Check out who has come to promote martial arts in Kolkata?

When we think of Kung Fu, we first think of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee and all those cool moves and stunt-filled movies.

Like any Chinese from Hong Kong, John Wong Hong Chung’s favorite hero is Bruce Lee. Had one asked Lee, who was his favourite, he would have pointed to Wong Shun Leung who taught him the moves of Ving Tsun Kung Fu at the school of legendary Chinese martial arts exponent Ip Man. Bruce Lee in a letter to Leung in January 1970 wrote, “Even though I am (technically) a student of Ip Man, in reality, I learned my Kung-fu from you.”

Chung, Leung’s eldest son, who was barely three when Bruce Lee passed away, is in Kolkata to promote Ving Tsun, the south China martial art that Bruce Lee learned from his father and introduced to the rest of the world.

“My father was perhaps Ip Man’s favorite disciple but it was Bruce Lee, who was the most famous student. Bruce Lee made Ving Tsun famous when he took it to America and became a phenomenon,” said Chung, who is now a Ving Tsun grandmaster. and has come to Kolkata to teach the martial art.

It was Leung who got students to Ip Man’s school by engaging in street fights and beating students from martial arts schools run by rival masters. His character was portrayed in the movie Ip Man 2, the Hong Kong biographical martial arts film based on the life of Ip Man.

In 1973, shortly after Bruce Lee’s death, Wong acted in ‘Life and Legend of Bruce Lee’. In this film, Wong played the role of himself, an instructor at Ip Man’s Ving Tsun school who met a teenager named Lee in the 1950s. The life and achievements of Wong Shun Leung are commemorated in a recently completed documentary film by Bruce Lee’s historian John Little titled ‘Wong Shun Leung: the King of Talking Hands’.