San Soo » History
A Comedy of Errors
There are many martial arts historians exceedingly well versed in martial history, both professional and amateur. Some understand these disciplines better than others, and many far better than us. But most of the sources surrounding Kung Fu San Soo are very confusing and poorly documented. By that we mean that explanations are often poor on nonexistent, and cross referenced documentation is usually supported only by hearsay, and more often just missing completely. Sometimes arguments are simply reasoned by tautology.
This makes it very difficult to support many, if not most, of the common assertions made about Kung Fu San Soo. For example, you'll find several references to the art being created in a monastery in Hoy Song, Canton, China. But if an individual familiar with even the most fundamental conventions of research and source referencing tries to Google typical Romanized spellings, the only place that a Hoy Song turns up is on Kung Fu San Soo web sites. The confusion possibly stems from the fact that the city Taishan (Cantonese, Toisan Mandarin), a city important to Kung Fu San Soo historians, is locally known as Hoisan, but is still some distance from Canton. So we end up with Hoy Song, and without the explanation, one is prevented from researching past that point with respect to the story. Furthermore, those familiar with the area, or immigrants actually from that region, shake their heads with an incredulous amusement when they read about the art.
More common claims refer to a place called Pon Hong, but again it shows up nowhere except on Kung Fu San Soo websites. Not as pon hong, pon hon, pan hon, pon han, pong hong, pong hon, pon hung, ponhong, ponhon, or ponhan. Try it yourself.
Or go to the English version of the Local Map of Kaiping, Guangdong, China, (Sanbu Town, where we are all fairly positive the art comes from), zoom down as far as the map will go, scroll all around the region, and see if you can find a place named Pon Hong. We don't doubt that a historic place exists closely associated with the art, or even the accounts. We've even been assured that a village is there, with nearby temples, by several trusted persons who have actually visited it. But that's only good for someone who knows someone that's been there. For everyone else, it's just a sore point of confusion. So what would be easy to doubt, and quite logically, even for those of us who would love nothing more than to prove them true, are some of the references, and therefore the interpretations. And while it's highly probable that the family of Chan Siu Dek may have trained at a temple in or near this small village, and that he may possibly well have learned a highly stylized family version, we are willing to state categorically that it's highly improbable that the broader historic art he brought to America originated in this small temple.
And this sort of documentation error is prevalent throughout the San Soo community, so it's reasonable to offer pardon to those that find this all confusing, even to those that express doubt about the art. If no one has bothered to even find the common English spellings for real places in China so people can look them up on a map, or offer alternate names, or at least cite the nearest known official mapped landmark with an explanation about how the village name has changed or that it's locally known in a different dialect, how is the prospective student or outside researcher trying to place Kung Fu San Soo into the greater history of Chinese arts expected to view all the other claims, many of them crying out for legitimate clarification and support?
If Pon Hong is in fact a village, but one too small to be listed on popular maps, one can see why detractors of the art have suggested it's not a logical place for a monastery of much significance. Even though we hold the account as true, this kind of oversight may serve to enhance the mystery of it all, but does little for the respect.
Oversights made 40 years ago are understandable. A closed Communist China mired in the Cultural Revolution might just as well have been on the dark side of the moon. But it's very different today. Several Kung Fu San Soo practitioners have visited the birthplace of the art, Chan Siu Dek's mother (now deceased) and currently living cousin (as of 2003), son of Chan Siu Dek's own trainer, Chan Siu Hung, have been interviewed, the very training hall he studied in has been inspected, English maps are available for anyone on the Internet, and there are myriad references written about the Chinese martial arts by both Western and Chinese born practitioners, even by qualified historians and archeologists, many with impeccable credentials. When an intelligent person unfamiliar to Kung Fu San Soo stumbles across the existing morass of errors and contradiction, it tends to cast something of a pall over the entire family of the art.
So while there are several groups and individuals that clearly know a great deal about the history of the art, in our opinion, there really is no up to date "Concise History of Kung Fu San Soo" anywhere. Some may have come really close, but as fast as someone offered answers, more questions seemed to emerge. So we opted to attempt our own research, as much to ignite, quantify, and organize basic questions, as to offer solutions. And admittedly, because even well educated Chinese historians have trouble with this subject, we expected our own efforts are likely to be somewhat pedestrian. And they were.
However, we began our efforts before the latest wave of researchers had emerged on the scene. So, to his credit, since we began this project, David Lorenson has possibly become the most knowledgeable person on the background of the art. He's taken the historic research a full step further, and in our opinion, if he ever chooses to commit his efforts to booklength documentation, we may finally have a fairly complete and realistic history and lineage.
