Chan Tai San stories

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101

David,

You should tell the folks more the human side of Sifu Chan, how he was just a regular guy with great skills, no super ego,king of the hill type of attitude we see from so many so called masters nowaday. I remembered one time at dinner, he asked the waiter to bring him some shrimp paste ( a sort of dipping thing like soy source) and ate up two bowls of rice before we even ordered dinner. When I asked him why he ate just rice and shrimp paste and didn’t wait for the rest of the food, his repied was just," I was hungry and need to eat now",lol. I thought it was just hilarious the way he said that.
Hard to believe that was over twenty years ago, time sure went by fast.
Dixon Fung

102

Dixon,

I really don’t know if I’d call Chan Tai San “a regular guy”, I know what you mean, but “regular” just isn’t the word that pops into my head regarding him!

In some sense, he had no pretenses. He was a regular guy in that he’d show you the new jacket he’d bought, tell you how he got a deal. He’d sit and eat with you like you were a regular person, he never tried to be the “high and mighty master” in that sense. As the seniors opened their own schools and had their own students, Sifu Chan still would find time to say “hello” and show something to every student. Maybe it was a move, maybe he’d grab me, a senior, or even my ex-wife to translate and tell them a little “gem”, a pearl of wisdom, but if you were “in the family” he’d be a good “grandfather” and give you something

But then there were certainly other aspects of his personality. There is an advanced movement in Choy Lay Fut called “to divide both high and low”, supposedly it is a technique in one of the more advanced forms, reserved for “in the door” and a big deal. Well, sifu thought this whole idea was funny, I forget what got him started, but he decided one day that everyone that was studying with him was going to learn this move. Then one year at a NACMAF event he grabbed all of us and made us show the move to this highly regarded Choy Lay Fut sifu. Chan Tai San told him “I know you waited a long time for YOUR sifu to show you this move, I just showed it to everyone in my school”… it was sort of f-ed up! Sifu Chan had this evil grin on his face

:smiley:

Sifu Chan did have an ego, and it was built up by the very real fact that he had stuff that others did not. He made me demonstrate many times to other teachers, once I had to do forms in a suit and tie because we were at some big event in SF. I had to show a form, to show the stuff that was “go kahp” (advanced) to this Hop Ga guy… his own students stood there going “wow” and asked me later if we were in SF… I told them no, we’re in NYC, they were sort of crest fallen, apparently they’d spent a lot of time and not learned a lot of things at all..

And Chan Tai San knew all the dirt, knew where all the bodies were buried. As “open” as these posts seem, they are the tip of an iceburg really…

103

LOL David, you know what I mean when I said regular.
As far as the advnaced or secret techique in CLF, I am from the Buck Sing Clan, to us there is no such thing. Any technique drilled a million times will become advance,lol.

True about Sifu Chan willing to share at the moment of his liking. I remembered one time by Henry Street ( not the church, the workers union place), I was training on my own and Sifu Chan droppd by. We were talking and he said you wanted to learn iron palm. Sure I said, then he took me arounud the construction site around the corner looking for concretes to break,lol. We had a fun afternoon breaking concretes.

BTW do you still keep in touch with Gus?

DF

ps Tip of the iceberg,lol those been around know who these folks are. Keep in mind, if let all the dirts out, there might be only a handful sifus left in the North America,lol. Don’t know is that a good or bad thing :wink:

104

I think what is more depressing is knowing how much real kung fu is out there but not at the public level. I met all sorts of guys who do all sorts of things. Many taught only in associations, or small groups, a lot didn’t teach at all…

There are all these public schools that people know about, and yet so much that the average person knows nothing about. Say “Hung Kuen” and everyone knows the WFH version, but the variations of village styles, the stuff in them…

I even have a hand written manuscript on one village Hung style that a friend of my sifu wrote, all sorts of stuff in there… but he only taught maybe 5 guys in his lifetime…

105

Sifu Ross,

You do a great honor to your Sifu with these memories.

