All will be revealed.....

[lkfmdc]

Some people are new here. Some don't want to dig through really long threads. So I can make things easy. All these quotes are from the Chan Tai San thread

http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=34317




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"...



So, if anyone suddenly thinks that saying that CTS often was lazy in teaching people is a "revelation" clearly it is not. I posted this 2 years ago.

I never said CTS was a saint. I said he was a pain in the butt whose only redeming quality was how good his kung fu was. Even then, he was only worth the pain IF YOU WERE ONE OF HIS PRIMARY STUDENTS. The students in white crane, etc were NOT his primary students.

If you want to think that teachers in Chinatown gave CTS money to teach for YEARS as some sort of "charity" then that's really on you. As Chirs Jurak points out, it defies logic. They could have given him money and sent him on his way. Why have him come up to the school, why continue to do it for YEARS.




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.....

Seems I hit the nail on the head TWO YEARS AGO. Please re-read the above statement.

I guess we have a few of the whinning SOB's on here now :rolleyes:

Again, just because you never saw CTS's "A level material" doesn't mean it didn't exist.

How do I know the difference? that claim is made a lot. The answer is SIMPLE

I spend over ten years traveling and studying with every Lama, White Crane and Hop Ga person I could find. The fact I have some fluency in Chinese helped open doors, the fact I had a letter from CTS definitely opened doors. I have articles, boooks, and video that I can guarantee none of these people even know exists. IE I've seen a LOT of Lion's Roar versions and lineages. I've studied directly with a lot of these teachers. So, gasp, I compared what they had to what CTS gave me

The conclusion I reached, I got VERY GOOD STUFF. I got a very complete system. In fact, the only real Lion's Roar derivative teacher who really "up'ed" my game was Wong Ching. And he was a very close friend of CTS

How can you comment on things you never saw?



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...

Those group classes were NOT at white crane. They were in Duk Chan, then Lafayette street, then long island

MORE TO COME

[lkfmdc]

compare this quote to comments about CTS just teaching forms, the forms changing, etc etc


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 ....



Look at my Lama Kung Fu site... there are pics of Sifu teaching APPLICATIONS, counter punches, locks, throws, trips, etc

Oh, and there is alot of that rare material I said I've collected over the years.

But back to a reappearing theme


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...



My currennt thoughts? If you were one of the guys CTS screwed over, sorry bro, but it wasn't me. I dont' necessarily agree with how CTS conducted his business.

But once again, just because he showed crap to some doesn't mean that he didn't have great stuff

More than a few of CTS students will tell you that the forms that they learned CTS rememebered and corrected even years later

[lkfmdc]

Here, actually right in the original thread, I commented on how I didn't agree with the way CTS did things....


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...



So, what is someone gonna "out" about me and CTS? This was written TWO YEARAS AGO on this forum.... is this what you think you are holding over my head? :rolleyes:

But again, just because CTS was a jerk as a person doesn't mean he didn't have astounding kung fu skills

[lkfmdc]

Here's a good response to the idea I am a "sell out" because, gasp, I teach fighting :rolleyes:


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.

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

So, maybe I am "dis respecting kung fu" because I've outed the "secret" that is no secret. Lots of tough guys and criminals in TCMA

Did I say that TCMA can not be used in a fight? NO

"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..."

[lkfmdc]

I don't run a school for gangsters, I have normal people as students. I also don't want to teach them based upon fake ideas about what TCMA is about. IF that makes me a "sell out" then so be it... but here's what I've already said


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.

[Lama Pai Sifu]

Hey, not to mention; How many times have you seen someone from some other school, say they learned a set or their teacher learned a set from CTS - only to see it and realize that they didn't actually understand it at all? And the whole form was a mess. Not just the sequences, but the actual techniques...

I've seen CLF, Bok Mei and Lama forms that he taught to other people, outside his core students,...that were just demolished.

If you didn't learn to speak Cantonese to communicate with him,...odds are you didn't really walk away with anything to speak of. Hell, I've seen Chinese guys (at LEAST TWO (2) SIFUS IN CHINATOWN - no need to mention names) COMPLETELY CLUELESS when they tried to learn from him (One was part of a big organization who has been thrown out as of current). And they spoke Cantonese!

We've said it before. CTS was a good teacher to certain people whom he liked and could do his stuff. The better you got, the less effort it took for him to teach you. If you weren't up to snuff, he gave you what you could get. That's about it.

[lkfmdc]

Was CTS the laughing stock of the Mo Lum?

He seemed to be friends with every famous and respected sifu in the community.


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!

His name opened doors to me that would shock most. Schools where no white people were allowed, famous teachers showed me advanced sets, etc....

I guess that was a joke "oh, you're a CTS student? We think he's a joke but since you have a letter from him you can train here and we'll show you stuff we aren't even showing our regular students"

Strange sort of joke? :eek:

[lkfmdc]

I forgot abut this quote... isn't from me




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.



1. CTS apparently could grab a construction site brick with no preparation and break it....

2. Do you know who "DF" is? Maybe talk to him if you think you know all the facts

[lkfmdc]

Do I tell lies and deceive people? Do I make CTS sound like the best, biggest, undefeatable, ultra fast super best?

NO

IN fact, I followed in my own sifu's tradition.....


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...



We have told as many stories about CTS losing fights as we have about him winning.....

[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.



same theme, CTS stressed his LOSES as teaching tools, not his victories, even though he had MANY.....