Still, because we are dedicated to the art and concerned with its image as we move into the 21st Century and a much more open China, we tried to lay a groundwork foundation. And we share our conclusions with you here, using both local web site links, external links to public documentation, and some of the published source references we used, to show you how we arrived at them.
Some Things We Know, Some Things We Don’t
Chinese martial history and lineages are extremely challenging to research, especially to Westerners, and very controversial. Complicating things a great deal, there's considerable disagreement even among trained modern researchers, and what appears to be a great deal of unrealistic legend even among Chinese historians of the past.
Moreover, most Kung Fu San Soo practitioners tend to be disinterested in the history or lineage of the art. As practiced, Kung Fu San Soo is largely an Americanized art, which is now part of its own history, and Americans are a culture of mongrels, if you will pardon the expression. Most of us don’t even know or care about the history of our own immediate families, much less the very obscure and difficult history of a martial art.
It’s very different among the Chinese who produced Kung Fu San Soo, a culture where face, obligational social relationships, or Guanxi, and respect for family to the point of ancestor worship, are critically important to the very identity of the individual. The concept of family is so much a part of the historic integrity associated with martial arts that most of them are described by the word Jia (Mandarin), or Ga (Cantonese), a word which actually means family in this context, and pretty much defines the character of a Chinese martial system.
In the broader sense, there is Nei Jia, or family of internal styles, and Wai Jia, or family of external styles. On the middle scale, we find Chan Jia Cai Li Fo (Mandarin), which means Chan Family Choy Li Fut and follows at least one documentable branch of the historic lineage of Kung Fu San Soo. We also have Chan Jia Wushu, which means Chan Family Martial Art, and perhaps more closely describes the family style of Kung Fu San Soo. And on the finer scale, we have Cai Jia (Tsoi Ga), Li Jia (Li Ga), Ho Jia (Haw Ga), Fo Jia (Fut Ga), and Xiong Jia (Hung Ga), or the Five Families of Kung Fu San Soo. We know these as Choy Li Ho Fut Hung in Cantonese, or Cailehefoxiong in Mandarin. And every teacher in the art, every school, is like a family, connected from generation to generation with almost a bloodline thread.
But the debasement and bastardization of Kung Fu San Soo is not a particularly tasteful trend for at least some of those who hold the art dear. At least in our opinion, it tends to produce morally weaker practitioners with less honor and less respect for both the art itself, and others around them, just as it does in real families. When illegitimate is prevalent, when parents stray and show little respect for their heritage or their offspring, children tend to become progressively undisciplined and ill behaved, and the thread that holds their line together can break. If it's bad enough, their entire culture can collapse around them. That's why most cultures tend to honor family, and Asian martial arts their lineage.
But even among those that do have an interest in the history and lineage of Kung Fu San Soo, there have often been deeply bitter and agonizing disputes. So while we can’t claim to have all the answers, we do know a number of things about Kung Fu San Soo for sure.
We know it was brought to America from Sanba Town, of Taishan City, in the Pearl River Delta Region of Guangdong Province, China, somewhere in the 1930's by the late Chan Siu Dek (Cantonese; Chen Shou Jue in Mandarin, Zhen She De in Pinyin, Chin Siu Dek in Hoisanese), otherwise known as Jimmy H. Woo. It's popularly called Kung Fu San Soo, though most practitioners can't tell you what that means or why it was named that. But defining the art, or even its lineage, has proven a great deal easier than understanding its historic background.
But while we know some things for sure, there’s a whole lot that we don’t know. Attempting to unravel the mystery of exactly where Kung Fu San Soo came from has stirred controversy not only from the greater world of martial arts observers attempting to explain it, but among the inner world of Kung Fu San Soo itself. In reality, while many long time students and martial historians have probably come close, it appears that none of us knows with 100% certainty. Still, if we allow ourselves to accept that within the romantic legends surrounding the greater Chinese martial arts there may be a great deal of truth, it pretty much looks like it evolved along the following lines.
Background
Popular history holds that the practice of martial arts goes back in China to at least the Zhou Dynasty, which ruled from the 11th to the 5th centuries BC. This was the period where Confucian and Taoist thought developed. It was the age of Lao-Tse, the “father of Taosim,” and author of the Tao Te Ching, and the time when Sun Tzu wrote the infamous Art of War. And it was a period where the development of painting, poetry, and mathematics flourished.
