UK Lam Family Hung Kuen

Lam Sai Wing

The Lam Family’s Hung Gar legacy begins with Lam Sai Wing who is widely considered as one of the best martial artist of his time and most certainly one of the most well known gung fu masters of all times.

Lam Sai Wing (1860) was born in Ping Chow, a small village in Namhoi district of Kwangtung province, China. He was brought up in a family of expert gung fu masters and following his family tradition started learning gung fu and traditional Chinese medicine from a very young age under his father Lam Che-Chung, and grandfather, Lam Geui-Chung. His strong interest, natural ability and unbreakable dedication in gung fu allowed the young Lam Sai Wing to learn and progress rapidly. In time he mastered his family style but was still yearning for more. His hunger to learn further and dedication to improve, perfect his skill led him to seek out and train with some of the most well know gung fu masters of his time.

Lam Sai Wing’s search ended with the legendary folk hero Wong Fei Hung. For those who are new to Chinese martial arts, Wong Fei Hung is without a doubt one of the most renowned, respected and talked about gung fu masters of all time. His life and exploits has been immortalized by hundreds of movies, publications, TV&Radio shows, comic books etc. In-fact so famous, that he has become a household name all over China, Hong Kong and most parts of south-east Asia. For Hung Gar practitioners around the world, he is considered as the father of the modern day Hung Gar due to his additions and the pivotal role on the development of Hung gar as we know today.

The young Lam Sai Wing was fortunate to become one of Wong Fei Hung’s indoor disciples. He trained under the careful guidance of his master for decades, learning and mastering everything, including Wong Fei Hung’s famous dit da skills and lion dance. He eventually became the chosen successor of Wong Fei Hung to carry on the tradition and teachings of the Hung Gar style. In those days open challenges within the martial arts circles were common and as part of tradition it was a known fact for the top disciple of a master to fight first in any challenge match. As a result of such tradition, Lam Sai Wing faced many expert gung fu fighters who came to cross hands (challenge) with his master. With his victories, his fame grew and he soon became one of the most respected figures within the martial arts communities. There are countless real life accounts, stories and incidents about Lam Sai Wing and his life, from open challenge matches to recorded incidents such as the Lok Sin theater incident where Lam Sai Wing and a handful of his students were trapped and forced to fight for their life against 100s of armed opponents and survived without a scratch. Sticking to the main topic we’ll leave these stories for another time.

Besides his martial and medical skills, Lam Sai Wing was respected for his strong character, honesty, righteousness and moral values. He is also well known for his endless efforts to teach, spread and preserve the art of Hung Gar and teachings of Chinese Martial arts. He was the first Hung Gar master to publish books on the style. To this day his 3 books are the best Hung Gar books ever published and considered as the treasures of Hung Gar style. Lam was an excellent teacher and taught his skills openly to the public. Mass of students from all over southern China came to study under him. Being an excellent teacher, he trained many talented and high caliber students. He was also asked to instruct the army in martial arts and became the head instructor for the new Republics Chinese army in Canton. Lam Sai Wing did not have children of his own, but adopted a young orphaned boy (Lam Cho) whose parents had passed away when the boy was still very young. Lam Sai Wing loved and raised Lam Cho like his own son and taught him everything he new about Chinese Martial Arts and Medicine. Some years after the fall of Ching Dynasty and in early years of the Republic, Lam Sai Wing was invited to live and teach in Hong Kong. Lam Sai Wing eventually moved to Hong Kong, taking his nephew with him. Soon after moving to Hong Kong, Lam Sai Wing set up the Southern Martial Physical Culture Association (Nam Mou Taiyuk Wui) where he continued teaching and spreading the art of Hung Gar. Lam Sai Wing passed away in 1943.