User:JFD/Sandbox

History

Chan Heung (陳享)^[1] was born in Guangdong Province, China in 1805 or 1806. At the age of six or seven, he began to study Kung Fu from his uncle, Chan Yuen-Wu (陳遠護), a master of Southern Shaolin. So proficient as an adolescent that he could defeat any challenger from nearby villages, Chan Heung was ready to learn more. So he began training under another Southern Shaolin master, Lee Yau-San (李友山), said to be a student of Jee Sin himself and credited as the founder of the Lee family style Lee Gar (李家), one of the five major family styles of southern Chinese martial arts. After only four or five years of training, it once again became apparent that Chan Heung was ready to move on. So Chan Heung set out from Xinhui for the county of Bóluó (博羅), to find the monk Choy Fook (蔡褔) on Luofu Mountain. After several years of training under Choy Fook, Chan Heung returned to his home village of Ging Mui (京梅) village in the county of Xinhui.

The traditions of the Cheung Yim lineage

Cheung Yim (張炎) was an orphan who was cared for by his uncle. When Cheung Yim was twelve, his uncle had obligations that meant he would no longer be able to take care of Cheung Yim.

So he took Cheung Yim to his old friend Chan Heung in the hope that Chan would be able to take the boy in as a live-in student. However, village rules forbade Chan Heung from teaching martial arts to non-family members. Unable to take care of the boy by accepting him as a student, Chan Heung instead hired Cheung Yim to do odd jobs at his martial arts school. Cheung Yim took the opportunity to observe Chan Heung’s lessons and practiced in secret what he had gleaned. One night, Chan Heung came upon Cheung Yim practicing. Impressed by the boy’s motivation, Chan Heung taught him secretly for several years before the other villagers found out and expelled Cheung Yim.

So in 1831, at the age of 17, Cheung Yim left Ging Mui but not before Chan Heung gave him a letter of introduction and instructions to seek out the monk Chingchou (青草) at the Zhajian Temple on Mount Bapai in Guangxi Province. Absent the distractions of secular life, Cheung Yim was able to give himself over completely to the things that the monk Chingchou had to impart: his knowledge of Fut Gar (佛家) Kung Fu and traditional Chinese medicine, a commitment to the overthrow of the foreign Manchu Qing Dynasty, and a new name, Hung-Sing (鴻勝),^[2] which reflected that patriotic ideal.

Cheung, now Cheung Hung-Sing, returned to Chan Heung and shared with his first teacher the things he had learned from his second. Chan Heung hired Cheung once again, this time as a teacher rather than as a menial/clandestine student, enabling Cheung to stay for the year or two until he left to open his own school in Foshan in 1839. Because their new style synthesized the Choy Gar (蔡家) Kung Fu of Choy Fook, the Lee Gar (李家) Kung Fu of Lee Yau-San, and the Fut Gar (佛家) Kung Fu of the Chingchou monk, it became known as Choy Lee Fut.

The traditions of the Chan Family lineage

Yuen-Wu was a famed master from Shaolin Temple, and taught his nephew the Buddha Style Fist or Fut Gar Kuen.

After years of intensive study with the Buddhist recluse, Chan Heung revised what he had learned and formed a new system. He combined his knowledge of 3 martial arts systems and called it "Choy Lee Fut" in honour of his teachers.

Three styles that constitute Choy Lee Fut are as follows.

Chan Yuen-Wu and the Buddha Style Fist Chan Heung learned the Buddha Style Fist, or Fut Gar Kuen, from his uncle Chan Yuen-Wu. Yuen-Wu was a famed master of Shaolin Temple.

The Fut Gar Kuen style specializes in palm techniques. Both the left and right hand are used in attack and defence. Long and short-range footwork is employed.

At the age of 29, Chan returned to his native village, analyzing and synthesizing everything he had learned from his teachers. In 1836, he founded a new style of fighting, and named it after his two instructors Choy and Lee. He added the suffix Fut, which meant Buddha, to pay homage to the Shaolin temple and reflect his years of Buddhist study.

These were troublesome times in China, with the following decades seeing the first Opium War, the Taiping rebellion, and finally the Boxer rebellion. Choy Lee Fut, like other styles, was used by rebels in their struggle against the Manchus in the 1800's, and was driven underground by government interdiction.