But given the nature of human conflict, the evolution of Chinese martial arts probably extends back to the beginning of Chinese history, to the period of the Xia Dynasty, nearly 4000 years ago. Shuai Jiao, the art of Chinese wrestling, and an art integrally incorporated into Kung Fu San Soo, dates back to the Mongolians even before the Xia period.
During the period of the Northern Dynasties, 386-581 AD, Buddhism entered the martial arts with the legend of the monk, Bodhidharma, a person that popular romantic folklore holds to be the "founder of Kung Fu". Coming from India, where Alexander the Great is thought to have possibly brought the art of Pankration, in turn possibly linking back to older Egyptian martial practices, the disciplines of Indian Buddhist health and martial teachings may have blended with the older Chinese martial heritage.
Somewhere between the Tang Dynasty beginning in 618 AD, and the Ming Dynasty which ended in 1644, the martial arts were institutionalized beyond the level of state warfare into the Shaolin Temple System (Mandarin, Sil Lum in Cantonese), which might be loosely described as a blend between the older Taoist and Confucian ideologies, Buddhism, retirement for military officers, and a method of fitness and protection for the monks. The temple system, and therefore the institutionalized martial arts, enjoyed the support and patronage of five historic families.
To put this into perspective, the Tang Dynasty ruled during a time when Europe was mired in the Dark Ages and the Chinese were inventing gun power and refining public examinations for civil servants for the second time in their history. Between the Tang Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese invented moveable type and paper money. We know what Gutenberg accomplished, and perhaps the Internet that makes possible what you’re reading right here is an extension of that achievement. But few of us in the West care to remember Marco Polo or the great Silk Road, and in our ethnocentrism, what we might owe to the Chinese. To those that practice the fighting art of Kung Fu San Soo, this should be a particularly poignant moment of revelation.
The Temple System Produces A “Secret Art”
The Shaolin Temple System began with the northern temple in Henan. Until the fall of the Ming Dynasty, the system flourished with the support and patronage of the five families. Simplified, legend holds that retiring state martial officers entered the system, and the disciplines of the Buddhists blended with Taoist and Confucian cultural practices, and the fighting arts of warriors. Struggling to keep our minds open here, it's important to note that while the Shaolin traditions are critically important to our research, many historians are beginning to express considerable doubt about the impact that the system actually had on the Chinese martial arts.
Still, to the degree that the legends hold truth, we can expect that many of the older Taoist and Confucian thoughts and practices were probably retained, merging into a greater system. The result was the Shaolin System where a significant number of Chinese martial arts trace their origins. And while there appear to have been separate Confucian, Taoist, Buddhist, and even Muslim institutions, all sometimes associated with the Chinese martial arts, what we are concerned with here are the Taoist (Wudang) and Shaolin, and mostly the Shaolin.
In about 1644 AD the Ming Dynasty fell to the Qing Dynasty, or the Manchurians. It’s a period characterized by Chinese historians as a time of rebellions, opium wars, and the final decline of the monarchy. Historians hold that the martial artists from the temple system opposed the Manchu, and sided with the Ming. As the political opposition against the northern Manchu grew, the influence of the Shaolin martial arts moved to the southern temples, principally the Shaolin Lin Quan Yuan Temple in Fujian, constructed in about 1399 A.D.
Underground movements emerged in opposition to the Manchurian Qing, along with secret societies. One of the most notable was the Hung Fa Wui, or Red Flower Society, closely associated with the legendary fighter, Fong Sai-Yuk and subject of the 1993 film, "The Legend", starring Jet Li. Another group was the Tian Di Hui, or Heaven and Earth Society, concerned with the three part relationship between man, heaven, and earth, or Triad.
Many southern martial arts, including Wing Chun, popularized by Yip Man and Bruce Lee, Hung Gar, and the Hung Sing branch of Choy Li Fut (Cantonese), or Cai Li Fo (Mandarin), trace their roots through legends about these secret groups. The Chinese calligraphic characters Chan Siu Dek used to signify the Choy, Li, and Fut, in Choy Li Ho Fut Hung, are the same used by the Choy Li Fut community. A critical part of his own training can be traced through the Hung Sing, or Hero's Victory Choy Li Fut lineage, supported both by reasonably trusted family testimony and historic Choy Li Fut documentation that extends well beyond the American Kung Fu San Soo community.
The Qing Dynasty imposed severe restrictions on the fraternal societies like the Hung Fa Wui and the Tian Di Hui. By 1646, membership was made punishable by 100 lashes. By 1661, membership was punishable by death. This engendered considerable resentment among the societies. Resistance moved underground, and sedition began to surface.
