Our Kung fu lineage

The history of Fujian White Crane Kung fu

The beginning of White Crane Kung fu

There is general agreement that Fujian White Crane was originally developed by Fang Chee-Niang. The story of why she learned to copy the movements of a crane has been told elsewhere. How accurate that is I leave as an exercise for the reader.

However, the point is, that the movements are based on the movements of a crane in defence and attack. Like the crane one's movements must be light, but swift. The major lesson from the crane is that attacks and defence aren't based on strength. Instead they are based on deception and redirection.

Her father was a disciple of Shaolin Kung fu and she started to incorporate the crane's movements into her training. This was about the middle of the 18th century

The development of the styles

Since then there has been a range of styles: sleeping crane fist, crying crane fist, eating crane fist, flying crane fist, shaking crane fist and whooping crane. Unfortunately many styles tend to over emphasise a limited range of movements. Our tradition can be seen as more "holistic" than that. Our style is derived from the Whooping crane style as developed by Xie Zhong Xiang.

Xie Zhong Xiang taught Higashionna Kanryo who was the teacher of Chojun Miyagi - the founder of Okinawan Goju Ryu Karate. As a result some similarities can be seen between Goju Ryu kata and White Crane forms.

Grand Master Huang

GM Huang was taught by Xie Zhong Xiang and was known as the "the young champion" because of all his victories. It was after over 30 years of Kung fu that GM Huang discipled to GM Cheng. Because of his skill in White Crane GM Huang rapidly acquired a high level of skill in Tai ji. This is largely because he was taught to "relax, relax, relax."

Wee Kee-Jin

Wee Kee-Jin was the last student of GM Huang to be taught all four of the White Crane sets. He was tasked to carry the tradition on and to teach more widely.

Alan Jeffery

Alan started to learn White Crane from Wee Kee-Jin in 1991. He was authorised to teach it in 1995.