CHOY LEE FUT!

This is the style that I practice since 13 May 1991. It is a great system with a great potential
and very much resources. I practice the Choy Lee Fut system within the Romanian
Traditional Kung-Fu Association and my teacher's name is Mihai Tataru. Our association
is affiliated to European Choy Lee Fut Association and to International Chinese Kuoshu
Federation.

The leader of the E.C.L.F.A. sifu dr. Gaspar J. Garcia Lopez is one of the few masters in
the world taught by the present keeper of the style Jeurng Mun Yun CHAN YONG FA.
Sifu Garcia has also trained with sifu Franck Primicias

The Choy Lee Fut system was founded in 1836 by CHAN HEUNG GOON, a wellknown
martial artist of that period. His martial arts career began at age seven when he went to
live with his uncle CHAN YUEN WOO, a former boxer from the SHAOLIN temple.
CHAN HEUNG trained with his uncle until age seventeen when he assimilated all that his
uncle could teach him. So CHAN YUEN WOO took him to LI YAU SAN, who was the
senior classmate from the SHAOLIN temple in YUEN WOO's generation.

CHAN HEUNG GOON spent the next four years learning the skills of Shaolin Kung-Fu
style under the eye of LI YAU SAN. The two teachers of CHAN HEUNG told him to go
and continue his studies with a former SHAOLIN monk named CHOY FOOK, who lived
on Lau Fu mountain. When CHAN HEUNG, after long weeks of searches, reached the
monk and gave him the letter of recommendation from LI YAU SAN he was stuned when
CHOY FOOK simply refused him. After a long period of begging and waiting, CHOY
FOOK finally agreed to take CHAN HEUNG as a student, but only to study Buddhism. So,
CHAN HEUNG studied Buddhism for many hours a day and far into the night he
practiced his martial arts.

One day, when CHAN HEUNG was practicing his kung-fu, suddenly the monk appeared
and told him to kick a large stone, weighing about eighty pounds, and to send it twelve feet
away. With all of his strength, crashing his foot against the stone CHAN HEUNG kicked it
barely twelve feet away. CHOY FOOK placed his own foot under the heavy rock and
effortlessly propelled it through the air.

From that day on, for eight years, CHOY FOOK taught CHAN HEUNG both the way of
the Buddhism and the way of martial arts. When CHAN HEUNG was twenty-nine, he left
the monk and went back to his village, where, for the next two years, he revised and refined
what he had learned from CHOY FOOK. In 1836 he established the CHOY LEE FUT
system, naming it in honour of his two teachers CHOY FOOK and LEE YAU SAN and
using the word "FUT", which means BUDDHA in chinese, to pay homage to his uncle,
CHAN YUEN WOO, and to the SHAOLIN temple roots of the new system.
These are the words that CHOY FOOK told to CHAN HEUNG GOON at the end of his
studies:

Touch the swords for translation! Touch the swords for translation!