ABSTRACT
Wing Chun, as it is pronounced in its native Cantonese, or Yǒng Chūn (詠春) in Hanyu Pinyin, is a form of southern Chinese hand combat first taught publicly in the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong province during the second half of the nineteenth century. It slowly gained popularity in the area during the Republic of China period (1911–1949) but declined dramatically on the mainland after 1949. It became a global phenomenon when Ip Man (1893–1972), a resident of Foshan and former police officer, moved to Hong Kong and began to teach professionally in the early 1950s. His best-known student, Bruce Lee, became the first Asian-American superstar in the early 1970s. Lee’s fame and efforts to promote the Chinese martial arts ensured that Wing Chun would become one of the most widely distributed and successful traditional fighting systems within the global marketplace. The art’s popularity was further boosted by the release of a series of fictionalised treatments of Ip Man’s life, starting with Wilson Ip’s highly successful 2008 film Ip Man. Today the art enjoys great popularity not only in Hong Kong but throughout Asia, Oceania, the Americas and Europe, where several lineages have been popularised or ‘rediscovered’ in recent decades.