I know you don’t need to hear that from folks in the peanut gallery like me, but it’s inspirational and heartfelt and I feel compelled to encourage more of the stories.

I know my experiences pale in comparison but even my meager view to the Mo Lum shows me how rich it is. You just bring it more visibility especially in these days of so much negative publicity.

There’s good kung fu out there. It’s not tied to a piece a paper and it isn’t free. It also isn’t bought with just money.

Keep ‘em comin’

PS. Maybe one sign of a good sifu is that he can talk story for many hours about himself and keep you interested. It’s been true of all the great ones I’ve met.

106

One of the things I remember about Sifu Chan was that he would always get in pictures with the hottest chics at every tournament.

107

LOL, Chan Tai San certainly had a way with the ladies. He was always getting pictures with hot chicks! He was also quite smooth in his native language! Stephen Laurette taught English as a Second Language (ESL) and had a class full of Cantonese ladies. Chan Tai San dropped by one day to see Laurette, and chatted up all the students. They were all dreamy eyed and in la-la land talking to him, and gushed about it to Laurette for a week or so… Chan Tai San was the original dawg :smiley:

108

Coach Ross,
Thanks so much for sharing these stories about Chan Tai San, they are facinating as well as entertaining, and a great resource for the kung fu community.
Cheers, Chris

ps. I was at the Baltimore/Towsen tournament you mentioned (in 99?) where you guys did the hard chi-gung demo where the block wouldnt break and your sifu got frustrated, lol, he really was quite a character! :smiley:

109

He looks like one mean sum’bitch, that’s for sure.

110

Kwong Tit Fu of Boston and the birthday from hell…

Kwong Tit Fu of Boston had some big birthday (65? honestly I don’t remember how old he was). My sifu was invited to come up and he had the seniors all practice very hard a lot of showy forms to do at the demonstration. I was doing a Hung Kuen set with a lot of tiger, Parrella was doing a CLF kicking set, Gus was working on a ground fighting set…

We go all the way up to Boston, and one of Kwong’s students, a guy who looked like he was 16, says he has no idea who we are and doesn’t want to let us in the door. Chan Tai San grabbed him by the throat, I honestly thought he’d kill the kid. This creates some nose and Kwong comes over, saw Sifu Chan, greats him, etc etc blah blah and the 16 year old idiot shrinks like in a cartoon to 1/2 size

We change, we start warming up, the demo starts. I don’t know Kwong Tit Fu from a mountain in Pakistan, but the demo sucked. It started off with Tai Chi, bad enough to have some slow azz Tai Chi for 15 minutes, but it wasn’t even good tai chi

The we started noting that all his students would come up and do the SAME F-IN SET! I lost track after 6 times Fu HOk had been done. It was even more annoying because they all did this thing where they hopped on one leg and tried to “hoop” like a crane. I was already teacher level in Hung ga, and this is NOT in the set…

We will still warming up when another of Kwong’s students came over to us. He looked like an Ehtopian on crack, he was close to 6 feet and maybe was like 135 lbs, dude, eat something! He was a white guy, so trying to speak to Sifu Chan was getting him no where. I asked him what he wanted, he said that they didn’t want us to perform

You’d think, with the clunker of a demo this was, that they’d want something interesting, but we started to think, hey, if we perform, they are going to look like crap! Oh well…

It sure wasn’t that they were “running long”, we sat there and watched the demo go on forever, each demo getting worse and worse. It was pretty horrible

the only up side was the banquet after the demo. good food and everyone but me got to drink (I was driving). SIfu Chan got so drunk, he fell asleep, but he fell asleep with a duck head sticking out of his mouth. TO this day, I wish we had a picture of that, it was one of the greatest Chan Tai San moments of all time…

I have tons of demo stories, most of the time, demo’s ended up being huge pains. especially because Sifu would get so nervous about them…

111

Was your sifu friends with Sifu Poi Chan or Sifu Leung Ting or anyone like that? I can only imagine what some of the conversations must’ve been like at some of these meals amongst sifus.

