Chan Tai San stories

[lkfmdc]

Might as well share a few....

The first time I saw Chan Tai San, I didn't even know who he was, much less that I'd spend a good part of my life with him. I had heard some rumblings about him around Chinatown, particularly during the brief period I was lion dancing with the Dragon style people since Chan tai San was teaching some Bak Mei and some of the Lung Ying people had sought him out to learn it. The rumblings were mixed, and at the time I wasn't really that interested in finding a teacher. I was pretty much teaching my mixture of Hung Ga and Shuai Jiao, with some boxing and assorted other stuff I had picked up. I never really imagined how meeting him would shape my life so much.

I was sitting in Din Yik, a restaraunt that no longer exists (and sadly so, it was a real landmark, at the turn of the century Sun Yat Sen had tea there while collecting money for his cause in NY). It was a little place, and mostly Chinese. But I managed to order my ha jeung (shrimp in rice noodle tube) and my coffee and it was the sort of place that if you sat and BS'ed they didn't care.

Old Chinese men arguing was nothing strange here, but one old guy was louder than the rest. He then suddenly stood up and proceeded to run through a line of movement. Now, I know it was bak Mei, at the time I just knew it was some sort of Kung Fu. Sifu Chan was already in his 60's by the time this happened, yet he moved as if he was an active student in his 20's!

After demonstrating the movement, he apparently must have felt he proved his point. The guy he was arguing with sort of put his head down, and Sifu Chan actually slapped his forehead. As I would later learn, Sifu Chan when it came to martial arts was ALWAYS right, and he wasn't shy about telling you, showing you and pointing it out afterwards.

At this point, Steve ventura, who was eating with me, had pulled our friend the waiter over. He was a man I'd get to know over the years and call "uncle". I didn't know either at the time, but he was a relative of Sifu Chan's. He did Taiji and Tan Teui (spring legs) in the part every morning. His Taiji was his own synthetic form, he'd studied with like 20 different guys including version of yang, chen, wu, hao and li...

Anyway, my "uncle" as I would learn to call him, told us he was a famous teacher who had just arrived from China recently. He told us the name, which only sort of stuck, we were dumb lo faan who didn't speak Chinese at the time. But he also told us he spoke no English and wasn't exactly interviewing for students. A little crest fallen, I figured it wasn't mean to be.... of coure, I was wrong

[lkfmdc]

The same month I saw Chan Tai San in Tin Yik, Stephen Laurette came to me and Steve Ventura and asked us if we wanted to meet this old teacher he had studied with the year before. Laurette said that he'd lost track of the guy, but he had bumped into him the other day on the street and gotten his new address.

I met Stephen Laurette when I was doing Shuai Jiao with Jeng Hsin Ping. Laurette was an extremely skilled 7 Star Praying Mantis person, and also quite a scholar. He had studied with Sifu Chiu Leun in Chinatown for many years. Laurette had picked up quite a lot of Cantonese, and also could read and write pretty well. Like a lot of guys in TCMA, he wanted to learn more of the applications. For that reason, he decided to study Shuai Jiao to compliment his Mantis.

I had read the Shuai Jiao articles over the years and liked the idea of wrestling the "kung fu way". I had done western wrestling and Hapkido, in addition to the Hung ga Kahm Na (Qin Na or Chin-Na). When I saw a flyer for Shuai Jiao lessons in NYC, I jumped at the opportunity and also found my way to the lower eastside, where I met Laurette.

Honestly, I grabbed Laurette the first day because he was the biggest guy there. I figured if I could learn to throw him, I could learn to throw anyone! But we ended up getting along for more than that. Laurette was always up to learn something new, and we ended up exchainging Mantis and Hung Ga over the years as well as doing Shuai Jiao together...

Laurette had met Chan tai San because Sifu Chan's wife was Chiu Leun's cousin. That's just the way stuff worked in Chinatown those days. Laurette found Sifu Chan strange, to say the least, but could appreciate that he had stuff that apparently NO ONE else had... Sifu Chiu had told Laurette that Sifu Chan was a unique guy... that was true on many levels.

[lkfmdc]

Laurette had studied Lama with Sifu Chan for about 8 months and then Sifu Chan left NY. He had gone back to Toronto, Canada for a while. I won't tell you why now, some other time maybe...

When I met Laurette, he'd mentioned Sifu Chan to me, but since he wasn't in NYC, it never was much of an issue. Then he came up to Steve Ventura and I and said that he'd just bumbed into Sifu Chan on the street and that if we wanted to meet him, he'd set up a meeting...

Here is the real kicker to this. At the time, I was teaching Hung Ga and Shuai Jiao. I'd done some Mantis, some dragon, a bunch of stuff, but I was pretty happy with what I was doing. I had no real desire to learn a new method. But I had one problem, the version of Hung Ga we did only had the 4 core forms. There were all long, and none were really fancy or pretty....

When I first asked to meet Sifu Chan, my initial desire was just to learn some pretty forms! That's pretty f-in ironic in the long term...

We arranged to bring Sifu Chan to the space I was using for my own classes. Laurette translated. Sfu Chan asked if we would pay him $80 per month for lessons. He'd come a few times a week and teach us what we wanted. I forget the hows and whys, but Steve Ventura originally asked to learn Choy Lay Fut. Laurette and I decided to do Lama. Actually, I think Laurette had asked for a particular set already, Siu Lo Han.

[lkfmdc]

Sifu Chan liked Laurette because he had studied a very real kung fu system (7 star) for a very long time. He didn't have to explain a horse stance, he didn't have to teach him how to throw a punch. Sifu Chan was like that, he liked to work with guys who already had skills. He would of course take money from any one who had it, he made his living from teaching. But the reality was also that if you studied with him and were clueless, you often got quite jerked around. And Chan Tai San knew your story in 5 minutes or less, the first few movements and he pegged you, worthy student or just rice bag...

Steve Ventura and I were also not exactly clueless beginners. We were both already intructor level in Hung ga (I had 6 years of training I think at the time, Ventura close to 10). Ventura had trained with teh Beijing Wushu Team in Beijing already, and was a champion forms player. We were also black belts in TKD and Hapkido. I'd done mantis, dragon, some white crane, shuai jiao, etc...

I think in 5 minutes everyone knew what the deal was. Ventura and I realized we had just stumbled upon something unique. Sifu Chan started showing us moves just to see if we could do them. Then we started talking applications.... the rest was really just history....

[lkfmdc]

It is getting sort of late, but let me say this in closing, 6 months from the date this started, I closed my Hung Ga classes and dedicated myself exclusively to Sifu Chan. The upswing for Sifu Chan was that everyoen I was training (about 15 at the time) became HIS students... We also began to advertise sifu Chan publicly, the first time anyone had done that for him. I'll get into more details later....

[SifuAbel]

I can't wait for the next episode.

Quite an interesting read. You really should concider making us pay for this in book form. Quite a splash of romance in the telling.

[Lowlynobody]

Do you know where Chan Tai San learned his Bak Mei?

[SPJ]

Excellent posts.

Cool stories.

Shuai Jiao is so popular that it is incorporated into almost all the northern schools.

Mongolian and Muslim Shuai Jiao were like traditional events since the time thousand years ago.

Shuai Jiao started to become sports events some 2200 years ago in China.

Shuai Jiao + Tong Bei.

Shuai Jiao + Ba Gua.

Shuai Jiao + Mantis.

Shuai Jiao + Ba Ji.

Shuai Jiao + Tang Tui.

---

I would buy the book or watch the movie. If you ever decided to do so.

:D

[jun_erh]

I saw a thing on "chinese wrstling" on CNN World a few weeks ago. They had red, white and blue vests and were throwing tourists around. The most striking thing about it was how old the practicioners were, like 60's+

[4everblu]

It was , i beleive , a Christmas party at the school and Chan Tai San wanted to say a few words to the students (through a translater, of course). It was a real warm hearted speech but what I still remember today was how he went on about how much he appreciated being here in this country. I came away feeling that his sharing of his knowledge with us was his way of saying," thank you, America."

Any former students of the Mineola school here?

[count]

I liked your stories Ross, good color. I get a bit of the flavor of the scene in New York, which is clearly in the top 3 cities in this country for martial arts communities. For Chinese food restaurants too. :p I get a real sense of the history of the period. I was curious, what years more specifically was this and about how old were you at the time? What kind of a man was Chan besides skilled at kung fu? Did he ever learn to speak English and teach in English? Any other profession? Was New York's Chinatown predominantly Cantonese at the time, and how much has it changed over the years? Did Chan's classes have more American gringo's who wanted to kick some ass or more immigrant Chinese students keeping their roots? (or immigrant Chinese who wanted to kick some ass for that matter.) How long did you spend with him? Seems like $80 a month would have been a little steep for the time?

I'm sure, I have read you making these points before, and I could probably figure out the rest from this thread. But fill us in a bit more. I'm curious. :)

[WanderingMonk]

coach ross,

thanks for sharing the story.

wm

[lkfmdc]

I met Chan Tai San the first semester I was in college, it was the mid 80's, Chinatown was mostly Cantonese, with the Vietnamese thing happening. We later in time had some trouble with the Vietnamese gangs and that's one reason we left Chinatown, to be done with the BS....

I spent 16 years actually training with him, then the last few years he was semi-retired and I was running my own school.

Sifu Chan never learned to speak English. I guess in retrospect he never needed to, his students all started learning Cantonese to study with him! More than a few teachers over they years asked him (and us) how the heck that happened as they often couldn't even get their students to learn the technique names even.... The reason was sifu Chan, what he offered.

Sifu Chan was a complicated person, in some respects the power of his kung fu knowledge was the counterweight to his difficult personality.

A few months into my learning with Sifu Chan, I closed my school and said I wanted to follow Sifu Chan and become part of his lineage. Since my Chinese was still basicly non-existant at the time, Sifu Chan asked a friend of his, a student of Hung ga teacher Wan Chi Min, to translate. We met at Mandarin Court on Mott Street for tea and the student of Wan Chi Min's translated, as well as warned us...

He asked us (me, Steve ventura, Laurett) if we were really ready for what this was going to take. At the time, it seemed a stupid question, in retrospect, I now know what he meant. He said many people had wanted to learn from Sifu Chan, but following him was not an easy path. I had my share of horror stories training with sifu over the years, and they PALED compared to what he did with other students. He beat a few students in Canada with a stick once. He casually mentioned that he'd KILLED a few of his students in China. The one time he slammed me against the wall and choked me seemed mild in comparison.

When sifu passed this year, we sat with his family. Even they had very little to do with him in his life. For the most part, they found him a bad tempered man who only knew his way, who had not been much of a husband, much of a father, much of a grandfather. His students spent more time with him than his own family. In some respects, we put on blinders, because what we wanted was his kung fu, and his kung fu was ultimately worth whatever it took, really, it was like the X Files. Every year I got that sense more and more...

[Shaolinlueb]

sifu ross, i like your stories man
they are pretty cool/ please continue.

[lkfmdc]

Sifu chan had both Chinese and American students. The Americans were the majority in the regular school, which originally was just the group class that Sifu ran out of the Gee How Oak Tin Association on Bayard. that was really because Chinese students would often come, were confronted with Sifu's personality head on, and would opt for another arrangement.

I think sifu was even harder on his Chinese students, he expected they know every aspect of the "proper" things to do in the kung fu world, even if they were "juk sing" (ABC)... Considering the grief he gave me, an American with no previous Chinese cultural training, over stuff like the right place to put a tea cup or the correct time to pour tea, I can only imagine the sort of stuff he expected of Chinese students...

Other times, Sifu Chan would be contacted by all Chinese groups to teach on a contract basis. Sifu Chan, as was his nature, would of course take the money, then often mess with the heads of those groups. It was like "I am Chan Tai San, and I thumb my nose at you and your thinking you are anyone"

Sifu Chan's favorite "trick" was to take the money and then have a monkey, usually me, a lowly gwai loh, do the actual teaching. I got used to the drill. He'd tell me to show up some place at a certain time. By the time I'd shown up, Sifu had taken the money and closed the deal, he'd usually start something with the group. Then, as soon as I arrived, he'd hand them all over to me and LEAVE.... I taught in the White Crane school, and in 4 or 5 different "associaitons" over the years because of this "trick"...

I remember two times when this created an actual argument. The head of one of the associations was absolutely not going to accept a dumb monkey teaching his members, especially when he thought he had paid for famous Chan Tai san. Sifu Chan simply told the guy, "anyone here that can beat him?" The answer was no. So Chan told him basicly "stuff it" (actually, he said something about crabs that don't smell too good and something about seeds withering for those of you who speak Cantonese)

[lkfmdc]

I got so used to this sort of thing, it became auto pilot. One time, I showed up at the school of a famous Chinatown Sifu. My sifu was teaching this Chinese guy. I assumed he must be a senior student who the famous teacher wanted to get some extra stuff for. I can't tell you how many big name teachers in the US paid my sifu to come and give them some extra stuff. The list is LONG and is BIG NAMES...

Well, Sifu Chan hands him off to me like always. Like always, I proceed, in Cantonese. Prior to this, every time I taught, I was teaching guys who only spoke Cantonese. I went on for about an hour....

At the end of this hour, I head the guy, in English ask me, "uh, do you speak English?"

Poor guy, never had the courage to speak up before this. Apparently, he was ABC and didn't speak Chinese. His sifu had set up the appointment, he'd shown up, been first confronted with Sifu Chan, then me! I'd rambled on for an hour in Cantonese, not one word of English... Poor bastaaaaaadddd had no idea what was going on...

[Shaolinlueb]

Originally posted by lkfmdc
Sifu chan had both Chinese and American students. The Americans were the majority in the regular school, which originally was just the group class that Sifu ran out of the Gee How Oak Tin Association on Bayard. that was really because Chinese students would often come, were confronted with Sifu's personality head on, and would opt for another arrangement.

I think sifu was even harder on his Chinese students, he expected they know every aspect of the "proper" things to do in the kung fu world, even if they were "juk sing" (ABC)... Considering the grief he gave me, an American with no previous Chinese cultural training, over stuff like the right place to put a tea cup or the correct time to pour tea, I can only imagine the sort of stuff he expected of Chinese students...

Other times, Sifu Chan would be contacted by all Chinese groups to teach on a contract basis. Sifu Chan, as was his nature, would of course take the money, then often mess with the heads of those groups. It was like "I am Chan Tai San, and I thumb my nose at you and your thinking you are anyone"

Sifu Chan's favorite "trick" was to take the money and then have a monkey, usually me, a lowly gwai loh, do the actual teaching. I got used to the drill. He'd tell me to show up some place at a certain time. By the time I'd shown up, Sifu had taken the money and closed the deal, he'd usually start something with the group. Then, as soon as I arrived, he'd hand them all over to me and LEAVE.... I taught in the White Crane school, and in 4 or 5 different "associaitons" over the years because of this "trick"...

I remember two times when this created an actual argument. The head of one of the associations was absolutely not going to accept a dumb monkey teaching his members, especially when he thought he had paid for famous Chan Tai san. Sifu Chan simply told the guy, "anyone here that can beat him?" The answer was no. So Chan told him basicly "stuff it" (actually, he said something about crabs that don't smell too good and something about seeds withering for those of you who speak Cantonese)


LMAO nice, sounds like one of the old chinese teachers i know of. sifu chan sounds like an awesome guy.
i never heard of him before you mentioned him Sifu Ross. is Sifu Chan still alive?

[lkfmdc]

Sifu Chan Tai San passed away on Sept 1, 2004. He had spent the last 3 or 4 years of his life in a hospitol, badly bad health and secluded from the world. Once he got sick, he never went out. He never wanted anyone to see him as anything other than the tough guy he had always been. All of his students basicly lied when asked about him, "oh, he's doing good, he's fine"

The last few years of my teacher's life was a difficult time for me. After completing the system with him, and after he was semi-retired, it was no longer about showing up to "work out" or to learn. It was all about personal relationships, and about confronting both the positive AND the negative things he'd done over the years. It was like having a father you never really agreed with. YOu loved him, you were comitted to him, but you were conflicted over how you felt about things that he had done.

My teacher, like a lot of Chinese teachers, felt that those who mattered always knew the real deal and those who didn't know the "real deal" never mattered. A sifu in the martial arts community (Mo Lum) knows exactly how a real Baai Si (adoption) ceremony takes place. If you say you were adopted and don't have the right things, a real person in the Mo Lum is going to laugh his azz off at you and take you for a clown. Of course, most Americans don't know thing #1 about this sort of stuff

A real Baai Si is a public event. It is usually announced, often in newspapers. Mine was.

