The History of Wing Chun Kuen

Wing Chun Kuen’s history has, like many martial arts, been passed down verbally rather than through documentation, making it difficult to confirm or clarify the differing accounts of Wing Chun’s creation.  

 

A popular version of the story Wing Chun Kuen’s 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. She took the lessons she learned from observing the fight between the two animals and combined them with her own knowledge of Shaolin boxing to create a new system. She taught this system to a young woman who was being harassed into a marriage with a local warlord, the young woman’s name was Yim Wing Chun. Yim Wing Chun used Ng Mui system to successfully defend herself from the warlord. Yim 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 system on to others.

 

Source: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wing_Chun

 

For a great reference book concerning Wing Chun Kuen’s oral and documented history ‘Complete Wing Chun: The Definitive Guide to Wing Chun’s History and Traditions’ by Robert Chu, Rene Ritchie and Y. Wu is highly, highly recommended.