lit a candle 4h agoI only heard about this because my daughter in law is from Ipoh and she called me this morning, still half asleep, to tell me. I had never heard of Chin Woo before she explained it, how he joined at fourteen and just never left, seventy some years with the one place. We travelled through Malaysia in 2015, my husband and I, and I remember the markets in Ipoh more than anything, not knowing any of this history was walking around us. Eighty six years old. Anyway I just wanted to write something down, I don't really know the man or the organization, but it moved me, the loyalty of it, staying with one thing your whole life. Rest well, Datuk.
Their story
Datuk Ooi Foh Sing was a Malaysian Chinese community leader who gave more than 70 years of his life to the Ipoh Chinese Chin Woo Athletic Association, the martial arts and cultural body founded in Ipoh in 1924. Known in Chinese as Huang Baosheng, he served as the association's president…
Datuk Ooi Foh Sing was a Malaysian Chinese community leader who gave more than 70 years of his life to the Ipoh Chinese Chin Woo Athletic Association, the martial arts and cultural body founded in Ipoh in 1924. Known in Chinese as Huang Baosheng, he served as the association's president from 2011 until his death, and was also a two-term national president of the Federation of Chin Woo Associations Malaysia. He died in the early hours of 11 October 2026 at the age of 86.
Ooi joined Ipoh Chin Woo in 1953 at the age of 14. He became its troupe leader at 20 and joined its governing council at 21. He went on to serve as its general secretary for nine years and then as deputy president for 25 years before taking the presidency. At national level he spent eight years as secretary-general of the Federation of Chin Woo Associations Malaysia, and he later served as a vice-president of the World Chin Woo Federation, which he helped to establish in 2011 with other Chin Woo leaders.
Under his leadership the association became known for far more than martial arts. In 1977, while he was general secretary, Ipoh Chin Woo formed a dragon dance team with a 120 foot luminous dragon, the first such team in Ipoh. From 1994 the association offered marriage registration, and Ooi served for more than ten years as an assistant registrar, at one point registering 120 couples in a single day at Wisma Chin Woo. The association also ran regular blood donation drives for Ipoh's hospital, numbering 134 by 2026, and in 2021 received a Ministry of Health award for its commitment to blood donation during the Covid-19 pandemic. It held talks on thalassaemia and helped patients who could not afford medicine.
Ooi often said that martial arts training begins with character, discipline and self-control. In 2024 he hosted the association's centenary gala dinner, which fell on his 85th birthday, and spoke of the Chin Woo spirit of community service, including fundraising for schools, hospitals, orphanages and disaster relief. In an interview about six months before his death he summed up his life in a line: he had entered Chin Woo at 14 and, at 86 and grey haired, was still a Chin Woo man.
Ooi died at about 2.35am on Sunday 11 October 2026, The Star reported. The cause of death was not made public. He is remembered in Perak as a steady, lifelong servant of Chinese culture, martial arts and charitable work.
Biography adapted from The Star (Ivan Loh, 11 October 2026), Sin Chew Daily (11 October 2026) and news reports.
Photos
1Datuk Ooi Foh Sing in 2010
by People Forever
From social media
1Posts by Ooi, and posts about them, kept here so they are not lost.