The hand salute used by most southern Chinese martial arts, including Kung Fu San Soo, the open left hand covering the right fist, emerged during this period and signified a loyalty to the Ming and opposition to the Qing. You can see it at your left, a silhouette of the actual hands of Chan Siu Dek, given exactly as it has been for at least 350 years.
A disrespectful salute could invite a potentially mortal confrontation, or political arrest and execution by government officials. Punishment was swift and harsh, often just a beheading on the spot with a Dáo, or Chinese Broad Sword. Even today it should be still used with extreme care when entering and greeting the master of a Chinese traditional school. In other words, it might not be the best idea to wander into a back alley Chinese martial school in Hong Kong, one closely associated with modern day Triads, and throw up a salute unless you fully understand what you're doing.
Just about everyone that begins training in Kung Fu San Soo intuitively realizes there's something fundamentally special about the art. And right about here we may possibly begin to approach core origins of the art itself, or at least a time of intense refinement. So Kung Fu San Soo practitioners should find the following passage extremely interesting. From an in depth article by Benny Meng and Richard Loewenhagen, we learn that:
“The martial experts of the Hung Fa Wui pooled their knowledge to create a combat system that would be quick to learn and effective against all styles via the mapping of spatial, temporal, and energetic characteristics of the battlefield to human physiological structure. The highly scientific paradigm shift of this fighting system occurred in the Southern Shaolin Temple through the combined efforts of Shaolin monks and the Hung Fa Wui secret society…”
“The fighting effectiveness and revolutionary activities of the Southern Shaolin systems astounded the Qing Emperor at that time. In response, the Qing ordered the destruction of the Southern Shaolin Temple through the use of overwhelming odds.”
Most researchers hold that the Hung Fa Wui operated out of the southern Lin Quan Yuan Shaolin Temple at Fujian. And in research, we also stumbled on a few rare references to a very old, fierce clan style of wushu called TaiZu San Soo Pugilism, or First Emperor Kung Fu, which originated from Zhao Kuang Yin, who was the first emperor of the Song Dynasty in 960 A.D. In description, it sounds very much like primitive Kung Fu San Soo, although it's popularly known as TaiZu Bei Quan, and is a long northern style. And while it's probably not correct to place Kung Fu San Soo among the strictly Bei Quan northern arts and it's lineage is definitely Nánquán or southern, to anyone who remembered Chan Siu Dek in action, or has seen the demonstration videos transferred from 8mm film, or recalls the Al Rubin or Frank Woolsey lineages, early Kung Fu San Soo didn't really look much like Nánquán Wing Chun either.
So in attempting to trace the lineage we find a Song Dynasty reference to Zhao Kuang Yin, an early Qing Dynasty reference to Lin Quan Yuan — where some historians hold that rapid scientific changes occurred by Ming sympathizers in the Hung Sing lineage through the Hung Fa Wui secret society, a lineage through which we can reasonably trace Kung Fu San Soo historic personages — and finally, we have Chan Siu Dek, in a very thick Hoisanese accent, making source references to Kwan Yin. And all of these share some historic aspect that by definition sounds very much like Kung Fu San Soo. At the very least, we find these things quite interesting.
The Burning of the Temples
In 1728 the Qing government banned the popular practice of martial arts, especially the Southern Shaolin, forcing the arts to retreat into the safety of the Shaolin temples. In 1736, the"overwhelming odds" described in the article excerpt above, resulted in the Manchu Qing Dynasty burning the temples to the ground and dispersing the occupants, most of them to the countryside and small temples in the south.
Legends abound about this time period and the martial arts, but one of the most popular holds that only five members survived from the Southern Temple in Fujian, one from each of the five families patronizing the temple system, each one representing one of five major fighting specializations. And while the larger temples were destroyed, it’s very likely that smaller temples survived, perhaps sometimes nothing more than shrines in community buildings. Many reasonable historic sources suggest that elements of this martial diaspora even reached other parts of Southeast Asia, including Malaysia influencing Pencak Silat, Okinawa influencing Karate which was originally written "Chinese Hand" or "Empty Hand", and the Phillippines influencing Escrima.
The resulting discord and conflicts continued throughout the Qing Dynasty, and one of the most notable was the civil war in South China during the mid nineteenth century. Known as the Taiping Rebellion, it extended from 1850-1864, and it is claimed more than 25 million people perished. Civil disturbance was even further inflamed by the Punti-Hakka Clan Wars, which without a doubt, directly effected Chan Siu Dek's immediate ancestors.
