Master the Art of Kung Fu Today

Tsai Li Fo's Founders In the mid 1700's, Chin Siu Dek's ( Chan Siu Duk ) great great great grandfather Chan Woo was a 10 year old orphan. Knowing this, local monks allowed him to live in the Quan Yin temple where they began training him in the way of Kung-Fu. Then at around the age of 35, as the Manchu's began killing monks left the temple taking three fighting books with them. These books date back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
 

   In 1802, Jimmy H Woo's Chin Siu Dek great great great grandfather Chan Heung Ying, founder of Tsai Li Fo San Soo was born in the King Mui village (also known as Mui Gung, Gung Moy, King Mui or Zin Mui), In San Wui district county in Kwantung province. He began his training in Tsai Li Fo at the age of seven under the guidance of four Buddhist monks; his uncle Chan Yuen Woo with whom he studied with for ten years, Choy Fok whom he studied with for four years learning kicking, and Cho Ching whom taught him Buddhism and Shao-lin open palm techniques.
 

   In 1836 Chan Hueng ( Chen Leung ) would combine the Five Family Style of Choy Li Mo Liu and Hung to form what is known today as Tsai Li Hoc Fut and Hung or simply Tsai Li Hoc Fut ( also Tsai Li Fo For short). Chan Heung has two sons, Chan On Pak ( born 1839), and Chan Koon Pak. Chan Heung died in 1875 and is burried in King Mui.
 

   At the age of 4, around 1906, Chin Siu Dek was sent to China to begin his wu-shu training under the guidance of his grandfather, Chan Koon Dah and his Great Uncle, Chan Si Hung (his father's uncle) known as crazy devil Hung.
 

   In the 1930's, the Japanese swept down into China. In 1941 or 1942, Chan Hung at the age of 73, was forced to fight the Japanese regional karate champion as a public display of  Japanese superiority he killed his opponent within 20 seconds. He and most of his students were then shot, stabbed or machine gun to death. This wiped out all traces of Tsai Li Fo San Soo on the mainland of China.
 

   It was during this period that many of the early arts of Chinese fighting were destroyed. First by the Japanese, then after world war 2, by Mao Tse Tung (the communist). Mao destroyed anything from the past including the purest of martial systems (books), temples, and any other fighting or religionist systems he could find.
 

   Between 1935 and 1937 as the Japanese invaded southern China, Chin Siu Dek took two secret fighting books and one book of forms from his family home in China and left for Hawaii, Within a few years Jimmy became bored with things and had his family buy him the passport belonging to a dead cousin name Koon Haw Woo so he could enter the U.S.
 

   Arriving in this country with no money, Chin Siu Dek lived at, and taught Tsai Li Fo San Soo at the L.A cousin Club (an all Chinese club like the Y.M.C.A). He later dropped the name Koon at the request of his female english teacher who asked him if she could call him Jimmy, the name stuck for the rest of his life. Then in 1962, after working for many years as a produce manager, he bet a large sum of money on a horse race winning 6 to 8 thousand dollars. He quickly opened his El Monte Kung-Fu studio where he taught until his death on Feb 14th 1991 of heart failure. Grand Master Chin Siu Dek (Jimmy H Woo) is burried in Newport Beach, Ca, at Pacific View Memorial Cemetery in the Bayview Terrace area, Lot 875.
 

                           KUNG FU SAN SOO IS NOT A HOBBY BUT A WAY OF LIFE: JIMMY H WOO.