Jumper Without A Cause (Jumpchain Creative Mode)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1qb0_OLhDrDQi1FNTdBOFh6bzg/view

Identity: Prodigy
Age: 1d8 (4) + 10 = 14
Gender: Male
Head and shoulders above other disciples, huh? Yeah, sign me up. I’d rather not start at the very bottom of the heap in this particular universe. At 14 I’ll be a bit younger than the other characters (that’s like… 2nd year middle school, right?), and given that pretty much none of the main characters are actually static in their growth I might be at a bit of a disadvantage. Really not regretting taking Prodigy now.

Starting Location: 1d8 (2) = Ryōzanpaku Dojo
Well… let’s hope I’ve been invited.


Martial Ethos: Katsujinken
Yeah, I’m not going to pick Satsujinken when I start smack-dab in Ryōzanpaku of all places, even if they probably wouldn’t do more than just throw me out. More to the point, the perk is better and it’s the one that actually makes sense to me, so why not?

Ki Method: Sei
Yeah, I’d rather keep a clear head in a fight to the death, crazy enough.

Arms: Weapons
“Hmm, shall I learn how to use tools like a proper human being, or try to punch every problem away like a damn caveman?” No, I don’t care that you can make it work in this universe, it’s still stupid to focus exclusively on one or the other. When it comes to practical martial arts, specialization is for insects.


Martial Arts

Arnis
Case in point, the martial arts of my people! Well, the martial arts of my maternal grandmother’s people. Trains both unarmed and with weapons, and many of the weapons its most famous for are stuff that you can get away with walking around with in most places, i.e. sticks and knives.

Kuntao
Southeast Asia is home to a lot of Chinese immigrants, most of whom are from several related Southern Chinese ethnic groups that speak the Southern Min dialect (which is very different from both Mandarin and Cantonese, and in fact isn’t mutually intelligible with either in spoken form); these immigrants are known as the Hokkien. The Hokkien brought many Chinese martial arts with them; mostly Southern styles, but some Northern ones as well; different groups in different places focus on different martial arts, and while some of them are mostly unchanged, several of them are conglomerations of several schools both Chinese and incorporating elements of styles like arnis and silat. This unique strand of Chinese martial arts is referred to as kuntao, which means “way of the fist.” And yeah, picking this as one option may be cheap of me, but canon gets away with grouping the entirety of Chinese martial arts under a single Master, so f*ck it I’m taking this. Armed and unarmed, duh.

Pencak Silat
Indonesian/Malay languages use “silat” in much the same away Filipinos use “arnis;” an umbrella term for many indigenous styles of fighting that can be said to fit into a specific national martial art. “Pencak silat” is the official term for the particular style of silat recognized in Indonesia as their own. Like arnis, it is both an armed and unarmed martial art. And according to martial arts luminary Dan Inosanto, arnis and silat complement each other well.

Yaw-Yan
Short for “Sayaw ng Kamatayan,” which means “Dance of Death.” It’s a martial art invented in the 1970s as a Filipino style of kickboxing rooted in unarmed techniques from arnis. The funny thing is, that combination has actually made it functionally very similar to muay thai. Not identical, of course, but similar. And if this seems incongruous with my earlier statement about strictly unarmed martial arts: that’s strictly regarding fights to the death, and I don’t intend all my fights to involve trying not to get stabbed.


Perks

Hidden Weapons
Why would you pick fighting styles that teach the use of small weapons that can be concealed and then not take this, even outside of Creative Mode?

Disciple’s Discipline
“Discipline” is not a word that anyone would ever use to describe me, so I’m going to need this to keep up with the insane training I’ll need to keep up.

Used to It
Much like my reasoning for taking Sei Ki. Flipping out or panicking is a quick way to die in a serious fight.

Ki Kneading
It’s presented as a major step toward becoming a Master, after all, so why skip out on it?