It was in this environment and time period that the ancestor of Chan Siu Dek, Leoung Kick, is held by oral tradition to have left one of these small temples in or near a village called Pong Hong on the Pearl River, with two wushu training books critical to the history of Kung Fu San Soo, as Chan Siu Dek often referred to them when he taught. Most Kung Fu San Soo practitioners hold that Chan Siu Dek explained that this particular temple was either identified by, or dedicated to, the goddess Kwan Yin.
Yet the Romanization is very close to the infamous Southern Temple in Fujian where the Ming fighting arts were refined, which very probably included early Kung Fu San Soo, the one burned by the Qing Dynasty, Lin Quan Yuan. Either way, it is almost certain that the techniques employed in Choy Li Ho Fut Hung did not originate in isolation in the obscure village Pong Hong, but descended there as a practicing lineage from the radical changes that formed the greater Wai Jia Nánquán arts through Fujian.
So even if Chan Siu Dek was in fact referring to the popular deity, Kwan Yin, there's still a reasonable possibility, at least from the point of view of a researcher, that there might have been a Kuang Yin > Quan Yuan lineage that had to be disguised as Kwan Yin during the extreme Qing oppression toward the lives of those who made any reference to the Ming era, and the great amount of documentable secrecy practitioners employed. It clearly would have been significantly safer to take refuge in small temples behind Kwan Yin, the "goddess of mercy", than by openly identifying with the rebels associated with the larger temple of Lin Quan Yuan. While this may or may not be true, it really does make a lot more sense. When we think about it, there's nothing really merciful about crushing a man's larynx or rupturing his spleen, which are basic white belt techniques in Kung Fu San Soo.
In other words, the books attributed to the ancestors of Chan Siu Dek may have come from a surviving temple somewhere near present day Taishan in South China, but the techniques probably originated earlier in the Fujian Shaolin Temple, Lin Quan Yuan, where the fierce, earlier martial practices like TaiZu San Soo Kuang Yin Wusu may have been refined to oppose the Qing Dynasty.
And of course we don't claim to know any of these things for sure, but rather seek to find a more reasonable and complete understanding than anyone else has been able to provide us with to date. A better researcher may emerge tomorrow, or one may come forward with past information, that could inspire us to quickly change our view.
We've seen wild assertions regarding the age of the Kung Fu San Soo training books attributed to Leoung Kick, some suggesting they might be 700 years old. But that would make them 150 years older than the Guttenberg Bible, and as the oldest known Chinese martial training manual is Qi Ji Guang's New Book of Effective Military Techniques, a woodblock first penned in 1584, it's highly unlikely. Most sources hold that the books Chan Siu Dek inherited date to the end of the Ming Dynasty, which would make them no less than 360 years old. But the only known Ming era Shaolin empty hand training manual, Fist Classic; Fist Method, was first penned by the monk Xuan Ji, and barely dates back to the early 1600's.
Whatever their age, they are also not alone as examples of older martial arts texts from China, although any dating back to even the 18th Century are considered quite old. You can find one specific example here, and a deeper analysis of the trend here. In addition, many sources suggest significant numbers of older texts have emerged during the past few years. With respect to the older pieces, those where authorship might possibly date back to the 15th and 16th Centuries, most were hand copied and it's difficult to say if any originals are still in existence.
To our knowledge, the truth about the books Chan Siu Dek used, is that their actual age is unknown. But they are Western bound and some sources hold that Western binding has not been used for more than a few hundred years in China. Still, book printing and binding is very old in China, and as no one seems to know whether they were rebound from scrolls or early sewn binding, which could make them potentially much, much older. Although unlikely, it is always possible that they actually are treatise created either in the late Ming period, or during the early Qing period in the Lin Quan Yuan temple in Fujian, which would likely make them unique, and almost priceless to martial art historians.
It’s also difficult to say where these books are today. What’s not difficult to conclude is that they are a treasure logically valued considerably more in moral and spiritual significance, than just in their secular net worth, at least to the thousands of black belts and hundreds of masters who have dedicated millions of hours to Kung Fu San Soo. Most practitioners have given up on ever establishing fact with respect to these books.
