Professor Leung Ting is the founder and permanent president of the International WingTsun Association (國際詠春總會). He began learning Wing Chun kungfu at the age of 13 from Great Grandmaster Yip Man's first student. In 1967, Leung Ting began teaching WingTsun Kungfu as an amateur instructor. In 1968, he started a Wing Tsun class in the Baptist College, becoming the first kungfu class ever established at a university of Hong Kong. Earlier that year, Great Grandmaster Yip Man (teacher of Bruce Lee) had just "closed his door" — a Chinese phrase that means to retire from teaching. However, he soon accepted Leung Ting as his "closed-door" student and personally taught him the most advanced techniques in the home of Leung Ting's Second Si-Hing (elder kungfu brother), Kwok Keung. Soon, a young Sifu Leung Ting realized that what he was learning from the Great Grandmaster was quite different and far more profound than what he had previously learned. He started to appreciate the most advanced ideas of "unloading the force from the strong opponent and defeat him by making use of his own force". To distinguish his newfound understanding of the art, he chose to spell in English his interpretation of the style as "Wing Tsun," which, although pronounced the same, is quite different from the generic spelling of wing chun. However, the most important point is not the difference in spelling; it is the difference between the "superficial techniques that look alike" and the "profound fighting concepts behind these techniques"!
In September of 1969, Sifu Leung Ting organized the first WingTsun Kungfu Contest in the Baptist College in Hong Kong. It was the first Chi-Sau contest ever held since Great Grandmaster Yip Man began teaching Wing Tsun in Hong Kong in 1949. In this contest, Great Grandmaster Yip Man was the VIP, and it was the only time he was ever present at one of his own student's open functions.
In May of 1970, Sifu Leung Ting set up a well-equipped gymnasium, called the Leung Ting Gymnasium(梁挺拳術館), and began to admit students publicly, turning teaching martial arts into a career. Academically, he was a graduate of the Hong Kong Baptist College and obtained his Bachelor Degrees in Chinese & English Literature in 1973. On account of his success in the development of the WingTsun System and propagating it worldwide, he was conferred the title of Doctor of Philosophy in the USA in 1979. More recently in 1997, he was appointed by the National Sport Academy of Bulgaria as the "Guest Professor of Combat Arts".
The WingTsun Kung Fu system developed by Professor Leung is practiced worldwide by tens of thousands of martial-arts practitioners, many of whom were already experts of other martial-art styles before they took on WingTsun. They include instructors who hold high Dan (grading) and individuals who have won titles as National Champions, runner-ups, and even World Champions in various international martial-arts tournaments. Professor Leung Ting's students also include instructors of the army and security Special Forces in a number of countries, such as the FBI and Marine Corps of theUSA, SEK & GSG9 of Germany, GIP of Luxembourg, RAID of France, NOCS of Italy, Anti-Terrorist Squad of India, Special Police units of Belgium, Austria, Spain.
Visit Grandmaster Leung Ting's website at www.leungting.com
