Sifu Mark Horton

MARK HORTON began his martial training at the age of eight in Malaysia. His family was living there due to his fathers'work in the British Air Force and, of course, martial art is like a national sport in that part of the world so every little boy joins a Kung Fu school.
The instruction in Asia is still very different to the West in many ways and, because of this, Mark developed very good basics at an early age helping him to develop later enough to learn the more difficult advanced patterns of Chinese Martial Art and to understand the Chinese culture a little better than the average English-boy.
At that time (1968), the Chang Choy School in Petaling Jaya (Malaysia) was already world reknowned for Lion Dancing and strong Choy Li Fut Kung Fu, the popular southern Chinese, Shaolin system, and so this was a perfect place to begin his martial journey, which still continues after more than 30 years !

During those 30 years Mark Horton has practised with & learned from many other great stylists of Chinese traditional systems including Lau Jia, Mei Hua Zhuang, Wing Chun & Shaolin, but has always kept Choy Li Fut close to his heart as the principle style. He has even trained extensively in some of the more modern sytems like Korean Tae Kwon Do, Jeet Kune Do, Japanese Karate, and Western Boxing and always enjoys trying to trace the modern Freestyle movements back to the origin, often in some really obscure Shaolin form .

Teaching on a Full Time basis since 1980, Mark has focused his adult working life on developing the Hong Ying Schools (founded in 1979 by late Master Huang Li He, Mark's former teacher, who passed away in 1985), and trying to establish strong roots in Europe for the beloved Choy Li Fut system. Mark continued to learn from different great masters and often travelled across the world, just to learn one hand form or weapon set, sometimes even as far as Northern China, where he practised Mei Hua Zhuang (northern plum flower fist). He also spent time in both British, then later, Dutch national teams as both competitor and later Coach, but became disillussioned with the 'politics' of various controlling organisations.

Finally, after years of continued learning and practising Mark was accepted as a direct student by the worlds leading "Sifu" (teacher), of Choy Li Fut Kung Fu and Yang style Tai Chi Chuan, namely Grandmaster DOC FAI WONG based in San Francisco, but with school in over 50 countries under the Plum Blossom Federation. Grandmaster is said to have more knowledge than any other Choy Li Fut teacher who has ever lived, so Mark was incredibly happy to reach this point, which he has aimed at, and dreamed of, for many years. Of course, this only helped to strengthen even more the system and student of the Hong Ying schools.

Nowadays, of course, the Choy Li Fut style has grown enormously in popularity in Europe and the US, due in most part to the work of Grandmaster WONG and his direct students. Mark Horton continues to learn from his sifu, who visits Europe regularly to teach the European Instructors directly, making sure that this great system is passed on purely.

Mark Horton is very busy teaching at different schools around Europe throughout the year and studying Accupuncture and advanced level Chi Kung, he is based in Holland where he lives with his eldest daughter (he has 2 more in UK) and his girlfriend. In his sparetime (what little there is) Mark enjoys playing music and 'tinkering' with his handbuilt motorcycle.