Bruce Lee: The Way of the Intercepting Fist

William Cheung had known Bruce Lee since boyhood, having first met him at Lee's ninth birthday party in Hong Kong. By 1954, Lee was thirteen and wanted to learn Wing Chun from Ip Man, the grandmaster Cheung already trained under. Ip Man said no. Lee's mother, Grace Ho, was part German, and an unwritten rule among the city's older masters held that foreigners were not to be taught the style. Several of Ip Man's own students were reportedly reluctant to even share the training hall with a boy of mixed blood. Cheung pressed Ip Man on Lee's behalf, and the grandmaster relented. Lee began training that year, and it would remain the only formal martial arts instruction he ever received, roughly five years under Ip Man. In practice, though, much of that training came not from Ip Man directly but from a senior student named Wong Shun-Leung, who drilled Lee through Wing Chun's close-range forms for hours at a stretch. Cheung and Lee became training partners, sparring daily in the school. That discipline did not stay confined indoors. The two began carrying their sparring into the streets of Hong Kong, taking on rival schools in real challenge fights, the kind that ended not with a bow but with someone bleeding on the pavement. In those unsanctioned rooftop bouts, fought for pride rather than rank, Lee first discovered exactly what his hands could do to another person.