Huo Yuanjia (1868-1910) was a patriotic martial artist born in the late Qing Dynasty. His ancestral home was located in Cangzhou, Hebei Province. As the founder of Chin Woo Athletic Association, a martial arts school in Shanghai, he was well-known for his outstanding martial arts performance and his righteousness. As a practitioner of the extraordinary Huo family-style martial art “Mizongquan” or literally “Hidden Trace Boxing”, he was widely known as a hero in China for challenging foreign fighters in highly-publicized matches in Tianjin and later in Shanghai. Short as it was, his life was dynamic, dramatic and legendary.

Huo Yuanjia was born in a family which had a long tradition of being practitioners of martial arts. As the story goes, he was born weak and susceptible to illness and therefore his father Huo En forbade him to learn martial arts. However, he practiced martial arts in secret and further developed Mizongquan later on. When he turned an adult, Huo Yuanjia ran a drug store in Tianjin and later founded the “Chin Woo Athletic Association” in Shanghai. In Shanghai, he once defeated a Russian wrestler in a competition. In another case, a Japanese boxer openly challenged him. Huo Yuanjia, who was supposed to have fallen ill, allowed his student Liu Zhensheng to meet the challenge and the Japanese opponent defeated. The “Chin Woo Athletic Association” was a martial arts school Huo Yuanjia started in Shanghai and a few months later he was poisoned by the chamber of commerce. Afterwards, his students and the patriotic martial artists of Shanghai launched a large funeral for him and he was buried in the northern suburbs of Shanghai.       

As it is said, after the Japanese poisoned Huo Yuanjia to death, his favorite student Chen Zhen took revenge for his death. Such a legend was included into a film for the first time by Bruce Lee in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The film was named Fist of Fury and Bruce Lee played the role Chen Zhen. However, there was no such a character as Chen Zhen in history.