Sean was a legendary leader of Lingnan Wushu in the late Qing Dynasty. At the age of seven, I began to learn from my uncle Chen Yuan. At the age of fifteen (1823), he was recommended by the Enlightenment Master to learn from Li Youshan, the founder of Guangdong Lijiaquan. Four years later, on the recommendation of the second master, he went to Luofu Mountain in Guangdong Province to learn from Cai Fu, a secular monk, for ten years. As soon as he got down from the mountain, he fought alone for seven times in Zengcheng County, Guangdong Province, and rescued more than 100 villagers and villagers trapped by bandits. He was awarded the title of "dating" by the court. He didn't care about his career at all, and returned to Xinhui County to run a library to practice medicine. At the same time, I compiled a martial arts boxing score, which is divided into three levels: primary, intermediate and advanced. In order to thank and commemorate the cultivation of the three masters, I named it "Cai Lifo Boxing Score". During the period of 1836, it coincided with the Xinhui county government's implementation of the "good policy of attacking bandits and protecting themselves", allowing villages to set up their own protection organizations. At the invitation of the elders in the countryside, Sean returned to Jingmei Village to collect apprentices and spread his skills, marking the official appearance of Cai Lifo Boxing.
Subsequently, Lin Zexu, who came to Guangdong to "ban smoking", tried his best to promote Xinhui's "good strategy of attacking and protecting bandits", and Sean was also hired as the staff of the Governor's Office to help train the "no smoking" water brave in Guangzhou and other regions. Cai Lifo Boxing began to develop in the central city of Guangdong.
After the defeat of the Opium War, Lin Zexu was demoted. Sean led his disciples back to their hometown, put forward the slogan of "strengthening the country by force", widely accepted his disciples and carefully trained them. Two years later, after careful planning, more than 100 male and female disciples were sent to open 44 Cai Lifo's "Wu Hongsheng Guild Hall" in Guangdong and Guangxi, and the resulting "branches" were countless. From then on, Cai Lifo Boxing became the largest sect in Lingnan until the founding of New China.
Soon, Cai Lifo's martial arts organization became the main military force in the early days of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. When the peasant movement broke out, Sean ran around to avoid Zeng Guofan's lobbying and expropriation, and finally became a staff officer in Wang Shida's blessing in the wing of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Sean returned to Xinhui after the "infighting" of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and was chased by the Qing court and forced to flee. He lives by practicing medicine in Hong Kong, Nanyang (Southeast Asia) and America. Therefore, Cai Lifo Boxing became the earliest school of China Wushu spread abroad. In order to safeguard the interests of overseas Chinese, stories such as Sean's unarmed attack on Giles and the killing of Jaguar have been passed down to future generations, and Cai Lifo can still be found in many overseas Chinese communities.
Sean returned to his hometown in his later years and assigned his disciples to set up museums in various places to revive his glory. At the same time, it summarizes the practical experience for many years and writes books for future generations. He died in Jingmei in the first year of Guangxu at the age of 70.
At the beginning of the last century, many disciples of Cai Lifo at home and abroad actively participated in the Revolution of 1911 led by Sun Yat-sen, which virtually pushed the spread of Cai Lifo's martial arts in Guangdong to a new peak. During the Republic of China, Cai Lifo made unprecedented development in Guangzhou, Foshan, Jiangmen, Zhaoqing, Hong Kong and Macao. Some troops from Guangdong and Guangxi, such as the 19th Route Army, also demonstrated the actual combat power of Cai Lifo's martial arts in the cold weapon battle in the anti-Japanese battlefield. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, although the public spread of Cai Lifo Boxing in China has basically stopped for 30 years (1949- 1980), it has an unparalleled deep historical origin overseas. With the rise of international kungfu craze in China in 1970s and 1980s, the spread of Cai Li's Buddhist boxing has not only been restored and continued, but also developed rapidly, covering five continents. According to incomplete statistics, there are 50 countries and regions with a certain scale of Cai Lifo's folk martial arts organizations, and the number of learners is estimated to be above10 million. Therefore, there is an international saying that "Tai Chi is in the north and Cai Lifo is in the south".
In June 2008, Cai Lifo Boxing was approved by the State Council and became a national intangible cultural heritage project. At present, the practitioners of Cai Lifo Boxing in China are mainly distributed in southern areas such as Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan provinces, and the non-governmental organizations have a certain scale and a solid mass base. However, even those who practice in the north of the Yangtze River basically don't know the origin of boxing, so few people know it. So the overall situation is that China is inferior to foreign countries.