JOSEPH WANG KIU WAS BORN ON THE 15TH OF AUGUST, 1923 IN HONG KONG. HE WAS ONE OF GRANDMASTER IP MAN’S FIVE “CORE STUDENTS”, TOGETHER WITH LEUNG SHEUNG, LOK YIU, CHU SHONG TIN AND WONG SHUN LEUNG.
“I am just a simple Chinese man doing Wing Chun. I’m not a professional.” Wang Kiu Sifu was a private person, to the extent that many in the Wing Chun world did not know of him for some years. Wang Sifu told me he started with Grandmaster Ip around 1950, when he had perhaps a half-dozen students in a back room of the “Third Prince” Temple. One of these students was an elderly newspaperman named Lei Man. Building enrolment for Grandmaster Ip motivated Wang Sifu and Wong Shun Leung to do the original dozen or so Challenge Matches (Beimo), which were highly illegal. Wang Sifu reported and promoted many of the matches in the Noi Mok Kun Tjat Po newspaper under the pen name “Water Dragon”, which was misread and published as “Little Dragon”, the characters for “water” and “little” being easily mistaken.