Donne Yen stars as Ip Man, aka Yip Man, in a quadrilogy of movies about a legendary martial arts master that is now streaming on Netflix. The made in Hong Kong series kicked off with Ip Man in 2008, followed by Ip Man 2 (2010), Ip Man 3 (2015), and Ip Man 4: The Finale (2019).
Much of the fame initially came to the Ip Man series through its connections to Bruce Lee, whose own legend continues to grow through a new documentary.
While the Ip Man movies are based on a real life martial arts hero, it’s no surprise that the movie version would stray here and there from a strictly factual account. Here's a look at what's true and what's not over the four flicks.
The Basic Facts
The basic facts of the story are essentially true. Ip Man was a real person. He was born on October 1, 1893, and his family lived in Foshan. His parents were Yip Oi-dor and Wu Shui, and he was the third of their four children. As the movie depicts, the family were wealthy, and he began his training in martial arts at the age of 12. Ip Man went on to become the first person to give Wing Chun lessons publicly.
In real life, the man behind the legend remains something of a mystery, and that’s probably how he wanted it. In the movies, though, his life is fleshed out by the imaginations of the writers. Many scenes and facts were manufactured for the cinematic Ip Man legend, including that awesome fight where Ip Man took on 10 Japanese black belts in Karate. Ip Man also never fought a Japanese general.
In real life, he also worked as a police man before leaving Foshan. The chronology of the Sino-Chinese war was mixed up for the movies, and while he did flee Foshan, it was because the Communist Chinese forces had won the war. Later, he opened a school in Hong Kong, as the movie depicts.
Wing Chun – A Martial Art
Ip Man practises a martial art known as Wing Chun, which leverages body structure to generate power, and tends to use a lot of circular motions, twisting the punches. Already proficient in other martial arts, Donnie Yen studied it for nine months under Ip Ching before taking on the first film.
Some of the moves that Donnie Yen makes in the role are true to that art. In Ip Man 3, for example, Ip Man fights a British boxer, and wins after he lands a sharp punch to the bicep from the outside. That's a classic Wing Chun chi sao training tactic called "attack the attack", which is pretty self-explanatory as an alternative to a block.
Later, he fights another boxer and blocks using his elbows, which is another Wing Chun technique. Landing a punch on the hard edge of an elbow can cause serious damage. In many other scenes, the cinematic version strays from the actual, or is exaggerated for maximum effect. The actual fight against the boxer, for example, was pure fiction.
Most of Ip Man 4, where the master comes to San Francisco, is completely fictional. Ip Man never set foot on US soil. However, small touches like the scene where the iconic character asks his son to tape a video of him demonstrating Wing Chun moves on a wooden dummy is taken straight from his true life story.
The Truth About Bruce Lee
Ip Man trained under a few different instructors, but it is in the role of instructor himself that he met – in real life – Bruce Lee, who became his student, and by all accounts, his mentee. Bruce Lee studied Wing Chun with him privately, although Lee never became a Wing Chun master like Ip Man.
In the movies as in real life, Bruce Lee, whose father was Han Chinese and mother of Eurasian descent, had trouble with purists who wanted Chinese martial arts restricted to Chinese students. The details in the story, in Ip Man 4 in particular, are embellished in the movie version, but the essence of the conflict was real. That's why Lee had to train privately with Ip Man.
In the movie Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth (1976), Ip Man’s son Ip Ching plays a small role as his father. It’s probably not a coincidence that Lee himself, as a martial arts icon, been the subject of less than truthful depictions in the movies, including that memorable scene where he fought a Hollywood stuntman in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
Personal Life
On the personal side, just as in Ip Man 3, his wife died of cancer before he did. However, when she died, they'd been separated for nine years. She had returned to China, but got trapped on the Chinese side of the border after the Japanese left Hong Kong, still a British territory at the time.
Ip Man had a mistress in the late 1950s, and an illegitimate son that the movies never mention, along with a rumored addiction to opium.
Today, there are artifacts and displays about Ip Man’s life in the Foshan Ancestral Temple grounds and in the Yip Man Tong museum in China.