Leung Ting, Leung Sheung & Yip Man
Leung Ting does not mention his sifu Leung Sheung by name in any of his writings be they magazine interviews or his most recent books. In his writings he simply uses the term my former sifu–never using his name.
This is most likely because Leung Ting did not seek the permission of his sifu to approach Yip Man for instruction, which is of course a violation of protocol. That may be less the case now some 40 years later, but not so then.
Leung Ting was indeed a student of Yip Man for about 8 months or so prior to Yip Man’s death. That said the majority of his training time was with Leung Sheung and probably his own uncles, who were students of Leung Sheung.
As Leung Ting himself has stated last year in the Kung Fu Magazine article, Yip Man was in very very poor health and at most would have been “fine tuning” Leung Ting and being more of a coach than an active hands on trainer. Look at the footage of the man (Yip Man) 2 weeks prior to his death–a tragic sight. And not a portrait of a man who would be going full out in chi sao or gor sao with a young student. He would not have had the stamina or physical conditioning.
As to Wang Kiu, his skill in Wing Chun was more as a newspaper reporter writing about Wong Shun Leung’s fights. Most of his students were in holland and the majority of them restarted under Wong Shun Leung when he visited Holland for a series of seminars.
How would Wang Kiu have any clue if Leung Ting went back to Leung Sheung’s school and showed “new skills” to his sifu? Doing so, would I think be quite disrespectful in a large variety of ways. Does anyone here actually think Leung Ting would engage in that kind of behavior? It might make for a good tale from Wang Kiu, but seems highly unlikely to have happened in fact.
If any of you went for training with your own si-gung, learn something that your own sifu was not taught…would you then go back and INTENTIONALLY show off such things on purpose to rub them in your own Sifu’s face? I’m actually rather surprised that the WT organization would include that portion of Wang Kiu’s comments in their “defense” of Leung Ting.
As to Leung Sheung and Yip Man, while there were certainly points of disagreement between them over Yip Man offering “additional training” to anyone who would walk in the door and ply him with money, that is between the two of them.
The level of committment to training and studying under one’s sifu then is nowhere near the same it is today, unless there are those of you who are living with your sifu. If you had done so for 6 years and then see some schmoe walk in and sucessfully buy advanced techniques from your teacher you might be miffed as well. While it is certainly the teacher’s decision to do what he wants–it would probably sting you as well.