Introduced to Yip Man by Bruce Lee, Duncan's childhood friend, Duncan trained for only a very short time with the public students.  Yip Man offered to teach Duncan privately for $300 a month (the public class was $8 by comparison). Duncan was highly motivated (and was in part training for revenge, as he saw his father murdered), and surprised Yip Man by coming up with the money.

 

From then on out Yip Man came to Duncan's home and trained him privately.  Duncan trained on average 6+ hours a day from '55-59 and fully mastered the entire and complete system and its true applications.  He is only one of 5 true formal disciples of Yip Man (as opposed to the 16+ private students and live-in students Yip Man taught), and the absolute best with the Butterfly Swords according to Yip Man.

 

Since Duncan didn't train in the regular school with the other students, Yip Man worked with him a lot personally and constantly told him to go out and fight in order to learn how to use the techniques.  Duncan is a veteran of literally hundreds and hundreds of fights - and is considered by many as THE most dangerous fighter Yip Man ever produced.  He has been called the Dark Warrior of Wing Chun.

 

Duncan now teaches what he calls "Applied Wing Chun", saying Yip Man taught a lot of people Wing Chun, but not how to truly apply it.  For example, Yip Man sent his last disciple, Allen Lee, to train with Duncan to learn how to use Wing Chun even after years of private study.

 

Gong Li is part of this secret 1/2 of Wing Chun that Yip Man said he only taught to 5 of his most secret disciples.