Choy Li Fut

Choy Li Fut is a southern Chinese martial art founded in 1836 by Chan Heung, a well-known and highly skilled martial artist of his period. The name records its three teachers: Choy Fook, Li Yau San, and Fut (Buddha), Chan Yuen Wu. The system spread from King Mui village in Guangdong across southern China, and in the twentieth century it became one of the most widely transmitted southern systems in North America.[1]

History

Choy Li Fut was founded in 1836. Chan Heung first learned the Fut Gar (Buddha family) method from Chan Yuen Wu, then the Li Gar method of Li Yau San, and finally the Shaolin boxing of the monk Choy Fook on Mount Luofu. Rather than keep one lineage alone, he combined what he had received into a single system and named it after his three teachers.[1]

Because the art was adapted to fit the needs of society in each generation as it was handed down, its principles remained intact while its training methods evolved. Historically the system was associated with the self-defense needs of village communities in Guangdong during a turbulent century.

Lineage

The Golden Eagle schools in Alabama taught Choy Li Fut in the lineage of the Plum Blossom International Federation under Grandmaster Doc-Fai Wong, a sixth-generation successor of the system through the King Mui branch. Steffan de Graffenried, who founded Golden Eagle Martial Arts Centers in 1997, trained in this lineage and represented it in North Alabama.[2]

Lineage matters for one documentary reason: it fixes who taught what, to whom, and when. The archive records lineage as a chain of dated transmission, not as a badge.

Forms

The Choy Li Fut curriculum is organized in sets. Hand forms progress from short elementary sets to long advanced forms; weapon forms cover the classical arsenal; and two-person sets connect solo practice to application. The school’s historical materials advertised formal training in 36 different weapons, alongside the ten animal sets, Chin Na (joint locking), Chinese wrestling (Shuai Jiao), and San Shou.[3]

The heritage curriculum counts the whole corpus at 193 sets — 39 hand sets, 54 partner-drill sets, 64 weapon sets (14 of them staff work), 18 post sets (the so-called “18 wooden men”, 木人樁), 9 lion-dance sets, and 9 internal-exercise sets.[6] The two weapon figures count different things, and the archive keeps both rather than choosing: 36 is what the Golden Eagle school’s own 1998 materials advertised as its training syllabus, while 64 is the full weapon list the heritage register carries — a list that reaches past the bladed arsenal to the bench (長凳), the iron hoe (鐵鋤), the rake-tooth pa (九齒鈀), the fans, and the trident alike.[3][6] Technique counts divide the same way: 30 hand techniques, 28 palm, 29 bridge, 35 hammer-fist, 14 body, 16 leg, and 18 step methods.[6]

Sets are marked by five sung tones — yu, di, yi, xia and he (域 · 的 · 益 · 嚇 · 鶴) — so that a student who hears the first three sung knows at once that the class belongs to this school.[6]

Weapons

Choy Li Fut preserves one of the largest weapon curricula of any southern system. Long weapons — the pole, the kwandao, and the trident — are central. The archive maintains a dedicated historical study of one such weapon, the Nine Dragon Trident (Gau Lung Cha), at its original 1998 web address: Nine Dragon Trident.

Heritage status and the home village

The system entered China’s second national intangible cultural heritage list on 7 June 2008 as item Ⅵ-36, filed by Xinhui district, Jiangmen. In November 2019 the Xinhui Choy Li Fut Starter Association (新会蔡李佛始祖拳会) was named the national-level protection unit for the item, and on 31 October 2023 it passed the state evaluation of that unit.[6]

The founding village is Jingmei (京梅村, “King Mui”), at Yamen in Xinhui district. Four sites there carry the tradition as a public route: the founder’s dwelling (陳享故居), the Hung Sheng ancestral hall (洪聖始祖館), the lane named Chushenhua (出神入化巷), and the Choy Li Fut International Inheritance Centre (蔡李佛國際傳承中心), described by the district as the first of its kind in the world. The village markets the four together as a “kung fu town” (功夫小鎮); the route drew more than 250,000 visitors in 2024.[5]

Two recurring events carry the calendar. Since 2001 the Starter Association has run the Choy Li Fut Martial Arts Culture International Exchange Activity (蔡李佛武術文化國際交流活動); the 2026 edition, held on 18 April at the village square, brought about 500 people together, including more than 60 overseas students from Australia, the United States and Canada.[4] And on the tenth day of the seventh lunar month — the founder’s birthday, kept as the Xiangongdan (享公誕) rite — the village holds the anniversary observance; the 220th, on 22 August 2026, drew some 1,300 practitioners from more than 60 schools and associations at home and abroad.[5]

The scale of transmission is quoted by the organizers as: practitioners in more than 100 countries, a federation or association in more than 70 of them, and a following of over ten million students.[4][5] The archive records those as the heritage program’s own accounting. They are promotional figures issued by the district’s tourism and culture bureau and by the association, not a census, and they are not comparable with the federation’s own membership figures — which are also self-reported, and smaller.[2] The two releases also disagree on how many editions of the exchange activity have been held; the archive does not assert a count.[4][5]

Sources on this page

This page summarizes the archival record. For cited references, see the sources listed above; the historical narrative of the school that transmitted the art in Alabama is documented in About the Archive.

[1] Encyclopedic summaries of the system’s founding agree on the 1836 date, the founder, and the three-teacher derivation of the name.

[2] Plum Blossom International Federation, teaching organization records.

[3] Golden Eagle Martial Arts Centers, historical school materials, 1998–1999 (archived captures).

[4] Xinhui district Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television, Tourism and Sports, 20 April 2026 — the exchange activity of 18 April, the heritage listing, and the organizers’ spread figures.

[5] Jiangmen Overseas Chinese Media Center, 24 August 2026 — the 220th anniversary of 22 August, the Jingmei village sites, the Xiangongdan sequence, and the same spread figures.

[6] Baidu Baike, 蔡李佛拳 — the 193-set corpus by category, the weapon, partner-drill and post lists, the five-tone marking, and the protection-unit dates. The category totals and the item lists on that page do not always agree with each other; only the totals are used here.