Seidō Gōitsu – LOCKED
Holy. Sh*t. This perk. Fifteen minutes before you’re at risk of dying? Ryūto couldn’t handle it for longer than thirty seconds after he wrecked himself overdoing it the first time. Mastering this let Ogata take out Cyril Rahman and put Agaard on the back foot at the same time. And I get fifteen minutes’ worth just like that? This wouldn’t be balanced even without Creative Mode.

Strength & Endurance
Speed & Agility
Perception & Awareness
The funny thing is, from reading the write-ups for these I get the impression that it’s basically hovering around the level of Miu for the bulk of the series; she busted up a car in one of her first appearances, after all.

Youth & Longevity
Sure, I’ll take a longevity perk that I can actually teach to people.

Enhanced Ki – LOCKED
That’ll be useful for later Jumps, but I think I’ve got enough advantages in the here and now.


Items

Money
¥1,000,000? That would be something like $8,000-9,000, which might be a bit suspicious for a 14-year-old to have sitting in his bank account. Guess I’ll put ¥50,000 on a debit card and keep the rest in cash.

Victory Medals
Sure, sounds fun.

“Sword”
Just as an aside, it doesn’t specify that the weapon has to be made of metal, so this is a good way to get “Secret of Steel” quality for a weapon that isn’t steel. Which doesn’t matter here, since despite it being contrary to what would actually be most useful, I’m going to pick an actual sword as my special weapon because f*ck it, swords are cool. Specifically, a kampilan. Yes, something like a bolo knife would be more practical and no, I don’t care.

Data Book
Wow, I almost forgot PDAs ever existed. If I pick a book, will it magically stay the same size, or is it going to grow into a massive library of its own? F*ck, it, I’ll take it.

Resistance Suit
For one, that means I get more free time since I don’t have to do dedicated strength training. It also means I’ll be able to do the DBZ “take off the weighted clothes” thing, which is always fun. And might actually be useful, given there are f*cking crazy Masters like Fortuna and Jenazad who have no problems kidnapping disciples who catch their eye; pulling punches might help keep me off of their radar.

Mesh Armor
Both Yami and Yomi have armed divisions, why the hell wouldn’t I take this? Even if they did only get shoved into the very end of the manga and get taken out like a bunch of mooks…

Koetsuji Training Apparatus MK-∞
Oh, that’ll be fun to train people with in future Jumps. Wow, I’m already planning on torturing people to make them stronger; no wonder all the Masters are such dicks.

Dojo
Sure, free sticks and padding and crap is nice.

Stretching Machine
Again, not personally useful, but something I can put to use later.

Secret of Steel – LOCKED
As useful as that will be, I’d rather not have to explain myself to Shigure.


Companions

Master x2
Given that I took 4 martial arts, 3 of which are very broad, might want to take more than one Master to teach me.


Drawbacks
None. All of them either just plain suck, and not in an interesting way (like “become a budding sex offender” and “show off your 14-year-old ass all the time”), or are just outright suicide for someone on their first Jump. Also, “everyone in the world suddenly wants to kill you” is such a lazy option for a Drawback.

 

Presented here is a list of traditional Chinese martial arts and what little I know about their philosophy, teachings, provenance, etc (which means you could get a lot of this info from Wikipedia). I’ll also note which styles specifically that Ensei has some level of training in. This is mostly for my own convenience and consultation, and I figured there was no reason not to put it here (except of course possibly as a surprise, but oh well).

Short note: a lot of styles have “quan” or less commonly “zhang” as a suffix. That just means “fist” or “palm” literally, and can be taken as shorthand for “style,” such as with, say, Bajiquan/Eight Extremities Fist/Style. It’s kind of like how Japanese martial arts styles are appended with “-ryū.”

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Bafaquan: “Eight Methods Fist.” Not to be confused with Liuhe Bafa. This style was created by Li Demao in the early 20th century, shortly before the end of the Qing Dynasty (1636-1912), and was synthesized from Fanzi, Paochui, Tantui, Tongbei and Xingyi. The style is based on the theory of the “Eight Methods” of attacking; training for this style includes training the spear, straight sword and curved sword. Its training for the use of a very long spear, both on foot and on horseback, is considered a specialty of the style.

