Hing Chao

Hing Chao is the founder of the Hong Kong Culture Festival, Chairman of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Earthpulse Society, Executive Director of the International Guoshu Association, and a leading advocate for Chinese martial studies in Hong Kong. He has initiated many research and educational projects on the subject. He co-founded the Journal of Chinese Martial Studies with the renowned professor of history, Ma Mingda, and a scholar in Chinese traditional physical education, Professor Ma Lianzhen in 2009. In 2013, Chao entered into strategic partnership with the Centre for Applied Computing and Interactive Media of the City University of Hong Kong to build the ‘Hong Kong Martial Arts Living Archive’, which has been an ongoing project since. He has organized several large-scale new media kung fu exhibitions in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Switzerland, Australia etc., such as ‘300 Years of Hakka Kung Fu: Its Digital Legacy and Future’ (2016), ‘Lingnan Hung Kuen Across the Century: Kung Fu Narratives in Cinema and Community’ (Hong Kong: 2017-2018); ‘Kung Fu Motion: A Living Archive’ (Switzerland: 2018); and ‘Safeguarding the Community: An Intangible Cultural Heritage New Media Exhibition’ (2018), among many others.  Chao has also initiated projects that reconstruct the theories and studies of traditional martial arts in Hong Kong from an academic perspective, such as Hong Kong Martial Arts Research (work in progress), Hong Kong Hakka Unicorn Cultural Research (completed in January, 2018), and Hong Kong Hakka Kung Fu Research Studies (completed in April 2018).

Aside from carrying out research and preservation work in the frontline, Chao is also active in the education of related subjects. He organises courses at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the University of Hong Kong, serving also as Visiting Lecturer himself.  He has also published several books on his chosen subjects, such as Spirit of a Nation: Development of Chinese Martial Art, 1900 to Present (2009), The Hong Kong Martial Arts Community (2014), 300 Years of Hakka Kung Fu: Its Digital Legacy and Future (2016), Mountains, Oh Mountains! An Oral History of the Orochen Hunters (2016), Lingnan Hung Kuen: Kung Fu in Cinema and Community (2018), among many others. He launched the course in Chinese martial studies at the University of Hong Kong in 2015.