Li Yau San

Li Yau San (李友山, 1763–1840) is the second name in Choy Li Fut. A native of Qibao in Sun Wui and a lay disciple of the Southern Shaolin monk Zhishan, he founded the Li family fist, trained Chan Heung for four years, and then sent his finished student to a better teacher. Courtesy sources give his hao as Sezhai (瑟齋).

A name, and a common error

The correct characters are 李友山 — the 友 of friendship. Early popular martial-arts books sometimes write 李有山, and that error still circulates; county gazetteer, heritage registers, and the lineage’s own documents all write 友. The archive follows the official record and notes the variant here once. His hao is given as Sezhai (瑟齋), written in one source as Shizhai (式齋).

The Zhishan line on Mount Luofu

Li Yau San’s own account begins on Mount Luofu. As a youth he traveled there with his father, who traded in the temple markets, and at Puming Temple (普明寺) he met Zhishan (至善禪師), a master of the Southern Shaolin line. He studied under Zhishan for years and received the Shaolin Hung Kuen (洪門拳, the Hung family boxing of the Shaolin stream).

That placement matters. Zhishan’s hall is the same hall to which tradition assigns Hung Hei-gun and Fong Sai-yuk — the circle popular memory calls the Ten Tigers of Shaolin. Li Yau San was not one of the Ten Tigers; he simply drew from the same well, a generation of the same line. What that means for Choy Li Fut is concrete: the “Li” in the system’s name descends from the Southern Shaolin Hung stream, not from an isolated village style.

Founding the Li family fist

Technically complete, Li returned home to Qibao and set up as a teacher. The Guangdong martial history records the result plainly: he opened a school, students gathered in numbers, and the Li family fist spread through Sun Wui, Jiangmen, Heshan, and Kaiping. His own students included Lin Shao-qian (林紹乾), who carried the Li Gar line in Sun Wui itself, and — in one of the two surviving accounts — the boy Cheung Yim, later Jeong Yim, before the Hung Sing branch began.

The healer

The sources treat Li Yau San as a martial artist and a trauma physician together. His school practiced dit da (跌打) — the bone-setting and herbal medicine of the Shaolin stream — and treated the injuries that training produced. In the medical chain of Choy Li Fut his position is exact: Chan Yuen Wu passed on palm method and principle, Li Yau San passed on the dit da trade, and Choy Fook, a physician first, gave the completed union of boxing and medicine. The Yong Sheng dispensary of the founder’s later years stands on that ground.

Teacher of Chan Heung

In 1823 Chan Yuen Wu brought his seventeen-year-old student to Li’s door with a letter of recommendation. Li was sixty that year. He accepted the boy and kept him four years, and the lineage credits those years with the footwork, body evasion, and bridging mobility that distinguish the system from its harder-angled Choy component.

The most telling fact recorded about him is what he did at the end: he directed his finished student to another teacher. Hearing of a recluse on Mount Luofu whose medical skill was that sure — a physician so accomplished, he reasoned, must have the gong fu to match — Li brought Chan Heung up the mountain to the monk Choy Fook. A master who completes a student and then names his own limits is rarer than a master with famous techniques, and the lineage is right to preserve the act.

The method

The Li family fist as the sources describe it:

• Hand: supple and variable — palm, bridge, and fist in rotation.
• Footwork: stable and solid, favoring sideways advance and retreat.
• Body: the four qualities of swallow, spit, float, and sink (吞、吐、浮、沉).
• Kicks: low kicks preferred; high kicks rarely released.
• Weapons: the staff above all — the Li family staff (李家棍) is the tradition’s signature.

A training verse preserved in the sources runs: 縮頭貼肩兩手硬，疾力撮為進步行，團胸虎背二字馬，吞肩縮脯即出肘. Named sets include the Three Star fist (三星拳), Three Shapes (三形拳), Five Shapes (五形拳), Eight Elbows (八肘拳), Thousand Character fist (千字拳), the Li family long fist, the double-headed staff, the Eight Immortals spear, single and double saber, and the great Guan knife, with paired drills of fist against fist, staff against staff, and double saber against spear.

Because the method grew from Zhishan’s Hung Kuen, sources sometimes call it “the Li family of Hung Kuen” (洪拳李家) — same spring, different channel from the Hung line of Hung Hei-gun.

