Q: What really attracted you to Wing Chun enough to make you take it up?
A: It all started because my father had friends who practised it; one of them was Chao Chin Wah (Chan Wah Sun), whom he had seen fight. I didn’t believe in Wing Chun in the beginning. The first day I went to Yip Man’s school I ended up fighting with him; I was seventeen years old at the time and Yip Man was over fifty, and I was forced to admit without a doubt that he had defeated me. What surprised me the most was the efficiency with which he did so.
I knew that what I was practising at Yip Man’s school was Wing Chun, but I didn’t relate it to the system that my father had told me that Chao Chin Wah practised. I was aware that Yip Man was from Fatshan, the same as Chao Chin Wah and Leung Jan. Shortly after joining his school I asked him if he had heard about these two men and the system they practised, as my father had told me that they were very good fighters. Yip Man’s answer was: “They practise this very same art, you idiot!”
See the rest of the interview at WongShunLeungSpain.org