About Choy Li Fut

Choy Li Fut is a popular southern style of China, employing both the low stances of the south, and the high kicking techniques of the north.

In 1836 Chan Heung founded Choy Li Fut in the village of King Mui, near Canton. Born in 1806, Heung began his martial arts training at age seven after going to live with his uncle, Yuen Woo, a famous boxer from Shaolin. By the time he had reached his teenage years, Heung had become a formidable fighter and could defeat any local challenger. At age 17, due to his advanced abilities, Heung began studying with his uncle’s senior classmate from Shaolin, Li Yau-San.

Chan Heung spent four years studying with Li before it became apparent to Li that Heung was in need of more advanced training. Li believed the best person to instruct Heung was Choy Fok, a Shaolin monk who lived as a recluse on Lau Fa Mountain. Heung set out to find Choy Fok. Upon his location, Heung handed the monk a letter of recommendation from Li Yau-San. After waiting patiently to be accepted as Choy Fok’s disciple, Chan Heung was stunned when Choy Fok turned him down. It seemed that the monk was intent on being left alone to cultivate Buddhism, and no longer wished to teach martial arts. Finally, after much begging from Chan Heung, Choy Fok agreed to take the young man as a student, but only to study Buddhism. So, Chan Heung studied Buddhism for many hours a day, and practiced his martial arts well into the night

Early one morning Chan Heung was practicing his kung-fu, leg sweeping heavy bamboo trees, and kicking up stones into the air, then smashing them before they hit the ground. Suddenly, the monk appeared and asked him if that was the best that he could do. Chan Heung was shocked when Choy Fok pointed to a large rock weighing about eighty pounds, and told him to kick it twelve feet. Bracing himself, the student exerted all of his strength as his foot crashed against the rock, sending it barely twelve feet away. Instead of giving the expected compliment, Choy Fok placed his foot under the heavy rock and effortlessly propelled it through the air. Chan Heung was awestruck by this demonstration of superpower. Again he begged Choy Fok to accept him as a martial arts disciple. This time the monk agreed, and for eight years Choy Fok taught Chan Heung both the way of Buddhism, and the way of kung fu.

When he was twenty-nine, Chan Heung left the monk and went back to his village where he spent the next two years revising and refining all that he had learned from Choy Fok. Chan Heung had now developed a new system of kung fu.

In 1836 he formally established the Choy Li Fut system, naming it in honor of his two principal teachers, Choy Fok and Li Yau-San, and using the word “Fut” which means Buddha in Chinese, to pay homage to his uncle, Yuen Woo, and to the Shaolin roots of the new system. Today, though still relatively rare outside of China, Choy Li Fut is one of the most popular and widely practiced styles of kung fu in Mainland China.

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