A fortune teller is consulted to find the right date, you must submit to your sifu your date and time of birth.

A real Baai Si must have witnesses, at least one a MAJOR figure in the Mo Lum. My #1 Baai Si witness was Sifu Frank Yee (Yee Chi Wai) of the Dang Fong Hung Ga lineage.

My other two witneses were a Choy Lay Fut teacher and a member of one of the associations.

A real Baai Si involves you receiving a reb paper books which has important Kuen Po and which is signed by you, your sifu and the witnesses.

To my knowledge, my sifu did four Baai Si in China before coming here. He did three official Baai Si in the US, all done in the Mineola school myself, Gus Kapros and Michael Parrella opened.

I bring this up because my sifu, like many sifu I know, was also capable of turning to someone and telling them "hey, you got $500? I'll adopt you. Come to my house on a Thursday night with teh cash and BOOM you're adopted!"

The senior students had a huge issue with Sifu Chan over this sort of stuff. My sifu always scoffed and laughed. He said that anyone who mattered, ie real people in the Mo Lum, would never take someone claiming to be adopted from one of these "late night cash sessions" seriously.

And if another ignorant American believed someone was an adopted disciple because of this? WHO CARED. They didn't matter anyway...

It was also common knowledge that my sifu had A, B, C, even D versions of everything he taught. Like I said previously, usually in 5 minutes he figured out whether you had potential or not. If you didn't, he never bothered to even try and show you the real stuff...

This is why, from time to time, you'll see some whining SOB claim that Chan Tai San didn't know anything. He'll inevitably claim he studied with him and learned crap. Of course, that doesn't mean Sifu Chan didn't know anything, it meant he never showed YOU anything of value. There is a difference.....

[FuXnDajenariht]

****, thats some ****ed up ****...

[lkfmdc]

A Chan Tai San "class"

Sifu Chan ran things like a lot of the old school people did.

First, he had his students and he had the "outsiders". If you were a regular student, you had a regular monthly rate, you leanred what he thought you should learn, you put your Faith in him. He did spend more attention with the regular students...

The outsiders were those who showed up, wanted to learn something and were charged based upon what they asked for. If you did this, you got no more, and frequently, if you turned out to be clueless, you got less....

Among the regular students, there were the seniors and there was the group class. the seniors ran the group classes basicly while Chan tai San watched and would tweek things. The group classes were first run by Steve Ventura and I, then just me for a while, then me, Parrella and Kapros.

He expected his seniors to be resposible and do stuff themselves. We'd show up, he'd ignore us. It was our job to warm up, do basics and then start reviewing whatever we were working on with him. If we apparead to have a grasp on what we were working on, then he'd work with you. The seniors were the only people Chan Tai San worked directly with on a long term basis. the price for that, he expected that you already knew what you were doing. there were holes you had to fill in for yourself, or, if you were smart enough to ask specific questions, he'd fill them in if you asked the right questions...

The group classes were for Chan Tai San a way to maybe find some people worthy of being seniors and actually learning from him. Again, it was a survival of the fitest thing, you were thrown in the pool, if you swam, you'd stand out and get more. Many downed

The seniors were shown the basics, some drills, told how to do things, then told to run the group classes. Eventually, the seniors figured out the best thing to do was start teaching some of the basic sets in the group classes. Once someone was in the group classes for a while, had learned the basics, and if it looked like they could cut it, they were made seniors and worked with Sifu Chan....

The seniors were free to try stuff, Sifu Chan would then say good or bad, or correct it. Ventura and I always made people spar, to sifu this was a good thing. Other ideas were killed by Sifu Chan, at times our failures would prompt him to go "ok, here's what you SHOULD do'... but it was honestly hit or miss...

[count]

Thanks David,
Interesting stories. It brought back memories for me, except for the Chicago and LA Martial arts community of the time. LA's CMA community actually goes back much further than people think. Back to the 20's and 30's and evolving to pretty robust selection of teachers, schools and training choices today. Even well before that in private.

Would you say there is still any of that solid, real deal, training to be found or is just too hidden in the commercial BS that passes for martial arts in most suburbs, x-urbs and strip malls across the country?

[Kristoffer]

Great storys. I really like reading about this. I'm curious how you're classes looked like. I mean, did he have you do any conditioning etc? What were his views on sparring?

[SifuAbel]

Originally posted by count
Thanks David,
Interesting stories. It brought back memories for me, except for the Chicago and LA Martial arts community of the time. LA's CMA community actually goes back much further than people think. Back to the 20's and 30's and evolving to pretty robust selection of teachers, schools and training choices today. Even well before that in private.

Would you say there is still any of that solid, real deal, training to be found or is just too hidden in the commercial BS that passes for martial arts in most suburbs, x-urbs and strip malls across the country?

ahem............:D

[Mr Punch]

Originally posted by SifuAbel
ahem............:D Nah, obviously not! :D

Great stories David.

[SifuAbel]

ahem *cough* cough* mat *cough* cough*has azz wartz *cough* cough*

:D

[norther practitioner]

Abel,
Be careful what you stipulate.. people might be curious as to how such an outstanding gentleman as yourself may know these things.... :D :p ;)

[lkfmdc]

Guys, I would really appreciate it if you would NOT side track this particular thread.....

or, in case I wasn't clear

Guys, I would really appreciate it if you would NOT side track this particular thread.....

[diego]

great read Ross...you really should get ya boys together and catalog all the Chan Tai Shan nastolgia and then get other famous teachers to put in their two cents and put together a nice bio etc:)

with the strip mall comment buddy posted it made me think of a story my teacher told me about his teacher...he was the best fighter he seen but he was scared of and didn't trust him....one student one the lotto and his teacher got one of his boys to extort him and the seniors weren't feeling that then he retired or the story goes....there is a whole side to kung fu that peeps don't hear about in the chinese opera world of chinese martial arts etc:)

[lkfmdc]

Regarding Sifu Chan's regular students, the training was very much about FIGHTING. Those who came and just paid for something, who asked for something and did a straight, I ask, I pay you give, got what they asked for, never more. And usually Sifu Chan looked down on these people, thinking their attitudes sucked...

If you put your faith and your trust in Sifu Chan, he'd actually put effort into what you should be doing. That is why most of his students were trained differently, they weren't all the same guy, cookie cutter produced on an assembly line, so why treat them that way?

From Sifu Chan's point of view, forms were just a way to get the techniques across and make you do them over and over again. There was NOT a particular reverance for the sets, even for the exact sequences!

A very common thing that would happen; "Sifu, is the movement this? or This?" A technique could be done several ways, several different angles, maybe even the sequence was open to some variations....

Anyway

"Sifu, is it this, this or that?"

Sifu Chan would inevitably say "yes"... as in, it is all those, and MORE

The first set I did with Chan tai San was Siu Lo Han (lesser Boddhisattva set). it is one of the core sets (there are 5 core sets), in reality, you could well study this one form and make an entire fighting style out of it. I won't say it has "everything" but it has certainly enough to make a strong cross section. The basic shooting star fists are in this set, the basic concepts are in this set. There are four basic kicks, plenty of throws and joint locks. A few really nasty advanced "Neih Lahk Sau" tactics...

I learned 5 versions of the same set.

The sets became "conversation pieces", ie they stimulated talk about application and theory. A good part of the practice was taking apart and re-assembling the sets to find the applications. But the way my sifu did it was probably "unique"

Certain applications he took the initiative to teach you, ie he'd stop you, show it to you and make sure you grasped what it was about...

But that was HALF the process. He expected you to hold up your end, to ask him about other applications. If you had no initiative, you'd been shown very little. The best stuff by far you got by asking, by askig again, by having follow questions. Once you got Sifu Chan going, it poured out, but if you didn't make the effort, he let you go on your merry way ....

But the other half of the equation was, you FELT the applications, there was no "show" it was all "tell"! If it was a punch, Sifu Chan PUNCHED YOU! If it was a kick, he kicked you, if it was a throw, he threw you, joint lock, you get the idea

I regularly got kicked, tripped, thrown, poked in the eye, kicked in the groin (once, I was getting ready for a demo at NYU, I didn't even ask Sifu anything, but he walked up to me, told me that in the situation we had set up, THIS is what he'd do, BAM, kicked me square in the groin)

I said this before, Steve ventura and I started flipping coins to see who was going to ask the next question......

[lkfmdc]

Sifu Chan didn't run a school in the convential sense. When we met him, he was living in an association hall. They hall had weapons and had a roof, and that and Sifu's knowledge was what he provided. The rest was up to you.

So, when it came to sparring, it was up to us to get gear. By the time Steve Ventura and I had met Sifu Chan, we'd been around martial arts a long time already. With the group classes, we had everyone get a mouth piece and a cup, we then had a number of boxing gloves we handed out to spar with. Sifu Chan was fully supportive of sparring and sparring with gloves. He noted that there were too many injuries bare knuckle (which we had already discovered) and noted that the best part of being in the army had been that they had gear. When he was just an orphan in a monastery in the middle of no where, the kung fu was good, but they had NOTHING

Later, we added in shin guards. Less injuries meant we could spar more often. The irony, after we did it, that's exactly what Chan tai San said "good, now you guys can spar more, less injuries"

A lot of Sifu Chan's training was based upon self initiative, he spoon fed no one....

Like most traditional Chinese systems, the sparring was what most would call "stand up". Sifu taught three different ground fighting sets as part of the Lama, and the Choy Lay Fut had ground fighting sets, and Sifu also had a two man set that was liek Fukien dog fighting, with stuff like Jujitsu guard even..... but the primary emphasis was hitting and wrestling standing up...

In sparring, if you were thrown, swept or fell, we didn't jump right on top of you, but you were expected to get right back up...

In one of the first sparring sessions we ever did with Sifu chan around, a guy just stayed on the ground, he didn't curl up, he didn't try to get back up, he just stayed there.... Sifu Chan SCREAMED "if he stays there, HIT HIM"... I actually think that's how the ground set got started, because he actually walked over to the guy and started showing us ways to attack a guy who was on the floor....

Ove they years, that's often how material would get started, a deficiency that popped up would prompt Sifu Chan to address it.

The week one of the students got attacked with a knife on Mott street resulted in two weeks of knife disarms for example...

[norther practitioner]

Thanks Ross, sorry for the OT thing...

[lkfmdc]

One last one, then off to sleep!

Chan Tai San was a fighter, in every sense of the word. I've talked before about the 42nd street indicent (will probably post it again here). I think I talked about the time he came home and casually mentioned as he made dinner that he'd been jumped by 7 guys on the subway.... I thought I'd share two stories here tonight...

I was in the association hall on Bayard late one night. At the beginning especially, we'd often be there until 11 or later at night. We fell in love with practice, so much so I dropped out of school for a semester.... hi fu pow :D

This was early on, I didn't speak cantonese really yet, so what transpired remains a mystery to me. Chan Tai San was cooking dinner, a common thing around that hour for him. Two guys came into the associaiton hall, one middle aged (50's) and another rather young (he was my age, early 20's).

Whatever was going on, the middle aged guy did the talking, Chan Tai San was obviously annoyed and waved his hand at the guy. Chan Tai San walked around and the middle aged guy followed him around. The volume of the "discussion" went up and it was clearly an argument after a minute or so....

Sifu Chan was walking across the floor again, when suddenly the young guy took a fighting stance, looked like a Muay Thai stance, and started dancing around Sifu Chan.

I was young and stupid, at first I thought "wow, Sifu is old so I'd better fight this guy"

I was about to learn my lesson.

Sifu Chan didn't take a stance, he said something to the guy, who made a funny face (knowing Sifu later on over the years, I can guess the sort of thing he might have said, but I can't ever be sure, I didn't speak back then)

the guy was still in his stance, sort of dancing about, Sifu Chan made his "chyuhn choih" noise, hit the guy ONCE. He went all stiff like a board, fell back on his heels, fell flat on the ground...

Sifu Chan said something to the middle aged guy, I can be pretty sure it must have been to teh effect of "now, get the F out of here"

The middle age guy helped the young guy get up, the left, and I never saw them again....

Sifu continued to make dinner

I was numb....

It was a night Steve Ventura was working late, so I told him the story the next night... he was pizzed he'd missed it all!!

(more)

[lkfmdc]

Years later, Sifu had moved out of the association hall and was living in Brooklyn. It was like an hour ride on the subway there. I got there one day, with Michael Parrella, and we found a note on the door. My Chinese wasn't great, nor was sifu's writing very good. So we took the note downstairs to the resteraunt and the owner translated for us

"sorry, not here, went to have challenge match, come back tomorrow"

WHAT!

I asked him to read it again, same answer

WHAT?

The owner added, "oh yeah, he went to park in Chinatown to fight two guys, he said he'll see me later"

Needless to say, we were back on the train a minute later, heading to Chinatown....

We knew which park it was, and we ran there from the Grand Street station. But we got there, and there was nothing going on. So we went to Tin Yik restaraunt and I talked to my "uncle"

There is a saying, "sifu for a day, sifu for life". My sifu had a lot of "students" in Chinatown, even if they were average people who had only studied a little and were now running businesses and not "martial arts guys"

One had a bad gambling debt and owed some money. Normally, this was just the sort of normal stuff that goes on in Chinatown and that was not why my sifu got involved. he got involved because the guys who came to collect had smacked his student's wife. That was "low class" and out of the "undeground code" (now, my sifu probably at some point in his life broke legs collecting for someone, but he had "standards" and hitting women was out of the standard)

So, for this reason, sifu was going to have a fight with these two guys...

According to my "uncle" we had missed the fight by about 25 minutes. Sifu was probably already back at home having dinner. We were just dumb lo faan :D

"How did it go" we of course asked?

Well, one guy didn't want to fight at all, so it was Sifu and the other guy.

"and"? was the obvious question!

Guy took one swing at Sifu, sifu dropped him with a sweep, kicked him in the head and then lectured him for 5 minutes. The guy apologized. Sifu went home. For us a huge event, for my sifu, just SOP in his lifestyle....

[scotty1]

Good stories.:)

[Paul T England]

Hi Ross,

Thank you for the stories of Chan Tai San. Even though I have only read about him he was a real inspiration.

You should put together a book with all the stories, photos and training methods.

Paul

[lkfmdc]

"getting to the heart of the Chan Tai San personality"

This one isn't really martial art related, but it gives you some insight into the man...

Sifu Chan was in Baltimore for a tournament, he starts having a bad time and is rushed to the hospitol. He starts having paralysis on one side of his body. The doctors say he has had a stroke, it is very serious and he needs to be admitted to the hospitol immediately....

This is translated to sifu, he says "I'm hungry, screw this, let's go eat".....


WHAT!?!???!!
is all the seniors can think to ask!!!

regardless, Chan Tai San walks out of the hospitol, he makes the seniors take him to eat, where he eats with the side of his body that is working!!!

on the drive back to NY, he asks Stephen Innocenzi, one of the seniors, to come to his house on Monday morning. Stephen agrees

On Monday morning, Sifu Chan is sitting on his couch with five accupuncture needles in his good hand. He tells Innocenzi where to stick them (feel free to make your own joke here!)....

Innocenzi sticks them in as Sifu Chan asks, twists them like Sifu Chan tells him to do, BOOOMMMMM, Sifu Chan gets up pulls the needles out and is back like nothing happened. He went on business as usual and didn't have any serious medical issues for another three years, and that was diabetic in nature...

[Yum Cha]

The greatest respect a student can give to his Sifu is to imortalise his name.

Good on you Ross.

[WanderingMonk]

Coach Ross,

did your teacher learn his medical skills at the temple? If he did, was he taught tibetan medicine along with the lama pai fighting system?


thanks

wm

[diego]

Originally posted by lkfmdc


Guy took one swing at Sifu, sifu dropped him with a sweep, kicked him in the head and then lectured him for 5 minutes.

that made me lol. peace

[Lowlynobody]

Well I found out from another forum that Chan Tai San learnt Bak Mei from CLC.

Did Chan Tai San pass on his healing knowledge?

[cerebus]

Now THIS is the kind of thread that makes it worthwhile to check out this forum from time to time!

Thank you Sifu Ross for sharing this with us. Please keep it coming. I'd also like to join some of the others in reccommending that you write a book on GM Chan. I would love to see any of the old photos that you have or could obtain as well.