Because it’s essentially a condensed amalgamation of several locally popular martial arts in its native Shanxi Province, it’s hard for an untrained eye to distinguish it on sight, and it’s hard to talk further on what kind of distinguishing features it has.

Baguazhang: “Eight Trigram Palm.” Bagua is one of the three styles referred to in contemporary martial arts as “Wudang styles,” a term (drawn from legends about the origins of these styles and their shared qualities as largely internal styles) meant specifically to contrast with the largely external styles of Shaolin. This term also denotes a contrast in religious inspiration; Shaolin is (obviously) Buddhist, while the Wudang styles are seen as being largely inspired by Daoist thought, generally speaking. In fact, the name “Eight Trigram” refers to one of the canons of Daoist thought and belief, the Yijing (more well-known by the now-outdated Romanization “I Ching”).

To avoid getting into some heavy Daoist philosophy, I’ll just say that “bagua” in the Yijing are eight symbols used to represent the fundamental principles of reality, each represented by a series of three straight lines that are broken or unbroken (this tripartite structure is why we call them “trigrams” in English). The Yijing is essentially a listing of the 64 pairwise permutations of the trigrams, called “hexagrams,” and contains commentary on the meaning of each one. The Yijing is used and consulted in many various ways, but most popularly as a method of fortune-telling. It’s also influenced traditional Chinese beliefs about things like geomancy, astrology, geography, anatomy, etc.

The creation of Baguazhang as a formalized martial art is attributed to Dong Haichuan (date of birth disputed as either 1797 or 1813; date of death is 1882, so he was either 69 or 85 when he died), a devoted martial artist who is said to have learned from various Daoist and Buddhist masters while training in the mountains. Many authorities actually dispute the Buddhist origin, claiming that his instruction was purely or at least overwhelmingly Daoist in origin, citing the name of the style and several of its techniques and stances, the frequent reference in its philosophy to Daoist ideas and relative lack of Buddhist ones, etc. It’s also pointed out that the attribution to Buddhist teachers only started coming from the 2nd generation teachers, i.e. Dong’s students, several of whom were Buddhist.

Dong Haichuan was a devoted student of the martial arts from a young age, learning the (probably Shaolin-derived) martial arts practiced in his local area. Since his family was very poor, as a young man he set out to find work of his own so as not to burden them with feeding him, and by many accounts spent years as a penniless wanderer who often got into trouble. He studied a lot of Daoist methods, including circle walking (which is not actually unique to Baguazhang) and synthesized it with his previous studies, creating an art he called Zhaunzhang (“Turning Palms”). Sometime around 1864 he arrived in the capital, Beijing, and was hired as a servant in the household of the Prince Su (which is not a name, but a hereditary title of peerage given to a specific branch of the imperial house), who eventually gave him a job collecting taxes, which he did for the next 10 years along with his first student, Yin Fu (1840-1909). After that, he left the prince’s employ and devoted himself fully to teaching publicly and further developing his style.

The exact details of what Dong taught are disputed; some claim that only the first three of the Eight Palms that he taught a student remained consistent for all of them, while the remaining five were varied based on the student’s skill and experience. Others claim he taught considerably more than that, and that his teaching was more-or-less consistent. Regardless, his style grew popular and acquired the name of Baguazhang. Because of how popular Baguazhang eventually became, it’s hard to say exactly what’s fact and fiction about Dong’s last years; there’s a lot of claims, for example, that he gave demonstrations to the Emperor in the Forbidden City and impressed him enough to gain imperial patronage, or that he and his students became bodyguards to the imperial family. Might be true, might not, I don’t have the evidence either way. What is known is that some of Dong’s students participated in the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901), so there’s that bit of fun trivia.

Dong Haichuan’s nine most famous disciples each taught the arts he passed on to them, but each of them approached his teachings in different ways, and many synthesized it with their own prior education in the martial arts. This pattern continued, and in the modern day there are almost 20 separate styles/schools of Baguazhang, each with minor or major differences from each other, though the dominant ones are the Yin style (founded by Yin Fu), the Cheng style (Cheng Tinghua), and the Liang style (Liang Zhenpu). Each of them emphasize different things and have differing focuses in their instruction, so it’s hard to make generalizations about Baguazhang as a whole except for the basics.

