Kung Fu Arts
New kung fu biography reveals details of the early days of Bruce Lee
New book release: Wing Chun WARRIOR: The True Tales of Wing Chun Kung Fu Master Duncan Leung, Bruce Lee’s Fighting Companion by Ken Ing M.D.
Told from a whole new perspective – here is the story of Kung Fu’s most formative era, and of the influence of three of the mightiest and wisest fighters who ever bonded in a humble post-war Hong Kong Kung Fu studio: legendary Yip Man, iconic Bruce Lee, and – the story thus far less known – the amazing life of Duncan Leung. Now that it’s out, it packs a punch.
A new Blacksmith Books paperback, Wing Chun Warrior is more than a good true-life story well told. It’s an epic that has an arresting cinematic quality, as one might expect of a Kung Fu story that has Hong Kong icon Bruce Lee playing a strong supporting role.
Here in these pages is the only-now fully revealed life story of Master Duncan Leung Shiu-hung, and a detailed narrative on those who had the most influence on him.
Portrayed through lucid and informative prose, Wing Chun Warrior is illuminated by a wealth of historical background that helps puts ancient fighting arts in a modern context. Living legend Duncan Leung became a master of the Wing Chun form of Kung Fu through training with Yip Man, and hung out with a neighbourhood buddy, one Bruce Lee (a fellow student of Yip Man) through young adulthood. The high-kicking duo experienced many rites of passage together in the 1950s, and they’re detailed here in these pages.
Duncan Leung’s early-life challenges and escapades enthrall as the action weaves its way through the decades and alleyways, with many a spectacular bone-crunching fight scene soon tempered by poignant insights into human nature and Chinese history, and the imperative of courage and other virtues.
Later in his career, Duncan Leung refined and adapted his defensive fighting style to create a whole new branch on the ancient and enormous tree of the Chinese fighting arts. In this way, Leung managed to bridge the gaps between the ancient world, the golden age of Kung Fu’s swift world-conquering popularity of the last century, and the martial arts scene of today.
From the mean backstreets of Hong Kong and Macau – where he bloodily learnt his craft, enduring and delivering many a beating – to the backwoods of Virginia where he trained US military personnel in unarmed combat in the 1970s, to the contemplative old master of today, Leung is a man with a past spectacularly travelled.
Not just a biography, Wing Chun Warrior is a fastidiously researched treatment of a way of life, through a triangle of lives – Duncan Leung’s, Bruce Lee’s and the legendary teacher of both, Yip Man. And it is as spellbinding as it is informative.
Furthermore, it’s also topical. Interest in Yip Man was recently reignited by the release last December of Ip Man – a wildly successful, award-winning movie about the martial arts master starring Donnie Yen. Another Yip Man bio-pic, directed by Chinese cinema supernova Wong Kar-wai and starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai (most recently seen in Lust, Caution), is set to be unleashed this year.
Wing Chun Warrior was penned by Ken Ing, a retired doctor who was inspired to write this book through meeting Duncan Leung in mainland China, and gradually learning of the master’s remarkable background and accomplishments. This is Ing’s confident debut as an author, and has revealed his uncanny ability to convey the magic of Wing Chun Kung Fu through writing. As Ing puts it: “As long as Bruce Lee’s popularity prevails, there will be aspirants after Wing Chun. If someone wants to study Applied Wing Chun, this is the only book available that will teach them the real from the unreal, the verbal from the applicable.”
There’s plenty of added value here too: well-selected quotations from the Lord Buddha, Confucius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Sun Tzu and Kong Rong, and other great thinkers and theorists from Chinese history, open each and every chapter. And 18 photos spanning several decades have been gathered together in the book’s mid-section. Notably and unusually, this work also contains some zesty manga-style cartoons by veteran comic-book illustrator Siu Hoi-on. And these effectively capture, in another medium, some of the extraordinary action scenes that impacted on Duncan Leung’s life.
Bruce Lee may have been Yip Man’s best-known student, but Duncan Leung spent more time under his tutelage, and much of what followed can be read here for the very first time. In undertaking to write Wing Chun Warrior, Ken Ing intended to put Duncan Leung’s place in history in context, and he has succeeded wonderfully through one of the most gripping biographies you’ll read this year. Better still, the reader gets new perspectives on Bruce Lee and Yip Man too. Three tough-yet-gracious men who changed the world.
Here’s a book that is as overdue as it is captivating.
Book Details
Wing Chun Warrior: The True Tales of Wing Chun Kung Fu Master Duncan Leung, Bruce Lee’s Fighting Companion
Genre: Martial Arts / Biography
ISBN: 978-988-17742-2-4
Format: Paperback, 256 pages, 129 x 198 mm, with photos and illustrations
Cover price: US$14.95
Availability: Bookshops throughout Asia (Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand); Retail websites (amazon.com, bn.com, amazon.co.uk etc.) internationally
Excerpts from the book may be viewed online at www.blacksmithbooks.com
A Chinese edition (ISBN 978-988-17742-9-3) will follow in July 2009.
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