Wing Chun Kung Fu - History

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This page tells the common features of the legendary story of how Wing Chun Kung Fu was born.

About 300 years ago, Ng Mui, a Shaolin nun, fled the burning of the Shaolin temple, along with 4 fellow priests. Ng Mui went her own way to avoid capture, and sought refuge in a White Crane temple, where due to her Shaolin experience she immediately became the highest authority. During her time at the White Crane temple, Ng Mui reflected upon her Shaolin techniques and found them to be inefficiently wild and exaggerated. She then went on to develop a more efficient system, based on the most simple and direct movements of the human body, with minimal over-reaching and over-commitment.

Ng Mui met a girl called Yim Wing Chun, who was being harassed by a man who wanted to marry her, forcibly if necessary. Ng Mui then taught Yim Wing Chun how to fight so that she could defend herself from the man who was pestering her.

Yim Wing Chun taught her husband, who taught someone else, who taught someone else. Somewhere along the line, this efficient system of fighting, descending from the Shaolin nun named Ng Mui, was named after her student, Yim Wing Chun, and is known as Wing Chun Kung Fu today.

The system of Wing Chun Kung Fu was eventually passed on to the late Grandmaster Yip Man who heavily refined the system from the state in which he received it. Yip Man had many students, the most famous of which being the late Bruce Lee.

Before Yip Man died, he made a film of himself authentically practicing the system in its most important ways, thus preserving much of the system as he taught it.

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