Once again, thank you. :)

[brothernumber9]

Coach Ross,

now that we see some of what kind of man sifu Chan Tai San was, I would like to ask; There was a tournament, I Think a WKF tournament where you guys had set up a huge concrete slab for Sifu Chan Tai San to break with his head, it was set up on the lei tai stage, he had already done a steel wire break, and a break where a spear is at his throat and a slab is broken on his back with a sledge hammer. However, due to the give and bounce of the stage, The slab he was to break with his head wouldn't break after repeated attempts, finally he just smashed it with his foot. My question is, who caught the wrath for all that after it was done? or since I know he must've done those a thousand times, do you even remember that particular one?

[lkfmdc]

Originally posted by brothernumber9
Coach Ross,

now that we see some of what kind of man sifu Chan Tai San was, I would like to ask; There was a tournament, I Think a WKF tournament where you guys had set up a huge concrete slab for Sifu Chan Tai San to break with his head, it was set up on the lei tai stage, he had already done a steel wire break, and a break where a spear is at his throat and a slab is broken on his back with a sledge hammer. However, due to the give and bounce of the stage, The slab he was to break with his head wouldn't break after repeated attempts, finally he just smashed it with his foot. My question is, who caught the wrath for all that after it was done? or since I know he must've done those a thousand times, do you even remember that particular one?

It was one of the last NACMAF events, and I do remember it well. The Lei Tai kept absorbing the force... SIfu was mad as heck! Lucky for us, that day he took it out on Yim Sifu :D

On other stuff....

Sifu Chan was a doctor of Chinese medicine, herbs, bone setting, accupuncture, a member of the herbalists association (those new year banquets were the bomb! Man we used to get so drunk!). It was not Tibetan medicine. Remember, sifu's teacher (our si gung) was also Chinese...

Sifu Chan learned Bak Mei with Chung Lai Chung and with one of CLC's students, name escapes me but I will look it up. There's a story about Sifu Chan wanted to test Chung Lai Chung, tried to kick him in the shin! CLC, while old, avoided it easily and poked Sifu Chan in the eyes and called him an ingrate! I have lots of stories of Sifu Chan being a "bad kid" and getting smacked around....

[lkfmdc]

oh, as for his healing knowledge, none of us got it completely. A classmate, Noran Malouff, went on to study at Pacific Institute, the stuff that Sifu gave him he showed to the professors there, they were all baffled by it! I have some basic first aid stuff, which I use ALL THE TIME...

[Jamesbond_007]

Coach Ross:
These are great stories, and I thank you for sharing them with us. This is the first I have heard of your sifu and would like to know more. Can you tell us about his background. For example, where he learned his kung fu, his teachers, where he learned all his info, some of his backgound in China and the US. I think this will help us learn more about this great master of kung fu.

Thanks

[Lowlynobody]

Cheers Ross.

A few more questions -

Who is your sigung?
I'm interested to know who the student of CLC he trained with was.

I'm interested in those stories of your sifu when he was younger as I'm sure a lot of other people are. From what I've been told from at least one person who trained under CLC - training under him was not easy.

[lkfmdc]

Jyu Chyuhn was born in Guangdong and began his training in martial arts at an early age. He studied Choi Lei Faht style under Chan Goon-Bahk, the son of the style's founder, Chan Heung. This prepared him for what he would learn under both Wong Lam-Hoi and Wong Yan-Lam.

Jyu Chyuhn first learned Lama Pai under the direction of Wong Lam-Hoi and then sought out Wong Yan-Lam when he returned to Guangdong. Eventually, Jyu Chyuhn learned the entire Lama Pai system and became one of the most accomplished martial artists in the area. He was given permission by both Wong Lam-Hoi and Wong Yan-Lam to pass on the Lama Pai system.

(the politically correct version of the next part of this story)

However, Jyu Chyuhn became interested in Buddhism later in life and, inspired by the stories his teachers told him about their youth, retired to become a Buddhist monk in the Green Cloud Monastery. He would not teach for many years.

(the not so politically correct version of how Jyu Chyuhn, rich man from Canton city, ended up in a monastery in the middle of nowhere)

Jyu Chyuhn got into troulbe with the law and retreated to the monastery his teachers had told him about...

Anyhoo...

Chan Tai-San was born into a wealthy and influential family in the Toi San district of Guangdong province. His grandfather had been good friends with the Abbot of the Green Cloud monastery and had contributed a large sum of money to pay for the monastery's restoration. Because of this, Chan Tai-San was adopted by the monk when his father died. Chan Tai-San was about twelve at the time.

[lkfmdc]

At first Chan Tai-San did not learn Lama Pai. Instead he learned basic kung-fu skills and Choi Lei Faht and general monastic practices. He practiced everyday, three times a day for close to seven years before he even heard about Lama Pai.

Sifu Chan relates that he had a terrible temper and had gotten into fights with local gangsters. Despite repeated warnings from the monks, Sifu Chan engaged in many duels, including several with western boxers, and was always victorious. For this reason the monks suspended his training and refused to allow him to study their most valued system, Lama Pai.

One day, out of frustration, Chan Tai-San decided to challenge his teacher, the very same monk who taught Lama Pai. The monk easily defeated Chan Tai-San but saw a spark of hope in the young student. After Chan Tai-San swore to change his ways he was finally allowed to learn Lama Pai. That monk was Jyu Chyuhn.

After seven years of intense study, Chan Tai-San completed the Lama Pai system under Jyu Chyuhn's direction. Chan Tai-San had devoted himself to Jyu Chyuhn's version of Lama Pai and had never realized that there were numerous versions of the Lion's Roar tradition in southern China. It wasn't until Chan Tai-San left the monastery and had met teachers of White Crane and Haap Ga that he had an opportunity to see just how complete Jyu Chyuhn's version had been. To further his knowledge of Lama Pai, Chan Tai-San studied with Dang Ho, a student of Wong Lam-Hoi, and with Ma Yi-Po, a student of Wong Yan-Lam. Ma Yi-Po was particularly valuable in helping Chan Tai-San uncover the truth because he had studied another version of Lama Pai in Manchuria.

[Reggie1]

This is great stuff. Thanks for sharing.

[Sow Choy]

Sifu Ross,

Thank you very much for sharing these stories...

A great thread... unfortunately I do not know much of your sifu or had a chance to meet him...

I hope you keep this one goin for a while :)

Joe

[brothernumber9]

Coach Ross,

If it stirs too much trouble or political BS I'll understand if you don't respond or confirm, but I heard through the grapevine years ago, WH's people (I'll use it loosely) were more or less trying to tell most kung fu schools in mid-town, down-town what they can and cannot do. Rumor had it they tried to tell your Sifu what to, and not to, do. Alot of others had caved in to the coersion but Sifu Chan Tai San did not and openly defied and practically dared them to make a move against him. Are there any stories related to this that you are able to share?

[lkfmdc]

It's not secret that we, me in particular, had issues with Wai Hong and company. While he set up the first Kung Fu federation in the US (the Eastern United States Kung Fu Federation), which even Tai Yim was originally a member, they got lazy and stopped doing anything. It became nothing more than the "Wai Hong mutual admiration society"

Being that it did NOTHING, we started going to Sifu Yim's events. This pizzed Wai Hong off, he was angry that NACMAF was called the "North American" federation like it was bigger than his "Eastern US" federation, blah blah, huge F-in ego trip and other such NONSENSE

Wai Hong told us we couldn't go to Sifu Yim's events, I told him to mind his own business, and reminded him this was AMERICA, not China...

When we came back, he called us into his school again for a "meeting".. he said he had fined us $30,000 for going to the NACMAF event. Not only did I not have that kind of money, he had no way to collect it even if I had it. I told him to stop living in fantasy land and left....

When we started promoting USA WKF events in New York, Wai Hong once again called us in... he pulled a gun on me. For a guy who is supposed to be a "kung fu master", guns are the thing he falls back on,

Why anyone took any of his "orders" seriously is a mystery to me, must be a Chinese thing. In the US in the 1990's to let a guy who didn't even have a real school anymore, , to tell you what to do???

Not to mention, what a back woods peasant Wai Hong is. During his "meetings" he'd sit in a wife beater tank top, picking his toe nails....

I bumped into Wai Hong on the street not that long ago, I was on my way to have tea with students. I asked him, "so what are you up to these days?" (I was being polite). He just said "I'm buying some mushrooms"

How this guy was the most feared figure in Chinatown is really beyond me....

[lkfmdc]

Pretty soon, I think I'm gonna start posting some of the less politically correct stuff.... be prepared :eek:

[SaekSan]

"...he pulled a gun on me"

That's another story I'd like to hear about Mr. Ross.

:)

[lkfmdc]

There is no story, I don't remember what I said exactly, but it was basicly "are you going to shoot me?" I was there in front of 10 other teachers...

[SaekSan]

I've only heard rumors but nothing substantial. I understand your hesitation.

Thank you for the insight.

Have you ever given any thought to writing a book?

Please continue posting your stories they are priceless.

:)

[SifuAbel]

"I don't know if you know the background on what I am talking about, I'm only hesitant to go into it so I don't get banned"

Its best not to stir the turkish coffee.

[lkfmdc]

The dark side of traditional martial arts, the stuff we aren't supposed to talk about....

OK, this guy was a rich kid in a major city, studying under big time teachers. So how did he end up in a monastery in an out of the way part of nowhere? Might be because he killed someone in a duel and had to run off there.

In China, if you "became a monk" to "atone" for your "sins" then the police usually left you alone, even when you killed someone...

OK, this guy was a famous teacher with 15 schools in Guangdong provice, one day he picks up, leaves his schools and goes to Hong Kong to start over again with nothing?

A famous Lama teacher did just that, left 15 schools behind and went to Hong Kong. Why? Well, a guy walked into his school, looked at the style and said "I don't think that would work"

Famous Lama teacher says "oh yeah?" and proceeds to poke the guy in the eye! When the guy puts his hands up to cover his face, famous Lama teacher kicks him in the groin. Guy falls down screaming, famous Lama teacher stomps on his head and kills him...

All pretty common knowledge in the circles I was in.

I never paid for a meal in San Francisco when I was there with the Lama guys. We'd walk in, order whatever we wanted, walk out... anyone care to guess why?

Why these same guys all carried meat clevers and had lots of scars on their bodies....

I was at one of Tat Mau Wong's tournaments one year. This guy goes out and does a White Crane set, it's beautiful. So we go up to him after he's done and ask him which school he's from. Chinese guy looks us straight in the face and says "I don't do any kung fu"....

WTF! We just watched you do a form, a white crane form...

Chinese guy "what is white crane?"

His teacher comes strolling up with Chan Tai San, so we are then introduced as Sifu Chan's students. Suddnely, Chinese guy is really friendly

"oh, that is so and so set, my name is BLANK, etc etc"

They took us out to dinner that night. We didn't pay, neither did they! We then went to their school, in an alley behind a Mah Jong parlor....

Out of the blue one day, one of Harry Ng's students shows up at our school in New York. He had "just decided to visit" but needed a place to sleep while he stayed in New York, for just 6 to 8 months....

Anyone seeing what I'm getting at?

[SifuAbel]

Ok, Don Ross, that which is understood need not be discussed.

<------ covering ears yelling La La La La La La La La in loud voice.

[SaekSan]

You should refer people to this thread next time they accuse you of hurting their feelings... Then they can see where you're coming from.

:D

[lkfmdc]

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;

1. Kahp Choih (stamping strike)
2. Paau Choih (long uppercut)
3. Chyuhn Choih (straight punch)
4. Tau Bouh Seung Gwa (steal step twin backfist)
Mah Sik Pak Yik (spin into horse stance crane wing strike)
5. 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)
6. 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.

[lkfmdc]

Originally posted by SaekSan
You should refer people to this thread next time they accuse you of hurting their feelings... Then they can see where you're coming from.

:D

ya think? :D

[lkfmdc]

One of the greatest Chan Tai San stories EVER!

The very first time we went to one of Sifu Tai Yim's events, Sifu Chan is doing his Chi Kung demo. As usual I am translating his comments into English. So you have

Chan Tai San: I am very happy to be here as Sifu Tai Yim's event

Me; translate into English

Chan: I knew him when he was a little boy, I was friends with his teacher and studied with his si-gung

Me; translate into English

Chan: Tai Yim's Si Gung, the "white haired devil" was very famous

Me: translate into English

Chan: for killing a lot of guys

Me: SILENT (I aint no dummy)

Sifu Chan continued about how the White Haired Devil had killed so many people that their families hired men to go and kill him. I am no dummy, I am not translating this! So on he goes.

The Chinese are dying laughing! The Americans are asking me why I'm not translating. I'm just standing there, hoping he'll change topics. Of course, Sifu Chan continues

Sifu Chan talks about how a bunch of these hired killers surrounded the place White Haired Devil was having tea in, White Haired Devil breaks off the legs of the table that he's eating at, goes outside to beat them to death

I'm not touching it!

Sifu Yim, realizing that the lack of translation is a bad thing, tries to ad lib....

Sifu Tai Yim: "Master Chan is happy to be here. He says that kung fu is excellent for everyone, an excellent way to get healthy"

Only problem, while sifu is talking, he's mimicing the blood and mayhem with his hands. His body language is anything but about "health and spiritual development"

The Chinese in attendance are dying laughing...

Sifu Tai Yim keeps trying to ad libb

Sifu Chan is mimicing White Haired Devil choking to death the last guy

I'm just standing there....

Sifu Chan "and that's how White Haired Devil beat six guys to death with table legs"

I jump right in "and now Sifu Chan will do his next Chi Gung demonstration"

I honestly though Tai Yim was gonna kill me :D

[FngSaiYuk]

Originally posted by lkfmdc
... Sifu Chan knew he was eventually going to the US, these students were temporary.
...
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"....
...
I actually found this to be a rather common Chinese attitude.

I now feel I better understand your 'rants'.

I agree w/SaekSan, you should refer people who's 'feelings have been hurt' to this thread. Good stuff. I won't pretend that I'm not exactly impressed by the basic moral character depicted, but what's great is that it feels very real, very human and explains quite a bit about the views you've expressed in this forum.

Thanks, and I look forward to reading more...

PS. I also vote for a Bio, this is very much the kind of thing I'd love to read, and apparently quite a few other folk would as well.

[FngSaiYuk]

Originally posted by lkfmdc
I honestly though Tai Yim was gonna kill me :D

THAT is HILARIOUS!!!!


More!!More!!More!!

[lkfmdc]

Originally posted by FngSaiYuk


I won't pretend that I'm not exactly impressed by the basic moral character depicted,



Reality isn't always pretty, in fact, most of the time it is downright ugly.....

[FngSaiYuk]

Originally posted by lkfmdc
Reality isn't always pretty, in fact, most of the time it is downright ugly.....

Agreed, which is why I'm really enjoying this and hope you continue, or better yet, put together a bio. Feels very real and doesn't try to hide the ugly behind a PC facade.

[MonkeySlap Too]

Ohman, I remember sitting at the 96' Jeff Bolt thing, and your teacher was talking about Henry Poo Yee..the South Mantis guy. The person translated said something about, "I knew his teacher." then stopped translating... but Wai Lun Choi was sitting next to me and was busting up laughing... but he never tell mec what was said....

What a riot. Keep going Ross...

[norther practitioner]

Thanks Ross, good stuff..

[lkfmdc]

My sifu frequently shared stories in public that in American society would be taboo....

I remember one dinner where he asked another famous sifu if his wife had found out yet about his 16 year old mistress.... the whole table just looked down at their dishes

NO, aint gonna tell you who that was :D :eek: :D :eek:

[Lowlynobody]

Sifu Chan is mimicing White Haired Devil choking to death the last guy

"Kung fu is good for your health."


lol

[Shaolinlueb]

oh man sifu ross.

I am enjoying these stories tremendously. better then the ones i hear of sigong fu.

[lkfmdc]

Life as an orphan in a monastery......

Sifu Chan was only one of many young boys that the temple took in. I think it was a group of like 12 but I don't remember exactly. Sifu many years ago had an old picture of the group when they were teenagers...

All took "manastic names" even though they didn't all take final vows and become monks. All were "san" or "mountain" names. Lei Fei San was the #1, a very good friend of my sifu. He is still alive and well in Canton, he has over 1000 students there.

Chiu Wan San was in Chicago, I don't know if he is still there or even alive, sadly.

Oh, actually, as I type this, there was another student who was #1 before Lei Fei San, but he disgraced Jyu Chyuhn and the temple and was kicked out.... no one really knows what became of him...