What are the basics? The one baguazhang is most famous for is the practice of circle walking, sometimes called turning the circle; this is a method of training stances, movements and footwork that all styles utilize as an integral part of training. Practitioners walk the edge of the circle in various stances, facing the center, and periodically change direction as they execute forms; as they advance, the diameter of the circle shrinks. This trains up flexibility and proper body alignment through the basic exercises, then the more complex forms teach mechanics of generating and using internal power.

Hilariously for the style that inspired Airbending in Avatar: The Last Airbender, baguazhang is actually famous for training in the use of a diverse array of different weapons, from swords to spears to a weapon unique to this style, the crescent-shaped “deer horn knives.” Baguazhang is also known for training with extremely oversized weapons, such that extremely outsized straight and curved swords are called bagua jian and bagua dao, respectively. Other weapons include the staff, the spear, the cane, and hook swords, and many styles of baguazhang take pride in being able to use anything as a weapon using the principles they teach.

In addition to the use of many different weapons, baguazhang is also very versatile in unarmed combat, with a variety of strikes with just about every part of the arm, lots of kicks, joint locks, and throws, all to complement its evasive footwork that give baguazhang practitioners a reputation for being able to “flow” around an opponent’s attacks; all that circle-walking makes them very good at quickly circling behind an opponent without ever turning their back to them. The main differences in a lot of styles are in what they emphasize here in particular; Yin style, for instance, specializes in long-range (i.e. fully extended) strikes, while the Cheng style emphasizes going in close to wrestle and lock your opponent.

Finally, all baguazhang styles are internal styles. So… what does that mean? A lot of the mysticization of kung fu would lead you to believe that internal power is some magic life force or whatever, but an “internal” style just means that it emphasizes on building power through means other than pure muscular strength, which is what an “external” style does. In baguazhang, power is built both from centripetal force from the circular motions and steps as well as what pretty much every internal martial art does: the generation of power through an understanding of the body’s mechanics and how to move the body in such a way that you can generate a lot of force that doesn’t come from your muscles. Movements of the waist are key to this, which is probably why the Chinese have always believed that energy comes from the stomach.

And as far as History’s Strongest Disciple Ken’nichi goes, the very first lesson in martial arts that Ken’nichi learned (from Miu, rather than any of the Masters) was the unique “stepping method” of Bagua, which allowed him to very quickly pivot away from Daimonji’s attacks without the karateka being able to tell where he was moving (because with this method the upper body stays in place the longest, and Daimonji was too stupid to watch his feet instead of his upper body). In addition, the “Three-Headed Dragon” was a team of Chinese martial artists during the “Desperate Fight of Disciples” or “D of D Tournament” hosted by YAMI. The “Three-Headed Dragon” each used one of the three Wudang styles in conjunction to very nearly defeat Ken’nichi and Miu; the Baguazhang user was the only woman of the group, Yinlin Chou (whose actual Chinese name would be Zhang Shelin). Also, as a master of all Chinese martial arts who specializes in soft and internal styles, Ma Kensei frequently uses baguazhang, though it’s never specifically called out as such. And, of course, Ensei knows it.

Baihequan: “White Crane Fist,” this style is also known as Fujian White Crane (after Fujian Province), or Yongchun Baihequan (“Eternal Spring White Crane Fist”). One of the major animal styles often associated with the Shaolin Monastery, it is one of the most influential of Chinese martial arts.

Legend traces this style’s origins to a woman named Fang Qiniang, who lived in (of course) Fujian in the mid-17th century, a place known for being home to many cranes. Her father was a martial artist, and having no sons he taught what he knew to his daughter instead. One day, as she was doing her chores, a white crane landed nearby. She tried to scare it off with a stick without hurting it, but failed. When she tried to lightly hit it on the head, the crane moved its head away and flapped its wings, knocking away the stick. When she tried to hit its wings, it grabbed the stick with its talons. When she tried to poke its body, the crane jumped back and grabbed the stick with its beak. Qiniang then decided to study the crane’s movements, combining them with her father’s teachings to develop her own style of martial arts that she named after the crane.

