anyone know anything about him? Where he dissappeared to? Dropped off the face of the earth,?
never heard of him.
what’s the backstory?
he wrote three excellent books on Bak-Hok, and Hop-Ga, entitled, “White Crane Gung-Fu,” “Hop-Gar Gung-Fu” and “Tibetan Kung-Fu: The Way of the Monk” in the seventies.
Ross doesn’t know?
i talked to him via PM on the old empty flower forum…like 6 years ago.
and…AND…???
what do you wanna know? we were just talking about hop gar and the lions roar arts, and he was telling me stories of training with george long and david chin (this was prior to my training with sifu david chin). i lost contact with him since.
just wondering what he’s up to. He wrote some great books, and then dissappeared.
Just wondering,
I have one of his books, not sure which will have to check, scanned…
if anyone interested would like to trade .pdf of his other books if anyone has them?
quite well done books especially for the era.. very well done
TT: I think he is still -irregularly- active on EF forums… can;t recall which (old vs new “EF”.. they split some time ago . .. EF and RSF 
…
what is RSF?
[QUOTE=TenTigers;963413]what is RSF?[/QUOTE]
sorry TT … what David Jamieson said (thanks)
EF forum splitted into 2 camps.. EF and RSF … due .. err differences 
I can’t recall which but M.P>S was active in one I knew dec 2008 for sure…
so i’d ask over at EF and RSF for a contact details
Mister Staples had been active on the original Emptyflower forum before it was hijacked & taken away from the people who created it. The original creators of the EF forum then put up the RSF forum, which is where all the original EF members migrated to (here http://www.rumsoakedfist.org ).
Haven’t seen anything from Mr Staples recently. I do like those books though, especially the White Crane and Hop Gar books. Lots of great info…
Michael Staples
Hi guys,
I ran across this thread by mistake, but saw my name in the title. I am alive and kicking (though not as high anymore). Indeed, I wrote the first book on White Crane, the first book on Hop Gar, the first book on the Chang chuan compulsory routine used in Wushu competitions, and maybe 70 or 80 magazine articles that introduced unique kung-fu styles for the first time to the west (like Bak Mei). I was with the first Wushu team from Beijing, and published a number of articles about them (introduced Jet li). My partner, Anthony Chan, and I were the first westerners to be granted visas to China in the 80s to go in and (1) run tours to the shaolin temple, back when it was till covered with weeds and, (2) produce a series of wushu videos. Anthony was the first to use the wushu routines in American karate competitions – you should have been there and seen everyone’s jaw drop when he came out with his double whip chains. it was very cool. No one had ever seen anything like it – with Anthony marching out in his while silk uniform…
Anyway, I just finished a new book. Strickly speaking, it isn’t a kung-fu book. it started off that way, but kind of changed direction. It is what you would call a psychological narrative. But it has quite a bit about kung-fu in there, and lots of pictures of the original wushu team. If you are interested, it’s available on Amazon. or you can swing over to the website at http://focusingemptiness.com/ and have a look. See if you might be interested.
Hello Mr. Staples. Nice to have you participating. Hope you add as much as you can here.
Billy
Mr. Staples,
Thanks for the heads-up on the new book.
I still have your books on White Crane, Hop Gar, and a third one, Tibetan Kung Fu: The Way of the Monk. Bought them back in the early '80s. Good books. Glad to know all is going well with you.
Thanks from Michael
[QUOTE=Jimbo;1295510]Mr. Staples,
Thanks for the heads-up on the new book.
I still have your books on White Crane, Hop Gar, and a third one, Tibetan Kung Fu: The Way of the Monk. Bought them back in the early '80s. Good books. Glad to know all is going well with you.[/QUOTE]
Thanks back, Jimbo. Back then there weren’t many books about kung-fu. Most of what was out there was shaolin, in one form or another. Robert Smith had a book out on Hsing Yi and one on Pa Kua, but most of the books (and there were only a few) were from obscure publishers.
