Is The Story Of Ip Man Truth Or Pure Lies?

When a famous person dies, they are immortalized in culture. In the case of Ip Man, he was bought to the forefront of martial arts with the iconic Ip Man movie series and is well known as the face of wing chun as a result of this. Most people who watched this series of wing chun action movies will never consider training wing chun, but are impressed by the well choreographed fight scenes and want to be entertained.

It’s no surprise then that the Ip Man story is not accurate at all and does not contain many real details about the life of the wing chun legend. After all, the idea of a Hollywood movie is to make more money in ticket sales than you do from your filming budget. In the case of the 4 Ip man movies, the total budget was approximately $140 million USD. Thanks to the popularity of the series in mainland China, the ticket sales from all 4 movies exceeded $400 million.

If you were to watch the movies at face value alone, you would believe that Ip Man was a super hero, capable of defeating any opponent (or even multiple opponents at once). In reality, we know that even the best and most well rounded fighters in the world rarely retire with 0 losses on their record. Ip Man lived in Hong Kong during the 1900s which was not a thriving metropolis as it is today. He lived a very simple life and did not have glamourous street fights against crime bosses of the city. Sadly, Ip Man was not really appreciated by anyone as a global superstar or even somebody who was famous in the martial arts community until the catastrophic rise of Bruce Lee.

Did Ip Man Train Bruce Lee?

Yes, it is fairly well known that Bruce Lee trained wing chun under Ip Man since the age of 15. Lee was drawn to the martial art of wing chun since he was regularly participating in gang street violence – something which was very common in Hong Kong during the 1950s. There are conflicting accounts of whether Bruce Lee was kicked out of Ip Man’s gym due to the fact that he was 1/4 European, something that wasn’t as accepted as it is today. However, Lee eventually did leave the gym of Ip Man after he emigrated to America at the age of 18.

What Did The Ip Man Movies Get Right?

Wing Chun Fight Scenes

The fight scenes in the movie are accurate from a technical wing chun perspective. Of course, in real life, it would not have been possible to fight off 5 or 6 attackers at once, but the moves show very good form and are well executed. You can tell that the directors of the movie actually paid attention to putting the martial art in the movie properly, rather than just having a mixture of various striking and grappling arts. When compared to other movies with martial arts, the Ip Man series performs the wing chun sequences how they would have been done at that time.

Donnie Yen was trained by Ip Man’s son, so you cannot really get more authentic than this. He would know exactly how his father moved and which styles he preferred over others.

What Did The Ip Man Movies Get Wrong?

Ip Man Vs Boxer

In Ip Man 2, the grandmaster faces off against a boxer from Great Britain and beats him convincingly in what can only be described as a primitive MMA fight. During the match, the boxer is trying to box against Ip Man, who uses a series of leg kicks and even some grappling on the floor of the ring without the referee stopping the fight.

This kind of scene is very common in Hong Kong fight movies where a cocky westerner (usually British), will get their comeuppance against a smaller, but more skilled Asian adversary. A lot of these scenes are based around the British occupation of Hong Kong to which there is still some resentment due to the forced sale of opium to the nation’s inhabitants.

Drug Addiction

Whilst it’s impossible to prove whether Ip Man was a drug user – there have been numerous first party accounts claiming that he used the money he earnt from wing chun to smoke opium. Some of these accusations come from former students, whilst his family vehemently denies it.

At the time though, it wouldn’t have been unusual for a Hong Kong inhabitant to be smoking opium. It’s just a shame that the movies completely gloss over this and ignore it completely. Given that the movie was so popular in mainland China – this theme would not have been acceptable for viewing at all.

Ip Man In The USA

During the finale of the series – Ip Man 4, the grandmaster travels to the USA and even has an interview at a high school to become a teacher. Whilst he is in California, Ip Man is challenged to a series of fights. At this time, California was not really known for its martial arts and if a Chinese man from Hong Kong began telling everyone about wing chun, they would have no idea who he was or what wing chun is.

This also coincides with the diagnosis of Ip Man’s throat cancer, which means he is even less likely to have made the cross-continental journey to the other side of the world. Lastly, there is no evidence of Ip Man ever leaving Asia, throwing even more doubt on this already non-sensical story.

Japan Causing Ip Man To Lose Everything

Once again we can see that the movie series is very centered towards the mainland Chinese audience. There was, and still is a very anti-Japanese undertone in Chinese society. This is because of their invasion and occupation of China in the 1930s-1940s and the atrocities the country committed – something Japan still deny. Whilst the Chinese do have a right to feel aggrieved, it is strange that this was also featured in the first Ip Man movie and is clearly used to stir up nationalist rhetoric.

This is compounded when Ip Man fights a Japanese general and is then shot for winning! Something which never happened at all.

When the hometown of Ip Man was invaded by the Japanese he did leave shortly after. However, in reality Ip Man left China because of the rise of the communist part. Ip Man was fairly high up as a police officer in the KMT – which ruled China at the time. We clearly know why this was left out of the movie since over 80% of the global revenue from the movies was generated from the grandmasters homeland.

The Death Of Ip Man’s Wife

First of all, Ip Man’s wife did die of cancer, but this is pretty much where the truth ends. In the 3rd movie of the series, Ip Man is seen being a loving husband and stopping his martial arts in order to care for her. Due to the complications on the border between China and Hong Kong, the wife of Ip man was not able to visit him during this period. Ip Man was also well known for having affairs and had an illegitimate child with one of his mistresses.

Summary

Sadly, what you see in the Ip Man movies is pretty far from reality. The general gist of the story is true. Ip Man was a Chinese immigrant to Hong Kong who set up a wing chun school that happened to have Bruce Lee as a student. Other than this, the movie storyline goes from bending the truth to extremely far fetched.

It makes sense that the movie had to have cinematic fight scenes, an interesting plotline and many interesting events that simply did not happen in real life.

With that being said, it would likely have been better if this was disclosed before the film rolled the titles, or at least put it after the credits. As the title of each film begins with the name of a real wing chun grandmaster “Ip Man”, it does blur the lines between reality and fiction, particularly for those who don’t know too much about the history of martial arts. If you had watched these movies at the cinema with no knowledge at all, it is very difficult to know which events are historical fact and which are stories that have been invented for the sake of politics and entertainment.

For more information on Ip Man’s wing chun – check out this book here.