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???
So essentialy Ross, what you’re saying is that Chan Tai San was one of those responsible for why good kungfu is dying out?
So essentialy Ross, what you’re saying is that Chan Tai San was one of those responsible for why good kungfu is dying out?
Go **** yourself *******.
intelligent response to a serious question there ST00. Maybe I’ll explain for you neanderthal types?
Ross admits the guy taught people the wrong way because they weren’t “in the door” students. Ok, I can understand this elitist and short sighted view many traditional chinese instructors had or have. however, you can’t argue for one minute that this doesn’t contribute to the crap that is traditional kungfu today. For fukk sake Ross describes watching an entire class doing footwork wrong! The very foundation of a lot of martial arts and they were taught wrong because of some outdated method of thinking that only a few shoudl get the real thing?!
Can we please respect Mr. Ross’s request to keep this thread pure out of respect for his master. A new thread has been created to deal with this topic.
Originally posted by ShaolinTiger00
[B]David, if you don’t mind, Could you elaborate a little bit upon your personal relationship with sifu? You mention is was “complicated”.
Btw, I think there is something to be said about traditional kung fu here. - fighting’s ultimate level is killing each other. It’s one thing to batter each other in a ring, or your kwoon. It’s one thing to defend your life from an attack.
But when you are the predator and kungfu is the vehicle for this.
You have crossed into another world. [/B]
I thought I already got a little into what made us conflicted.
We worked our azzes off to learn with him. We put up with his personality, often his abuse. I paid off his gambling debts more than once. I shuttled him around the country, paying his entire way. I translated for him. I ran his group classes.
We felt that in return, Chan Tai San tarnished both his image and the meaning of being a senior. By teaching crap to the “outsiders” there were people walking around talking about how Chan Tai San only taught worthless made up fluff. By “adopting” people in late night cash sessions, he cheapened our legit adoptions. To this day, you still have people walking around (and posting on BBS) telling you that Sifu Chan knew nothing…
Also, if you think I have a bad temper, you never knew Sifu Chan. He had a horrible temper, and when it was in effect, he lost all rational thought.
Here’s something I’ll share with you. Lilly Lau has a letter from my sifu denouncing me. Much has been made of this letter, except that I was with my sifu less that two days after it was written, and remained with him for another 8 years or so until he passed. Nor do people know WHY the letter was written…
My sifu knew Lau Fat Man. He knew Lilly since she was a child. So they were close almost like family. I didn’t have any problem with that. I had problems with her behavior, particularly during the funerral of my Si-Mo (my teacher’s wife)
I was VERY CLOSE with my si-mo. So was my then wife (now ex-wife). We were very upset with her passing. It was a coincidence, but Lilly Lau was in town at the time. My sifu took her out to tea, despite the funneral arrangements, and this was standard and not bad…
But at tea, Lilly Lau started doing stuff that pizzed me off. Lilly was just building her school and her federation at the time. She didn’t speak of it while my sifu was at the table. But when he got up to go to the bathroom, she handed out her card to all the senior students. She said she could quickly teach them some basic sets and make them members of her new association. As soon as Sifu Chan returned to the table… she stopped
I found this very low class… but it got worse
At a Chinese funneral, the family sits by the casket and thanks every visitor who attends. You MUST be sitting there ALL DAY. And you MUST thank all who come to pay respects.
Lilly Lau, acting like a teenage girl, not a respected adult teacher in teh Mo Lum, pulled my sifu outside to talk to him. Thus, when several well known NYC area sifu arrived to pay respects, my sifu, the HUSBAND, was not there to thank them…
I went and got Sifu Chan, I pulled him back to the casket and made sure he did the right thing. I then told Lilly Lau that she needed to act the correct way. She instead threatened to use her power to have me kicked out of the NACMAF federation (ie Sifu Tai Yim’s federation)
At this point, I told her that if she was a man, she’d have to put her hands up, but being that she wasn’t, the seniors KICKED HER OUT OF THE FUNNERAL
My teacher lost his mind! I was the seniro most present (Steve Ventura was in Florida) so I took responsibility. I did so not only because that was what the tradition was (as the senior most in the group present) but because it was the RIGHT THING TO DO…
I also called Sifu Tai Yim and told him that if he wanted to kick me out of the federation on Lilly Lau’s word, so be it. He just laughed and said it was HIS federation, NOT hers!
