BEY LOGAN: Jeremy, you are now, certainly, the most prominent figure in the U.K's kung fu community, and I’m sure a lot of our readers would be very interested to hear about your early years living in Hong Kong, and training in kung fu.
JEREMY YAU.: I started training in Hong Kong at the age of five. It was a family tradition. The training was very hard, and we started training every day at six o'clock in the evening, and finished at 10 o'clock. It was four hours every single day. No days off. You just trained, I don't think my childhood is a very enviable one for today's children. Every day was just going to school, eating, training and sleeping. We were not allowed to play, as such. We didn't have any toys. Our play was kung fu, and the only "toys" we had were the weapons we trained with.
B1.: And your instructor at that time was your grandfather, wasn't it?
JS.: That's right. After about six years training, when I was 11, I started to help out with the teaching of the beginners. Obviously, in the olden times, classes weren’t structured like they are now. The more advanced students helped the beginners, and they needed their own self-discipline in order to train. They were only to be corrected when necessary. It wasn't a class with people walking up and down in rows.
B1.: Where was the kwoon situated?.
J.Y.: It was in the village community centre in Kowloon City. It was a council building. My grandfather was also head of the village. It was slightly outside the Walled City, quite near the old Kai Tak airport location.
B1.: What was your family's situation at that time?
J.Y.: My father had died during the war, so I was more or less brought up by grandfather anyway. He was very well known for his Dit Dar (Chinese medicine) and also for other aspects of Chinese culture. Our family was reasonably well off, so we didn't need to depend upon any particular occupation in order to survive.
B1.: And the style was then called Lau Gar?
J..Y.: It has always been called Lau Gar.
B1.: What was the syllabus like in those days?
J.Y.: There were nine empty hands forms, and then there were all the different types of weapons. We started off with basics, stance and so on, and then would be taught the different sets. You wouldn't be taught another set until you'd mastered the one before. There wasn't a grading, as such, but at some time the Master would come and look at you and decide whether you were ready to learn the next set, and so on. All the time you were learning a set it would be broken down. These days we do hand blocks and kick blocks separately. In those days, we'd take them out of the set, and learn to use it as such. You'd try variations of that technique. That was the basic form of the training.
BL.: One point that's been raised is that there seems to be several different versions of Lau Gar, with yours being far and away the most popular. There seems to be a separate version on mainland China, another version in America. Can you explain this?
J.Y.: There have never been different Lau Gars. However, at least as far as the British version goes, there have been IMPROVEMENTS. For example, most kung fu techniques were originally designed as being right-handed, with most people being forced to use their right hands. I have done a few things that enable left-handed people to train, and that ensures that people train both sides of the body.
B.L.: I understand that the established Lau Gar in this country will, of necessity, have evolved over the years, but what I’m particularly interested is the route that Lau Gar took from Shaolin, seen as the birth-place of Chinese kung fu, to Hong Kong.
J.Y.: First, let me say that there are no DIFFERENT kinds of Lau Gar. What has happened is that, later, people have claimed that they are Lau Gar because it was one of the lesser known of the Shaolin styles. The practice of Lau Gar was restricted. It was only taught to a limited amount of people. Now, Lau Gar originated in Shaolin, obviously, but our specific founder was a man named Lau Sam Man, "Three-Eyed" Lau, from the
Kongsi Province. My grandfather actually went into China to learn it.When he came back to Hong Kong he found another master of Lau Gar, whom he served until the man died. Of the older generation, no-one would question our authenticity. The masters in Hong Kong knew my grandfather well, and none would deny his origin. However, today, with people in this country who are more commercially oriented, you hear them say “untraditional”, "unoriginal", “ungenuine", and other such slang terms.
B.L.: I remember stories about your grandfather used to circulate through the Lau Gar community. There was one about his skill at Lion dancing...
J.Y.: We used to do the Kei Lun, which today people translate in England as the Unicorn dance, but KelLun is not Unicorn. It's mythic Chinese animal. It's not a horse with a horn, but that's probably the nearest thing in English. In this dance, you use big cymbals and a very small, high-pitched drum and. a big gong. Those were the three instruments.
The dance was a ritual to show respect and bring in luck on festive occasions.
BL .:Was there a long gap between the time you left college in Hong Kong and when you came to England?
J.Y.: Yes. I used to teach English in the evenings at a night school, and I also worked as a storekeeper at the RAF station. I didn't do a lot of kung fu instruction, because, at that time in the 50's, there was a lot of trouble in Hong Kong. A lot of riots. My grandfather closed the school completely, without hesitation. He didn't want to teach people so they could go out and fight in the street. He just kept a few of his students training under him,
and I think that that was the stopping point for the style until I came over to this country
BL.: What brought about your move to this county?
J.Y.: I think it is the land of opportunity! My brother had come over before me. I arrived, I thought it looked very sad. I arrived in Birmingham in 1961, and I thought it looked
miserable. I was most disappointed. Then I started working, in the restaurant business, for my brother, and then, eventually, I started my own business.
B1, There's one aspect of the success.of Lau Gar that cannot be undervalued: You were already a .good businessman before you started to teach kung fu in this country. Were you trained in business, or were you naturally, good at it?
J.Y.: I did study a little bit. When I arrived in this country, I realised that there was no point in complaining about it. You had to adjust to your circumstances. Catering seemed to be the main outlet for business for the Chinese at that time, so I took a course in catering management which taught me a few things which might have helped. Having said that, my family in Hong Kong had always been in business, so I had that background.
B.L.: While building up your restaurant business, did you still find time to maintain the practice of your kung fu privately?
J.Y.: Yes. I did my own training with a few friends who were interested in learning kung fu. Bernard Chong was one of them. He, of course, went onto become one of my instructors when Lau Gar was established in this country. It's funny, but when I first started working in England, I was not a very popular employee, because everywhere I went I took all my equipment, my weights and weapons. I didn't have anywhere to train, so, if the restaurant closed in the afternoon, then I'd be training in there
B.L.: At the time that you met Mike Haig, he already had a functioning martial arts establishment at Temple Passage. I believe there was a man named Pat Carroll teaching there, who had trained in Wado Ryu and a little Wing Chun ... What kind of situation did you inherit?
J.Y.: I wouldn't say I inherited it, as such. When Mike was introduced to me and asked me to teach for him, my first impression of him was not too good! He was young and he looked quite flamboyant. I didn't think that anyone his age who looked as he did could have any genuine interest in martial arts. I had no involvement with other kinds of martial arts, so I didn't know that he was such a big name in the karate world at that time. Initially, it didn't interest me very much, and I was very sceptical.
BL.: What changed your mind?
J.Y.: I went in with an open mind and started teaching a few of the instructors, the karate people who were down there already. I wasn't interested in what had been taught there before. When I arrived, I made it clear that it was going to be my way or no way!
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