Introduction

Chan Jiu-Chi 陳耀墀 belongs to the third generation of Choy Li Fut 蔡李佛. He was the grandson of the founding master, Chan Heung 陳享, and one of the most important masters of the style. He notably boosted the spread of Choy Li Fut, especially in the city of Guǎngzhōu 廣州.

Chan Jiu-Chi

Chan Jiu-Chi (1892-1965) was a scholar, poet, herbal practitioner, and teacher of Choy Li Fut and, although he is said to have excelled in all of those areas, his fame in the field of Kung Fu undoubtedly far surpassed the others.

Despite having lived in more recent times, the information that has come down to us about his life comes from oral tradition, and is difficult to corroborate.

Master Chan Jiu Chi 陳耀墀 in his youth.

He learnt Choy Li Fut from his father, Chan Gun-Bak 陳官伯, Chan Heung's youngest son, who had moved from his home village of King Mui 京梅 to Guǎngzhōu city to continue the transmission of the Choy Li Fut system.

It is said that Chan Jiu-Chi rarely took his thoughts off Kung Fu, and that even when he was sitting, his legs continued to practice. To him we owe the structuring and systematization of the entire Choy Li Fut style. He took care of recording each form in writing, with its respective movements and applications; these writings are jealously guarded by the Chan family, but their copies have been passed down from master to disciple down to us.

Chan Jiu-Chi was a highly successful man, but also very envied. On numerous occasions other martial artists came to his school to challenge him. On one such occasion, a man who displayed his corpulence and physical strength crushed one of the arms of a wooden dummy from Chan Jiu-Chi's school, and challenged him to do the same. Master Chan Jiu-Chi was a thin and weak-looking man, with the manners of a scholar. However, he possessed a perfect mastery of the technique and, without even gaining momentum, with a small and barely perceptible twist of his body, he broke with a Kwan-Kiu 綑橋 another of the arms of the dummy, which flew away.

Chan Jiu-Chi 陳耀墀.

Another such story tells of the occasion when another Kung Fu master who taught in Guǎngzhōu, named Gum Zai, came to Chan Jiu-Chi's school to challenge him to a match. Chan Jiu-Chi refused the duel on numerous occasions but, finally, at the insistence of Gum Zai, who was getting all full of himself, his own wife urged him to accept the challenge. A large circle of people had gathered around them. Chan Jiu-Chi was smoking from his pipe, which he held in his left hand. When Gum Zai attacked, Chan blocked the blow with a Joeng-Kiu 揚橋 with his right hand and then with the same hand, he hit his opponent's chest with a Tsang-Jeung 撑掌, which threw him backwards and caused him to fall to the ground. Chan Jiu-Chi hadn't even let go of his pipe. Gum Zai started vomiting blood due to the internal injuries caused by the blow, and Chan Jiu-Chi hurriedly treated him with herbal medicine. Gum Zai was too proud to accept Chan's help, and he died a week later. This episode had no legal consequences for Chan Heung's grandson, as there were numerous witnesses that Gum Zai had started the dispute, had come to provoke, and attacked first. However, it did make our master carry great remorse for much of his life.

Chan Jiu-Chi was a person of humble and generous character. As a doctor, he never denied his care to any patient, even if the patient could not pay him, and he charged only the will.

Martial arts and Chinese Medicine

Traditionally, there has been a relationship between the practice of martial arts and Chinese Medicine (Zhōngyī 中醫). As we have already explained (Chan Heung, Founder of a New System), this was partly because many doctors and sellers of herbal formulas used martial arts to advertise their medicines, making demonstrations of vigor and resistance when receiving blows.

In the nineteenth century there was a great proliferation of doctors and herbal practitioners. There has been speculation about whether the manufacturing-based economy might have favoured this concentration. Some of the most important industries of the time, such as the iron industry, textiles or ceramic kilns involved certain tasks that were carried out in proximity to dangerous equipment, fire and chemical products. As there was still no awareness of occupational risk prevention, the high incidence of work accidents could have favoured the activity of doctors specialising in bone repositioning and treatment of fractures and burns.

Many private doctors were interested in martial arts, perhaps as a means of demonstrating their understanding of the workings of the human body and attracting clients. Many famous martial arts practitioners went into the medical business, such as Leung Jan 梁贊 or Wong Feihung 黃飛鴻. The latter ran a clinic in Fóshān 佛山 and, despite having achieved immortal fame as a martial artist, he seems to have sustained himself mainly through the practice of medicine.

Chan Jiu-Chi ran several Choy Li Fut schools in Guǎngzhōu City and trained numerous specialists in the system. He lived in a time of great change for Chinese martial arts. Traditional employers of martial instructors, such as the imperial army and armed escort agencies (biāojú 鏢局), disappeared in a short period of time.

Meanwhile, in the cities, the growth of the working middle class became a source of clientele for the new commercial schools that had begun to emerge in the second half of the nineteenth century. These clientele demanded affordable, quality instruction.

Another photography of Jiu-Chi.

In Guǎngdōng 廣東, the Jīngwǔ association (Jīngwǔ Tǐyùhuì 精武體育會) opened a branch in April 1919. This association had emerged ten years earlier in Shànghǎi 上海 and was dedicated to the teaching of martial arts in a modern and very efficient way, in addition to other educational projects. His work in spreading martial arts had great repercussions at the national level, boosting the popularity of Kungfu throughout the country and making instruction accessible to new social groups, especially the educated middle classes of the cities.

We can assume that Southern masters such as Chan Jiu-Chi, although experts in their own right, benefited from the work of the Jīngwǔ association despite not having been linked to it.

By the time of Chan Jiu-Chi, martial arts were becoming an urban pastime for educated people. Chan Jiu-Chi himself was the epitome of this model: gentle, polite, and cultured.

Jiu-Chi passed away in 1965. Of its many students, masters Wu Wan Choek 胡雲綽, Pun Ming Fan 潘明芬 and our own teacher Pun Seon Seoi 潘顺遂 belong to our lineage. His legacy lives on today in Choy Li Fut practitioners around the world, but especially in the city of Guǎngzhōu.

Chan Jiu-Chi (center, wearing dark) with his students.
In the back row, the fifth from the left, Pun Ming Fan 潘明芬, father of our teacher.