Chan On-pak

Chan On-pak (陳安伯, 1838–1896) was the elder son of Choy Li Fut founder Chan Heung and the lifelong keeper of the system’s ancestral school at King Mui village. The genealogy records his name as Tin-ching (陳典承) — the founder’s sons belonged to the “Dian” generation, his younger brother being Tin-lun (典倫), known as Chan Koon-pak — while the world knew him by the courtesy name On-pak.

The divine spear

The family’s second generation ran on distinct strengths: the grandfather Chan Yuen Wu’s palm, the father’s all-around synthesis, and the elder son’s spear. Chinese sources crown On-pak with the nickname Divine Spear On-pak (神槍安伯), a reputation that fixed the family school’s association with the weapon.

His spear was the Five Blossoms spear (五枚槍), rendered in English accounts as “Five Blossoms with One Lance.” Tradition traces the form’s origin to the Buddhist nun Ng Mui (五枚師太) — a lineage attribution the archive marks as school tradition — passing through Choy Fook to Chan Heung and then to On-pak. The form runs to 108 movements. Its technique centers on the three spear fundamentals — ward off (攔), seize (拿), thrust (扎) — assisted by chopping, bursting, pointing, and piercing actions. The maxim is that “the spear strikes along a single line”: the point leaves like lightning and returns like fire. Within the system’s twelve core weapon sets it holds first place.

A life inside the school

On-pak never left. He founded no branch schools, traveled on no teaching circuits, and kept the Hong Sheng ancestral school at King Mui from his father’s death in 1875 until his own in 1896. The two brothers divided the inheritance in the pattern later sources call “one keeps, one spreads” (一守一放): Koon-pak went out to Jiangmen, Foshan, and Guangzhou and built the urban centers, while On-pak held the source.

The keeper’s role was not passive. During his years at the school he organized and stabilized the written corpus of the system — the boxing and weapons manuals of the 193-set curriculum — regularizing the weapon sequences above all and confirming the Five Blossoms spear’s position at their head. Because of that work, the system’s technical record survived the dispersal of its students; the family texts outlasted the families that carried them abroad.

The late Qing years

A correction belongs here. An earlier draft of this record stated that two of On-pak’s students joined the Tongmenghui in 1894. The date cannot be right: the Tongmenghui was founded in Tokyo in 1905 (the Xingzhonghui, its predecessor, dates from 1894 in Honolulu), and On-pak — then 56, keeping the school at King Mui — appears in no revolutionary roster himself.

What the sources support is this: in the late Qing, students and nephews of the family school joined anti-Qing revolutionary activity, and the school’s own “Hung” (洪) tradition carried the movement’s old resonance. One figure, Cheng Si-nam (陳錫南) — described variously as On-pak’s son, Koon-pak’s son, or a disciple — took part around 1911; his exact place in the genealogy remains unverified. The archive accordingly states that the school supported the revolutionary current through its younger men, and no more.

The succession

On-pak’s line stayed at the source. His grandson-class successor Chan Wing-fat (陳永發) carried the ancestral school into the fourth generation, and the disciple Chan Yan (陳恩) held the local transmission. Because the keeper’s line never moved, every “ancestral school” (始祖館) transmission in Choy Li Fut treats On-pak’s branch as the orthodox mainline. The genealogy and the lineage association’s official record name Chan Yiu-chi as On-pak’s son and grandson of the founder — a few English accounts say Koon-pak’s son, against the primary records — and Yiu-chi taught in Guangzhou under his uncle Chan Koon-pak before the line through his students eventually reached Hong Kong, San Francisco, and, in 1997, the Golden Eagle schools in Alabama.

The school today

The school On-pak kept still stands at Jingmei village, Yamen town, Xinhui — built in 1836, the year of the founding. Inside are the tablets and images of the four ancestors: Chan Yuen Wu, Li Yau San, Choy Fook, and Chan Heung, with the second generation listed alongside. Overseas disciples restored the buildings in 1998, contributing 100,000 yuan under Grandmaster Doc-Fai Wong’s leadership, and the village holds a modest family observance, the An-pak Memorial Day (安伯公誕), each year beside the far larger Founder’s Day for Chan Heung.

Cautions

• Dates. Born 1838 (Daoguang 18), died 1896 (Guangxu 22), per the genealogy and the lineage association; earlier English summaries that omit dates relied on secondary material only.
• The spear’s origin. The Ng Mui attribution is school tradition (相傳), not documentary history; the archive preserves the claim with its label.
• “Five Blossoms with One Lance.” English accounts treat the phrase as a nickname; in Chinese sources it names the form (五枚一槍). The archive follows the Chinese reading and keeps the English phrase as its rendering.
• The revolutionary connection. No source places On-pak himself in the revolutionary movement; the documented links run through students and nephews, and Cheng Si-nam’s identity awaits genealogical confirmation.

The record continues

The keeper’s biography is the quiet half of the second generation: what survived did so because someone stayed. The outward half belongs to his brother — see Chan Koon-pak — and the merger of the two lines runs through Chan Yiu-chi into the archive’s own history.