More Chan Tai San stuff…
In his late 50’s, Chan Tai-San decided to move to the United States and to establish his own school. He first went to Canada, where friends of his put him up and helped him find students. He taught a lot of guys out of a particular system, which was a combination of Choy Lay Fut and White Crane. They had similar traininig, so it was easy for Sifu Chan to teach them. However, it appears that Sifu Chan also considered two factors
First, they were not HIS students, their loyalty was to their original teacher.
Second, Sifu Chan knew he was eventually going to the US, these students were temporary.
Often, guys from Canada would come down to visit us, we would ask them what they’d learned from Sifu, they’d show us the forms. The first thing we noticed, they had neither the traditional openings nor closing to the Lama forms…
When I asked sifu Chan WHY, he said exactly what I am relaying to you, so people “in the know” would know they weren’t “in the door”…
In New York, Chan Tai-San first taught in a number of local schools, with similar things going on. I’d meet people who’d learned with him, and they show stuff, it was altered… As sifu would say, “they didn’t know, they’d never know”
I actually found this to be a rather common Chinese attitude. I visited a teacher who was very good friends of my Sifu. I noticed that his students were all doing footwork which was WRONG. So I asked the sifu, if maybe I was mistaken???
“Oh no, you’re right, that footwork is wrong. But only you and I know that, they’ll never know that”
I trained with Sifu in the Chan Family Association on Bayard Street, where Chan Tai- San had been appointed lion dancing and kung-fu instructor. These classes were always different from the stuff Sifu would do outside, for example when hired to teach in another school. A prime example, some claimed Sifu Chan didn’t remember his forms.
In reality, he didn’t remember the altered forms he showed those “outside the door” but if I screwed up a set that he’d shown me 5 years earlier, he’d scream and show me the correct way. A few times Steve Ventura and I purposely screwed up to see what would happen. Always the same, if you got the “A version”, Sifu Chan could correct you for the rest of your life…
The classes remained rather small for a number of reasons. First, Chan Tai-San only spoke Cantonese dialect and had trouble communicating. Second, he was no longer a young man and disliked having to demonstrate the more difficult techniques. If there were tornado kicks, butterfly, spin ups, rolls, etc, teh seniors had to do it. When teaching the seniors, sifu chan frequently resorted to hand motion to indicate these techniques.
Since Chan Tai-San lived in the association hall, there was no set class time. Students could come and leave when they wanted.
When I first started training, Sifu insisted we train the following basics, single techniques across the floor of the gym. The basics included;
- Kahp Choih (stamping strike)
- Paau Choih (long uppercut)
- Chyuhn Choih (straight punch)
- Tau Bouh Seung Gwa (steal step twin backfist)
Mah Sik Pak Yik (spin into horse stance crane wing strike) - Tau Bouh Bin Choih (steal step whip strike)
Mah Sik So Choih (spin into inward swing strike)
Gung Sik Jong Choih (bow stance forearm strike) - A combination of Kahp Choih, Paau Choih and Chyuhn Choih.
Despite the fact that Lama Pai has a wide variety of kicking techniques, they were never practiced as basics.
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