My sifu gave Lilly Lau the letter, because he was angry. But the letter never changed the fact of who I was, nor the fact that Lilly Lau acted totally low class at the funneral of my Si-Mo…
(more)
As for kung fu, fighting and fighters…
I’ve met a lot of traditional fighters. I know people that are from traditional lineages that are stone cold killers. If you’ve paid attention, I never said that there arent’ ANY skilled fighters in TCMA. What I’ve said is that they are a very small percentage of those who trained…
Being in the Mo Lum for YEARS, meeting all sorts, having seen “inside” in ways many have not, even having trained with some very shady types, I’ve come to see that when it came to TCMA, the fighters were based not so much on the quality of their training or getting any sort of secrets…
Rather, the fighting tradition in TCMA is based upon the “tough guy”… INdividuals who would have been nasty and dangerous regardless, based upon the lives they led and the things they experienced.
Sifu Chan was a bad kid from DAY ONE. He would go down into the village below the temple, get into fights, hang out with gangsters and revolutionaries. He challenged western boxers. The monks found him impossible! Jyu Chyuhn beat him constantly with good reason!
Sifu Chan then went on to be a career military man. In China, career military wasn’t all that different from being an all out crimminal. Know anything about Chang Kai Shek and his green gang connections?
Based upon his history with the gangs and secret societies, the Communist asked Sifu Chan to be the guy who went around and tried to recruit them. He walked into their places and announced “join the party or DIE”!
The Lama/Hop Ga/White Crane community is FULL of gangsters. That’s one reason it was hard to find info on these styles before we opened up the history to people. When I was doing research, I was dealing with killers.
These sorts of guys, if they lived through the knife fights and gang scuffles, got toughter each time. Many did NOT live to see the next day… We end up with the guys in their 40’s and 50’s who lived through all this stuff, so by then they were TOUGH AS NAILS… It had nothing to do with secret training or DIM MAK charts
Ross,
Did you see any difference in flavor between the way those old guys fought and moved and the way you see people using kung fu today?
Any idea what your sifu thought of Sun Yat Sin and the Boxer Rebellion?
Master Killer,
I have seen a fair amount of these guys in action. The most interesting ones were the times I saw stuff settled in the park in SF. I watched a White Crane guy KO a BJJ guy for example
Think back to the old UFC and guys whose hands dropped and often both guys getting hit at the same time. Unlike a tight guard with the other hand protecting the head, most of the TCMA people I saw left lots of holes or “leaks”… but being rough characters, they got hit, kept going and such.
I honestly think the fixation on stuff like iron body, etc is because these guys knew from experience that they got hit a lot when fighting, so in their world they worked on being “tougher” and “taking more”… where the modern fighter works on better defense..
The huge irony is, what these guys used was what a lot here would call “kickboxing”. I’ve seen tons of punches, elbows, knees and low kicks, some wrestling. Unless you call eye goughing “tiger claws” I never saw much “animal kung fu” in any sense…
Among the fighters I knew, regardless of the “style” or the lineage, they all seemed to rely on a lot of the same stuff… When push came to shove, there were only a few things that people learned worked.
That is precisely the “san shou idea” and was a result of the peasant military division. When they got all these famous fighters together, and they were sharing openly their “secrets”, they found stuff that worked… and it wasn’t secret dim mak strikes 
I did Hung Ga and Shuai Jiao before I met Chan Tai San. After I met Chan Tai San, I got the chance to work with guys like Y C Wong, Adam Hsu, Wong Ching, etc… I found more in common than in difference.
I found more in common with Lama and Hsing Yi than Lama and “Shaolin” styles actually…
The huge irony is, what these guys used was what a lot here would call “kickboxing”.
makes sense to me, for the most part it’s all short powerful shots that are no nonsense. No flower. The flower looks good but the quick stuff is what wins.
As for being tough and getting tough. I think it’s a good idea. I’m not saying you shouldn’t work on your defense but working with all these fancy blocks and dodges often times just gets you into trouble, sort of sets you on the defensive. In real fights atleast, taking the shots makes or breaks you.
Originally posted by lkfmdc
I found more in common with Lama and Hsing Yi than Lama and “Shaolin” styles actually…
Thats interesting I also feel the same way regarding the Hop gar that I train and the Hsing-i I train. I think the strategy/mindset is very similar.
deleted off topic.
People have asked me, am I as good as my teacher? Will I ever be as good as him?
The answer, it’s easy, NO
He started at around 12, I started at around 9, but he trained EVERY DAY, all day, that is all he did. I did dumb stuff like go to grade school, junior high school, high school, college…
I’ve had a few “non sport” events in my life… Chan Tai San had a life full of them. None of mine were really life threatening… I had a knife pulled on me twice, that’s opposed to sifu having a gang with meat clevers chase him down a street with the real intent of killing him
Chan Tai San fought in three wars (world war II, civil war, cultural revolution). He has killed people, period, end of story…
I don’t have the same mind set. I had a “challenge match” in college, I remember thinking, “well, this is supposed to be no rules, but no one is gonna get hurt”… after I broke the guy’s nose I asked him if he wanted to stop…
Chan Tai San was the epitomy of the first of the Ten Character True Forumla = “Chan”
“ruthlessness; when fighting you do whatever is necessary”
Sifu Chan was in Toronto staying in a school when there was a gang war going on. The owner of the school was in one gang, a guy from another gang broke in one night.