My sifu's relationship with his teacher was, like my relationship with Chan Tai San, COMPLICATED. Jyu Chyuhn was a strict discipliner, a harsh teacher. In some respects the kids hated him...

In other ways, he was their father, the only father figure they ever knew. He raised them, fed the, healed them...

All the kids were taught Choy Lay Fut and that meant harsh stance training at the beginning. All morning holding stanced, jumping up and down with sand weights attached to their ankles. Duck walks, squats, etc....

The first big formal test we arranged at the Mineola school, the seniors wanted the students to hold stances (Steve Ventura and myself came from Hung Ga with strong stance tradition, Gus Kapros also wanted to see strong stances...)

When it came to the students holding the stances, legs shaking, sweat pouring off, Sifu Chan LEFT THE BUILDING, he went downstairs and had a cigarette. He told me that while he knew it was necessary, he never wanted to see that ever again, it reminded him of those days...

The kids hated Jyu Chyuhn for making them do stances and training so hard, and because he made them study and was harsh. So, like "lord of the flies" they often fell back on their worst animal instincts... Sifu Chan told me they literally tried to kill Jyu Chyuhn a few times!!!

Head to head, young kids vs a master was a no brainer. The beatings commenced to quote Bill Cosby :D

Lei Fei San and Chan Tai San decided to "plot" better ways to kill. One day they waited for Jyu Chyuhn to meditate. He meditated every day in front of the main altar. Chan Tai San stole a knife and waited for him to meditate. He waited until he thought Jyu Chyuhn was deep in meditation and jumped up on the altar..

Jyu Chyuhn simply took off his shoe and slapped Chan Tai San in the face! He had been aware he was hiding the entire time.

As an indication of how complicated and conflicted the relationship was, Sifu Chan told me this story crying, "and that's how we tried to kill him, I miss Sifu" he cried. Sifu Chan really loved Jyu Chyuhn, even with these strange behaviors....

[lkfmdc]

The climax of this difficult and conflicted relationship came when Chan Tai San was an adult...

At 17, in 1937, the Japanese had invaded China. Chan Tai San left the temple to join the resistance to the invasion, joining the KMT's special "peasants' division"

At this time, Chan Tai San had NOT yet learned Lama Pai. Jyu Chyuhn felt he had been too immature and wild to learn the method. He had only studied Choy Lay Fut.

In the "peasants' division" however, Chan Tai San was in the company of many kung fu master (White Haired Devil for example) and since they were all in the same cause of fighting the Japanese, they shared techniques, a first for Chinese martial artists who had before all been in their sects fighting eachother

after years of fighting the Japanese and after having learned other methods of Kung Fu from his fellow soldiers, Chan TAI San returned home...

Sifu Chan thought he was a man, and he wanted Jyu Chyuhn to teach him Lama Pai. But Jyu Chyuhn saw a man who was older, but who had not grown up... Jyu Chyuhn refused...

Chan Tai San then cursed his teacher, calling him an old man, a worthless old man, Sifu Chan said that he didn't need to learn Lama, he was already a combat veteran with cross training

Sifu Chan, in anger, attacked Jyu Chyuhn

I tell you this story as Sifu Chan told it to me, I asked him, "so what happened"?

He told me that the next thing he knew, he was on his hands and knees. he thought that some of his teeth had been knocked out and he reached out to find them, he wanted to stuff them back into his mouth, because he wanted to be buried with them. He said that he knew he was no longer a child, and as such, he expected that this time Jyu Chyuhn would kill him for such an attack

Instead, Jyu Chyuhn picked up Sifu Chan, took him inside and nursed him back to health. Sifu Chan said that upon being picked up, he cried like a baby and begged his sifu to forgive him. And Jyu Chyuhn did. After a few months of healing, Sifu Chan began studying Lama Pai....

[ShaolinTiger00]

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.

[diego]

Originally posted by lkfmdc
At first Chan Tai-San did not learn Lama Pai. Instead he learned basic kung-fu skills and Choi Lei Faht and general monastic practices. He practiced everyday, three times a day for close to seven years before he even heard about Lama Pai.

Sifu Chan relates that he had a terrible temper and had gotten into fights with local gangsters. Despite repeated warnings from the monks, Sifu Chan engaged in many duels, including several with western boxers, and was always victorious. For this reason the monks suspended his training and refused to allow him to study their most valued system, Lama Pai.

One day, out of frustration, Chan Tai-San decided to challenge his teacher, the very same monk who taught Lama Pai. The monk easily defeated Chan Tai-San but saw a spark of hope in the young student. After Chan Tai-San swore to change his ways he was finally allowed to learn Lama Pai. That monk was Jyu Chyuhn.

After seven years of intense study, Chan Tai-San completed the Lama Pai system under Jyu Chyuhn's direction. Chan Tai-San had devoted himself to Jyu Chyuhn's version of Lama Pai and had never realized that there were numerous versions of the Lion's Roar tradition in southern China. It wasn't until Chan Tai-San left the monastery and had met teachers of White Crane and Haap Ga that he had an opportunity to see just how complete Jyu Chyuhn's version had been. To further his knowledge of Lama Pai, Chan Tai-San studied with Dang Ho, a student of Wong Lam-Hoi, and with Ma Yi-Po, a student of Wong Yan-Lam. Ma Yi-Po was particularly valuable in helping Chan Tai-San uncover the truth because he had studied another version of Lama Pai in Manchuria.

Sifu Ross, I have always wanted to know how the Lama Pai from Manchuria was differant from the Wongs, would you share some info on the differances?...how many differant Lama styles did your sifu study, etc?

lmao @ this: "Sifu Tai Yim: "Master Chan is happy to be here. He says that kung fu is excellent for everyone, an excellent way to get healthy"

Only problem, while sifu is talking, he's mimicing the blood and mayhem with his hands. His body language is anything but about "health and spiritual development"

The Chinese in attendance are dying laughing...

Sifu Tai Yim keeps trying to ad libb

Sifu Chan is mimicing White Haired Devil choking to death the last guy

I'm just standing there...."

[diego]

Originally posted by lkfmdc
The climax of this difficult and conflicted relationship came when Chan Tai San was an adult...

At 17, in 1937, the Japanese had invaded China. Chan Tai San left the temple to join the resistance to the invasion, joining the KMT's special "peasants' division"

At this time, Chan Tai San had NOT yet learned Lama Pai. Jyu Chyuhn felt he had been too immature and wild to learn the method. He had only studied Choy Lay Fut.

In the "peasants' division" however, Chan Tai San was in the company of many kung fu master (White Haired Devil for example) and since they were all in the same cause of fighting the Japanese, they shared techniques, a first for Chinese martial artists who had before all been in their sects fighting eachother

after years of fighting the Japanese and after having learned other methods of Kung Fu from his fellow soldiers, Chan TAI San returned home...

Sifu Chan thought he was a man, and he wanted Jyu Chyuhn to teach him Lama Pai. But Jyu Chyuhn saw a man who was older, but who had not grown up... Jyu Chyuhn refused...

Chan Tai San then cursed his teacher, calling him an old man, a worthless old man, Sifu Chan said that he didn't need to learn Lama, he was already a combat veteran with cross training

Sifu Chan, in anger, attacked Jyu Chyuhn

I tell you this story as Sifu Chan told it to me, I asked him, "so what happened"?

He told me that the next thing he knew, he was on his hands and knees. he thought that some of his teeth had been knocked out and he reached out to find them, he wanted to stuff them back into his mouth, because he wanted to be buried with them. He said that he knew he was no longer a child, and as such, he expected that this time Jyu Chyuhn would kill him for such an attack

Instead, Jyu Chyuhn picked up Sifu Chan, took him inside and nursed him back to health. Sifu Chan said that upon being picked up, he cried like a baby and begged his sifu to forgive him. And Jyu Chyuhn did. After a few months of healing, Sifu Chan began studying Lama Pai.... without stirring up any isht with the CLF guys on here:) how come Lama was so seceret?

[cerebus]

DAMM!! I was laughing my AZZ off over the description of the translating at Tai Yim's tournament!! :D :D :p :p

[Dale Dugas]

Ross Sifu,

I applaud you for sharing these stories with us. Too many people are often afraid or conflicted to give out these reminders that ALL people are human no matter the background.

I loved the story where Sifu Chan was telling everyone about White Hair Devil Sifu's killing of men in the teahouse.

I can only imagine what was going on through your mind.

Kudos to you.

In Boston,

Dale Dugas

[Becca]

Dude! I just cut and pasted Coach Ross's stories and only a few pertinant other comments. It's at 20 pages, so far!:cool:

[red5angel]

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?

[ShaolinTiger00]

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 *******.

[red5angel]

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?!

[Ray Pina]

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.

[lkfmdc]

Originally posted by ShaolinTiger00
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.

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)

[lkfmdc]

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

[MasterKiller]

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?

[Newb]

Any idea what your sifu thought of Sun Yat Sin and the Boxer Rebellion?

[lkfmdc]

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 :D

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...

[red5angel]

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.

[Palmer]

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.

[Newb]

*deleted* off topic.

[lkfmdc]

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...

[red5angel]

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 ;):D

[SifuAbel]

"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.

[lkfmdc]

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....

[ShaolinTiger00]

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."

[Sow Choy]

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

www.leekoonhungkungfu.com

[lkfmdc]

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!

[lkfmdc]

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

[DF]

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

[lkfmdc]

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

:D

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....

[DF]

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 ;)

[lkfmdc]

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...

[hasayfu]

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.

[brothernumber9]

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

[lkfmdc]

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 :D

[Mutant]

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! :D

[MasterKiller]

He looks like one mean sum'*****, that's for sure.

[lkfmdc]

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...

[brothernumber9]

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.

[lkfmdc]

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!

[lkfmdc]

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!"

:D

[lkfmdc]

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...

[brothernumber9]

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.

[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. :D

[SifuAbel]

"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.

[omarthefish]

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. :D

Nah.....that's just how the Chinese drive. :p

[Sow Choy]

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...

:p

[lkfmdc]

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 :D 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...

[lkfmdc]

Chan Tai San the fighter....

In retrospect, an important part of my time with Chan Tai San was all the stories about his fights. Rather than try to paint an unrealistic picture of an invincible, unbeaten super hero, Sifu Chan showed us the reality... he also made a loss OK... no big deal, it was something that happened and that you learned from. That is how we deal with losses in our school now, have for YEARS, a loss is usually BETTER for your growth than a win...

One of the seniors asked Sifu Chan, why did he challenge so many teachers? His answer made perfect sense really, he said that he wanted to see how skilled they are and what they could offer him....

Chan Tai San met the White Haired Devil, grandmaster of Hung Fut, in the army. White Haired Devil (WHD from now on ok?) was already a master, a skilled fighter, a mature martial artist. Chan Tai San was really nothing more than a punk kid

At the time WHD took no students. He had no interest in them. But Chan Tai San was a persistant bugger and basicly followed him around..

WHD went in to eat, Chan Tai San (having no money) sat outside and waited for him. That's how Chan Tai San saw the infamous "beat them to death with table legs" story.

WHD got tired of this pesky kid following him around. He told Chan Tai San, we're gonna spar with staffs (WHD was famous for his Crazy Devil Left hand staff). WHD said that he'd use 13 specific techniques on Chan Tai San. After the match, Chan Tai San would have a few days to try and remember and perfect the movements, then he'd come back. If he didn't get them right, Chan Tai San would have to agree to bugger off and leave WHD alone...

Apparently not content to take chances, WHD then proceeded to almost beat Chan Tai San to death with his staff!!!!!! Chan Tai San crawled off, said he could barely move the next day...

A few days later, WHD was SHOCKED to see Chan Tai San show up with his staff. He was angry, he never expected to see Chan Tai San again! But he also wanted to see what Chan Tai San would show him, since that was part of the deal

Chan Tai San said, he really wasn't sure if he'd remembered the correct techniques or was doing them correctly. He was really scared. But he showed WHD what he thought was the correct 13 movements.

When he finished, WHD started cursing. Chan Tai San thought, "oh, I did it wrong, now he's really going to kill me"

But among the curses was a question "how did you remember those movements?"

Chan Tai San said he honestly didn't know, he certainly wasn't sure, but apparently he had!!!! WHD agreed to teach him, because he had given his word...

[lkfmdc]

After returning from the war, Chan Tai San had ended up challenging his primary sifu/fahter figure Jyu Chyuhn. I already posted that story, including sifu Chan being pretty sure that he'd stepped over the line a little too far and that Jyu Chyuhn might kill him. But Jyu Chyuhn forgave him and taught him Lama Pai

After studying Lama Pai, Sifu Chan met Chan Dik-Seung, the #2 student of Bak Mei techer Cheung Lai Chung (I looked it up, old issue of IKF with sifu's story, Oct 1996). Cheung Lai Chung was getting on in years, but he visited from time to time.

One problem was that Cheung Lai Chung had a policy of not letting people who had already studiend other methods learning Bak Mei. He did not like Sifu Chan studying, and Sifu Chan didn't help matters!

One day, Cheung Lai Chung agreed to show Chan Tai San a movement. Sifu Chan said he was happy to feel the energy in his hands and arms, but kept thinking the technique he was showing wouldn't work... So Sifu chan tried to grab his arm and kick him in the leg...

Cheung Lai Chugn easily avoided the attack, and was naturally upset. He his Chan Tai San back and told him he had no respect. Even as an older man, Sifu Chan said he had real speed and power

[lkfmdc]

While Chan Tai San made a career of the military and government coaching positions, he was not an officer, nor even regular military, he was a member of the "peasant division" out of the south. As such, he was often "out of work" so to speak. But, even after the communists took over, his connections allowed him to still make money doing "shows" on the streets, doing Chi Kung and selling his herbal medicines...

Chan Tai San arrived in one village and promptly set up his show in front of a large, well kept, fancy building. The locals quickly tried to warn him that the buidling was a famous kung fu school and they wouldnt' like him doing his show in front of their wall and gate.

In typical Chan Tai San fashion, he said "screw it, if they got a problem, let them say something to me"... Sifu Chan proceeded with his show and nothing happened all day...

You thought I was difficult? :D :D

The show went on, nothing happened all day, then at the end of the day, the gate opened and a servant asked Sifu Chan to step inside. Once inside, they told him he had quite a nerve to do a kung fu show in front of their school! Sifu Chan was characteristically un-moved by their "hurt feelings" and the challenges began...

A veteran of war, of White Haired Devil, of Jyu Chyuhn, of Cheung Lai Cheung, etc... Chan Tai San was no wilting flower. He handled three students of the school in a row rather easily...

Then the teacher came out, Mok Ching Gui, founder of Mok Ga...

A typical Chan Tai San story, "so what happened" the seniors asked.... typical Chan Tai San dramatic pause....

As he told the story to us, to that day, until probably the day he passed, Sifu Chan says he never knew what happened. But he knew that his side near his kidneys hurt more than they have ever hurt before... he just sat down in the corner and gave up...

I think, even by Chinese kung fu standards, Chan Tai san was not a "regular guy", so the people of the Mok ga school were not sure what to make of this character... But in a few minutes, when Chan Tai San had caught his breath, Sifu Chan asked them if he could stay and study. Perhaps totally perplexed by this strange man, or perhaps because he HAD bested three of the top students, they said yes, and Sifu Chan learned Mok ga for a month or so from them before moving on to the next village, the next fight and the next adventure

[Joseph_alb]

This is a great thread and a very good read. My teacher once in a while shares stories like those, they make me understand him more as a person and as a martial artist. Thanks for sharing David.

BTW, did Chan Tai San ever interacted with Xingyi or Bagua folk?

[Reggie1]

lkfmc,
Did you know Raymond Fogg at all? I know he trained with Chiu Leun a long time ago, but I don't know if it was the same time Stephen Laurette did.

Thanks, and keep up the stories! These are great!

[phantom]

Sifu Ross, for the most part, I am really enjoying this. Although I never met him myself, there is no doubt in my mind that Sifu Chan was a good teacher and did good things for people. However, I really cannot understand why he would have killed his earlier students in china. Did he ever say why he did? Also, have you ever had a guilty conscience knowing that you learned from somebody who did that? This really disappoints me. However, I do not know all of the details, so perhaps I should not be so quick to judge your sifu. I apologize if this offends you.

[lkfmdc]

I've met Raymond Fogg once or twice, knew he was a mantis person, didn't know he was a Chiu Leun person, don't know him that well... other than he was a very nice guy in person...

phantom, I am neither offended nor surprised by your post. Please don't be offended by my comment, your post is exactly the sort of naive sentiment that I see so often today...