112

Sifu Chan Poi is Chan Tai San’s cousin… small world… I know him very well and had dinner and drinks with him many times… I remember one time, I drove down to Baltimore for a NACMAF event, I walked into the bar and found Sifu Tai Yim, Sifu Goh, Sifu Chan Poi and a sifu Chung who did Praying Mantis somewhere in Canada. They invited me to sit down and Chan Poi said “I’ll buy you a drink tonight, to celebrate both of us getting kicked out of Wai Hong’s federation for coming here”. I laughed and accepted the drink. Then Sifu Chan Poi said “enjoy it, because in a few months you’ll find yourself BACK in Wai Hong’s federation”. Sifu Chan Poi was of course correct, Wai Hong would kick you out, then insist you were still a member and so still under his orders, he was a weird one!

113

Another Chan Poi story… we go to Florida for Jeff Bolt’s event. the first night we get there, SIfu Chan Poi comes to pick us up, he’s taking us to dinner at some big local Chinese restaraunt. He’s driving a mini van. We get on the highway and while he’s driving, he keeps turning around to talk to sifu Chan! We were like “awwwwwww, he isn’t looking where he’s driving!” But we weren’t going to say anything to a respected sifu who is also Sifu Chan’s cousin!!! Finally, after another swerve and another loud honk by a passing car, Chan Tai San even says to him, LOUDLY, “keep you eyes on the road, you’re going to kill us!”

:smiley:

114

Another Chan Poi story…

We were in Florida, and it’s the first time Chan Tai San has met Dave Cater… Sifu Chan doesn’t really know who he is, but as Cater tries to get some interview stuff from Sifu Chan, out of the blue, Sifu Chan says he does “Hop Ga”

NOw, I had been with Sifu for YEARS, and he always affiliated himself with the “Lama Pai” name and lineages (though he’d studied some Hop Ga and White Crane)

So, I break off my talking with Dave Cater to get into an argument with Chan Tai San… “we alwyas use Lama Pai, it’s on your business cards and stationary that YOU printed up in Chinatown, what’s this all about”

Chan Tai San loses his mind, screaming ensues, it starts to be a mess

Suddenly, I feel a bony claw on the back of my neck. Sifu Chan is in front of me, it isn’t him? I get pulled away, by Sifu Chan Poi

He pulls me away from my sifu, tells me, “don’t worry, your sifu is old and cranky, and he thinks Dave Cater is a spy for the Chinese government trying to get him in trouble”

“WHAT”.. I never fathomed how Chan Tai San’s mind worked, NEVER

Chan Poi told me to relax, let CTS brew, and it would all be fine…

Later, Chan Poi went back to CTS and “cleared” Dave Cater with him…

I sat with one of Sifu Chan Poi’s guys later that night and told them the story and how I was impressed by how nice Sifu Chan Poi was…

Chan Poi’s student acted like I was talking about another guy entirely, not HIS sifu!!!

Moral of the story, MY sifu is a nut, YOUR sifu is a nice guy… Sifu can be totally calm and rational with people who are not their students, but tend to get all emotional and wig out with their own guys…

115

In '98 our school went to a tournament in SF. After the banquet/dinner, we were leaving, I was driving our rented minivan. As we’re getting ready to pull away Sifu Poi Chan walks up and says he’s coming with us. We were all puzzled but being he is a freind of our sifu’s, we couldn’t do anything but oblige. He got in the front seat.

I didn’t know where I was going so we got lost. At one point I turned on a red light when I shouldn’t right in front of a cop, fortunately the cop at the same time was pulling another car over. Sifu Chan says “oh my god we’re going to jail, don’t worry he’ll come get you later”. After a few more traffic violations we finally make it back to the hotel an hour later (what should have been a 15 min drive). He says to me and yells out “I lose one hour!! You not too sharp!” Then I hear the whole thing over again later from my sifu. Even still, I got to ask him some things about wah lum mantis and some of his students I had met (that were no longer his students) at sifu Lee Koon Hung’s grand opening.