[lkfmdc]

On sources that we relied upon to verify CTS' stories




NY Newsday and Daily News both ran stories when Sifu Chan took out the guys on 42nd street, those are ENGLISH papers

As for other sources, he was in China, sorry the sources are in CHINESE, go figure :rolleyes:

The 1954 Toi San overseas almanac has Sifu Chan listed as taking #3 in the Guangdong province sparring championships.... a class mate reminded me the Xing Yi guy who won the whole thing has the last name Wong...

Sifu Chan used to have the certificates the military issued for his sparring titles inside the military, but most of that was lost when he had to give up his apartment and spent the last few years at the hospitol, his family didn't care for his kung fu past and threw a lot of stuff out...

I am told that Mike still has the almanac!

[lkfmdc]

CTS was also respected and sought out as a teacher in CHina, must have been part of the joke :rolleyes:




A couple of Sifu's China disciples are quite famous. One is the "South Fist King".. another two put out a book on two man fighting sets, I remember picking it up, not knowing who they were, and thinking it looked like out stuff, took the book to sifu, and he laughed and pointed to the wall,,,, on the wall was a pic of the same two guys standing on either side of sifu...

One of Jason Yee's coaches in China was a disciple of Chan Tai San, I always joke the Boston guys about that! :D

That book I still have....

[lkfmdc]

I always love the snide inference that I got crap from CTS and never realized. But as I said, I had not only background AFTER I studied with CTS but even BEFORE




I am an instructor level in Hung Ga, meaning I learned each of the basic sets (Gung Jih Fook Fu, Fu Hok, Sahp Yihng, Tit Sin). I spent ONE YEAR doing each set because that is the way my tradition did it. Before that started I did ONE YEAR of just basics, the first 4 months JUST STANCES....

I studied Shuai Chiao with Shihfu Jeng Hsin Ping. Even with all of SC inter-family squabbles, everyone agrees Shihfu Jeng is one of the top people.

I studied Dragon Style with Wing Hong Yip and was part of his lion dancing team.

....

That was BEFORE I met CTS




I studied 7 Star Praying Mantis with Ho Chi Yu, Chiu Leun's top disciple.

I studied Pek Gwa/Pi Gua with YC Wong, Pi Gua and straight sword wtih Adam Hsu, Hung Fut with Tai Yim, and another version of Lama Pai with Wong Qing...



That was AFTER studying with CTS

Thus, I can safely say I have perspective....

[Golden Arms]

No beef with you LKFMDC, but I might point out, 5 years of Hung is just scratching the surface of that system, unless yours is much smaller than the one I learned. I dont even know if someone could do half the stuff in TSK at that point, even if they were practicing full time. Not saying you dont have skill or perspective, but Hung is a large system.

[lkfmdc]

No beef with you LKFMDC, but I might point out, 5 years of Hung is just scratching the surface of that system, unless yours is much smaller than the one I learned. I dont even know if someone could do half the stuff in TSK at that point, even if they were practicing full time. Not saying you dont have skill or perspective, but Hung is a large system.

I was studying like 5 days a week, and each set I spent a year learning, not just the movements but the applications and principles... is the system larger than that? Sure.... but after 5 years of 5 days a week, 3 hours or more per session, did I have a good grasp of what it was about? Sure :p

I've been in the Mo Lum like 30 years.... by now I can tell TCMA from movie kung fu I think ;)

[noone]

"oh, you're a CTS student? since you have a letter from him you can train here and we'll show you stuff we aren't even showing our regular students"

Strange sort of joke? :eek:


bwwhhahahahahahahahahaha yeah! we know that happens everyday where a sifu disregards his own students for anothers..

:rolleyes:

[CFT]

bwwhhahahahahahahahahaha yeah! we know that happens everyday where a sifu disregards his own students for anothers..Well I kinda doubt that CTS was unique in his approach to teaching students. Wing Chun's Yip Man also seemed to produce a lot of variations in his students, which in itself is not bad - the cookie cutter approach is just as invalid as teaching "the wrong stuff".

So for coach Ross to pick up stuff from another sifu that regular students did not get is really not surprising. If someone has the right basics, has good intent, and the sifu is willing, then why not teach them? The thought had crossed my mind that maybe the sifu just showed him cr@p just like CTS did with outside students, but then as stated earlier in the thread, he had the experience to tell what is "real" and what is not.

[lkfmdc]

Well I kinda doubt that CTS was unique in his approach to teaching students. Wing Chun's Yip Man also seemed to produce a lot of variations in his students, which in itself is not bad - the cookie cutter approach is just as invalid as teaching "the wrong stuff".

So for coach Ross to pick up stuff from another sifu that regular students did not get is really not surprising. If someone has the right basics, has good intent, and the sifu is willing, then why not teach them? The thought had crossed my mind that maybe the sifu just showed him cr@p just like CTS did with outside students, but then as stated earlier in the thread, he had the experience to tell what is "real" and what is not.

Good post CFT, right on the money. But don't bother trying to apply logic to "no one".... he's been found out and the story is clear. He is someone that fits both molds in the ongoing saga. He is someone who both wasn't able to get what he wanted out of CTS and he is also someone who got kicked out of an established Chinatown organization and so he's bitter and talks badly about all the old teachers who were friends of his primary sifu (who was not CTS)...

He'll be gone very soon.