There are, of course, many variations of this story, but the point is that Fang Qiniang learned from a crane to emphasize evasion and attacking an opponent’s vulnerabilities rather than relying on strength. It is most often associated with the way practitioners will move their hands and arms in ways that imitate the way a crane pecks with its beak and flaps with its wings (Crane Stance is meant more as an exercise to develop balance, before you ask). Strikes are fast and precise, aimed at vulnerable points on the body to disable an attacker even if the practitioner is not very physically strong, as befits a style supposedly created by a woman, which is even now a popular subject in women’s self-defense classes in parts of China.

As I mentioned before, White Crane is very influential in the development of many famous styles of martial arts, and not just Chinese ones; karate was originally developed in Okinawa, where there was a significant Chinese presence and a great deal of influence from Chinese martial arts in the development of their own methods of combat, which were eventually popularized in the rest of Japan; White Crane in particular is noted as an inspiration for some of the oldest formal schools of karate.

In addition, one of the most famous and direct of White Crane’s descendants is Wing Chun. Remember that alternate name, the “Eternal Spring” one? Well, “Wing Chun” is Cantonese; the Mandarin is “Yong Chun;” though it uses a different character (thus the name means “Spring Chant” instead of “Eternal Spring”), the homage is very apparent in both the name and the fighting style, particularly in the rapid strikes with the arm and hand.

Ensei is somewhat familiar with this one, though he personally considers it kind of "obsolete" compared to a certain other one he knows.

Bajiquan: “Eight Extremities Fist.” Originally, it was called Baziquan (“Rake Fist”) after the way the fists, held slightly open, are used to strike downward in a rake-like fashion. As the style grew in popularity and prestige, the original name was deemed to crude and was changed. The term “Baji” comes from the Yijing, much like Bagua, and is a term that signifies something that extends or moves in all directions simultaneously; essentially, you could translate this style’s name as “All-Encompassing Fist” or “Universal Fist.”

The first recorded master to teach this style was Wu Zhong (1712-1802), but the most famous of the style’s practitioners was a man from Hebei by the name of Li Shuwen (1864-1934), who acquired the nickname “God Spear Li” for his incredible spearmanship. A Beijing Opera performer by training (hey, just like Jackie Chan! And Sammo Hung. And Yuen Biao. And…), Li Shuwen is famous as claiming that, “I do not know what it’s like to hit a man twice.” Li Shuwen’s students included Huo Diange (bodyguard to Pu Yi, the last Emperor of China), Li Chenwu (bodyguard to Mao Zedong), and Liu Yunqiao (secret agent for the Guomindang and instructor of bodyguards for Chiang Chuncheng, a.k.a. Chiang Kai-shek); to this day, bajiquan retains a reputation as a popular style for bodyguards in China and Taiwan.

Bajiquan specializes in battle at extreme close range, using a distinctive charging step to close in, then focusing on strikes with the elbows, knees, shoulders and hips. Fighters use these close-range attacks to forcibly open the opponent’s guard to quickly attack vulnerable areas like the throat, groin, joints, etc. The essence of baji quan lies in jin, or power-issuing methods, particularly fa jing (explosive power). The bulk of the damage is dealt through the momentary acceleration that travels up from the waist to the limb and further magnified by the charging step; this requires strenuous lower body training.

Despite this focus on infighting, there are eight weapon styles that the style teaches, including spears, straight swords, curved swords, staff, two-handed swords, and polearms. These aren’t really ever given much spotlight or attention as far as I can see.