My view was always, if you want to learn to fight, learn from fighters. With guys like Chan Tai san, when he said "this is how this works" you KNEW it worked that way, not because of theory, but because of EXPERIENCE...

In law enforcement they often joke about the "quality" of the witness, but honestly, if you are going after a Mafia boss, the witnesses are not going to be bishops and nuns, they are going to be other Mafia people

Real Chinese martial was NEVER about enlightenment, scholars, being healthy and such nonsense. In Chinese society, the sort of people who devoted their time to learning how to fight with hands and knives were the sorts of people who USED those skills, frequently soldiers, mercenaries, gang members, revolutionaries and secret society brothers...

I think most people don't realize how a lot of the kung fu people got to the US in the first place, brought over by associations to act as "red poles" or ENFORCERS....

A very respected teacher started off his school by taking his students to OTB every day to collect from the dead beats. HIs first group of students were told it was "practice", practice your kung fu on the guy who owes the dragon head $1500...

There is a staff technique where you smash the staff onto the ground. When you do it, you roll your hands so you are only holding the top of the staff, so you don't smash your fingers on the ground. My sifu showed this technique, one guy was a little slow, kept holding it and putting the staff on the floor with his fingers wrapped around the staff, ie his fingers under the staff

After a few times of the slow guy NOT listening to Sifu Chan, sifu chan just walked up and STEPPED ON THE STAFF..... OOOOOOWWWWWWWW! the guy screamed... in Siuf Chan's mind, he'd done him a favor, the guy finally figured out he shouldn't do it that way

[lkfmdc]

If people are already squirming at these stories, the next few may put people over the edge....

[Reggie1]

Originally posted by lkfmdc
I've met Raymond Fogg once or twice, knew he was a mantis person, didn't know he was a Chiu Leun person, don't know him that well... other than he was a very nice guy in person...


Yeah, he studied under Chan Poi (Pui Chan?) out of Florida, Chiu Leun + Lee Kam Wing, and Henry Chung.

[lkfmdc]

The next Chan Tai San story MUST be put in historical context.. but it will still offend and upset many readers here, except maybe the Chinese ones who have head stories about the Cultural Revolution before

"Man Fah Min Gok".... The Cultural Revolution in Cantonese. (Wen Hua Min Guo in Mandarin, I heard that one too, with my ex in-laws)

Only people who were in China and lived through this period will ever really understand it. For my part, I learned that any story that began in that period was going to be sad and depressing, and irrational.

China had become a highly politicized culture with strong, irrational ties to certain figures. Many of course favored the "East Faction" of Mao Zedong... but others favored the leadership of Liu Shaozhi

Worse than a father who is a life long Republican whose son votes democratic... the Cultural Revolution tore apart families and friends in horrible ways.

My ex father-in-law actually tried to shoot his uncle. This was just one of the MILDER stories I heard... so Chan Tai San's story must be put in perspective...

I was in Sifu Chan's house one day when he opened a letter from China. Inside was a picture of a pretty Chinese girl. Sifu Chan showed me the picture and asked me if I wanted to marry her (not as weird as it sounds, families paid American men money to marry their daughters, so the daughters could come over here, make US money, eventually bring the whole family over)...

Cute girl, but no, I wasn't going to marry her. Who was she?

The daughter of a very close friend. They had been in the military together. A Hung Kuen stylist from Guangzhou. Sifu Chan had promised to take care of her, he had a responsibility to do right by her.

What happened to her father? I asked INNOCENTLY....

Sifu Chan told me he had killed him....

It was one of those times when I was sure I had heard wrong, my Cantonese was failing, I had missed something.

I said, "no, your friend, her father, what happened to him?"

I hadn't gone to graduate school yet, so this was quite an education for me. Later I read a lot of literature on how the Cultural revolution had created divisions within the military, divisions where the military ended up fighting eachother in the streets. In Shanghai, they fought eachother in tanks!

Sifu Chan was part of the "East Faction" in support of Mao. He was out with them marching in the street, shouting chants in support of Mao. They came across a Liu faction marching and doing the same thing... They were all Chinese, they were in the same military, many were friends, but in the climate of the Cultural Revolution it came to blows in the street...

I can understand why, Sifu Chan didn't get into much detail. But his friend was in that Liu faction and during that brawl in the street, Sifu Chan had killed him....

It was stories like these that always re-inforced a simple fact, we do not live the lives many of the old masters in China were forced to live.

After the brawl, Sifu Chan went to his friend's house, and on his knees explained to his wife what had happened. The daughter was just a baby, and the wife screamed at chan Tai San and told him that no matter what, the life of the little girl was forever his responsibility..... it was a responsibility that 20 years later he still took seriously...

The daughter ended up in Chicago, married and happy...

[SifuAbel]

You are cutting and pasting these to a file, right? Writing never comes out the same twice.

You have a very "Mickey Spillane " style.

[lkfmdc]

wife was screaming at me last night to save these, but haven't so far, hope Gene doesn't delete it :eek:

[SaekSan]

I've been saving them as you write them in fear that they'll be deleted.

If you ever need them contact me.

:)

[lkfmdc]

I just copied them into a word file,,, but thanks

as we get into the mor controversial stuff, I'm afraidn some moderator may find it "too much"... but I hope it won't be deleted....

[Newb]

I hope I am not out of line but if a moderator deletes this thread, they need a major ego check at the door before moderating.

[SifuAbel]

I agree, this a rare and poignant view into the life of an old master. Life was tough, its was real, lets hear it.

[lkfmdc]

thanks for the support guys.....

more soon...

[Newb]

Sorry if I missed it, but how did the WHD die?

[lkfmdc]

To the best of my knowledge, WHD died of natural age, remember, Chan Tai San only spent a little time with him, not a whole lifetime.... Sifu Tai Yim would know for sure

[diego]

Originally posted by lkfmdc
I've met Raymond Fogg once or twice, knew he was a mantis person, didn't know he was a Chiu Leun person, don't know him that well... other than he was a very nice guy in person...

phantom, I am neither offended nor surprised by your post. Please don't be offended by my comment, your post is exactly the sort of naive sentiment that I see so often today...

My view was always, if you want to learn to fight, learn from fighters. With guys like Chan Tai san, when he said "this is how this works" you KNEW it worked that way, not because of theory, but because of EXPERIENCE...

In law enforcement they often joke about the "quality" of the witness, but honestly, if you are going after a Mafia boss, the witnesses are not going to be bishops and nuns, they are going to be other Mafia people

Real Chinese martial was NEVER about enlightenment, scholars, being healthy and such nonsense. In Chinese society, the sort of people who devoted their time to learning how to fight with hands and knives were the sorts of people who USED those skills, frequently soldiers, mercenaries, gang members, revolutionaries and secret society brothers...

I think most people don't realize how a lot of the kung fu people got to the US in the first place, brought over by associations to act as "red poles" or ENFORCERS....

A very respected teacher started off his school by taking his students to OTB every day to collect from the dead beats. HIs first group of students were told it was "practice", practice your kung fu on the guy who owes the dragon head $1500...

There is a staff technique where you smash the staff onto the ground. When you do it, you roll your hands so you are only holding the top of the staff, so you don't smash your fingers on the ground. My sifu showed this technique, one guy was a little slow, kept holding it and putting the staff on the floor with his fingers wrapped around the staff, ie his fingers under the staff

After a few times of the slow guy NOT listening to Sifu Chan, sifu chan just walked up and STEPPED ON THE STAFF..... OOOOOOWWWWWWWW! the guy screamed... in Siuf Chan's mind, he'd done him a favor, the guy finally figured out he shouldn't do it that way

the staff story reminds me of when my teacher showed me one of kaido's drills with a funky short kick and i couldn't get the flow down and kept asking how does the footwork set it up...his reply was punch at me and watch my feet....kicked me in the nuts when i wasn't expecting...i have found that feeling the technique is the best teacher, so i can respect Chans opinion that he did the guy a favor.

Great thread Dave....one of the mod's should make a sticky!

[lkfmdc]

as most are aware, I am not the most politically correct person when it comes to discussing this sort of stuff, Chan Tai San was less so, he told people to their faces that what he tought, even if it meant destroying their dreams :D

as the number of American students in the classes grew, the association kicked us out... so we moved the classes to a dance studio space in Chinatown. In these sorts of arrangements, you paid for your hours... there was another kung fu class before us, they were supposed to leave at 2 pm. We rented two hours, and there was a dance class after us at 4 pm. One day, the guy just wouldn't wrap it up, he was still teaching at 2:20... it was rude on a lot of levels, especially that he was teaching on our dime, and denying us the time we had paid for..

Sifu Chan finally just walked onto the floor, right past the guy, and pulled out his chair, told the students to start. The other "teacher", an American, SHOULD have been apologetic, but instead started to get all upset!!! Sifu Chan used one of the few phrases in English he ever learned, it sounded sort of like the Cantonese word for "subdue" and the second word was "you"

:D

Sifu chan then made sure I translated the next into English... "you're kung fu sucks, you have no power and no focus, now please leave, you're making us all sick to our stomachs"

It was sort of fun to translate that... the guy made some noises but he was smart enough not to push the issue.

A major mistake I made when we first started advertising Sifu's classes was putting my home number on the flyers. So I got all sorts of weird calls. One of the best was an American who said he had studied Bak Mei. He said he wasn't interested in the classes, just in telling us how Sifu Chan didn't really know any Bak Mei...

:rolleyes:

I told him that really, we didn't care, then he said that he'd like to come down and tell my sifu that. I told him that Sifu doesn't speak English but I'd be happy to translate. I did however tell him that once I translated, I was not responsible for his personal safety. The guy said he didn't understand, so I explained it to him. I told him that if he wants to make a big show, come down, and tell sifu he's a fraud... chances are sifu was going to beat him to death. I told him I just wanted him to understand that I wasn't going to be held responsible for whatever horrible thing happened to him...

The guy reconsidered his position and decided not to come down...

It turns out, the guy's teacher had decided to bad mouth Chan Tai San in his classes. Sifu heard about this, had the guy's home number and called him. I was sitting there when he made the call, it was pretty darn amusing.

Chan Tai San: "well, you know me, you know who I studied with, so what's with all this talk"

didn't hear the other end obviously

Chan Tai San: "you didn't say those things"?

"you did?"

"do you have a problem with me?"

"no? good... I didn't think so"

Chinatown NYC is a very small place really, especially among martial arts people. We heard pretty quickly that the other sifu had gone into class a few days later and "explained" that there was a "misunderstanding" and that everyone should know that Chan Tai San was very well respected

Why teachers felt the need to bad mouth Chan Tai San I never figured out... they alway shut up when confronted and most also kissed rear end in his presence...

[diego]

Originally posted by lkfmdc


Chinatown NYC is a very small place really, especially among martial arts people. We heard pretty quickly that the other sifu had gone into class a few days later and "explained" that there was a "misunderstanding" and that everyone should know that Chan Tai San was very well respected

Why teachers felt the need to bad mouth Chan Tai San I never figured out... they alway shut up when confronted and most also kissed rear end in his presence...

prolly didn't like being told how much they suck so they talked behind Chan's back and kowtoed sp? to his face:)

[darkholme]

lkfmdc your post has brought back a lot of fond memories training with my sifu

After a few times of the slow guy NOT listening to Sifu Chan, sifu chan just walked up and STEPPED ON THE STAFF..... OOOOOOWWWWWWWW! the guy screamed... in Siuf Chan's mind, he'd done him a favor, the guy finally figured out he shouldn't do it that way
Painful effective and straight to the point.
Keep them coming

[Pork Chop]

Ross
Man, this whole thread has me missing DC (and my old kung fu school) with each and every one of your posts. lol

Even more than lion dance, I'm finding myself missing some of that "supplementary" training.

A lot of those US-based stories I can relate to; besides the obvious one that comes up anytime somone mentions "DC".

Can Ye always said nice things about your Sifu; plus with the other sentiments expressed on this thread, I've always had a real positive image of the guy. It's sad when such a bright voice goes silent. My very first sifu, that got me into kung fu 11 years ago, passed earlier this year. Definitely think sharing the stories of the moments that were special to you, keeps them kind of immortal in a way.

This thread makes me miss some days gone by, but I kinda like what I'm doing now. Speaking of which, your comment on "losing" was pretty inspirational and I think it finally sunk in. Taking some steps to try to see some action in 05.

Keep the stories coming. It's human nature to gossip, so we're all into the "dirt"; but I'm really interested in hearing about the training and hearing more about the love/hate relationship with such a father figure.

[richard sloan]

one thing's for sure, with traditional masters, you gotta be real careful of what you say 'yes' to, lol...man some of the predicaments one little word can cause.

my sifu heard of Chan Tai San's passing and had quite a few nice things to say about the man. I think he appreciated the visit Chan Tai San paid him when he decided to stay in the US and came to NYMFC.

[lkfmdc]

Thanks for all the good words guys. Yes, obviously training with Chan tai san has influenced my views on things, especially about "winning"...

aw, crap, was gonna post more, but my guests arrived early

[lkfmdc]

Reviewing the thread, I noticed a question about Chan Tai san and Xing Yi people....

He knew quite a lot, he got around obviously, but the best story in relation to Chan Tai San and Xing Yi is this one...

For the overseas community, Toisan county prints a sort of yearly almanac of things that happened "back home"... How or why Sifu Chan got a hold of an old copy from 1954 I have no idea, but into the school he walks one day with it...

He shows us the section on sports and physical culture... there is the 1954 Canton Province free sparring championship results...

We note that our si-bak (older uncle) Lei Fei San was #2 and Chan Tai San was #3... so we ask who number 1 was and what happened....

Sifu Chan got stopped by number 1, who then fought Lei Fei San in the finals and also beat him. The fact the guy beat BOTH Chan Tai San and Lei Fei San made us darn curious... what style did he do?

Xing Yi, Sifu Chan said....

Well, how did he fight? We of course wanted to know...

Sifu didn't get into much detail, he said the guy told them (both him and Lei Fei san) that he only did 12 techniques EVER, just drilled the same ones over and over....

Sifu Chan then said, basicly, whatever he did, I can tell you one thing, he hit HARD....

Sifu Chan never had a problem giving props when it was due... just few lived up to Chan Tai San's standards....

[yutyeesam]

Sifu Ross - what did CTS think of Wing Chun, and did he ever meet Wong Shun Leung?

123

[mickey]

Greetings,

Thank you for such a great share.

That bit about the OTB master and his students sounded hilarious. Is that stuff still going on? What style was/is he?

mickey

[lkfmdc]

Sifu Chan had a friend in Fut San who did Wing Chun. Sifu Chan said, based upon the Wing Chun his friend did, that in his opinion most of the wing chun did here SUCKED

The only Wing Chun I remember him remarking he liked was Sifu VA Thomas...

[Felipe Bido]

TTT. Excellent thread

[lkfmdc]

Chan Tai San 3, NYC crime 0

More details on the event that made Chan Tai San a celebrity in NYC...

Sifu Chan arrived in this country, he spoke no English (never learned any either!). A friend told him, at least he could see kung fu movies if he went to 42nd street. At the time, 42nd street was crime central, a real slum... off Sifu Chan went, not knowing it was a bad area.

Sifu Chan is wandering around 42nd, looking for this darn movie theatre... there was only one that showed Kung Fu movies, the rest, er, showed lots else :D

Three guys walk up to Sifu Chan and start talking to him. He doesn't know what they are saying, but he said when they pulled knives he got an idea :mad:

A few minutes later, three guys are lying on the sidewalk, none of them is Sifu Chan... the cops are laughing their azzes off as an ambulance has to take the three guys away. The daily news ran something like "kung fu YOU!" or something equally as stupid, but the story circulated like wildfire

When I applied for NACMAF membership YEARS LATER, Ken Fish said to me "oh, you're teacher is that old guy who put those guys in the hospitol, Tai Yim told me that story" so it really got around

[Newb]

The question I have to ask is: Do you have any video you'd like to share?

[lkfmdc]

unlike the Gracie family, we didn't follow sifu around with a video camera waiting for him to get into a fight, so sorry, no "Chan Tai San in Action" coming out anytime soon

[Newb]

Originally posted by lkfmdc
unlike the Gracie family, we didn't follow sifu around with a video camera waiting for him to get into a fight, so sorry, no "Chan Tai San in Action" coming out anytime soon

Just seeing him teach or talk would be nice too =P

[lkfmdc]

One of my training brothers uploaded some video of sifu that I think you guys might be able to view??

http://www.nykungfu.com/school/documents/SifuChanLamaDemo.mpg

http://www.nykungfu.com/school/documents/BokMeiStaffForm2.mpg

http://www.nykungfu.com/school/documents/SifuChanIronHead.mpg

[Newb]

I viewed all 3 fine. Thanx alot.

