Rating: 
Summary: A good read, and illustration of Sil Lum Tao.
Review: A good read and good illustration of Sil Lum Tao. It was most helpful with Wing Chun: The Science of In-Fighting DVD. With out the DVD I would not have been able to learn Sil Lum Tao. A fun read. I am glad I own it.
Rating: 
Summary: You'll need an instructor in order to understand the proper
Review: form. This book shows pictures of forms going from point A to point C but misses point B. Without someone knowledgeable on siu lim tao, you will be wasting your time. Granted, this book helped me to cover the siu lim tao faster while at the dojo, but I would have preferred something other than this book. It wasn't all that great.
Rating:
Summary: You'll need an instructor in order to understand the proper
Review: form. This book shows pictures of forms going from point A to point C but misses point B. Without someone knowledgeable on siu lim tao, you will be wasting your time. Granted, this book helped me to cover the siu lim tao faster while at the dojo, but I would have preferred something other than this book. It wasn't all that great.
Rating: 
Summary: Ip Ip Hooray!
Review: It's filled with Wing Chunny goodness!
Rating:
Summary: no macho, pure energy
Review: So much of martial arts is degraded in the Western approach-- it becomes all about physicality, muscle and machoness rather than being rooted in energy, personal improvement and spirituality/philosophy. Most martial arts books are titled "the deadly something or other". Maybe it is a marketing ploy to attract all these sweaty pubescent boys who like to pick fights (and those "adults" who still act like that), but they have missed the philosophical/spiritual roots of the martial arts. They have lost the tradition and the honor; so where then is their authenticity? I found this book to approach wing chun from a more traditional, balanced combination of philosophical/theoretical (energy work) and physical. Because wing chun is a combination of both internal and external styles it is essential to understand Qi if you want to improve. Ip Chun addresses that. His analogy as an eighty year grandmaster is that as a young person you can, if you like, focus on speed and brute strength, but where will you be when you are elderly? It is only energy work that will sustain your martial arts into your old age. The first one third of the book is history and background, the second third is sil lum tao with lots of photos, and the last third is one and two-handed chi sao (sticky hands techniques) and practical application of wing chun techniques in self-defense for men and women. And of course, if you want to talk about lineage, then you cannot go wrong with Ip Chun, son of Ip Man (Yip Man) himself. As a practioner of Wing Chun/JKD (taught by the late sifu Akko Nishimura trained by sigung Francis Fong [Yip Man school] and guru Dan Inosanto), I found this book to be invaluable. It is important to understand the traditional roots, even if your own practice is more synthetic. Of course, for all those philes who like their martial arts pre-packaged, glossy and aggressive, Ip Chun's approach will be too traditional for them to handle. They should go join the Billy Banks bootcamp for Tae Bo.
Rating:
Summary: Inadequate descriptions
Review: This book covers the first form and some applications. Well, you can forget about the applications, they are few and very basic level. It is a nice reference to the form if you already know it or when you just learned it and try to work it out at home, but you cannot learn any of the moves from this book alone. There should be more description or some kind of arrows drawn on some photoes or just plain more "in-between" photoes. You see pic 1, then it says stuff like "curl your arm, rotate your palm upwards, extend the fingers, rotate it clockwise as far as it goes, make a fist, blah blah..." then you see end result pic 2 and wonder "how did that happen?".The chi-sao and qi-qung sections are a joke. The only fun part of the book is the history of Ip Man. It is worth reading if you don't have to pay the price of the book (see local library). The second star is for the history section only.
Rating:
Summary: ok, for modified wing chun
Review: This book is good to have if you want to compare modified Wing Chun to traditional. Has good chapters on history, philosophy, and lineage. Decent demonstration of the modified form, though you may have to use your imagination, like all forms in books, to flow from movement to movement, which I don't recommend for proper learning. Take classes or get a video and use this book for reference. Application chapter is brief and basic, but gives you some ideas for real life situations. Book covers some topics too briefly to bother including them, and the authors may have made better use of space, adding further detail to important topics discussed in the book. Good book for someone with an idea of the proper movements of sil lum tao, the first Wing Chun form.
Yip Chun kind of lives off the fact that his father, Yip Man, was the last Grandmaster of Wing Chun. Yip Chun always has to include a chapter about Bruce Lee in his books, usually ripping on him and being generally disrespectful.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent basis for learning Wing Chun
Review: This isn't the book that will take you all the way to full understanding of siu lim tao (first form), but it will do better than any other single book. Combine this with the video "Wing Chun - Science of In-Fighting," and you will have a complete intructional guide to the first form of wing chun. I agree that some steps seem to be skipped in the form pictures, but this is more than compensated by the additional information about wing chun and how to apply it. Get the video by Wong Shun Leung too.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent basis for learning Wing Chun
Review: This isn't the book that will take you all the way to full understanding of siu lim tao (first form), but it will do better than any other single book. Combine this with the video "Wing Chun - Science of In-Fighting," and you will have a complete intructional guide to the first form of wing chun. I agree that some steps seem to be skipped in the form pictures, but this is more than compensated by the additional information about wing chun and how to apply it. Get the video by Wong Shun Leung too.
Rating:
Summary: basic secrets
Review: Wing Chun is not speed and punch. The secret is in energy and sensitivity, Yin and Yang (Alfa & Omega). I found this book to be really helpful and valuable. Of course you must have practiced the Siu Lim Tao before, in order to correct mistakes and reach higher levels. Wing Chun is not only movements, but a philosophy, if you don't have the basics you can not reach higher levels. Thanks a lot to Yip Chun and Michael Tse for this wonderful book.
Have a great day!.
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