Bajiquan shares similar roots with the style Piguaquan, and it is said that Wu Zhong, the first known teacher of these styles, taught them together, but as time went on they drifted apart. Li Shuwen was the one who recombined them, and it is said that this was a big part of his incredible success and fame as a martial artist. To this day, the two styles are considered incredibly complimentary, to the point that a proverb states, “When pigua is added to baji, gods and demons will all be terrified. When baji is added to pigua, heroes will sigh that they are no match for it.”

In the manga, Bajiquan is one of the two primary martial arts used by Natsu Tanimoto (Hermit), who combines it, of course, with Pigua. This Baji-Pigua is also used by his master, Ma Sōgetsu, though like his brother Kensei he’s a master of all Chinese martial arts (specializing in the hard and external styles), as well as another Master-Disciple pair in YOMI, Ro Jisei (Lu Cizheng) and Chou Enshin (Zhao Yuanchen). The former is noted by Kensei as having contributed to Sōgetsu’s turn toward Satsujinken, and the latter was killed in a battle by Tanimoto to secure the winner’s place in YOMI.

Bak Mei: “White Eyebrows.” The name (which is Cantonese; the Mandarin would be Bai Mei) comes from one of the legendary Five Elders – five survivors of the destruction of the Shaolin Monastery by the Qing Dynasty (an event variously placed as happening in 1647, 1674, or even 1732); many accounts claim that Bak Mei betrayed the temple to the imperial government. Like all of the Five Elders, he shows up a lot in Chinese works of fiction (and in Kill Bill, Vol. 2, where he’s called Pai Mei and played by Gordon Liu).

As an aside, the original Shaolin Monastery was built on the north side of Mt. Shaoshi, the central peak of Mt. Song, one of the Sacred Mountains, located in Henan Province (in northern China). It was first built in 477 by the Northern Wei dynasty by Emperor Xiaowen, but was burned down various times throughout history for varying political reasons and eventually rebuilt each time. A number of traditions and tales talk about a Southern Shaoling Monastery located in Fujian Province, sometimes called Changlin Monastery. Associated with the stories of the burning of the Shaoling Monastery by Qing forces or presented as a place of refuge for survivors of the northern monastery’s burning, this monastery (along with the burning of the temples) is a cornerstone of Chinese popular history, fiction, and the traditional accounts of many of the most famous martial arts… that could very well never have even happened. There is in fact a non-zero chance that every single bit of that was either invented whole-cloth long after the fact or just extremely exaggerated. *sigh* Reality is so discouraging sometimes.

As an example of how varying accounts of the Five Elders are, sometimes Bak Mei betrayed the temple to the government. Sometimes it was another Elder, Ma Ning-Yee, or sometimes it was both of them. Sometimes Fung Do-Duk also betrayed Shaolin with the two. Sometimes “Bak Mei” is just a nickname for one or the other. Sometimes all these completely different accounts make you seriously doubt that this wasn’t all just made up by wuxia novels and the anti-Qing mythology dreamed up by revolutionary societies like the Heaven & Earth Society that spread like a (secret) wildfire in China during the 19th century.

Regardless, the fact that this style is named after a supposed traitor has led to very real tensions with practitioners of the styles purportedly founded by the guys that their namesake purportedly betrayed. Some provide alternate accounts that Bak Mei didn’t so much betray the other Five Elders as much as refuse to join them in fighting Qing, others that he was simply banished for accidentally killing several disciples when practicing the new martial art he’d made (which has the added bonus of hyping up Bak Mei the style). Other accounts Bak Mei as being forced into betraying the temple, or of seeing the writing on the wall and selling out a few so that he could spare the traditions of the temple and keep them going. Others take the disciple-killing story and gleefully accept the distinction of being a “traitor,” claiming that the fact that Bak Mei was able to kill several Shaolin brethren and escape retribution proves the strength of their style.

As a style, Bak Mei emphasizes fighting in close quarters and focuses especially on the hands and arms. A particular emphasis on the style is, instead of blocking or avoiding attacks, to instead intercept and “jam” an attack before the opponent builds up force, then countering with vicious strikes, throws, locks and takedowns. It’s noted as having a lot in common with Leopard Kung Fu, one of the Five Southern Animal Styles for its emphasis on aggression, speed, and counterattacks.

