinese Western publishers didn’t
question them. It was assumed all Asians were secret gung fu masters – and several took
advantage of this);
3. the PRC took control of China, the Bamboo Wall fell and validating information became
impossible even for most Chinese speakers. Immigrants from Hong Kong could tell any story
they pleased. This was enormously magnified with respect to them communicating these stories
to non-Chinese speakers. At least two of Yip’s students took advantage of this and claimed Yip
had taught them his “secret” system. Funnily enough their two systems are nothing alike! Most
Chinese cared not a whit what stories were told to the West or what they were taught. People
were far more concerned with respect for legitimate masters, hierarchy and the art’s legitimacy
in Chinese communities.

As time progressed the myths surrounding Yip Man were added to by over-zealous students
marketing themselves and their systems. The advent of chat groups added numerous folk with
often-times questionable personalities and obsessions - and immense regurgitation proliferated.
The ridiculous Yip Man movies have promoted a fantastical image of Yip and added further
confusion for the gullible and promoted the Yip personality cult.

Given that there are more people “coming out” with information on Yip Man in Youtube clips
lately I thought I’d briefly list what information we had from Sum Nung. Sum Nung and Yuen
Kay San knew Yip Man well. They knew him as more senior gung fu practitioners. Yip would
often sit in restaurants with groups of practitioners listening to Yuen Kay San, as the most senior
master in China at the time, talking about the art. In brief summary, then, Sum Nung told me the
following:

On the few rare occasions whilst he could still catch the train to Hong Kong, Yip would greet
Sum Nung at the station with flowers and refer to him as “sifu” – as his senior.

Yip Man had not, when Sum Nung knew him, before he migrated to Hong King, learnt the
knives. Yip Man himself devised his knife form. There is some question about the pole. Sum
Nung said he did not know that either. Lun Kai, a Yip student in Futsan who has attested that the
Wing Chun he learnt from Yip when he was younger had some significant differences to the
Hong Kong version said Yip did teach him some pole usage. As far as we can assess this was
only some of the moves that Yip had seen from the full pole form.

We know Yip Man devised several versions of the dummy during his life-time. When Sum Nung
first knew him he said that Yip had then learnt only very limited dummy use prior to his
departure to Hong Kong. Yip was always wanting to learn the dummy form from Yuen Kay San
or Sum Nung. They declined.

Sum Nung said that Yip did not know any other version of Wing Chun – no “secret” style that he
taught only a few. Yip Chun has validated this, too. Sum Nung said that Yip’s Wing Chun was
always the same style.
Yip Man learnt his chi sau from Yuen Kay San. Yuen Kay San only taught Yip some of the chi
sau he himself knew, however. (Yip’s father’s estate was burnt down – an interesting tale in its
own right - and the Yips were offered hospitality by Yuen Kay San’s father. He and Yip’s father
were friends. Yip asked his father to ask Yuen Kay San’s father to ask Yuen Kay San to teach
him chi sau. It was agreed but Yuen Kay San, whilst obliged to honour and obey his father was
unhappy as he said Yip was not a character he would accept as a student. He had asked Yuen
Kay San previously but had been refused. Thus, he limited what he taught him.

Leung Jan had modified his Wing Chun to teach Chan Wah Sun - who had blackmailed Leung’s
students in his position as money-changer. He threatened not to change their money if Leung
didn’t accept him. Leung had refused him initially. (This is also supported by an old biography
of Leung Jan in my possession). The notion put forth by the Hong Kong story of Leung Bik
ascribed Leung Jan’s reasons for modifying what he taught Chan was to ensure that the bigger
Chan Wah Sun could not defeat the smaller (fictitious, anyway) Leung Bik. According to the
Hong Kong story (Yip himself never told it, by the way!) Leung Bik was supposed to have been
taught a secret style that could beat Chan Wah Sun. So, the master’s “son” would be taught so
that a bigger student couldn’t beat him? Thus, the Wing Chun supposedly passed down to Yip
through Chan Wah Sun was, whichever version of the tale is accepted, already a compromised
version of Leung’s own art. That art was passed down in Ku Lo village and is not the same as
Yip’s version!

Yip Man taught very, very few students all of the art he had substantially assembled from several
sources, and revised and - devised. It was not that Yip actually decided to delete so much of
previous Wing Chun that he’d learnt , it was that (as Sergio says) he had not learnt significant
sections of the art others had mastered.

Yip wronged Yuen Kay San on three counts: he insulted Yuen’s wife (I never managed to get the
details of this but heard several versions); he set Yip up in a challenge match with a famous
Northern Mantis boxer in which Yuen was jumped due to him not being aforewarned (it’s a well
known story to Yuen Kay San practitioners); and, he never acknowledged Yuen as teaching him
his chi sau. (Later Yip’s jump in skills over his seniors was ascribed to the fictional story of
Leung Bik that also served, at the suggestion of a journalist student who conceived of it as a
gung fu movie-like mystique to help Yip boost student numbers).

Sum Nung said that Yuen Kay San wanted him to challenge Yip and put him in his place. As the
senior master, Yuen Kay San could hardly challenge the practitioner ranked, by common
consensus, twelfth in the Mainland Wing Chun hierarchy. Sum Nung said that he didn’t pursue
this for three reasons – the Hong Kong police would have had a field day; the PRC would have
had more of a field day on his return to China; and, he had a fondness of sorts for Yip’s impish
character.

Yip did learn from Chu Chong Man. Chu ended up devising a version of Wing Chun also
incorporating many elements of Sil Lum according to Sum Nung. Most of what Yip learnt from
Chu he kept for himself rather than pass on.

Yip was not the Chinese nationalist (now portrayed in the Yip Man movies). He was said by
many in China to be involved both with the Nationalists and not at all unfriendly to the Japanese.
Others in China put that view more strongly. Some offer a mix of reasons for him leaving China
– one being he was quite politically compromised and marked by several factions – the
Nationalists and the Communists.
This is what I was told and some of which other sources have substantiated.
Some may not like it. That’s my point!
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