No a popular statement

If one still believe in the fairy tale of Yim Wing Chun as a real person and do not have some background to Chan Buddhism. Personally, I think 98% of the Wing Chun members will have a wrong conclusion on what is Wing Chun base on the nature of Southern Shaolin Temple. I am not talking about the three centuries of personal interpretation that created most of the WC today. Sure, someone can reproduce close to what Ip Man teach base on their interpretation, but I am talking about the WC that come out of Southern Shaolin in the late 1600. I had to went thru and learn all four evolutions of the WC systems below to clearly see the treasure of Shaolin Wing Chun.

There is a big big gap between today's Wing Chun and the Shaolin Wing chun such as Hik Ki Boan Eng Chun. The older version of Wing Chun still is very much first and foremost base on Chan Buddhism. It is not base on personality and personal interpretation such as many today's WC system. After studying under many GM of Yip Man WC by 1998, I began to investigate the non-Hong Kong branches of Wing Chun. When China changed policies and opened their doors in the 1980s, information on Wing Chun in China started to trickle into the West. We came into contact with many lineages outside the Ip Man (Hong Kong) lineage. Therefore, I created a second classification of Wing Chun: Gwongdong Wing Chun (or Wing Chun from the Canton Province). Within the Canton Province, there are many lineages, primarily centered around the city of Fatsaan (Foshan in Mandarin). Lineages from Canton province include: Opera - Ban Chung (most of them in Malaysia today), Yuen Kay-San, Pan Nam, Chan Wah Shun / Chan Yiu Min, Mai Gei Wong, Cheung Bo, Gulao, and others. A few of Ip Man's students from his time in China were teaching, with a different expression of the system compared to his Hong Kong students. I interacted with many of these lineages in person through numerous trips to Hong Kong and China. During the process of research with the mainland lineages, I came across lineages which the VTM today classifies as Shaolin Wing Chun.

There are two systems that the VTM classifies as Shaolin Wing Chun: Hung Fa Yi Wing Chun Paai and Hek Ki Boen Wing Chun Paai. These two systems contain the original three treasures of Shaolin, which are: Chan Buddhism, Health/Qigong, and Combat/Self-Defense/Martial Art skills. Both lineage are relatively unknown to the wider public due to their ties to Chinese secret societies in the past, with customs dating back to the founding of the Hung Mun during the Ming/Qing struggles during the 1600s. The oral traditions in both lineages do not follow the legends of a nun teaching a young girl by the name of Yim Wing Chun. Their cultures and traditions follow the movements of the ancient secret societies' efforts to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. The VTM labels these lineages as Shaolin Wing Chun because they still maintain a focus on the three treasures of Shaolin, while the system from Hong Kong and Canton researched to date are based on the teachings and preferences of individually great martial artists. Both lineages also maintain a related schema of Heaven/Earth/Human symbolism and are centered on the core principle of Time/Space/Energy.

Sorry my statement is not popular, but it is time that the WC community gets a different perspective. This is not to say what WC linage is better, everyone will have their own personal preference.