HAVING BEEN AROUND the world promoting wing chun over the past two decades, and earning high respect from kung fu lovers overseas, the ageing master Ip Chun should perhaps be now leading an easy life. But instead, he faces his greatest challenge : getting Chinese communities to respect martial arts as an art form.
'When I was overseas, people treated me like a scholar, and showed a high respect for my knowledge about wing chun. Kung fu is part of Chinese heritage, but Chinese people, no matter whether they are in Hong Kong, across the straits or even Singapore, do not recognise kung fu as a cultural activity,' says the slightly built, 76-year-old master, while smoking his pipe and looking thoughtful.
Wing chun was probably the first form of girl power. This system of martial arts was invented approximately 300 years ago by a beautiful Guangdong woman named Yim Wing-chun, who practised the skills as a form of self-defence.
Ip's father was Ip Man, the legendary grandmaster of modern wing chun. He brought the art to Hong Kong after he was forced to leave the mainland when the Communist Party took over China. He then began teaching wing chun in Hong Kong in the 1950s, and one of his students was kung fu legend Bruce Lee.
Though Ip picked up wing chun at the age of seven from his father, he didn't become a master right away. While his father chose to come to Hong Kong, Ip opted to do his undergraduate studies in Chinese opera on the mainland, and stayed on to teach Chinese opera. Even after escaping to Hong Kong from the Cultural Revolution, Ip chose to do accounting work instead of learning wing chun properly.
But finally Ip picked it up again in his late 30s, and when his father passed away in 1972, he and his younger brother Ip Ching decided to carry on their father's teaching.