fraudulent schools

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Kung Fu Forum
21

PS, I’ll ad this, and take it for what its worth:

This man is the best I’ve ever seen. Ever! I started MA when I was 4. Seen a lot. I was hitting tournaments back in the day of, what’s his name, Don Nagel, and all those old timers. Been up and down the coast. When my family vacationed, we checked ahead in advance to find a school that I could train at while away.

That was my first intro to phony balony kung fu in Fla. Real bad.

Anyway, now I’m 28. I’ve studied Hung Gar, Wing Chun, S. Mantis and mostly Issin-Ryu (my entire childhhod upt to HS and college).

My master, at 60, will put the gloves on and beat ya senseless. With technique. He’s not big, he’s just really good.

He’s an article by Rober Chu talking about him back in the day – and he has inherited that pole system being spoken about: http://www.wingchunkuen.com/chusauli/articles_feilungfumun.shtml

22

Yes

Din Gao,

Yes, I did attend Bo Law for a while. I left at the beginning of this year. I will give them credit, I got back into shape and my flexibility is much better than it has been in a long time. However, you are right, the atmosphere there was not very conducive to learning. There was definitely a “hurry up, you’re falling behind” mentality. Too much material too fast is a problem. You were never given any time to digest anything.

Now with the mixture of styles, its was very difficult to learn anything. If there was a sequence of learning, that would be fine (though personnally I found the sheer volume of material to be questionable). For example, if you were to learn 5 Animals and then move on to Fu Jow Pai that would make sense. Unfortunately, you are learning Shaolin, 5 Animals, Mantis and Fu Jow Pai (along with weapons) concurrently.

On a personal level, I like Paul. He always treated me very well. As a Sifu, there is a lot left to be desired. Am I bitter about my time there? I don’t think so (at least not consciously). Would I recommend the school to somebody? I’d have to say no.

I’ll treat it as a learning experience. In any event, I’m much happier in my new school.

23

Hai_To,

I will PM you.

Evolution Fist,

Thank you for the offer. I really appreciate it. I heard very good things about your Sifu. I may take you up on that offer when my schedule opens up. Right now it is kind of crazy.

24

Din_Gao,

I didn’t realize there were more of us out there. We should compare war stories.

EvolutionFist,

In my quest for a new school, I looked at Mr. Chan. All I can say is “wow”. He may be 60, but he certainly doesn’t look it. He is also one of the most friendly and engaging people I’ve ever met. Plus he is highly skilled. He is what a Sifu should be.

25

Efist

Great article you linked…your sifu sounds like quite a man.

26

I consider it a true God send to be training with him.

I’ve glipmsed some of his pole and sword work – WOW! Can’t wait to get back to that. Right now we are 100% focused on the hand to hand. Theory, concepts, principles and applying them. Doing some boxing as of late.

I don’t know about my training brothers, but I’m working to bring E-chuan out there. Don’t want to do it till I’m reday. You’ve seen him, pretty tall shoes to fiill. But this is too important to end there, it has to continue. Sometimes I question why all this work. But I love it, and if I who love it doesn’t do it, who will. In the end its a joy and privelage.

He’s the best teacher I ever had no question about it. I feel funny writing it though because everybody should feel that way about their teacher.

27

I visited SiFu Chan’s school as well with a friend who was looking for a new school.
Although, I’m quite happy at my new school, I have to say…he’s a great guy. He actually sat there and spoke to us for about an hour before his class started.(not many people would do that) At bo law, one had to schedule an appointment to ask the sifu the simplest of questions
He compared different fighting concepts, strategies, etc etc. He really knows what he is talking about. On some of the techniques he demonstrated on me, I could really feel his internal power. I was definitely impressed.

The school was like 20 degrees though! Freezing!

28

BTW DinGao/Hai To…Bo Law was the school I was talking about in my initial post.

To all in the greater NY area…avoid it like the plague.
If you’re only goal is to get in shape, then it may be OK…just be on the lookout for projectile weapons accidentally flying out of beginners’ hands!

29

LOL!

Just to make things clear. Its not like Bo Law is the 7th Circle of Hell. It has become a glorified health club (a very expensive health club). Similar to those “new age” Tai Chi schools that don’t worry about any martial applications. It was good once. Perhaps it can be good again. Though Paul will have to do some soul searching before that happens.

