The Green Grass Monk (Ching Cho)

 By Sifu F. McCarthy


The Green Grass Monk, an individual solely connected to the Fut San Hung Sing Kwoon, has been the subject of controversy for many decades.  While he was Jeung Ah Yims most influential teacher responsible for completing his gung fu training, personally grooming him to become a Red Pole for the Hung Mun, and renaming him using a synonym derived from a Hung Mun slogan, the Green Grass Monk was still considered to be nothing more than myth by certain Choy Lee Fut individuals outside of the Fut San Hung Sing Kwoon lineage because there wasn’t any proof of his existence.  This eventually led to a huge debate on a Kung Fu forum where members of all three CLF branches (Chan, Hung Sing & Buk Sing) argued over the topic for a few years.

In a course of individual research various members of the Chan Family of Choy Lee Fut were contacted and any available information on the Green Grass Monk was requested.  All replies were similar in the fact that they all claimed there wasn’t any known information on  the Green Grass Monk in the Chan Heung family archives.  Yet the debate over his existence raged on and younger students were beginning to ask their own teachers about the Green Grass Monk. Still, no one seemed to know anything about this elusive monk.  Then, shortly after 2001 one specific master of the Choy Lee Fut system suddenly claimed that he discovered  that  Green Grass was the Buddhist name for Chan Heung’s third teacher  Monk Choy Fook.   Although no one seemed to buy it, this outrageous claim stunned the entire Choy Lee Fut community.   

    

The idea of Monk Choy Fook having  “Green Grass” or Ching Cho as a buddhist name is a pure fabrication which epically failed on many levels.  Firstly, the Ching Cho (Green Grass) name isn’t a Buddhist monk name at all.  However, Monk Choy Fook did have another name of Lan Tau Fook or Scar Headed Fook because of it catching on fire during the destruction of the southern Shaolin Temple.  As it was such an identifiable mark for Monk Choy Fook,  Monk Ching Cho on the other hand was never mentioned as having any kind of scar on his head and if he did it would have been mentioned as well.  

Next, while Monk Choy Fook finally settled and eventually passed away on MT. Lau Fou, history indicates that Monk Ching Cho (Green Grass) was well established in the Guangxi Mountains as the founder of one of the largest and most powerful tongs in southern China.  The Guangxi mountains  were a great distance away from Mt. Lau Fou and very difficult for an elderly man to travel to and fro.  Additionally, Monk Choy Fooks teachers were Gok Yuen, Lee Sau and Ba Ye Fung and Monk Ching Cho’s Shaolin teacher was Monk Hung Yan.  Therefore, since they weren’t even living in the same area as each other, didn’t have the same teachers nor teach the same style, and only one was known to be the co-founder of the Hung Mun, its quite clear that they aren’t the same people.

In regards to any kind of actual evidence of the Green Grass Monk, Chan Family archives admittedly doesn’t contain any information at all on him.  And, to be fair, the Fut San Hung Sing Kwoon had very little information about him on their end.  But, that didn’t mean the information didn’t exist.  The key was knowing where to look and more importanly what to look for.  As the Hung Mun is a secret society, all of their information is coded in order to trip up any outsiders to the society that may be reading it.    

Since the Hung Mun and southern gung fu systems had a symbiotic relationship, it would make sense that many of the secret hand signals of the fraternal brotherhoods would be embedded throughout the gung fu being taught to the students. The fact that Jeung Ah Yim was a personal student of a Hung Mun co-founder was significant because it (the secret hand signals) was given to him straight from the source.    The essence of the Green Grass Monk can be found all over Jeung Ah Yim’s Hung Sing Choy Lee Fut as he was deeply entrenched with all of the most authentic Hung Mun material all the way down to the name “HUNG SING’ which was given to him by the monk Ching Cho.

In conclusion, there is an ample amount of information out there reaching back as far as 1866 (during Chan Heung & Jeung Yim’s own lifetimes) that provides much detail about the Green Grass Monk including how he actually got the Green Grass name.   Nowhere in the documented evidence does it mention Monk Ching Cho was the alias for Shaolin Monk Choy Fook.  Neither is the Green Grass name connected to the Shaolin Temple itself.  If claiming that Green Grass was Choy Fooks Buddhist name was a mistake than all is understood.  But, if it was an attemtp to absorb an ancestor of the Fut San Hung Sing Kwoon into their own lineage under a false claim, then it is nothing more than a weak attempt.  Ching Cho is NOT monk Choy Fook.  Case Closed.