Oral histories
Ip Man Wing Chun
The oral history of the Ip Man branch of Wing Chun dates its creation to the reign of the Emperor Kangxi (1662–1722). After escaping the destruction of the Fujian Shaolin Monastery by Qing forces, the Abbess Ng Mui fled to the distant Daliang mountains on the border between Yunnan and Sichuan. One day, she came upon a fight between a snake and a crane (or other animal). She took the lessons she learned from observing the fight between the two animals and combined them with her own knowledge of Shaolin kung fu to create a new style. Ng Mui often bought her bean curd at the tofu shop of Yim Yee. Yim Yee had a daughter named Yim Wing-Chun whom a local warlord was trying to force into marriage. Ng Mui taught her new fighting style to Wing-Chun, who used it to fend off the warlord once and for all. Wing-Chun eventually married a man she loved, Leung Bok-Chao, to whom she taught the fighting techniques that Ng Mui had passed on to her. Husband and wife in turn passed the new style on to others.
Yiu Kai Wing Chun
The oral history of the Yiu Kai lineage dates the creation of Wing Chun roughly a century later, to the early 19th century, and names Wing-Chun's father as Yim Sei, a disciple at the Fujian Shaolin Temple who avoids persecution by fleeing with his daughter to Guangxi. Wing-Chun learned the Fujian Shaolin arts from her father and, from their raw material, created a new style after being inspired by a fight between a snake and a crane. She eventually married Leung Bok-Chao—a Shaolin disciple just like Wing-Chun's father—and taught her fighting style to her new husband. The young couple began teaching Wing Chun's fighting style to others after moving to Guangdong Province in 1815, settling in the city of Zhaoqing.
Numerous variations on this story abound.
Theories
Other origins for Wing Chun have been suggested, typically involving connections to the Triads, revolutionary groups (often anti-Qing), or the Hakka people of southern China. Almost all extant lineages of Wing Chun, with the exception of the Pao Fa Lien branch, claim descendance from the members of the mid-19th century cohort of the Red Boat Opera Company.
Another legend has it that Wing Chun's lover, Leung Bok-Chao(who was a student of Choy gar) did in fact help to shape the style of Wing Chun. If so, then this is probably why the stances, and the short centred hand techniques have similarities in Choy gar and Wing Chun.
Espionage and assassination
According to one theory, opponents of the Qing Dynasty used the Red Boat Opera Company as a cover to disguise themselves as a troupe of travelling entertainers. Their identities as Chinese opera performers provided a cover for martial arts training; however, the flashy moves of opera style martial arts were not suited to the activities of espionage and assassination, which required specialized skills. Even though assassinations themselves would be carried out using poison or knives, their targets were usually protected by bodyguards who, on discovery of an intruder, would seize the person, call for help, and disable the person to be held for interrogation. Therefore, according to this hypothesis, Wing Chun was designed to deal with an opponent who seized rather than struck and to silence that opponent immediately. This would explain certain technical aspects of Wing Chun, such as its emphasis on close-range combat and its many strikes to the throat and diaphragm.
Wing Chun City
Also of note is the existence of a city called Yongchun (literally, "Eternal Spring") in Fujian Province, China. In Mandarin, the pronunciation of the martial art and the pronunciation of the town are identical: Yǒngchūn. In Cantonese, the pronunciations are virtually the same: wing cheun (martial art) vs wing cheun (municipality). The name of the town is written with the character yǒng/wing meaning "always", whereas the lineages of Wing Chun that descend from Yip Man, Yiu Kai, Yuen Kay-San, the Cho family, Tam Yeung, Fung Sang, Yeung Fook, and Leung Kwok-Keung write the name of their martial art using the character yǒng/wing meaning "sing." However, the lineages of Wing Chun that descend from Pan Nam, Nguyễn Tế-Công, Way Yan, the Wang family of Saiquan, and Pao Fa Lien use the yǒng/wing character, making the name of their martial art identical with the name of the town.
Several other Chinese martial arts come from Yongchun and the surrounding area, most notably the Fujianese style of White Crane, one branch of which is even called Wing Chun Bak Hok Kuen, or Wing Chun White Crane boxing. Li Wenmao, a historically verifiable opera performer and leader in the 1854–1855 Red Turban Rebellion in Foshan, is said to have been a Wing Chun White Crane practitioner.
There is a story that White Crane was created by Ng Mui after she was inspired by a fight between a snake and a crane, as in the Yip Man oral history of Wing Chun. Another White Crane legend states that the art was created by a young woman who combined her observation of cranes with the martial arts she learned from her father—in some versions a refugee from the destruction of the Fujian Shaolin Temple—and later taught her art to her husband, as in the Yiu Kai oral history of Wing Chun. Most stories name this young woman as Fong Chut-Neung, to use the Cantonese pronunciation, but other stories name her Fong Wing-Chun and the Shaolin disciple she marries as Hung Hei-Gun, to whom she teaches her Crane style which he combines with his Tiger style to create the famous Hung Family Tiger Crane style.
Oral history aside, the technical similarities of Wing Chun and Fujian White Crane suggest that the two are related. As Yip Man's student Leung Ting put it, "Wing Tsun System is derived from the Fukien System of kung-fu, which is related to the Hakka System. Their common features are that during fights, pugilists of these systems prefer short steps and close fighting, with their arms placed close to the chest, their elbows lowered and kept close to the flanks to offer it protection. Another characteristic of these two systems of kung-fu is, unlike those of Kwangtung Province and Northern China, their boxing forms are rather simple"
Original article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wing_Chun