Actually, I didn’t get into writing about kung-fu because I wanted to be a writer. I got into it because I was another fanatical student of kung-fu, and I stumbled onto a way of prying open the various Sifu around San Francisco by cutting a deal – you can have your name in lights with a nice article about you in a National Magazine, but you have to open up your style to me so I know what to write. And it worked pretty well. I managed to open up styles that had never before been written about in English. That was my motivation, at least with the magazine articles (I wrote something like a hundred of them). The books were ways of my better understanding the styles I was learning – so, White Crane, and Hop Gar. Back then, both of these styles were very (very) secretive, and white guys like me just didn’t get through the front door. Both George Long (White Crane) and David Chin (Hop Gar) were breaking with tradition to teach us Ba Gwei. But it still wasn’t all that smooth…as I point out in my book #Focusing Emptiness. You can chug on over to my website: FocusingEmptiness.com to see a little more. You probably don’t have my book Wu Shu of China. That one is really rare, but the best quality book I wrote. That one introduced the Chang Chuan compulsory routine used in Wushu for the first time. My partner, Anthony Chan, and I were heavily involved with the Beijing Wushu Team back then. I took the first pictures of Jet Li, and Anthony was with him during the galla openings of one of his movies later on. But we self-published that book, and we didn’t know about things like ISBNs. The first run of 5,000 sold out before it was even printed…mostly in Australia and the UK.
Anyway, there is a lot about my days in kung-fu in the book, but the book isn’t really about kung-fu. Still I included some historical pictures that I think are quite valuable.
The Hop-Gar book and the Tibetan book were written as one book (just a little trivia), but Curtis Wong, the owner of Inside Kung-Fu magazine wanted to break them up into two books. I have no idea why. Didn’t seem like the best idea to me. I never thought the Tibetan book was substantial enough to stand on its own. But I went along with it just the same.
Then there was the book we called “The Elegant Wushu of China,” that both Anthony and I collaborated on, about the first and second Wushu Teams from China we were involved with. I told Curtis, who published it, that we had to have complete artistic control, and that the magazine had to be 100% devoted to wushu – that I would write the whole thing, and we would use only our photographs – and that all the advertisments had to be in the back of the magazine somwhere, out of sight (that didn’t exactly happen, but it was close). The problem with magazine articles, though, was that after an issue comes out, it then gets lost in subsequent issues… and it’s gone – unlike a book.
Wow. I’ve just been rambling on here. Sorry. Probably more than you wanted to know.
Michael
One Last Thought
I was just thinking that I should probably say something about “What Ever Happened to Michael Staples,” since that was the original question for this thread: And it’s a great way for me to point you to my book, because in essence that is what the book is about. At one point, a dramatic point, I came face-to-face with the question of what I was doing in the martial arts…just what was I trying to accomplish, if anything at all. What was all my kicking a punching about? Where was the sense of the spiritual in my practice? Was I just trying to be the best at kicking ass, or was there something deeper… and if deeper; what was it? The path these questions took me down is the path my book discloses, and the reason why I dropped out of the kung-fu scene when I did.
I never really left kung-fu, but I suppose you have to define what you think kung-fu really is. Is it kicking and punching? Cage Fighting? If so, then perhaps you should turn your attention inward, and ask yourself why this is so important for you. Is there something or someone you are afraid of? Did someone kick sand in your face, and you lost the girl on the beach? Or are you drawn to the mystery of kung-fu, the potential for self discovery? What is it that draws you to it? Those were questions, very personal questions, that finally came up from the very depths of my soul and grabbed me by the scruff of my neck… and said “You MUST pay attention to me now!” And so I did. At what some would say was the height of my career as a writing in the field of kung-fu, and the height of my physical capabilities as well, I put it all down. I closed the school I had built. I put everything in storage. I put a few essentials in a backpack, and I went into a forest… and began to look inward for the answers.
From the Shaolin side of things, you probably know that the temple was the home of Chan Buddhism, and that after six or so generations, perhaps with the teachings of Hui Neng, Chan lost the last vestiges of it’s Indian core to become a legitimately Chinese, home-grown practice. And that many generations later Chan made its way into Japan as Zen Buddhism. And of course you know that Shaolin was also the home of the very important school of kung-fu by the same name… with all its offshoots. But there is more to kung-fu that kicking and punching, or seeing who can kick whose ass. There is a whole side of it that is often relegated to the quaint, which it should perhaps be its most important feature.
I may have “dissapeared,” from view, but “dissapeared” into clarity. I became both lost, from view, and found within myself. What more could one ask of kung-fu than this?
If you go to my website at FocusingEmptiness.com I have a blog page. Don’t know if it is quite up and running yet. But I would be happy to answer any questions I can there. I will also be checking in here. I want to support Gene Ching and this website as best I can.
Michael
Hi Mr Staples
Do you plain on writeing any more books on Hop Gar or Taibetan White Crane Kung Fu ?
Mr Staples,
I had your 3 books in the '80’s also. Then in 1990, I went to China to study Hop Gar, and still practising/teach to this day.
Thank you for letting us know about your new book, I have ordered it and look forward to reading it. Best wishes to you,
David.