[lkfmdc]

glad the links worked....

[lkfmdc]

not everyone was Chan Tai San....

In his later years in China, Chan Tai San found employment as a coach of the Guangdong Wushu Team. He coached south fist and fighting sets, also did some hard Qi Gong demos with them (he traveled to the philipines, the first time he had left China!). During this time he hung out with a lot of guys who were coaches...

After Chan Tai San had retired, Steve Ventura, Steve Innocenzi and I were having tea one day, we were introduced to a guy called "iron head" who was a friend of Chan Tai San's and had been a coach also in Guangdong. He was a village Hung Kuen stylist and also a Qi Gong person.

Personally, I wasn't very interested, but Innocenzi was interested in getting more Qi Gong, so we met with him, spent some time with him. Ultimately, his kung fu wasn't really really Chan Tai San standards so we lost interest...

But the reason I bring him up.... he was trying to talk himself up and get us interested, especially Ventura and I who weren't really that interested to begin with.

"Iron head" said that when he sparred with all the coaches, he always won. To which I asked him, "do you mean you beat Chan Tai San"....

His response was instantaneous, he shook his head and waved his hand, NO, NOT CHAN TAI SAN.... he was talking about "friendly sparring" and there was no such thing as "friendly sparring" with Chan Tai San. He said what many had told me before, if you didn't want to get hurt, you didn't mess around with Chan Tai San...

I always found this interesting, how many sifu engaged in almost juevenile "slap fighting" under the name "sparring" and guaged their skills based upon it!

Chan Tai San didn't believe in it. If he was talking about "fighting" he was talking about REAL FIGHTING...

"Iron head" wasn't a bad guy, he just was dealing with students of Chan Tai San... :D

He brought his nephew down the next time to try and help him teach, the nephew assumed we were idiots with no training, when we left him in the dust, he told his uncle "you dont need me here" and stormed out...

[diego]

Originally posted by lkfmdc
One of my training brothers uploaded some video of sifu that I think you guys might be able to view??

http://www.nykungfu.com/school/documents/SifuChanLamaDemo.mpg

http://www.nykungfu.com/school/documents/BokMeiStaffForm2.mpg

http://www.nykungfu.com/school/documents/SifuChanIronHead.mpg

thanks a lot for those links...is there much footage of CTS out there? do you know if there is any footage of Harry Ng?

[jon]

Thanks heaps for the clips and the tales.

The clip's are very interesting, your sifu must have had one hell of a crushing bridge. You can see the power he gets into those swinging arms, ill bet that must have been top fun to try and contend with.


lol did you end up with constantly bruised forearms from his 'blocks'?
:D


Thanks again for sharing.


Also wanted to say Im still laughing at the comment.
"My sifu is a nut, yours is a nice guy".

My sifu is 'exactly' like this, to everyone else he is a nice mild mannored Taichi master. To me he is the scary old guy who is constantly yelling at me and physicaly throws me around when he gets frustrated.

[ngokfei]

:D

[MasterKiller]

LKFMDC,
http://www.bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?t=19772

[lkfmdc]

Why should I even care what a BJJ zombie says? He's probably got like a year of training and thinks he is the deadliest person alive... It is, after all, bull sh it do forum isn't it?

If you listen to some of these people, and most act like they are 12 and just got their first computer, no one ever fought before Helio Gracie appeared on the planet.

The proof is in the pudding, one of the largest and most successful FIGHTING programs in the US is run by two of Chan Tai San's disciples. The newspapers, the many masters who knew Chan Tai San, the many people who actually met the man, they don't lie.

As for Ngokfei, hey, did you hear about my new movie?

"eagle lurks in lama thread" LOL! :D

[rogue]

(Bad lipsync) You should care because it's been said on Bullshido! Have you no honor. Go now across the country and avenge your master. Or they could just show up and enter your next event and go up against some of your guys. :D

[Kristoffer]

**** em, tell us more stories

[lkfmdc]

Over the years, I've become an expert and completely diagnosed the disease known as being a BJJ zombie. It's a dellusional mind state in which one believes that only BJJ and Muay Thai work and no one else has any skill or idea about fighting. In this pyschotic state of mind, Chinese martial art must always be the worst of all possible training, devoid of value and unable to do anything.

Like any psychotic, when the truth comes crashing in, it challenges their entire world and threatens their understanding of themselves. Thus, guys like Chan Tai San and the existance of a place like NYKK is dangerous, and they must try will all their (limited) skills to attack and try to topple it...

But I just find it amusing....

[ngokfei]

hey david.

Eagle Boy in exhile here!!!!:(

Hey got to have you fine tune my Siu Lohan set

ps: congrats, how was hawalli (my spelling sucks) and have a great holiday!!! :D

[SifuAbel]

Not everyone in BSdo has this attitude.
They just attact their lions share of bandwagon hitchers. Or those that use the site for personal cred validation. Some of the video of these people in action lends one to wonder how they are allowed to percieve themselves as fighters.

After reading more of the thread, a good number have made comments in your defense.

On a side note, the BJJ zombie is no different from any other style zombie. BJJ, like so many other arts, are slowly breeding the mcdojo section of their franchise. Particularly in schools whose primary style is not BJJ but incorporate it in their curriculum.

[lkfmdc]

Yo man, next time you are here in nYC we'll look at that thing!

Hawaii was great, wish I was there now, NYC is cold and it sucks

[MasterKiller]

LKFMDC,
On Parella’s website, he has a hand-drawn chart of Dim Mak time points done by Chan Tai San?

http://www.nykungfu.com/school/documents/DimMakPoints.pdf

[lkfmdc]

Originally posted by SifuAbel
After reading more of the thread, a good number have made comments in your defense.


Actually, the ORIGINAL thread is nothing but snide, uninformed comments... I think you mean a second thread that was started over there, where Master Killer seems to have posted.

But even over there, the level of stupidity was at an all time hi. One guy first says that no student was ever killed in China by his teacher, then says "yeah, a few were" but cant' grasp that of those few, one or two might have been students of Chan Tai San :rolleyes:

I hold to my initial comment, bullshido is a waste of time

[lkfmdc]

Back on topic with more Chan Tai San stories....

This one is a funny one, to lighten the mood so to speak...

Sifu Chan was famous for his hard Qi Gong, breaking bricks and such... well, we were going to San Francisco for Tat Mau's event and he was scheduled to perform. So he wants us to buy the bricks and slabs and stuff. We told him we weren't going to drag that crap on the plane, we'd buy some in SF...

Sifu Chan threw a fit... tried to make us buy the stones and crap. We of course found this ridiculous and simply refused. He called up Tat Mau... Tat Mau calmly told Sifu Chan that we were acting sensibly, in fact, Tat Mau said he'd buy the stuff for us... not to worry...

We get on the plane, and as soon as we land in SF, Sifu Chan calls tat Mau. Tat Mau tells him, "it's Wednesday (we arrived a few days early to site see), the demo is Saturday night, we'll get it"

Sifu Chan freaks out. He was aperfectionist when it came to his demo's and got very difficult around demo time. OUr very bad luck, this is SF and the cab driver at the airport is Chinese. SO Sifu Chan DEMANDS that we get taken from the airport to a lumber yard... still carrying luggage and crap, we go and have to buy all these bricks and crap... then check into the hotel... by the time we got to the hotel, it was late. And the "detour" to the lumber yard, with the wait while sifu chose his bricks, the cab ride was F-IN EXPENSIVE!

I tell Sifu Chan, "I'll call Tat Mau and tell him we have the stuff". Sifu Chan decides "not to take chances" and have Tat Mau get some stuff also.

By the time Saturday night hits, we're unloading a cab full of crap, Tat Mau has a pile of crap that Sifu demanded he get, the back of the demo area looks like a construction site...

SIfu Tai Yim is there, and in a joking kind of way, he says to sifu Chan "wow, you gonna break ALL that stuff?"

Sifu Chan turns to me and says "oh, now, to keep face, I have to break ALL this stuff"

We finally get to the demo, which as always, goes well, but Sifu has to break all this crap. Normally, he'd break one or two bricks on his head, but with all this crap, he breaks like four.

People are amazed, and after he demo, sifu Chan shows his head to everyone, not a mark. People ask him "does it hurt?", Sifu Chan waves his hand and says "NO"

Well, we get back to the hotel, and sifu slumps against the wall while waiting for the elevator, and holds his head. My ex-wife, who was Chinese, asked sifu "what is the matter"

Sifu Chan explodes!!!!!!!!

"What's the matter? My head f-in hurts, do you have any idea how much it hurts breaking bricks on your F-in head?" :D

He then asks my ex for his "special bag", so she hands it to him. Some secret dit da jow no doubt? No, a very large bottle of extra strength Tylonol :D

[Newb]

That was Hallirious!! I'm still laughing. Poor Sifu Chan, not only did he almost have a heart attack for getting stuff to break, then gets a headache for breaking too much to save face LOL.

[lkfmdc]

Chan Tai San was great because while he was a famous teacher, a legit bad azz and all, he was also very human, thus scaring away all teh mysticism and BS surrounding so man "legends"

[SimonM]

My brother shares several attitudinal traits with your sifu so I have been sharing some of the stories you told with him. He got a real kick out of the story about your sifu getting you to teach the demos that he had been paid for. :)

Anyway, just wanted to say, your stories have been truly entertaining, keep them coming! (And don't let those jerks on BSdo get to you.) :cool:

[lkfmdc]

I posted this before, but this one belongs in here as well...

was in (edit out city name) with Chan Tai San in the 1990's. We were having tea with 4 Choy Lay Fut teachers from the area, three I gurantee everyone here knows, but I won't use names for obvious reasons.

Now, over the years I've seen two trends in TCMA. I saw guys who weren't the best educated, not exactly historians, often didn't care about lineage and style history and the associated trappings like Kuen Po. Frequently, these were guys who because they were poor, struggled to survive, fought a lot and thus were actually good fighters. Some were actual killers. Deadly.

I also met guys who were educated, upper middle class, so they knew the literary terms, the philosophical inplications of certain terms, they could read all the books, they had good minds for history. They might have had enough money to study with a lot of teachers. They might have traveled all around and seen different versions and studied Kuen Po and got to "direct lineages" etc... They were also freuqently guys who did all their training in schools and who had never had a fight with an angry guy with a butcher knife ever in their lives....

One of the four CLF sifu sitting there was a guy who was well educated, well spoken, had done a lot of research. He'd traveled all over, read various books, knew a lot about the theory. Prior to meeting him that time, I actually had some respect for him. Then we went to tea.

I don't remember what started the exact conversation. But we were discussing what we call Teut Kiuh or scrapping bridge. This sifu, we will call him "mr expert" from now on, said that "the old teachers" were frequently poorly educated and didn't know the original, correct names for the technqiues. On this, he may have well be right.

Anyway, "mr expert" talked about how he only used the original, correct names. OK, fine, he'd gotten some very old Kuen Po. It was an interesting side note, but the conversation had actually been more on APPLICATION

My training brother had started the conversation, not me. But I got drawn in as it progressed.

Mr expert insisted that the application that "old guys" like Chan Tai San used was "wrong". I sort of stepped in at this point. A technque can have many applications, but to tell an "old guy" like Chan Tai San that he was wrong was retarded. Chan Tai San, unlike "mr expert", had actually fought, even killed people. I am pretty sure "mr expert" has never had a real fight in his life...

Mr expert continued about how the old Kuen Po he had gave the correct name and theory, and that since he was the only one currently using it, he was the only one with the "correct application"

So we asked, what is YOUR application?

Mr expert didn't want to show us.

Come on, show us already! We're Americans, we believe in put up or shut up. Mr expert said he didn't want to offend my sifu. A quick translation back and forth, my sifu said, "no, show us your application and David will show you ours"

I told "mr expert", tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it so you can show me your application, then you grab my arm because I am going to show you our applicatoin on you....

mr expert again said he didn't want to offend my sifu, we translated again, this time the other three CLF sifu, Laughing their butts off, helped translate to be 150% sure that my sifu understood (we, his students, were just dumb lo faan)...

My sifu offered mr expert to do it on HIM this time!

Mr expert just started eating his dim sum and didn't open his mouth the rest of the day.....

[Meat Shake]

Interesting stories coach ross. Thanks for posting them. Keep em comming.

You should compile them into a journal or essay book, a collection of short stories of the life and times of sifu chan tai san. Im certain a good number of people would buy it... You tell the stories quite well. Its been an interesting read thus far.

[sihing]

Sh!t that was so funny, I haven't had a good laugh like this in awhile, LOL. I also liked the story of all of you with Sifu Chan Poi (Praying Mantis Master in Florida, sorry for the spelling if its wrong) and him driving and turning around all the time to talk to you all, LOL. Absolutely Hilarious stuff and great Kung Fu stories also. I haven't even heard of Master Chan Tai San before this thread but I can almost see him when he's is getting angry with you or making a funny crack. LOL....

Keep'm commin...

James

[SifuAbel]

ttt,

keep um coming

[lkfmdc]

out of town for holidays with very limited internet access, but more will come in January when I return

[cerebus]

We're looking forward to it. Enjoy! ;)

[Newb]

Great addition to the thread. Thanx.

[cerebus]

Thanks, that was great!

[lkfmdc]

I did not realize that Chris was on here, but I am so happy to see him and to see him add his thoughts. The life we led was not normal by anyone's standards :D so it is nice that someone who was there can sort of "testify" that it is all true!

Hey, Chris, if you are still reading, I just heard about the little addition, my best wishes, I am happy for you.... we'll chat soon

[Newb]

(Chanting)

More Chan Tai San Stories!

More Chan Tai San Stories!


Where's my Burrito??

[lkfmdc]

... be careful what you ask for....

If Chris is still around, he'll get a kick out of this one. Michael Parrella and Gus Kapros came to me one day just after the school in Mineola had been opened. They wanted the primary course for the school to be Choy Lay Fut but they had no short CLF forms as beginners sets...

I simply suggested they teach some of the shorter, more beginner Lama sets Steve Ventura and I had learned, or, baring that, MAKE UP a short set, no big deal...

They wanted to ask Sifu Chan for a set... my advice, based upon knowing Sifu for years, was not to bother... Sifu rarely taught sort, beginner forms, he was much more into showing off what he had... as I said earlier.. I told them, they would likely end up with a very long and complicated form so Sifu Chan could "show off" the quality of the stuff he could teach, rather than what they really wanted...

YOuth is about being stubborn, so they insisted, and off we went to talk to sifu...

I tried to explain that we wanted a "chouh kahp" (beginner level) set for the school. Sifu Chan, as I expected, said "no, we need a "Kyuhn Jung" (fist seed) set to show off the new school, show we are doing something special, a CLF lineage not taught here before, etc etc

I translated back, "he wants to do a fist seed set"... I added, "he's going to give you what I told you he would, NOT what you want really"...

Parrella was suddenly in love with the idea of getting a "kyuhn jung" set.... I tired to warn him against it...

So, the die was cast, the set ended up being well in excess of 150 movements, with very complicated variations, pretty much a taste of the entire style. It was impossible for beginners to learn. Over they years, Parrella and Kapros broke it up, it was broken up into two sets, then three sets.... it was the total opposite of what they had originally wanted... be careful what you ask for...

A similar experience, this time with Lama and my classmate Stephen Innocenzi... he wanted to get some more advanced fighting techniques... so on Sifu Chan went with two VERY LONG Lama sets know as "Batt Duhn Go Sau" and "Sahp Duhn Go Sau" (eight section advanced hand, ten section advanced hand)

Innocenzi, Ventura and I all ended up doing these sets, very long, very complicated, lots of advanced techniques.... a lot of it pretty obscure or esoteric. Innocenzi said "when we're done, I guess we'll drill all this stuff...."

But, in typical chan Tai San fashion, when we were done with the sets Sifu Chan said to Innocenzi "there, you have advanced techniques, which is WHAT YOU ASKED FOR".... Innocenzi then said "well, I was hoping we'd drill stuff"... but, of course, that had not been WHAT HE HAD ASKED FOR...