I’m certain Sifu Chan will never know my name, but I’m sure he’ll remember my face and never let me drive him anywhere again. Nonetheless I enjoyed talking with him. He really doesn’t hold too much back. I can only assume Sifu Chan Tai San was maybe twice as blunt.

116

Not to take away from your Sifu stories but in my early days with Chan Pui I saw him drive a van about 80mph on I-4 in the pouring rain. We were on our way to Palm Island for a weekend seminar. I was in another vehicle trying to keep up. I figured he drives by feel or qi or something. He’s another one of those Masters with a lot of freaky stories. Maybe it runs in the family. :smiley:

117

“Wai Hong would kick you out, then insist you were still a member and so still under his orders, he was a weird one!”

One reason we never joined the silly thing.

118

Originally posted by Hua Lin Laoshi
Not to take away from your Sifu stories but in my early days with Chan Pui I saw him drive a van about 80mph on I-4 in the pouring rain. We were on our way to Palm Island for a weekend seminar. I was in another vehicle trying to keep up. I figured he drives by feel or qi or something. He’s another one of those Masters with a lot of freaky stories. Maybe it runs in the family. :smiley:

Nah…that’s just how the Chinese drive. :stuck_out_tongue:

119

Master Li Siu Hung is worse…

he used to drive a Taxi in Hong Kong…

He has cutt so many people off, we even have had people come in the school who followed him yelling that he’s crazy… Or he will spin out the tires while we have 40 kids in the class watchin him through the windows…

:stuck_out_tongue:

120

We never joined Wia Hong’s federation, it was like if you had a school in New York, you were in whether you liked it or not, real related to gang type of mentality… then again, most of the “old school” in NYC’s Chinatown seemed quite mixed with that political element..

When we ran the school in Chinatown, a “fee” for “membership” was paid to a certain organization that Chan Tai San belonged to… For that reason, when we had trouble with the vietnamese, we met with some of the leaders of that organization…

Personally, I really was turned off by all the politics and the drama. I was trying to teach classes. One day I had two women, a kid and one guy in class. These Vietnamese come in looking for some money. I was in a dance studio space, we weren’t even operating full time, it wasn’t like there was a cash register sitting there full of money. Not that we were making money back then either… Sifu wasn’t there that day. He was actually in Toronto for something or other. The Vietnamese didn’t find anything really, but they took two bottles of Dit Da Jow…

I called sifu up in Toronto, told him what happened. He was on his way back to NYC, told me to meet him in a certain restaraunt on Sunday morning. IT was not one of his usual places, I found out we were going there because the heads of that oranization had tea there…

Sifu Chan and I had morning tea with these two really old guys, they made Chan Tai San seem young :smiley: and they spoke really thick Toisanese dialect… I really had no clue what was going on, sifu did all the talking, after a few minutes they waved and two younger guys who were sitting at another table walked over and sat with us…

Honest to the lord, this is what happened, Sifu Chan told me that since we paid our fee, they’d take care of our “trouble”. Then one of the two old guys told me (regarding the two guys who had just sat down) “this guy, good with a meat clever, the other guy has a gun”

I thought I was on Hong Kong Candid Camera, Allan Funt Chan was gonna jump out from behind the Har Kow and say “fooled ya!”

But it wasn’t a joke, nor was I dreaming. I figured, heck, aint gonna insult these guys, but I told them I didn’t need this sort of help… I got up and left. Sifu was only like 2 minutes behind me. He probably just made the formal good byes, but didn’t have time for much else… I told Chan Tai San that we didn’t need that sort of help…

I don’t know if anything more transpired, but I was happy that the Vietnamese didn’t return. The next year, they got all busted by the police, in part because the On Leong and Hip Sing had ratted them out, BTK was bad for Chinatown business and the Chinese had no love loss for the Vietnamese. We moved out of Chinatown not much later… for the better…

I really, really, really disliked that part of the scene…