Huo Yuanjia

Huo Yuanjia (1868 to 1910) was a Chinese martial artist from Jinghai County near Tianjin and a co-founder of the Chin Woo Athletic Association, a martial arts school in Shanghai. Born into a family of traditional Wushu practitioners, he was a frail and often ill child whose father at first discouraged him from training, so he learned the family art of Mizongyi in secret at night. He later made his name by accepting challenges, among them a publicised bout with a Russian wrestler in Tianjin in 1902, and he is remembered in China as a national hero who stood up to foreign fighters in an era of foreign concessions. Because his reputation grew into legend, accounts of his life mix documented events with myth.