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Jet Li made Fong Sai-yuk a household name, while Chen Kuan-tai impressed as Hong Xiguan in Executioners from Shaolin. Did these heroic figures actually exist?
- Hong Xiguan, credited with inventing the hung gar style of kung fu, is said to have been born in 1745 and to have fallen in with anti-Manchu revolutionaries
- Fong Sai-yuk was, like Hong, a student at the reputed southern Shaolin Monastery, and is said to have been almost invulnerable
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The swordfighting heroes of wuxia films are generally drawn from novels, but the heroes of kung fu films are often folk legends who may have really existed.
Wong Fei-hung is well known, but below we look at two other heroes, Hong Xiguan and Fong Sai-yuk.
Both are believed to have trained at the southern Shaolin Monastery in Fujian â an off-shoot of the famed Shaolin Temple in the Songshan mountains which itself may or may not have existed.
Little is recorded about the lives of such legends, and some of the below is based on an essay, âWhen the Legends Dieâ, by Hong Kong film historian Ng Ho, among other sources.
Hong Xiguan and his wife Fang Yongchun
Hong Xiguan (aka Hung Hei-gun) is credited as the inventor of hung gar, which, along with wing chun, is the most well-known of the southern styles of kung fu. In legend, and perhaps fact, Hong is one of the fighters who fled the southern Shaolin Monastery when it was burned down by the Manchus.
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