Baoquan: “Leopard Fist,” i.e. Leopard Style, and one of the famous Five Animal Styles of Southern kung fu. In contrast to its fellow animal style Tiger Style, the Leopard does not overwhelm the opponent with strength, but instead relies on outmaneuvering them with speed; the style combines speed and aggression, focusing on elbows, knees, low kicks and “leopard punches” in close range. Fast footwork is used to step into range and then out of it, with counterattacks that are sudden, quick and indirect, with the aim of striking at vulnerable areas to debilitate and cripple the opponent.

Leopard Style does not block when it could attack (or to do both at once), and stances never sacrifice speed for stability. The style was supposedly based on the hit-and-run tactics of a hunting leopard, which allows it to take down prey larger than itself, so that a fighter could overwhelm and destroy a larger opponent. As a Shaolin martial art, this is one of the Chinese styles that Ensei is familiar with, though his actual training in it is limited.

Choy Gar: “Choy Family Fist,” known as Caijiaquan in Mandarin. This style was founded in the 17th century by Choy Gau Lee, one of the “Five Family Elders;” this is different from the Five Elders of Shaolin, but closely related to them. One of the Five Elders, Jee Sin Sim See, taught five students who all founded famous martial arts styles that they passed on through their own family lines; these are the Five Family Elders.

Choy Gar is a style created with self-defense in a specific environment in mind. Stances are low and stable and footwork is swift; the body and arms mimic the quick strikes of the snake. Unlike the many wide stances and open techniques of Northern martial arts, Choy Gar’s more contained movements and tighter stances make it better utilized in the cramped, crowded alleys and streets of the many megacities of Southern China. In Choy Gar, the strength of the lower body is paramount; strong legs are considered a necessity to practice the style because of the low style and the prevalence of powerful kicking techniques used to capitalize on openings made by the quick, deceptive strikes with the arms.

Choy Li Fut: Known in Mandarin as Cai Li Fo. This martial art was founded (and named after) an amalgam of styles learned by its founder.

Choy Li Fut was founded as a style in 1836 by Chan Heung (1806-1875), who learned Choy Gar from a Buddhist monk named Choy Fook, Li Gar from a man named Li Yau-San, and Fut Gar from his uncle, Chan Yuen-Wu. Having learned three of the Five Family Styles, Chan combined them into a style he created to honor them all and the heritage they represented. He founded his school at the local family temple in the village of his birth, but as his reputation spread. Hundreds of people came from surrounding villages to learn from him. In 1839, Chan Heung was forced to close his school temporarily to fight in the First Opium War (1839-42); his experiences with the ineffectual bureaucracy and corruption of the Qing government, which he blamed for the war’s loss, inspired Chan to leave his home to set up many Choy Li Fut schools throughout Southern China to spread both his martial arts and anti-Qing revolutionary sentiments. This connection with anti-Qing revolutionaries has given the style a fairly interesting history that’s been the subject of many a story.

As noted above, Choy Li Fut is an amalgam of several martial arts that ultimately derived from Shaolin; as such, it incorporates various aspects of Northern and Southern styles: the powerful arm and hand techniques of several Shaolin animal styles from the South, with the extended circular movements, twisting body, and agile footwork of Northern Shaolin. The style is noted for dramatic twists of the upper body and “whipping” motions of the arms to build up greater power, as well as stances whose height strikes a middle ground between the very low, rooted stances of styles like Hung Ga and the very high, agile stances of styles like Wing Chun, to try to attain a middle ground between stability and speed. It is a very comprehensive martial art system, with strikes at various ranges, locks, grapples, takedowns, and weapon techniques.

Bruce Lee, otherwise noted for being very critical of many other Chinese martial arts as being ineffective in modern contexts, complimented Choy Li Fut highly: “Choy Li Fut is the most effective system I’ve seen for fighting more than one person. It is one of the most difficult styles to attack and defend against. Choy Li Fut is the only style that traveled to Thailand to fight the Thai boxers and hadn’t lost.”