30

From what I understand, quite a few people have left and mostly for the same reasons. I know of six that you may be familiar with. Varying levels of committment and time spent.

You always have a high level of turnover among the newbies at any school but these are supposedly the more senior people. People who had skill and were frustrated with an environment that deteriorated before their eyes. Most have gone on to good schools. Others are just beginning to search.

31

The seniors leave b/c once he milks them for all the resources they can provide him, he treats them like dirt.
Student totally get used over there. It’s unreal.
The only seniors who remain there are the ones that do secretarial work for the school, or work on the website/advertising.
If there are any other seniors still there, it’s because they don’t care if what they are learning is valid, or becuase they choose not to ask questions and devote themselves blindly.

32

Din Gao & Begby,

I came across an interesting article on Cyberkwoon recently. You both may find this interesting.

How to spot a Fake Master

Obviously not all of it applies to Paul, but some of the points strike close to home. I doubt all of those points apply to anyone. From my recollection, at least 3 or 4 of them apply to Paul. Especially the money one. :wink:

33

A small word from an even smaller and insignificant speck such as I am when held to the light of what kung fu is.

Take the higher ground when the rain falls. Look back at your life and know that you have learned something through the living of it.

Be fit and be happy with yourself as you are.
Be good to each other and yourself.
Take care of others when the opportunity to do so arises. Let those who would see you fall, fall away themselves, away from influencing or affecting your life and understand that knowledge cannot be given, it comes from within. Stimulation and information are given, the knowledge is from you when you absorb what has been taught. And when you seek to build upon it.

Milk can be sweet, it can also sour, but it comes from the same animal.

Point of this is, the more you fan the flames of doubt, the higher the fire burns. It will consume you and the only one to face loss is yourself.

Next point is, regardless of what you may feel or think, this forum is not the place to bash or name call. if you know someone seeking to learn, then direct them. There is no consequence, good or bad to placing a post on an internet forum in anonimity defaming another practitioner be s/he good or bad.

peace

34

Question

Is this guy an out and out fraud, or just a poor teacher?

Is there a difference? I think so as one is intnet on seperating you from your $$, and the other just needs to improve his teaching skills.

35

Wow I was really really surprised at the cost and schedule thing. Shifu wants everyone to come in as often as possible, and at the least 3 days a week.

Charging extra for teaching weapons? It’s like he works on commision or something!

36

Kung Lek

Very good post. For the most part, I agree. At the same time, I strongly believe that some schools represent a decidedly negative side of things, even while at the same time having some fine people in them. As a former member of such a school, and having seen both the positive and negative side of that school, normally, my response would be like yours, just move on with my life and make a good person of myself.

However, by avidly taking part in a school, one contributes money to that school’s activities. By being a competent and driven student, one contibutes an air of legitimacy to the school as a martial one. By being enthusiastic, one attracts others to join in. In the case of the school I attended, these things were all from good intents, yet all contributed to some of the worst behavior possible. Taxes went unpaid, people were threatened(even in front of news cameras by the organization’s lawyers), any who left were ostracized and looked upon as less than those who still participated, and this continues today. Because I was once in this school and no longer am, I am looked upon as a mindless person by people still in the style, some of whom I convinced to join in the first place.

Is there a point at which your responsibility grows from just improving yourself, to fixing the results of your past actions? I admit, I tend to think that its important to self actualize first, but I don’t think that’s the end of the individual’s responsibility. Eventually, I think its important to affect things around you in a positive way, and even take a stance against what you feel is wrong.

Anyway, I’m curious of your opinion of this, as you have a much cooler head than I.

37

“With keeping members from anti-cult information, it really didn’t come out about what Chung Moo really was until a couple of years after I’d left”

All the way through that CMD article that was linked to, and the above quote was taken from, I’m thinking to myself “How could anybody lack enough common sense to put up with all that crap?”

Beatings?
Isolation?
No individual thought?
Multiple jobs to pay for instruction? Personal decision, fine, ENCOURAGED? Uh oh, alarm bells…
Ratting out your friends?

Sounds more like the bloody Cultural Revolution than a kwoon…

Apologies if I am out of line in saying this I have next to no sympathy for anybody that is weak enough to put up with that kind of ****. :rolleyes:

38

Challenge the fake

I would think that a phony teacher would be challenged, especially in NYC.

