Hong Xiguan
Semi-legendary figureAccording to tradition a tea merchant and student of Abbot Jee-sin of southern Shaolin, regarded as the founder of Hung Gar; information about him comes mainly from legends.
Quick Facts
ChinaBiography
Hong Xiguan, in Cantonese transcription Hung Hei-gun, is regarded as the creator and founder of the Hung Gar style (hung ga kuen). Tradition states that he was born in 1745 and died in 1825. Information about him, however, comes mainly from legends and film adaptations, not from primary historical documents, and we therefore present the following account as tradition as well.
According to it, he came from Hua district (today Huadu) in Canton and was originally a tea merchant. After a conflict with the Manchu elite he fled to the southern Shaolin monastery in Fujian Province, where Abbot Jee-sin taught him the Bak Fu Pai (white tiger) style. After six years he became the best of the monastery's lay members. The monastery was later destroyed by Qing dynasty troops because it sheltered anti-Qing rebels. The name Hung Hei-gun was, according to tradition, adopted and was meant to recall a Ming emperor.
According to legend he learned the tiger techniques from the abbot and the crane techniques from his wife Fong Wing-chun, and their combination gave rise to the Fu Hok Kuen (tiger and crane) tradition. The style includes the set Taming the Tiger, which according to tradition Jee-sin already taught. Tradition credits him with students who founded further styles: Luk Ah-choi built the Hung Gar style on his teaching and Lei Jou-fan the Hung Fut style; the line then leads to Wong Fei-hung.
Chinese sources give him as the father of Hung Wen-ting and mention a grave associated with him, discovered in 2013 in Xiaolan in Zhongshan. His story was adapted in the films Executioners from Shaolin (1977) with Chen Kuan-tai, The New Legend of Shaolin (1994) with Jet Li and the series The Kung Fu Master (1994) with Donnie Yen.