The Family Art of Chan Siu Dek Emerges
In the late Qing period, about 1839, a famous fighter named Chan Heung learned several aspects of these secretive arts from three teachers, Chan Yuen Woo, Li Yau San, and Choi Fuk. What he spawned was the hugely successful art we’ve already discussed, the art popularly known as Choy Li Fut, or Cai Li Fo. Through the documentation of this history, and through the Hung Sing Hero’s Victory Lineage, we can trace Chan Siu Dek’s teacher and great uncle, Chan Siu Hung (Cantonese, Chen Shiu Xiong in Mandarin). As we've noted, most southern martial practitioners belonged to secret fraternal societies to protect their interests.
Because of the rebellions involving the martial arts practitioners from secret society lineages, and the resulting concern over government repression, individuals took many names and even lived in many places during this period. Millions were dying, and the martially skilled were specifically targeted. Various legends have martial practitioners in and out of the country, in Southeast Asia influencing the Indonesian martial arts, Korean Martial Arts, and Okinawan Martial Arts. The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association claims Chan Heung was even in San Francisco fighting an American man named Gillis to stop his xenophobic aggression against Chinese immigrants.
Some archaeologists and historians now argue that the Southern Shaolin has "always and forever" been related to Hung Men — or the Hung Fa Wui — as legends of the early Triads, when they represented a fraternity of martial fighters dedicated to the overthrow of the Qing and the return of the Ming, long before being driven by western influences into less than honorable endeavors.
From the testimony of Chan Siu Dek’s cousin in China, Chan Sai Mo (Cantonese, Chin Shi Wu in Mandarin), we learn that Chan Heung and the individual known through the official International Kung Fu San Soo Association lineage as Chan Moon Don, were the same person using different names. Chan Sai Mo is the last living person who studied with Chan Siu Dek in China, and the son of Chan Siu Dek’s teacher, Chan Siu Hung. From the highly respected Choy Li Fut practitioner, Paul Chan, who shares the same Hero’s Victory lineage as Chan Siu Dek’s teacher and great uncle, Chan Siu Hung, we find reinforcement to the testimony left behind by Chan Siu Dek about his family claims. Born in China and fluent in Chinese, Paul Chan's own research holds that Chan Siu Hung was the adopted son of Chan Heung. So for the present, our best guess is that Chan Siu Hung was the brother of either Chan Siu Dek's paternal grandfather, and that Chan Heung was his great grandfather, just as he always said, although by adoption or intermarriage. But this is what we'd like to believe, and admittedly, there are some problems with this conclusion.
It's also important to note that during this period the social position of martial artists began to change. Prior to this time, higher classes of people urged their children to avoid martial careers as dangerous, undesirable, even as debased practices. Seeking legitimacy in greater Chinese society, martial practitioners began to attempt associating their skills with the artisan class, rather than the military, rebellious groups, or bodyguards and policing. Secular martial schools, having broken from the temples, began calling their skills martial 'arts', and their establishments 'studios', a tradition that continues to this day. This was also a period when Western influences began to discover the Chinese martial practices.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the British were engaged in the Opium Wars. They called the rebellious Chinese martial fighters, “boxers.” These boxers largely consisted of Nánquán Wushu practitioners, and called themselves the Yi Ho Quan, or “The Fist of Righteous Harmony”. These fierce, fighters, most of them peasants, finally attempted to repel Western influences, especially the sales of opium by Westerners into Chinese society.
This culminated in the Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the twentieth century, which was severely repressed by both the Chinese government and outside efforts, including the British and American Governments, and finally pushed the martial practitioners into an underground that completely distrusted all outsiders, especially Westerners. Modern history tends to depict the Boxer Rebellion as a misguided and viscous attack on innocent foreigners, which in some respects it probably was. But significant documentation also suggests that it was a reaction to the years of oppression by ruthless and corrupt Western influences, influences that also included both Great Britain and the United States. These Western influences relentlessly sold opium into the Chinese population trying to recover and repatriate the trade imbalance incurred by the tea trade. While the Boxer Rebellion failed, it did signal the end of the Qing Dynasty.
In the early 20th Century Dr. Sun Yat-Sen was busy touring the world trying to raise money for the for the Republican Nationalist attempt to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. In 1904, and again in 1910, he visited the Chinese in Los Angeles. In 1911 he was finally successful and the Chinese monarchy collapsed. From the Online Resource, Wikipedia, we learn that:
"Following the overthrowing of the Qing Dynasty of China in 1911, the Hung clan suddenly found themselves lost without purpose."