[ngokfei]

man wished he sold cars
:D

happy new year dave, give my best to the guys

eagle boy

[MonkeyBoy]

lkfmdc,

Thank you for sharing.

Gloria anum nova.

[lkfmdc]

I had the pleasure of having Steve Ventura and Steve Innocenzi over for dinner this weekend and we tossed around Chan Tai San stories....

Innocenzi reminded me of ANOTHER "brick story"... this time we were in Florida... we once again had like a day or so to get the bricks, but Chan Tai San was going nuts again, this time going nuts on Innocenzi! I must have been hiding or something :D

Apparently, Sifu Chan corners Innocenzi in the hotel lobby... Innocenzi again says "relax, we've got time"...

Sifu wigs out... I forgot this, but he went outfront of the hotel and flagged down someone's car, not a student, not even a kung fu person, not even someone we knew, just a total stranger, a white guy who spoke no Chinese and had no idea what the heck was going on, just some crazy Chinese guy had jumped in front of his car and was carrying on...

Of course, after this scene, we HAD to take him to get his bricks... but Innocenzi was mad as heck...

so why then, you might ask, did Sifu Chan ask Innocenzi to take the sledge hammer that night? One of sifu's tricks was to pile bricks on his head and have them broken with a sledge hammer. Why he chose Innocenzi, who was fooming at him, well, it is anyone's guess...

I forgot this whole story, but I was dying remembering it, Inno took the hammer and in a GIANT SWING cracked Sifu on the head during the demo.... darn, remembering that was funny...

[cerebus]

:eek: :eek: :p :p

[cerebus]

So, Sifu Ross .... did you ask him how his head felt afterwards? :D :D

[Newb]

Originally posted by cerebus
So, Sifu Ross .... did you ask him how his head felt afterwards? :D :D

Apparently he had his extra strength Tylenol handy.

[Shaolinlueb]

Originally posted by lkfmdc
Why should I even care what a BJJ zombie says? He's probably got like a year of training and thinks he is the deadliest person alive... It is, after all, bull sh it do forum isn't it?

If you listen to some of these people, and most act like they are 12 and just got their first computer, no one ever fought before Helio Gracie appeared on the planet.

The proof is in the pudding, one of the largest and most successful FIGHTING programs in the US is run by two of Chan Tai San's disciples. The newspapers, the many masters who knew Chan Tai San, the many people who actually met the man, they don't lie.


well said sifu ross. well said :D

[SifuAbel]

Just to add a bit and not derail the thread. A "what do you do" thread came up over there. A majority of memebers revealed that they were college students.

[Starchaser107]

Great thread lkfmdc.
thank you for sharing these stories with us.

[FatherDog]

Originally posted by SifuAbel
Just to add a bit and not derail the thread. A "what do you do" thread came up over there. A majority of memebers revealed that they were college students.

That's the case with most internet fora, because those are the largest group of people online/tech savvy with enough free time to surf the net a lot.

When the current generation that was raised on the internet gets to retirement age and suddenly has no jobs to occupy their time, the 'net's going to be a weird place.

I predict a lot of forums dedicated to how back in the day we had to carry the bytes back and forth from our computer to the modem in a bucket, uphill both ways in the snow.

[cerebus]

LOL! I hadn't considered that before FD. Man, and I thought the i-net was already dam weird! :p :p

[Becca]

NONONONONONO!!!!! STAY ON TOPIC! Go mess up another thread- this one is solid and needs to stay that way, please!:mad: :mad: :mad:













;) :p

[cerebus]

True. Let's hear more about GM Chan! (Maybe coax Sifus Innocenzi, Kapros, and other of his students to come on & share? That would be cool too! :) ).

[Dale Dugas]

Ross Sifu,

Any stories related to your Iron Arts within Lama-pai Kung fu?? I have heard some fun ones from others and wanted to pose the topic to you.

I can only imagine what it was like to train Iron Palm, Iron Vest/Iron Body, etc.. under Chan Sifu.

In Boston,

Dale Dugas

[MonkeyBoy]

Originally posted by cerebus
True. Let's hear more about GM Chan! (Maybe coax Sifus Innocenzi, Kapros, and other of his students to come on & share? That would be cool too! :) ).

FYI, it's Sifu Kaparos.

[fiercest tiger]

Hi Ross

Is there any footage of Chan around love to see him move?

Also Ross, who did he learn Bak Mei from?

Cheers
FT

[lkfmdc]

My training brother Gus Kaparos.... not an easy name to spell but it also reminds me of a funny story...

we sponsored a big tournament in NYC and one of the cable TV martial arts shows came. the guy who ran it was a well known pot head, a real crack pot, he kept calling Gus "Doug"

Gus, and the rest of us, kept correcting him... but when the segment aired, the caption under Gus' section read "Doug Kapieroz" ... Gus was pizzed.... :p

I know, that's not really a Chan tai San story, so here is another one....

My Cantonese was often touch or go... if it was a common topic, I'd have vocabulary... if it was something new, I often had to guess...

Sifu Chan never taught kids, but one day, in the park, these kids ask if he will teach him... I don't know what "children" is in Cantonese at the time, I improvised, basicly I took a guess...

Now, Sifu Chan knew full well I had made a mistake, but he capitalized on it, so it sounded funny to him... this is what basicly what happened

"uh, sifu, do you teach MIDGETS?" (I used the wrong words and instead of kids I said "midgets')

Sifu Chan (amusing himself)... "do I teach what?"

"do you teach MIDGETS"

"oh, midgets, is that what you're asking me?"

"why yes sifu, do you teach MIDGETS" (dumb me, I actually thought I had stumbled on the correct word so I kept repeating it)

Sifu Chan (amusing himself to no end) - "why yes, I teach midgets."

"how much"

"how much to teach midgets?"

"yes, how much to teach midgets"

He kept leading me on, having me say it over and over again, later, Stephen Laurette told me what I had actually asked him and the joke was obvious....

[Vash]

Midgets, children, no difference?

[cerebus]

DAM! It's a good thing I wasn't drinking a soda when I read that or I would've had a serious mess to clean up! :D :D :D
Midgets.... :p

Sorry for misspelling Sifu Kaparos' name. I was going by memory, which as I become an increasingly old man, becomes increasingly... um, increasingly.... what was I saying? :D

Fiercest Tiger, Sifu Ross has already posted a bunch of film clips of Master Chan in action (earlier on this very thread I believe), check and see.

[ngokfei]

hey dave warn us. I almost wet my pants!!!!!:eek:

I know that pot/crack head well, he's always being sued for not paying off on his contracts, etc. (i'll say no more)


;)

[WanderingMonk]

Originally posted by lkfmdc

"uh, sifu, do you teach MIDGETS?" (I used the wrong words and instead of kids I said "midgets')

Sifu Chan (amusing himself)... "do I teach what?"

"do you teach MIDGETS"



midgets?

you mean "small man" like "xiao ren" in mandrain?

if that's what you said, it ain't midgets, it is usually the chinese codeword for "backstabbers", "ingrates", etc.

[lkfmdc]

in different dialects it means very different things

in Mandarin, it means a "small person' as in small of character, a petty person, a bad person

in Cantonese it means "midget"

but, as I learned later, in Shanghai dialect it DOES mean "children"

go figure :D

[Pork Chop]

Coach Ross,
Know this probably ain't the best avenue, but not sure how else to go.
Sent you an email a lil while back.
Hope yah got it.
If yah missed it, no biggie.
If yah got it and didn't feel like replyin, cool beans there too.
Just checkin.

[fiercest tiger]

I found the bak mei info on this thread thanks, just a quick question. What other BAK MEI forms did Chan sifu learn. Also CLC did take other sifus from other styles even after he defeated them.

Sounds like you had fun with your sifu, same as my sifu i have many stories that i tell my students.

Money can never buy these memories.

FT:)

[WanderingMonk]

Originally posted by lkfmdc
in different dialects it means very different things

in Mandarin, it means a "small person' as in small of character, a petty person, a bad person

in Cantonese it means "midget"

but, as I learned later, in Shanghai dialect it DOES mean "children"

go figure :D

coach ross,

errr. upon reading your response, I asked several native cantonese speakers from hk and you can find their response about what "xiao ren" mean in cantonese below.

http://www.kungfuboard.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=13708

I don't think it was "midget". if it does mean what I think it mean in cantonese, your teacher had a lot more fun with what you said than you had thought.

[lkfmdc]

maybe your hk friends spend too much time in Gov't sponsored schools... honestly, even the way they write is NOT cantonese... it is all Mandarin grammar... not to mention that there are MANY sub dialects within "Cantonese"... most HK people probably would have trouble even talking to my sifu, who was from Toi San... and I have truble understanding Chung San....

needless to say, I know perfectly well what it means in Cantonese, I have no doubts....

[SifuAbel]

Yeah, my wife's parents speak in the toi san. I can't understand a word of it. And, of course, it doesn't help that I don't speak any chinese to begin with. :D

[lkfmdc]

oh dear lord, a Cuban married to a Toi san gal... the fights your household must have seen. Oh the horror! :D

Another Chan Tai San story, Chan Tai San, fried chicken chef in Guangzhou!

Sifu Chan's students all know that our teacher loved his chicken. In fact, my training brother Innocenzi notes that the only praise he ever got from Sifu was on how he cut a chicken! (Inno's dad was a butcher). According to sifu Chan, Inno's cutting of a chicken was a thing of beauty and "ho kung fu!"

As a amusing side note, I was in San francisco one day and walked past a side walk caligrapher. I thought to myself, it would be nice to get something for Sifu... so Gwai Loh talking and WRITING MONKEY jots down real quick what he wants the guy to do....

"Lama Pai" the guy looks at it..... "who does Lama Pai"

"My sifu is Chan Tai San... ever heard of him?"... now, in reality, EVERYONE I ever met had heard of Chan Tai San. We sat down in a resteraunt in the harbor in SF and three of the waiters and the head chef knew him. We went out to Stockton Ca to visit a relative of Michael Parrella's, and the cook at the local Chinese place knew Chan Tai San... Sunday I was buying groceries with my wife, I'm waring my school jacket so people ask me who my sifu is, the entire butcher department in teh biggest gracery in Chinatown knew him... ie, he was well known

"Chan Tai San?" the guy raises and eyebrow.... "He sold friend chicken in front of my house in Guangzhou!!!"

"Uh, I think you are mistaken, must be another guy..."

"No, no, Chan tai San... you see, I did Hop Ga with Dang Ho.."

This name I knew, dang Ho was one of the many Tibetan MA sifu that my teacher had studied with...

"Chan Tai San, the chicken seller, he came to our school also...."

The look on my face, according to my first wife, was priceless.... I had heard about nasty Chan Tai San, I knew about mean an vicious Chan Tai San, I had heard about Chan Tai San the fighter, Chan Tai San the soldier, Chan Tai San the herbalist

but "Chan Tai San the chicken seller?"

Truth is stranger than fiction, I had the caligraphy done, went back to NYC, told Sifu Chan the story.. he didn't blink, oh yeah, he'd sold chicken, he had to do something to get money to pay dang HO.... better yet, he said he made good money because he used Jyu Chyuhn's secret souce!!!

KFC, look out, LPC is on the way!

[Vash]

. . . Lama Pai Chicken. Tasted in a reality format against resisting culinary experts.

And they all agree, this chicken can Kick Your Tongues Ass.

[lkfmdc]

"biu jih licking good" :D

[fiercest tiger]

Can i ask you what fights did he have in tournements etc when growing up?

Not stret fights!

cheers
FT

[lkfmdc]

I know this is a long thread, but the info is in there, about how he fought in the Guandong provincial event, how he fought in the inter-military tournaments, etc....

[SifuAbel]

Originally posted by lkfmdc
oh dear lord, a Cuban married to a Toi san gal... the fights your household must have seen. Oh the horror! :D



The mrs. and I get along famously.

But the parents.............OML!!

TG!, they're on the east coast.
Those two would fight about which direction is "up".

[ShaolinTiger00]

oh dear lord, a Cuban married to a Toi san gal...

I bet your spice rack is full of all kinds of great stuff! :D You must buy rice in the 50lb. bags.

[ngokfei]

Dave

If I remember correctly (hard to do now I've been hit in the head too many times) that your sifu did use english.

"Fried Guy"!!!!!:D

[SifuAbel]

Originally posted by ShaolinTiger00
I bet your spice rack is full of all kinds of great stuff! :D You must buy rice in the 50lb. bags.


We cook to the max.

Spice rack? Try walk in pantry. I make back ribs so good....

.........Make ya' wanna slap yo' mama.

[cerebus]

:D :D :D

[ShaolinTiger00]

I make back ribs so good....

¿en la caja china? coño...

[lkfmdc]

Chris,

I always thought the praying mantis sifu was from Canada. But I could be wrong....

Funny how your stories are ones I have forgotten, we need to get all the hing-dai together again and jot them down...

[cerebus]

Excellent idea! Then gather everyone's photos from the old days and publish a Chan Tai San/ Lama Pai history!! Many of us would love to have such a book! I'd buy one for myself and a couple for friends! There's too much misinformation out there. We need the real stories of the old masters and the authentic arts.

[lkfmdc]

Coming up next, some more un-PC stories sure to make some cringe....

[cerebus]

Feh! You can't possibly make us cringe! You can't be un-PC enough to do it. Go ahead & try! I DARE ya! :D :D :D :D *sits back waiting impatiently for more* :p

[Shaolinlueb]

un-pc oooh i cant wait.

[lkfmdc]

"Jyu Chyuhn's special sauce for CHICKEN?" some one asked me?

Wasn't he a "monk"? was the obvious question....

Well, yes, and NO... like so many things in the world of TCMA, they are not always what they seem to be...

In Chinese society, there were several ways to deal with someone who committed murder,

you could execute them....

you could put them to hard labor for life....

they could pay the family the amount the life was "worth"

or they could become a monk, removing themselves from outside society... an idea similar to "no longer a threat to society" in modern law...

So a lot of monks weren't exactly the most religious people in the world. They were guys who agreed to remove themselves from society and live quiet but not necessarily saintly lives....

In fact, one day Chan Tai San asked us for some money to send to Jyu Chyuhn's WIFE.....

Jyu Chyuhn had died in the 1980's, he was over 100 years old when he passed away, so in addition to the surprise of learnign he had a wife, we were also surprised to find out she was still alive....

Well, as Sifu Chan explained it to us, well, she wasn't really a "wife"... it was just that when Jyu Chyuhn got older he "needed company".... YEAH RIGHT is exactly what we all thought... add to that the fact the old man married a pretty young girl probably 35 years younger than him...

I sort of chuckled about stuff like this, but others seem completely unable to grasp the concept. It goes against the cookie cutter, perfect world, properly ordered scene they have in their minds. Which is funny because it really isn't a secret.

Chinese kung fu movies are FULL of badly behaving monks. "Kids from Shaolin", the kids make a stew with frog and bird, both forbidden meats, an older monk catches them, they freak out, but he just tastes the stew, goes "good" and sits down with them!!!

Even my Korean wife has stories and jokes, common in Korea about Buddhist monks and their little secrets. It isn't uncommon in Japanese society either.

[Mr Punch]

Originally posted by lkfmdc
Even my Korean wife has stories and jokes, common in Korea about Buddhist monks and their little secrets. It isn't uncommon in Japanese society either. Another good one David! LOL, more please!

I was surprised when I came here, to find that most of the Buddhist priests eat meat, in fact the monks do too, apart from the stricter Zen sects, and at least one priest I know has a hyyooooge wine cellar, drinks like a fish, smokes like a chimney, has been known to go to strip bars, and his favourite food is steak!!!

It can't be a coincidence that in trad masked comedy shows the mask for the Buddhist monk is the same as the mask for the fool! (I think that's the same in Korea...?)

Also if you have read the popular histories of Takuan the Zen monk who advised Musashi, wrote the Unfettered Mind, and apparently invented the rather nice pickled white radish dish takuan pickles he was always in and out of geisha houses. I don't think he was learning ikebana! ;) :D

[joedoe]

I have a friend who is very deeply into buddhism and even considered becoming a monk at one point. His teacher once told him that once you advance in your practice of buddhism, you are obliged to eat meat if it is offered to you, since to refuse it would mean that the animal died wastefully.

I apologise for this interruption. Please carry on with the cool stories :)

[lkfmdc]

Earlier in this thread, I mentioned "Iron Head" and how he told us he'd beaten all the coaches in "sparring" except for Chan Tai san, that was because to him "sparring" was light almost point sparring and you didn't play with Chan Tai San unless you wanted to get hurt...