Sifu Chan said, he knew the guy had a gun, he knew he was there to kill someone.
He didn’t panic, he just crawled under the beg with a whip chain. He waited until he saw the guy’s feet, swept them out with the whip chain…
“Then what” we asked? The quick answer, that guy didn’t get a chance to use his gun… Actually, I don’t know what happened, sifu didn’t say exactly… I actually prefer NOT to know…
Chan Tai San was staying with Steve Ventura for a little while (argument with his wife! Really!)
Steve and I were sitting at the dinning room table, talking about something. Sifu Chan comes home, he takes off his coat and starts cooking his dinner like everything is totally normal. Then mentions in passing he just had a brawl on the subway…
We freaked, “are you ok”? I wasn’t even there, my heart was racing. For him, it was just “another day in the office” so to speak, no big deal, another fight, another one in a long history of them, wasn’t the first, probably wouldn’t be the last
The fact that he broke one guy’s knee and threw another onto the tracks wasn’t a big deal, it was “small talk” while he cut his chicken…
The time I ko’d a jerk who grabbed my ex-wife on the street, I sat quietly in a dark room for a few hours and tried to “deal with it”
Different mind set, different values, different life…
The time I ko’d a jerk who grabbed my ex-wife on the street, I sat quietly in a dark room for a few hours and tried to “deal with it”
that’s just because your an MMA sissy ;)
“The time I ko’d a jerk who grabbed my ex-wife on the street, I sat quietly in a dark room for a few hours and tried to “deal with it””
It is very hard to unleash the dragon and then put it back in the box without being devoured in the process.
Well, I’m happier being a “MMA sissy” than being a TCMA tough guy…
I dealt with a lot of gang BS when we had a school in Chinatown. I dealt with associations, and gangs, and gangsters and some of my Sifu’s KARMA…
I was asked by my ex-wife’s family a few times to help them out with certain issues. I found myself having to be a “tough guy” and didn’t exactly like the person who emerged from these situations… my ex-mother-in-law watched me one night deal with the people who were harassing her (my ex-father-in-law had a gambling problem, then skipped town, so they were harassing here and the grandmother). They were Cantonese, so I knew the “right things” to say and the right “names” to drop and “played the part”… my ex-mother-in-law said she’d never realized how part of me was “a Chinese gangster”
I did NOT like that observation…
Sifu Barry said something to me that I’ll never forget one day after practice.
"Bill there are are 2 things that are more important to Chinese men than life itself.
One is gambling. The other is keeping secrets. And secret gambling is the ultimate."
Sifu Ross…
These stories are great… I can see them in my mind the way you write them… Forget making a book, make a film…
I have some things in common with you, speaking Cantonese as well as being the white guy who teaches in place of the Sifu…
Someone once came all the way from Poland to learn from Master Lee Koon Hung and he watched for 10 minutes and passed him to me the rest of the time…
I have spent alot of time with his younger brother Li Siu Hung… and his English bad… So some of these stories are making me crack up cause I know EXACTLY where your coming from…
Anyway, hope to meet you one day, if I am up in NY I will try and look you up, if your ever down in FL, give us a shout…
Joe Keit
I knew your sifu
Here’s a pic
http://message.axkickboxing.com/images/user_uploaded/lkfmdc/group.jpg
Sifu Chan, me, Lee Koon Hung, Wai Hong, Deric Mimms, Anthony Goh
The sort of picture only someone associated with Chan Tai San could wind up in, at the time, Wai Hong and Anthony Goh HATED eachother and were in the very climax of the Easter US Federation vs. USA WKF thing!
My friend in the UK, Steve Richards, did me a great service by saving some pics on his web site… since we are traveling down memory lane…
Sifu Chan teaching applications
http://www.tibetankungfu.com/david_7.jpg
http://www.tibetankungfu.com/david_8.jpg
http://www.tibetankungfu.com/david_5.jpg
http://www.tibetankungfu.com/david_26.jpg
Sifu Chan with White Crane master Chan Hak Fu
http://www.tibetankungfu.com/david_23.jpg
Sifu Chan, myself, Gus Kapros, Mike Parella in SF with the Leung brothers, White Crane under Kwong Boon Fu
http://www.tibetankungfu.com/david_29.jpg
Us with Leung brothers and their Lion dancers, Ming Lum also made his way into the picture
http://www.tibetankungfu.com/david_1.jpg
Hard Qi GOng demo in Canton (year?)
http://www.tibetankungfu.com/david_34.jpg