This is probably a reference to hung as a word meaning red, to the fraternal social clan of the Hung Fa Wui, and the Hong Men of the Tian Di Hui, the rebel societies that were instrumental in refining the great Nánquán arts. And this is the probable background of the the Hung Sing lineage of Kung Fu San Soo, although in strictly speaking, the phonetic Hung in the phrase Hong Men and that in Hung Sing are represented by two different calligraphic characters; one meaning red, and one meaning victorious or strong.
When Chan Siu Dek's cousin, Chan Sai Mo, was queried by Kung Fu San Soo visitors, he said his father, Chan Siu Hung, was a member of the legendary "10 Tigers of Canton", but one generation after Wong Fei Hung. Wong Fei Hung is considered the father of Hung Gar (Xiong Jia), and the subject of the 1991 Jet Li Film, "Wong Fei Hung". Chan Sai Mo also said his father was one of the personal bodyguards of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, known as the "father" of modern day China. Chan Siu Dek was born into this time period, into one of these great fighting families, right at the epicenter, and not without controversy.
A Secret Art
During that entire period, until the mid twentieth century, the core fighting methods of the Chinese martial arts were exclusively taught, usually only to family members, or members of the trusted fraternal societies. This is particularly true of the southern arts and those closely associated with the secret fraternal Hung lineage. It was a secret art. It’s not too difficult to understand why. It was severely repressed for centuries by the Chinese government, and now by distrusted British and foreign influences.
By the turn of the 20th Century, Chinese Boxers may have had enough of all outsiders. Even in British Hong Kong, the core fighting arts, at least those fighting and training methods embraced today by Kung Fu San Soo, were mostly withheld from westerners. Even today, the core and family practitioners of nearly every Chinese martial art, including Kung Fu San Soo itself, insist that no one but family are taught certain inner secrets.
But even though the Choy Li Fut lineage is fairly well documented, we also know that two individuals critical to the history of Kung Fu San Soo, Chan Siu Don, and Leoung Kick are not among them. No one seems to know them either by their English names or the Chinese Calligraphy, including Chan Siu Hung's son and cousin of Chan Siu Dek himself, Chan Sai Mo, when interviewed in 2001.
Complicating things even more for sincere researchers, is that the International Kung Fu San Soo Association official names use the English word 'siu' in three of the middle names, Chan Siu Don, Chan Siu Hung, and Chan Siu Dek, but they are represented completely different in the calligraphy. The only way to research the names is therefore from the calligraphy to English, which requires a person who both reads and writes Chinese, and one who specializes in martial arts and family names. Furthermore, family records were destroyed by both the invading Japanese during WWII, and the PRC during the Cultural Revolution. Finally, those close to this lineage show a strange lack of curiosity with respect to further research into this subject. For decades Kung Fu San Soo practitioners of the Chan Siu Dek lineage were therefore left to draw their own conclusions.
What we conclude here is that Chan Siu Dek learned and trained in the Choy Li Fut lineage, with some family ties to the history of that art, but preferred to exemplify his own closely aligned but separate personal fighting lineage through other family members. While we're not positive, we believe they tended toward a somewhat longer style, and a carefully protected Chinese spontaneous free fight training practice they called San Soo. It was not unknown to other Chinese fighters, but almost unknown to most Westerners. Dave Lorenson has concluded that some of the lineage names left behind by Chan Siu Dek were actually the same as the famous Choy Li Fut lineage holders. There is a very high probability, in our opinion, that Dave is about as correct as we're likely to come in forming a realistic lineage. In our own lineage, we've kept them seperate but let them overlap as you can see here.
So the formal lineage definitely appears Shaolin, evolving through the art of Choy Li Fut, a technically fluent, quick to learn fighting method based on internal spatial reasoning, psychology, and opponent reaction, a method possibly traceable to the Hung Fa Wui at Lin Quan Yuan, and possibly even to the older art of TaiZu San Soo of the Song Dynasty Emperor, Zhao Kuang Yin. The training method, San Soo, is said to be a raw, very old Wudang system, dating back to early Taoist Tai Chi two man spontaneous form practice.
Choy Li Fut practitioners usually refer to formal training through officially recognized family lineages as "Family Style", and will tell you this if you visit one descended from the Chan family clan, while at least some references suggest that informal free fight training style of Choy Li Fut that Chan Siu Dek tried to describe to westerners as Kung Fu San Soo, the practice associated with his personal family lineage, was unofficially called a "Village Style."
