Style:
Kung Fu - Wing
Chun
(張卓興, Cheung Cheuk Hing in pinyin) (born
1940) is a famous Wing Chun Kung Fu practitioner and currently the
"Grandmaster" of his version of the Wing Chun, entitled Traditional Wing
Chun (TWC). He also heads the sanctioning body of TWC, the
World Wing Chun Kung Fu
Association.
In 1951, at the age of ten, Cheung
started his training in Wing Chun Kung Fu under the late Grandmaster
Yip Man. From 1954 to 1958
Cheung was a live-in student of Grandmaster Yip Man. Yip Man's training
studio was located in his Hong Kong apartment.
Between 1957 and 1958 Cheung won the Kung
Fu elimination contests in Hong Kong, defeating opponents with many more
years' experience. In early 1954 Cheung introduced
Bruce Lee
to Grandmaster Yip Man.
In 1959, after completing his training
under Grandmaster Yip Man, Cheung left Hong Kong to pursue an academic
career at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. He
graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics.
After moving to Melbourne, Australia to
teach Wing Chun professionally in 1973, Cheung began operating a very
successful Martial Arts School. In 1976 he was elected the President of
the Australian Kung Fu Federation.
In 1979, Cheung was sponsored by the USS
Oklahoma City (CLG-5), Flagship of the Seventh Fleet, to instruct
a select group of officers and enlisted personnel in the unique art of
Traditional Wing Chun Kung Fu as part of the ship's Welfare and
Recreation program. Instruction took place at the ship's homeport of
Yokosuka, Japan at the U.S. Navy Base there and included a strict
regimen of close quarter, hand-to-hand combat training over a five week
intensive period.
From 1979 forward Grandmaster Cheung and
many of his senior students conducted special programs for special law
enforcing officers and special operation groups in the Armed Services in
U.S.A. and other countries. They taught the military unarmed combat,
restraining, disarming assailants, and a firearm retention program.
Controversy
As an official successor to Yip Man was
not named publicly, some Wing Chun exponents have been involved in the
politics of claiming to be the rightful successor. Cheung himself claims
to be the only one who was taught what he calls the "Traditional Wing
Chun" style, which he says was previously a secret, purer version of
wing chun only taught to those expected to become the style's standard
bearers. Cheung claims that all the rest of Yip Man's students were
taught what he calls the "Modified Wing Chun" system, alleged to be a
simpler and less effective style taught to outsiders deemed unworthy to
learn the true version. All the other senior students of Yip Man,
including the directors of the Ving Tsun Athletic Association (VTAA) and
Yip Man's two sons, have disputed Cheung�s claims.
In the 1980s, Cheung made these claims in
a series of martial arts magazines, starting a published war of words
with other Wing Chun organizations, especially the WingTsun group. He
offered to demonstrate the practical (combat) superiority of his system
against anybody who wished to try, and he was subsequently challenged to
a fight unexpectedly in the midst of a seminar in Germany by a WingTsun
fighter named Emin Boztepe. In taped footage of this fight, it appears
the Boztepe was the clear winner of this conflict, though Cheung claims
that the footage was edited. The incident has turned into something of
an Internet phenomenon.
His claimed start date of 1951 with Yip
Man is also controversial, as he (by his own admission) started after
Wong Shun Leung. Wong said his own start date with Yip Man was early
1954, making the 1951 date impossible.
Cheung also claims to have been a live-in
student of Yip Man between 1954-1958. Chu Shong Tin lived with Yip Man
up until 1955 and there is no mention made in the literature of Cheung
living there as well. Considering the start date controversy, it is
possible he could have lived with him starting in late 1955 after Chu
Shong Tin moved out. In contrast, the VTAA letter described his training
as intermittent
From
Wikipedia.org