Sifu Chan was always ready with a story about how HE got beat up. He told us the story about Jyu Chyuhn beating him, Mok Ching Gui beating him, Cheung Lai Chung beating him, etc... funny thing was, he seldom talked about his victories... we would sometimes get a glimmer from him, but many times we'd get stories from others. This is one we got that is definitely not PC and has freaked quite a lot out...

A frienf of Sifu Chan's told us this story one afternoon while Sifu Chan was preoccupied with something. I guess it is not on Sifu's top 10 stories to get out, you'll see why later. It was later told to me almost identically by another teacher in SF who knew Sifu Chan...

Sifu Chan first joined the military at 17 in 1937. He fought in both World War II and the Chinese civil war. In the communist, post war era, he remained in the military and in the 1960's, already in his 40's, Sifu Chan Tai San was an all military sparring champion.

Sifu Chan did tell us about the sparring championships inside the military. Very little rules, very small gloves, like MMA gloves. We all knew he was a champion and considered a very good fighter inside the military.

The rest is the story Sifu Chan did not tell us, but we heard from his two friends...

In the 1970's, Sifu Chan was in his 50's. I guess compared to a guy in his 20's, Sifu Chan was considered an "old man", but to Sifu Chan, he was still the best fighter in the army and no one was going to say otherwise...

One day, Sifu Chan overheard two guys talking about a young army officer. They were talking about him, praising his skill, one suggested he might be better than Chan Tai San. Try to remember that the actual guy in question was not bragging, this was two guys sitting at a table eating rice talking a little too loud for their own good.

Having overheard the claim that this young officer was "better" than Chan Tai San, Sifu Chan approached these two guys and told them to set up a match between him and this young guy.

I also said earlier in this thread, Sifu Chan had skills I will NEVER have. He had hardened his hands, his claws dug into vital points, his chops were heavier than any blows I'd ever felt (or felt since). He knew things about fighting I will never know. It is that simple.

As I tell you what he did, don't ask me how he did it, I don't know. Dont' ask me "could I do it"? I couldn't. But I have no reason not to believe the story. It was told to me by two separate guys, guys who didn't know eachother, guys who both had brought it up without me asking, just in passing. And it fit right in with what "Iron Head" said about NO ONE going anywhere near Chan Tai San

The match was set up. I don't know if the younger guy had any idea what had been said or why Sifu Chan wanted to fight him. For all I know, he showed up expecting a friendly sparring match. For all I know, he may have actually like and admired Chan Tai San.

What was pretty apparent was, Sifu Chan was determined to keep his reputation...

It wasn't a long match, Sifu's friend said that the younger guy maybe landed a kick. The other teacher in SF made it sound very one side, like Sifu Chan went BOOM and it was over. Both agreed how it ended. Sifu Chan knew he'd done some sort of internal damage, and while the young guy was lying on the floor at sifu's feet, Sifu screamed at the two guys who had set up the match...

"don't ever say that anyone is better than Chan Tai San....."

The young guy died. A few years after I had heard the story again (ie in SF), I got up enough courage to ask Sifu Chan about it. Sifu Chan didn't get mad, he just matter-of-fact manner said he'd used a technique to rupture an internal organ, knowing it would likely kill the guy.

Did the guy really die? I asked?

"Yes, he died" Sifu Chan said....

[cerebus]

Whoah! Yes, this is the stuff people don't get to hear about the real old-school kung fu masters. If people are offended by these things, they shouldn't read them. These things happened. Many of the old masters were ice cold when it came to combat. Thanks Sifu Ross.

[lkfmdc]

The idea of rupturing an internal organ does strike me as "esoteric" and I don't buy a lot of the "chi" gimmicks, or "dim mak" as in "death touch"

My father is a medical doctor, my mother was an ER nurse. There's science and perfectly logical explanations for stuff like this. The kidneys can rupture, so can the spleen. Bone fragments can tear through soft tissue. Certain muscular contractions can actually prevent the lungs from expanding, preventing you from beathing...

Sifu Chan was a doctor, capable of bone setting, accupressure and accupuncture, but he was also rather matter-of-fact regarding the fighting applications of such knowledge. When asked about "Dim Mak" he replied he indeed knew it, but his explanation would probably shock a lot....

Strictly speaking, "Dim Mak" only means to "point the pulse" or "touch the pulse"

Dim Yeut, another term used for this sort of thing, means "point the cavity" or "touch the cavity", "Yuet" being certain points on the body...

Sifu Chan's "Dim Mak" was nothing more (and nothing less) than very concentrated strikes to logical areas. the strike were also contoured, using formations of the hands that best fit the area and best transfered the force.

I've been on the receiving end of two of them. I was hit under the arm pit, where a pile of nerves sit, with the fingers. The resulting trama kept me from raising my arm for a day or so.

I was hit in the solar plexus, causing a muscular contraction that prevented me from inhaling, had sifu not messaged and straightened me out, it certainly felt like I was going to die, probably I would have collapsed first, then started breathing... but it would not have been fun...

[Knifefighter]

Originally posted by lkfmdc
The young guy died. A few years after I had heard the story again (ie in SF), I got up enough courage to ask Sifu Chan about it. Sifu Chan didn't get mad, he just matter-of-fact manner said he'd used a technique to rupture an internal organ, knowing it would likely kill the guy.. He hears TWO OTHER GUYS stating that they thought a third guy was better than him. He then has them set up a fight with this third guy who THEY think might be better than him. He then uses a "deadly tecchnique" to intentionally kill the guy, who was pretty much just minding his own business.

Cough...bull...cough...****...cough.

[lkfmdc]

Believe what you want, I certainly don't care....

But don't mess up the thread.....

[lkfmdc]

Earlier in this thread, I mentioned "Iron Head" and how he told us he'd beaten all the coaches in "sparring" except for Chan Tai san, that was because to him "sparring" was light almost point sparring and you didn't play with Chan Tai San unless you wanted to get hurt...

Sifu Chan was always ready with a story about how HE got beat up. He told us the story about Jyu Chyuhn beating him, Mok Ching Gui beating him, Cheung Lai Chung beating him, etc... funny thing was, he seldom talked about his victories... we would sometimes get a glimmer from him, but many times we'd get stories from others. This is one we got that is definitely not PC and has freaked quite a lot out...

A frienf of Sifu Chan's told us this story one afternoon while Sifu Chan was preoccupied with something. I guess it is not on Sifu's top 10 stories to get out, you'll see why later. It was later told to me almost identically by another teacher in SF who knew Sifu Chan...

Sifu Chan first joined the military at 17 in 1937. He fought in both World War II and the Chinese civil war. In the communist, post war era, he remained in the military and in the 1960's, already in his 40's, Sifu Chan Tai San was an all military sparring champion.

Sifu Chan did tell us about the sparring championships inside the military. Very little rules, very small gloves, like MMA gloves. We all knew he was a champion and considered a very good fighter inside the military.

The rest is the story Sifu Chan did not tell us, but we heard from his two friends...

In the 1970's, Sifu Chan was in his 50's. I guess compared to a guy in his 20's, Sifu Chan was considered an "old man", but to Sifu Chan, he was still the best fighter in the army and no one was going to say otherwise...

One day, Sifu Chan overheard two guys talking about a young army officer. They were talking about him, praising his skill, one suggested he might be better than Chan Tai San. Try to remember that the actual guy in question was not bragging, this was two guys sitting at a table eating rice talking a little too loud for their own good.

Having overheard the claim that this young officer was "better" than Chan Tai San, Sifu Chan approached these two guys and told them to set up a match between him and this young guy.

I also said earlier in this thread, Sifu Chan had skills I will NEVER have. He had hardened his hands, his claws dug into vital points, his chops were heavier than any blows I'd ever felt (or felt since). He knew things about fighting I will never know. It is that simple.

As I tell you what he did, don't ask me how he did it, I don't know. Dont' ask me "could I do it"? I couldn't. But I have no reason not to believe the story. It was told to me by two separate guys, guys who didn't know eachother, guys who both had brought it up without me asking, just in passing. And it fit right in with what "Iron Head" said about NO ONE going anywhere near Chan Tai San

The match was set up. I don't know if the younger guy had any idea what had been said or why Sifu Chan wanted to fight him. For all I know, he showed up expecting a friendly sparring match. For all I know, he may have actually like and admired Chan Tai San.

What was pretty apparent was, Sifu Chan was determined to keep his reputation...

It wasn't a long match, Sifu's friend said that the younger guy maybe landed a kick. The other teacher in SF made it sound very one side, like Sifu Chan went BOOM and it was over. Both agreed how it ended. Sifu Chan knew he'd done some sort of internal damage, and while the young guy was lying on the floor at sifu's feet, Sifu screamed at the two guys who had set up the match...

"don't ever say that anyone is better than Chan Tai San....."

The young guy died. A few years after I had heard the story again (ie in SF), I got up enough courage to ask Sifu Chan about it. Sifu Chan didn't get mad, he just matter-of-fact manner said he'd used a technique to rupture an internal organ, knowing it would likely kill the guy.

Did the guy really die? I asked?

"Yes, he died" Sifu Chan said....

[cerebus]

Just ignore the guy who calls himself "knifefighter". Everyone else does. ;)

[lkfmdc]

The idea of rupturing an internal organ does strike me as "esoteric" and I don't buy a lot of the "chi" gimmicks, or "dim mak" as in "death touch"

My father is a medical doctor, my mother was an ER nurse. There's science and perfectly logical explanations for stuff like this. The kidneys can rupture, so can the spleen. Bone fragments can tear through soft tissue. Certain muscular contractions can actually prevent the lungs from expanding, preventing you from beathing...

Sifu Chan was a doctor, capable of bone setting, accupressure and accupuncture, but he was also rather matter-of-fact regarding the fighting applications of such knowledge. When asked about "Dim Mak" he replied he indeed knew it, but his explanation would probably shock a lot....

Strictly speaking, "Dim Mak" only means to "point the pulse" or "touch the pulse"

Dim Yeut, another term used for this sort of thing, means "point the cavity" or "touch the cavity", "Yuet" being certain points on the body...

Sifu Chan's "Dim Mak" was nothing more (and nothing less) than very concentrated strikes to logical areas. the strike were also contoured, using formations of the hands that best fit the area and best transfered the force.

I've been on the receiving end of two of them. I was hit under the arm pit, where a pile of nerves sit, with the fingers. The resulting trama kept me from raising my arm for a day or so.

I was hit in the solar plexus, causing a muscular contraction that prevented me from inhaling, had sifu not messaged and straightened me out, it certainly felt like I was going to die, probably I would have collapsed first, then started breathing... but it would not have been fun...

[FatherDog]

Originally posted by Knifefighter
He hears TWO OTHER GUYS stating that they thought a third guy was better than him. He then has them set up a fight with this third guy who THEY think might be better than him. He then uses a "deadly tecchnique" to intentionally kill the guy, who was pretty much just minding his own business.

Cough...bull...cough...****...cough.

Just out of curiosity, do you think this is bull**** because of the "deadly technique" aspect, or just because you don't think somone would be so much of a reputation-obsessed wack job as to cripple or kill someone who was said to be better than them?

[lkfmdc]

how about you just ignore both options and leave this thread alone, make your own thread, and debate there, leave this one alone.....

[lkfmdc]

Earlier in this thread, I mentioned "Iron Head" and how he told us he'd beaten all the coaches in "sparring" except for Chan Tai san, that was because to him "sparring" was light almost point sparring and you didn't play with Chan Tai San unless you wanted to get hurt...

Sifu Chan was always ready with a story about how HE got beat up. He told us the story about Jyu Chyuhn beating him, Mok Ching Gui beating him, Cheung Lai Chung beating him, etc... funny thing was, he seldom talked about his victories... we would sometimes get a glimmer from him, but many times we'd get stories from others. This is one we got that is definitely not PC and has freaked quite a lot out...

A frienf of Sifu Chan's told us this story one afternoon while Sifu Chan was preoccupied with something. I guess it is not on Sifu's top 10 stories to get out, you'll see why later. It was later told to me almost identically by another teacher in SF who knew Sifu Chan...

Sifu Chan first joined the military at 17 in 1937. He fought in both World War II and the Chinese civil war. In the communist, post war era, he remained in the military and in the 1960's, already in his 40's, Sifu Chan Tai San was an all military sparring champion.

Sifu Chan did tell us about the sparring championships inside the military. Very little rules, very small gloves, like MMA gloves. We all knew he was a champion and considered a very good fighter inside the military.

The rest is the story Sifu Chan did not tell us, but we heard from his two friends...

In the 1970's, Sifu Chan was in his 50's. I guess compared to a guy in his 20's, Sifu Chan was considered an "old man", but to Sifu Chan, he was still the best fighter in the army and no one was going to say otherwise...

One day, Sifu Chan overheard two guys talking about a young army officer. They were talking about him, praising his skill, one suggested he might be better than Chan Tai San. Try to remember that the actual guy in question was not bragging, this was two guys sitting at a table eating rice talking a little too loud for their own good.

Having overheard the claim that this young officer was "better" than Chan Tai San, Sifu Chan approached these two guys and told them to set up a match between him and this young guy.

I also said earlier in this thread, Sifu Chan had skills I will NEVER have. He had hardened his hands, his claws dug into vital points, his chops were heavier than any blows I'd ever felt (or felt since). He knew things about fighting I will never know. It is that simple.

As I tell you what he did, don't ask me how he did it, I don't know. Dont' ask me "could I do it"? I couldn't. But I have no reason not to believe the story. It was told to me by two separate guys, guys who didn't know eachother, guys who both had brought it up without me asking, just in passing. And it fit right in with what "Iron Head" said about NO ONE going anywhere near Chan Tai San

The match was set up. I don't know if the younger guy had any idea what had been said or why Sifu Chan wanted to fight him. For all I know, he showed up expecting a friendly sparring match. For all I know, he may have actually like and admired Chan Tai San.

What was pretty apparent was, Sifu Chan was determined to keep his reputation...

It wasn't a long match, Sifu's friend said that the younger guy maybe landed a kick. The other teacher in SF made it sound very one side, like Sifu Chan went BOOM and it was over. Both agreed how it ended. Sifu Chan knew he'd done some sort of internal damage, and while the young guy was lying on the floor at sifu's feet, Sifu screamed at the two guys who had set up the match...

"don't ever say that anyone is better than Chan Tai San....."

The young guy died. A few years after I had heard the story again (ie in SF), I got up enough courage to ask Sifu Chan about it. Sifu Chan didn't get mad, he just matter-of-fact manner said he'd used a technique to rupture an internal organ, knowing it would likely kill the guy.

Did the guy really die? I asked?

"Yes, he died" Sifu Chan said....

[Kristoffer]

uh, double post?

[Shaolinlueb]

Originally posted by Kristoffer
uh, double post?

triple post. :o

thats some pretty weird stuff Sifu Ross. but i believe the monk stuff and such. i wouldnt doubt that for a second.

[Knifefighter]

Originally posted by FatherDog
Just out of curiosity, do you think this is bull**** because of the "deadly technique" aspect, or just because you don't think somone would be so much of a reputation-obsessed wack job as to cripple or kill someone who was said to be better than them? Both.

[lkfmdc]

Hate to disappoint you, but the world still revolves whether you believe it does or not...

Seeing as we don't care, take it OUT of this thread....

[lkfmdc]

The fact is, very few monks are what most Americans would think they are....

Gene always gets rilled up when I start, but the Shaolin monks are still a classic example....

After Hai Deng was removed, most of the monks weren't very monk like at all... the group that came after Hai Deng was removed were lip synching their chants to audio tracks!

Sifu Chan walked up to them after the "show" and asked them to chant for him, he said, "hey, I am not even a monk, but I know tons of chants from being in the monastery, chant for me"... they couldnt' even chant....

[Newb]

Originally posted by lkfmdc
The fact is, very few monks are what most Americans would think they are....

Gene always gets rilled up when I start, but the Shaolin monks are still a classic example....

After Hai Deng was removed, most of the monks weren't very monk like at all... the group that came after Hai Deng was removed were lip synching their chants to audio tracks!

Sifu Chan walked up to them after the "show" and asked them to chant for him, he said, "hey, I am not even a monk, but I know tons of chants from being in the monastery, chant for me"... they couldnt' even chant....


What a great way to call 'em out as being as lame as Ashley Simpson, Milli Vinnili, and Eminem.


/edit
and Paula Abdul