Furthermore, while we positively can trace at least a branch of the lineage of Kung Fu San Soo through Choy Li Fut, in implementation, they do not look the same. Formal Choy Li Fut practitioners fight almost sideways, ninety degrees away from their Full Horse, while Chan Siu Dek fought straight in, or around, or to the side, but not sideways. Chan Siu Dek also tended toward strong Shuai Jiao throws and severe Chi Na takedowns. Chan Family style Choy Li Fut practitioners sometimes train on concrete floors that don't look particularly suitable for heavy throws.
In fact, we actually visited Ngan Cho Keong at his studio down a dark one lane alley in San Francisco Chinatown, a Choy Li Fut practitioner recently immigrated from Taishan. His grandfather, Ngan Yiu Ting, studied with Chan Yiu Chi and Chan Siu Dek's great uncle, Chan Siu Hung, under Chan Koon Pak. Through steel bars, he refused to see us and just shook his head with an adamant no. He wanted no part of rude and clumsy westerners nosing around his studio. But when we showed him our extended lineage tree with his grandfather on it, he nearly knocked us over dragging us in and summoned an interpreter.
He said that he did not know about Chan Siu Dek, but insisted that the are we presented to him as Kung Fu San Soo was not formal, or Family Style Choy Li Fut. He said that from the point of view of traditional Choy Li Fut, the five family art of Choy Li Ho Fut Hung would be properly written as Choy Li Fut Ho Hung. To be honest though, we were not able to demonstrate Kung Fu San Soo or explain it all that well. But when we showed him Chan Yiu Chi's reference to Chan Siu Hung, and and told him about Chan Siu Dek's Hung Sing Heroic Victory background and his American fighting legacy in Los Angles Chinatown, his eyes widened, and through his interpreter said, "Oh, must have had to deal with gangsta! Must have been very good fighta!" All we said with respect to his last sentence was, "Well, yeah."
So many aspects of the mystery continues. But this is how we see the history Chan Siu Dek associated with the art he called Tsoi Li Ho Fut Hung, or Kung Fu San Soo. Although some of the reports are only supported by oral tradition, we accept those from Chan Siu Dek as true, even if possibly misunderstood. It’s not unreasonable then to ‘pencil’ at least the lineage in side-by-side the documented Choy Li Fut history. Which is exactly what we’ve attempted to do in our own Kung Fu San Soo lineage study.
Beyond The Fold
Anyone familiar with the history of the Chinese in America knows that they suffered extreme persecutions, mostly enduring it with great stoicism. And Chinese boxers were no exception. Few would have even imagined any of them moving beyond the fold and teaching Westerners a prized martial art earned and protected by family blood. But things changed greatly after World War II, and more and more Westerners began to look toward the East with a new interest. And the East, began to fraternize with the west. While Chan Siu Dek taught Chinese in Los Angeles China Town for decades, his family art somehow did not take hold. So somewhere about 1960, Chan Siu Dek’s decided to teach those outside family and beyond the secret fraternal societies. Some of us remember rumors and assertions from the time that the Chinese fraternal societies vigorously opposed his decision, and that he sometimes expressed great concern over this.
But he taught a number of westerners one of the most comprehensive and devastating martial arts known, an extremely practical system closely associated with the legendary Choy Li Fut, personally specialized around San Soo, which at least in this context has come to mean free form fight training through mock sparring, with an extra emphasis on severe Chi Na and Shuai Jiou applications. Depending on who makes the count, Chan Siu Dek produced about 40 first generation masters. Today there are hundreds of second and third generation masters, very likely thousands of black belts, and tens of thousands who have practice the art. The Sonora School traces it’s lineage through first generation master, Bill Lasiter.
Most of these individuals remember Chan Siu Dek by his assumed name, Jimmy H. Woo, largely because that's precisely how they knew him, and what he expected most of them to call him. Chan Siu Dek’s family tradition continues with his grandson, J. P. King, who is the seventh generation of fighters in the tradition of Kung Fu San Soo.
There is also a ‘traditional’ movement in Kung Fu San Soo, where adherents pay respect to Chan Siu Dek by the traditional Chinese way of describing a martial disciple’s master, or Laosifu, and place a special emphasis on formal Chinese training practices. While many find it controversial, the traditionalists deserve considerable praise for their relentless effort to pursue the history of the art, and the memory of Chan Siu Dek.
In the Sonora lineage, we're much less concerned about what individuals call him today, than how he is remembered. Still, no matter how one addresses or remembers the founder of American Kung Fu San Soo, whether it’s as Jimmy H. Woo, as Laosifu, or by his family name, Chan Siu Dek, it's our opinion that all Kung Fu San Soo practitioners own him a monumental debt of gratitude.
