Choy Li Fut
Chinese martial art
Choy Li Fut is a Chinese martial art and wushu style, founded in 1836 by Chan Heung. It was named to honor Chan Heung's uncle and the three masters of each family: Choy Gar, Li Gar and Fut Gar, plus his uncle Chan Yuen-wu, who taught him Hung Kuen, and developed to honor the virtue teachings and philosophy of Buddha and the Shaolin roots of the system.
The system combines the martial arts techniques from various Northern and Southern Chinese kung-fu systems; the powerful arm and hand techniques from the Shaolin animal forms from the South, combined with the extended, circular movements, twisting body, and agile footwork that characterizes Northern China's martial arts. It is considered an external style, combining soft and hard techniques, as well as incorporating a wide range of weapons as part of its curriculum. It contains a wide variety of techniques, including long and short range punches, kicks, sweeps and take downs, pressure point attacks, joint locks, and grappling. According to Bruce Lee:
Choy Li Fut is the most effective system that I've seen for fighting more than one person. [It] is one of the most difficult styles to attack and defend against. Choy Li Fut is the only style [of kung fu] that traveled to Thailand to fight the Thai boxers and hadn't lost.
Founding
Chan was born on August 23, 1806, in King Mui, a village in the San Woi district of Jiangmen, Guangdong province.
Chan's uncle Chan Yuen-wu, a boxer from the Qingyun temple near Dinghu Mountain who had trained under Du Zhang Monk (獨杖禪師), who began teaching him the Fut Gar style of Chinese martial arts when he was seven.
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This entry incorporates text from “Choy Li Fut” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.