The roots of Pak Mei, or White Eyebrow, Kung Fu stem in antiquity back to China’s Qing Dynasty (A.D. 1644-1911). This stretch of time was a period in which one’s martial skill determined one’s survival. It was during this period of political turmoil and chaos that the fighting art of Pak Mei was conceived in the Shaolin Temple.

Pak Mei (pronounced “baahk meih” in Yale Standard Cantonese, but preserved in its more established spelling mode) was the name of one of the most elite members of a group collectively known as the Shaolin Five Ancestors. The other 4 outstanding members included: Ng Mui, Fung Dou Dak, Ji Sin, and Miu Hin. Each of these individuals went on to propagate the seeds of the Shaolin Temple’s martial tactics, spawning fighting systems and styles that continue to flourish throughout the world to date.
Within the walls of the Shaolin monastery, monk Pak Mei was trained in the methods patterned primarily after the Dragon, Snake, and Crane. After leaving the temple, Pak Mei traveled to Mount Omei in Sichuan Province where he spent a large portion of his life perfecting and refining his fighting art. During this point in the evolution of his martial techniques, Pak Mei decided to emphasize the spirit of the tiger and the essence of the leopard within his arsenal of empty-handed combat skills.

Many years later, Pak Mei was able to entrust all of the martial knowledge that he had accumulated to his foremost disciple, Gwong Wei. Little is known about this individual except for the fact that he was the chief abbot of one of the many temples dispersed throughout Omei’s mountainside. The style was then transmitted to monk Jok Fat Wan who traveled with disciple Lin Sang to Guangdong Province. It was at this time shortly after the turn of the 20th Century that Pak Mei’s martial art was introduced to the secular world by way of a chance encounter between the junior monk Lin Sang and layman Cheung Lai Chun…