For those who can read Chinese, the Lee Koon Hung Choy Lay Fut Association (Hong Hong) website has updated their information with some very interesting new materials. They have a couple of articles from the special journal published by the Association in Memory of the Founder of CLF to commemorate the 2002 international gathering of CLF practitioners in Sun Wun (aka Return to the Origin Tour II).
For balance, they also included an article called “Hung Sing Kuen Fa” (The Techniques of Hung Sing Fists) spoken by Lau Kam-Dong and written down by his son Lau Wai-Yip a couple of years ago. In the article, the name CLF was not mentioned at all, although the techniques discussed in the article were pure CLF, with the Ng Ying (Five Animals) and the same CLF terms like Charp Chui, Gwa Chui, Sao Chui, Pow Chui and Fan Jong etc.
Instead, Lau said Hung Sing Kuen was first called Fut Gar Sil Lum Pai (Buddhist school from Shaolin) founded by Jeong Hung Sing (Jeong Yim) after he studied with Monk Ching Cho in Bak Pai Mountain. Later it became known as Fut Gar Hung Sing and Tam Sam, a third generation disciple, founded the Fut Gar Buk Sing. Cleverly, they managed to describe CLF with a new name and Chan Heung was not mentioned at all. The end result is they did away with CLF altogether and everyone shifted up one generation.
The article was taken from the Futsan Hung Sing Gwoon 150 year’s anniversary celebrations journal published in 2001. Chan Kam-Dong studied with Tam Sam and Gu Yi-Jeung. He became well known when he fought a Russian boxer in the Model Theatre in Sai Gwan District of Guangzhou back in 1936.
With the discovery of this recent article, the pattern for a gradual re-writing of CLF history in the past 30 years became very clear:
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First introduce Monk Ching Cho as one of Chan Heung’s teachers and that is how the Fut in CLF came about. With this claim, Ching Cho replaces Chan Yuan-Wu, Chan Heung’s first teacher.
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Then changed to say Jeong Yim studied with Chin Cho as well as Chan Heung, so Jeong Yim’s Hung Sing was different (meaning better) to other branches, but Chan Heung was still considered the sole founder.
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Then changed the story again to say Jeong Yim, after learning for 8 years with Ching Cho in Bak Pai Mountain, came back and taught his old teacher Chan Heung what he has learned and together they co-founded CLF.
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Then pushed one step further and say Jeong Yim never studied with Chan Heung (according to Buck Sing elder Lun Gee, Jeong Yim only learned calligraphy from Chan Heung,) and he was the sole founder of CLF.
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The final step is that there was never any CLF in Jeong Yim and he only studied with Ching Cho. Chan Heung as well as CLF was not mentioned at all and the new name of Jeong Yim’s style is now called Fut Gar Hung Sing and Tarm Sam’s branch is now called Fut Gar Buk Sing.
There are some interesting variations to the story, for example, according to Dave Lacey, the name CLF was a misnomer, and it was originally called Fut Gar Jing Chung before it was changed to CLF. Frank is now promoting this story. Lau Wai-Yip is much bolder, he said his father, who studied with Tarm Sam, told him what they were doing is not related to or named CLF at all. The denial is total and final.
Sorry to bore you people with this, but Frank has started this history contrversy/debate again and I feel I have to follow through with how they rewrote history to its latest conclusion.
None of what they claimed is supported by any solid evidence, just hearsays from the “elders”.