Two Li family fists, one name

A caution the archive states plainly. The Li family fist inscribed on the national intangible cultural heritage register in 2008 (item Ⅵ-33) is the Huizhou line, founded by Li Yi (李義, 1746–1828), a native of Kaifeng who settled in Huizhou — a different master, a different system, no line to Choy Li Fut. The Xinhui Li family fist of Li Yau San is a separate regional tradition. The two share a name; they should not share a founder.

The survival

Li Yau San’s own line never reduced itself to a footnote in Choy Li Fut. Descendants of the Li clan still train at Qibao; the Jiangmen Li Family Fist Association organizes the tradition; inheritors of record include Li Jia-qu (李家驅), of the founder’s family, and Li Zhuo-sheng. In 2019 the Xinhui Li family fist entered the seventh batch of Jiangmen municipal intangible cultural heritage, and in 2022 the Li Wenda Middle School in Xinhui was named a provincial heritage-transmission school for the art. At the Jingmei ancestral school, Li Yau San stands second among the four stone figures, in the order of teaching.

The system’s second character

When Chan Heung synthesized his three inheritances in 1836, the name he chose — Choy Li Fut — placed Li Yau San’s contribution permanently in the middle of the art’s identity. The Li component contributed the mobility and the Shaolin Hung stream behind it; the Choy component contributed the power and the medicine; the Fut element contributed the frame of Buddhist discipline that Chan Yuen Wu opened and Choy Fook completed.

Cautions

• The variant spelling 李有山 appears in older popular books; the official record is 李友山.
• The nationally listed Li family fist (Ⅵ-33) belongs to the Huizhou line of Li Yi and must not be conflated with the Xinhui line of Li Yau San.
• Li Yau San is sometimes loosely placed among the “Ten Tigers of Shaolin”; he was not one of them. The accurate statement is that he studied under Zhishan, the teacher associated with that circle.
• Jeong Yim’s early training has two accounts: one places him with Li Yau San before Chan Heung, the other makes him Chan Heung’s student from the first. This archive follows the Hung Sing branch’s own account and marks the disagreement rather than resolving it.

The record continues

The founding synthesis is documented on the Chan Heung and Choy Li Fut pages; the other teachers are recorded at Choy Fook and Chan Yuen Wu, and the student passed on by one account at Jeong Yim.

References

[1] Chan Heung, preface to Choy Li Fut Ji Ji Xue (蔡李佛技擊學) — the founder’s own account of his teachers and their order. Primary lineage source.

[2] Choy Li Fut Founder’s School official transmission records, Jingmei village, Xinhui. Primary lineage source.

[3] Li clan genealogy of Qibao, Sun Wui (新會七堡李氏族譜) — family record of the founder of the Li family fist. Held at the Sun Wui Library and the Qibao Li ancestral hall. Primary source.

[4] Xinhui County Gazetteer, new edition, biographies section (call mark D/K29/D4, Sun Wui Library) — Li Yau San entry. Historical source.

[5] A Martial History of Guangdong (廣東武術史), Guangdong People’s Publishing — Li Yau San entry and the record of his school and its spread. Historical source.

[6] Guangdong Provincial Gazetteer: Sports (廣東省志·體育志) — provenance of the Li family fist. Historical source.

[7] Shaolin Hung Kuen (少林洪拳) — the Zhishan-to-Li Yau San transmission. Historical source.

[8] Martial Spring and Autumn of the Guangdong Coast (粵海武林春秋), 1982 — early provincial martial history. Historical source.

[9] State Council of the PRC, second batch of the national intangible cultural heritage register, June 2008, item Ⅵ-33 — the Huizhou Li family fist of Li Yi; cited here to mark the distinction from the Xinhui line. Secondary source.

[10] Jiangmen Municipality, seventh batch of municipal intangible cultural heritage, 2019 — the Xinhui Li family fist (Li Yau San line). Secondary source.

[11] Guangdong Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center — Li family fist project records. Secondary source.

[12] Jiangmen Municipal Archives, historical figures records. Secondary source.

[13] Guangdong Provincial Department of Education, third batch of provincial heritage-transmission schools, 2022 — Li Wenda Middle School, Xinhui (Xinhui Li family fist). Secondary source.

[14] Dictionary of Chinese Martial Arts (中國武術大辭典), People’s Sports Publishing — Li family fist entry. Secondary source.