Fu style Internal Martial Arts 傅式

Fu style Internal Martial Arts 傅式內家拳

Fu Style Internal martial arts is referring the martial arts system that is created by Fu ZhenSong and his son Fu Wingfei.

Fu ZhenSong(Fu ChenSong) (傅振嵩)

History

Fu ZhenSong(Fu ChenSong) (傅振嵩) was born in Mapo village (馬坡村) , Biyangxian county, in Huaiqing City area, Henan province, China at 1881. He began learning martial arts at age 16 from his local landlord’s martial arts teachers. They are Chen style Tai Chi Quan (陳式太極拳) master Chen YanXi (陳延熙) and Bagua Zhang (八卦掌) master Jia QiShan (賈岐山) (also known as Jia FengMing (賈鳳鳴) ). Chen Yanxi was the famous Tai Chi Quan master in Chen village. Jia QiShan was student for Bagua Zhang founder Dong HaiChuan (董海川). Fu Zhensong did not received a formal school education but he was very smart and practiced very hard. After 8 years of study, he became the top student of the two masters in the local village and got approval to start teaching others.

At the age of 26, Fu had become very famous for single-handedly defeating a large mob of bandits that attacked his village; he did so armed with a metal pole.

Fu traveled to Beijing where he met Bagua Zhang master Ma Gui (馬貴) and the other great Baguazhang masters of that period. He learned from them and exchanged information about the art. He also meet his another teacher Song WeiYi (宋唯一), who is a Wudang master of General Li JingLin (李景林).

General Li JingLin 李景林

In 1920 Fu joined the central army. The then Brigade Commander (later General), Li Jinglin (“God of Sword" Li) made Fu head of the 100 person strong martial arts company after he demonstrated his arts in a competition. General Li JingLin had also learned Wudang sword from Sung Wei-I, and created a swordsmanship team in the company to analysis and summarize his Wudang swordsmanship for combat. Fu ZhenSong was the team leader of the swordsmanship team, so General Li taught Fu further sword techniques.

In 1926 the company transferred to Beijing. During a martial arts demonstration, “God of spear" Li ShuWen (李書文) and Fu ZhenSong used his spear in a friendly bout. The match ended in a draw. This increased Fu’s fame and both men exchanged their knowledge of spear tactics.

In 1928, three military generals organized the first nation-wide martial arts competition in Nanjing. Fu Zhen Song was one of the judges of the competition. When the generals wanted to test the true skill of the top winner, a young man by the name of Wang, all the judges "nominated" Fu to do the "testing." Fu had no choice but to respect the commands of his seniors and fought with the winner, Wang. According to those present, the battle went on for a long time, and at the end, Fu hit Wang off the stage with one single blow. This was to be one of the high-profile battles Fu was famous for.

During this time, Fu met, befriended and exchanged information with the top Baguazhang and Tai Chi masters of China. He became close friends with Internal martial arts master Sun LuTang(孫祿堂) and Yang Style Tai Chi master Yang ChengFu(楊澄甫).

Fu Zhen Song and four other winners of the competition were invited to the south to teach their arts. Because of this historic event, they were called, "The Five Northern Tigers." These five men were constantly challenged by martial artists in the south, as the southern martial artists were very proud of their arts and refuted the arts of the north. Fu Zhen Song never lost a fight or a challenge.

Fu Zhen Song moved to Guangzhao (Canton) in the Guangdong Province in 1929. By this time, Fu had synthesized his own system by learning various family styles of Tai Chi, Xing Yi and the differing styles of Bagua Zhang. He had created his own version of Tai Chi Quan, Bagua Zhang and other arts.

Fu CheungWun, Yang ChengFu( 楊澄甫), Fu ZhenSong(Fu ChenSong) (傅振嵩) & Fu Wingfai in Guangzhou in 1930s