During the reign of Emperor Jiaqing in the late 1700s and early 1800s, master martial artists who opposed Manchu Qing dynasty rule were hunted down. A Shaolin nun called Ng Mui fled her temple to Southern China shortly before Qing authorities burned it down to the ground.

Being a master of the many fists of Shaolin, she summarized the arts and passed the condensed form down to Yim Wing Chun, the daughter of a tofu merchant who was forced to marry a local general. With the newly mastered combat system, Wing Chun defeated the general and avoided forced marriage. Since then, the art became known as Wing Chun Kuen (the fist of Wing Chun or the fist of singing spring).

Wing Chun Kuen then spread throughout China and eventually the world, including Indonesia, branching into various lineages. The most widespread is that of Ip Man, a Hong Kong Wing Chun master. Today, traditional Wing Chun Indonesia is the largest Wing Chun school of the Ip Man lineage in the country.

"My shifu [teacher] went to Hong Kong to learn the art. [He established the school] in 2009 in Jakarta. Since then, it has spread throughout Indonesia," said Hendric Kusnadi, a Wing Chun shifu (master) in Tangerang, Banten. 

Hendric said he had been training in the art since 2015 and began teaching others in 2019. He explained that there were “many schools of Wing Chun in Indonesia, but ours can be traced back to Ip Man”.

"To put it simply, Wing Chun is a summary of [Shaolin] Kung fu," the 56-year-old continued. "Only the important moves are included in Wing Chun […] Learning Kung fu takes years [unlike Wing Chun, which can be learned in a relatively short time]."

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