Begby,
Genuine teachers get challanged, why not the guy you are talking about?

39

He was challenged. It is a long story and has much to do with Fu Jow Pai - Wai Hong & Hui Cambrelen. I don’t lend much credence to the legitimacy of their argument. It is based on semantics IMO. If you search you will find information on it and it was debated to death here.

Kung Lek - Your words and wisdom are sound. I, myself, am just letting it go and walking away. Its not like we can get the $$$ back anyway. I think Begby just wanted to warn others, based on his experience. The whole experience was just painful (still is) to me. Mostly, I am just mad at myself for not seeing it.

We are pretty divided among our opinions. I think he, himself, was skilled as a hung gar & FJP practitioner. In speaking with older students who left, no one has an inkling where all the shaolin, lohan & mantis forms came from.

However, I stand by my opinion that the way things are taught & “marketed” creates a bad atmosphere. A Whip chain class with 25 people (more then half with less then 3 months experience).

I dedicated alot of time and effort, believing things would get better around the corner. But it never came. I was confused for more then a year.

We were expressly forbidden to go to any public demonstrations. A friend of my went through hell just to go watch his girlfriend’s black belt promotion in Tang Soo Do. When we finally violated that order and saw other styles and demos in Chinatown we were shocked at the disparity in skill levels and material taught. A friend of our’s left a year before us and was already light years ahead of any of the seniors at the school. Seeing that I just couldn’t go back.

I can’t say that he is willfully & malisciously a fraud bilking people of their hard-earned money but the evidence is pretty ****ing. Keep in mind that all the $$$ he is charging is cash in nice little red envelopes.

Anyway, this is the last I want to say on the matter. Despite what I have written I don’t like saying these things on a public forum. If people want to PM me for my opinions that is fine but I would rather discuss other kung fu matters and let Begby’s warning stand as a guide for others.

40

Scotty,

It was not quite so blatant. It was only after I left, and got back in contact with several ex-members, that I heard of the harrassment. Also, the isolation was not necessarily to the same degree for all students.

I never held multiple jobs when I was in, nor was I ever really told to. In fact, there were many occassions where I held no job at all(I was an irresponsible teen). I’d tell them “I’ll pay in two weeks”, then they’d forget how much I owed them, I’d pay a little here and there.

Keep in mind that those conditions are not ALL present in every story. However, there is usually some mix of them, and they generally don’t start blatantly, but begin more subtly.

As for ratting out friends, there were plenty of us that didn’t take part in that stuff.

Nonetheless, I will not claim that I wasn’t gullible to have been a part of that garbage, I was totally gullible. However, you are mistaken to think that I or any of the people I know who once belonged to that organization are in any need of your sympathy. That’s not what we’re about.

Imagine that you were a beginner again, knew nothing about martial arts except that you were interested.

Now imagine that you met some teachers in a school, a bunch of whom were cool, a few of whom were tolerable, but they did what, to your inexperienced eye was cool martial arts. I’m sure at some point you had an instructor you were in awe of. Imagine that that instructor put forward a lot of stuff he believed was the truth about martial arts, but was just a story he was force fed. You don’t know this is a story, the internet forums don’t really exist yet, and the kung fu book scene has not kicked into full gear. Then one day you start learning more about martial arts, the history and all, and you realize that its all a load.

Then, the head of the school and your instructor(the one you respect) and a number of others get dragged into federal court. Out of loyalty, your instructor and a group of others take the fall for the head of the school in a tax evasion case, in order to minimize the "grandmaster"s sentence. Everyone knows the grandmaster must have been in on it, because he runs everything, and because he got all the benefits.

Then, before this instructor gets out of prison, the grandmaster sends tapes to all the schools of the instructors who took the fall, tapes from the end of a long grueling workout session. All of these instructors look terrible, because they were past exhaustion. The tapes make the case that all these instructors were bad martial artists, and they were the cause for all the schools problems, and they were not to be welcome at the schools anymore.

These guys took the fall for nothing, but what’s worse is that the instructor you like is the only instructor you knew from the school who could actually fight, the guy loved martial arts, but he had been tricked by some jerk into believing martial arts were something they were not. He could have been a great fighter, but instead he is so disgusted that he swears off martial arts forever.

Now tell me, which would you be more interested in, the sympathy of some stranger on an internet forum, or the neck of the jerk who engineered the whole mess?