Recent History

Events within living memory can be pinned down with a little more certainty. Nonetheless, conflicting accounts remain.

Yip Man was the first Wing Chun master to teach the art openly in Hong Kong on a school fee basis. His students and their students therefore make up the majority of the practitioners of Wing Chun today. Yip Man died in 1972.

One of the last students of Yip Man, Leung Ting, formed a branch called WingTsun (rather than his master's Ving Tsun) as an international franchise. This organisation has spread to Europe and spawned several offshoots.

More recently, beginning in 1970, Bruce Lee, who trained primarily in Wing Chun but also some other arts, incorporated some of its techniques and ideas into his own Jeet Kune Do. His fame led to international interest in Wing Chun.

Though he never started a school himself, Yuen Kay-San's lineage of Wing Chun was continued by his student Sum Nung and the subsequent generations of students that descend from him.