Known for his roles in martial arts movies such as his debut in"Shaolin Temple" (1982) (also Jet Li's movie debut), "Yellow Crane Fighter" (1988) and more recently Xu Haofeng's two martial arts movies "The Sword Identity" (2011) and "Judge Archer" (2012), as well as scores of other movies and TV shows, Yu Chenghui also dedicated his life to martial arts outside of the movies.

His devotion to martial arts can be seen in the way he revived a long forgotten sword style to which he spent 14 years of his life researching and thinking about practically day and night. Yu's research found that there was evidence of the usage of shuangshoujian 双手剑, or the Chinese two-handed straight sword, in the Tang dynasty (618-907) but that by the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) the style had already been forgotten and even with a sword manual nobody could use it anymore.

 

In a movie-like moment Yu created the style of shuangshoujian (Chinese two-handed straight sword) through being inspired by a thunderstorm in 1975, essentially bringing this long-forgotten form back into contemporary use. He also wrote manuals for it. Due to Yu's work, shuangshoujian became included in traditional competitions in China at the end of the 1970s.

Yu himself won several martial arts championships, along with his numerous acting roles. He also served as martial arts choreographer in the 1993 film "Heroes Returning to the East," for which he earned a special award for “his unique achievements in martial arts choreography on screen” from the Chinese Wushu Association.

 

Always memorable onscreen, he also truly embodied the spirit of martial arts culture off screen. The video here shows grandmaster Yu Chenghui's graceful technique in shuangshoujian (two handed straight sword).