In his youth, Bruce Lee was a student of the famous kung fu master, Ip Man. Ip Man, a grandmaster of a kung fu style known as Wing Chun, is one of the most important figures in the history of martial arts. While living in Hong Kong, Ip taught his skills to hundreds of Chinese youngsters.
Though Ip Man is well-respected for his own accomplishments and expertise, one of the things he’s best known for is being the man who trained Bruce Lee in the 1950s. This particular period was touched on in the Ip Man movies starring Donnie Yen in the titular role. Ip Man 3 saw a teenage Lee seek him out and ask to become his student. Their relationship was more important to Ip Man 4: The Finale, which skipped ahead to years after Lee’s training with Ip had finished. The story focused on Ip visiting Lee in the United States.
The true story behind how Bruce Lee came to be a pupil of Ip Man has been documented in multiple works and in interviews with those who knew them. Back when Lee was a child actor, he participated in a great deal of street violence and even led his own gang, the Junction Street Eight Tigers. The constant fighting he was involved in resulted in him discovering kung fu, which he believed could help him win against rivals. He saw an opportunity to learn through friend William Cheung, who was living and training with Ip at the time. At 15-year-old Lee’s request, Cheung introduced Lee to his master, who agreed to take Lee under his wing [via Cheung’s Martial Arts Academy].
However, Lee didn’t immediately receive instruction from the grandmaster. Ip only taught some of his students directly, and instead assigned one of his senior students, Wong Shun Leung, to be Lee’s primary teacher. Lee, determined to become a good fighter, worked hard and experienced tremendous progress under Wong’s tutelage. The promise he showed wasn’t lost on Ip, who trained with him too, and helped Lee develop a deep, meaningful understanding of the philosophical side of kung fu. His influence is evidenced by Lee’s “Be Water” quote and other martial arts-related ideas.
The time Lee spent learning all he could from Ip Man and Wong Shin Leung was complicated by his relationships with his fellow students, who shared an extreme dislike for him. Jealous of his status as a child actor and the success he had achieved under Wong and Ip, many of them made efforts to get Lee expelled from the Wing Chun school. The reason they used was based on Lee’s heritage. Since his mother was Eurasian, they argued Ip shouldn’t teach Chinese martial arts to someone who was of mixed race. During these days, it’s true that it wasn’t acceptable for non-Chinese to learn kung fu, but Ip didn’t see it that way and kept Lee around.
As Bruce Lee himself has admitted, he didn’t necessarily join Ip Man for the right reasons, but the training and enlightenment he received paid off in a big way. Unfortunately, though, learning kung fu did little to keep him out of trouble. As a result, he was sent to the United States when he 18, far away from his gang in Hong Kong. His training with Ip Man ended, but a new era began for him there, with the actor eventually opening his own kung fu schools and using his skills to become a martial arts movie star.