Wong Fei-hung
黃飛鴻
A master of the Hung Gar style and physician from Foshan, owner of the Po Chi Lam clinic, about whose life more than 100 films and series have been made since 1949.
Quick Facts
ChinaBiography
Wong Fei-hung, birth name Wong Sek-cheung (黃錫祥), courtesy name Tat-wun (達雲), was born on 9 July 1847 in the village of Lingxi in the town of Xiqiao in Nanhai (Foshan) and died on 17 April 1925 in Guangzhou. He was a master of the Hung Gar style and a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine.
From the age of five he was taught Hung Gar by his father Wong Kei-ying, one of the Ten Tigers of Canton; he is sometimes wrongly counted among them. At thirteen he learned the Iron Wire form from Lam Fuk-sing. Legend makes him a student of So Chan, from whom he is said to have learned drunken boxing.
In 1863 he opened a school in Shuijiao in the Saikwan district (present-day Liwan), attended mostly by metalworkers and street vendors. His students included, among others, Lam Sai-wing, Leung Foon, Dang Fong and Ling Wan-kai. He co-created the paired Tiger and Crane form (Fu Hok Seung Ying Kuen) with ten special techniques and became famous for the so-called shadowless kick. In 1886 he opened the Po Chi Lam clinic (寶芝林) in Guangzhou.
After the murder of his son Wong Hon-sam in Wuzhou in 1919, he stopped teaching his other sons the martial art. In 1924 the clinic was destroyed in fighting during the suppression of the Canton Merchants' Volunteer Corps uprising. He is buried at the foot of Mount Baiyun; the exact location of his grave is not known today. The more than 100 films and series about him are recorded in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest film series about a single figure.
Teachers, students and family
Associated Martial Arts
Kata and forms
Filmography
A screen role does not mean the person actually practises the art — that is listed above.