San Soo is a form of Chinese martial arts.

San Soo has its origins in the very basics of Chinese life two thousand years ago. These fighting tactics were begun in the Kwan-Yin (goddess of mercy) monastery in the village of Pon Hong, Guangdong Province of Southern China. It is said that the monks developed this form of martial arts to protect themselves from bandits and outlaws as they returned with supplies and donations from the nearby villages as well as to maintain their physical fitness. Combinations of kicks, punches, strikes and leverages are based on scientific principles of physics. It follows no set pattern, and is easy to adapt to any given situation.

Jimmy Woo (Chin Siu Dek) is credited with bringing the art to America in the 1930's, finally opening his own studio to teach formally in 1962.

San Soo is not a tournament sport. San Soo incorporates techniques that can remove a threat as quickly and effectively as possible being as it is a combative art. Typical moves during a fight could include blows to the throat, upward blows to the nose, or kicking to the groin, all of which are customarily banned from tournament fighting.

The application of proper technique is paramount for San Soo. This paradigm can be used effectively by smaller, weaker persons against large assailants, as it does not rely on brute force. Therefore, San Soo is useful to women in rape prevention and self-defense. A basic premise of San Soo is there are "no rules in a fight" and hence it is an extremely brutal form of hand-to-hand combat. The swiftness of neutralizing an opponent is another aspect of this paradigm, with some practitioners aiming to end a fight within ten seconds, using merely three blows.

San Soo is an efficient form of hand to hand combat, but this doesn't preclude its practitioners from having respect for human life. This point is demonstrated with a quote from Jimmy H. Woo, “The art of San Soo does not lie in victory or defeat, but in building human character.”