23/09/2026
Before Wing Chun became famous around the world, there were only a handful of students in the room. Lok Yiu was one of the ones who stayed.
In 1950, Ip Man began teaching Wing Chun at the Restaurant Workers Association in Hong Kong. Among that earliest group were Leung Sheung and Lok Yiu. Historical records associated with the Ving Tsun Athletic Association later identified Leung Sheung as Ip Man's first Hong Kong student and Lok Yiu as his second.
Those early classes were a very different world from the Wing Chun we know today. There were no Ip Man movies. No international seminar circuit. No millions of practitioners discovering the art through Bruce Lee.
Just a small group training under a teacher who had only recently begun teaching publicly in Hong Kong.
Lok Yiu stayed.
He trained intensively under Ip Man, became an important figure in those early years, and eventually taught students of his own. Later lineage accounts particularly associate him with Chum Kiu and Wing Chun's long pole, with some referring to him as the “King of Chum Kiu.”
In 1961, Lok Yiu established his own school, helping another generation inherit what had begun in those small Hong Kong classes just over a decade earlier. He died in February 2006, leaving his Wing Chun lineage to continue through his students and family.
Bruce Lee and Wong Shun Leung would eventually become names known around the martial-arts world.
But Lok Yiu was there before either of them entered Ip Man's school.
🌹 Give him his flowers.
Did you ever train with Lok Yiu, meet him, or learn through his lineage? Share your story below. 👇
Sources: Ving Tsun Athletic Association historical family-tree record; Lok Yiu Wing Chun lineage sources; International Wing Chun Academy.
