Читать книгу From Lee to Li: An A–Z guide of martial arts heroes - Ben Stevens - Страница 16

The founder of the kung-fu system named Choy Lee Fut, Chan Heung was born in 1806. From an early age he was an avid student of kung-fu (first taught by his uncle, a Shaolin fighting monk), then in his early twenties he sought to expand his knowledge by seeking out a hermit named Choy Fook. (Choy, a former monk and martial arts’ legend in his own lifetime, lived on a nearby mountain. He apparently had a number of ugly scars on his head, which had resulted in his unfortunate nickname ‘Rotten Head Fook’.)

After some months of searching, Chan Heung eventually succeeded in finding Choy Fook, who seems not to have been particularly fond of company. Chan then trained under Choy for around a decade, eventually pioneering his own system which he named after Choy Fook and another teacher who’d instructed him, Lee Yau-Shan. (The Fut in the title, incidentally, is Cantonese for ‘Buddha’—something which Chan Heung believed imparted a ‘spiritual’ element to the system he’d evolved.)

Having fought against the British in China’s Opium Wars, Chan Heung later went to San Francisco, where he opened his own kwoon(martial arts’ training hall). He died in 1875.