Kwan Saihung?

[Dale Dugas]

You are going to get answers from both sides of the road on this.

He is not a fraud.

I feel that people have deified him over the years. Common practice in MA circles.

He has told me that he trained with Wang Zi Ping. I cannot ask Wang Zi Ping as he passed away many years ago.

I again state that you can learn a lot about Qi Gong from him.

Walking my circle,

Dale Dugas

[MonkeySlap Too]

Thank you for your responses. I had someone asking about him, and I'm hard pressed to take his books literally (although I enjoyed them) - but this enough to give him a thumbs up - at least for Qi Gong.

[Blacktiger]

Are you talking about the guy in the book "Chronicles of the tao" ???

[Mutant]

I did a week long seminar with Kwan Saihung in '96 i believe it was.

Me and a couple of kung fu brothers went mainly to learn 5 animals that he claimed to teach and any lost track boxing he'd be willing to show us. We ended up doing endless hours of sitting meditations and chi kung exercises, some 5 animals frolic interal stuff, and some of his tai chi. We did go thru some 5 animals eventually and learned a couple of short forms, crane, leopard and a dragon forms that seemed kind of flakey. In the end we were disappointed that we didnt learn what we were hoping we would get, but enjoyed the chi kung that we did get and the experience of training with him. He was funny, a real character and I was glad to meet him. His internal stuff was way cool and he had tons of it. It wasnt fighting oriented but more health and internal alchemy oriented and I doubt any of his students are 'fighters'.
We came away not knowing whether he: a) didnt have the real fighting stuff, or just as likely, b) wouldnt show us the real fighting stuff since we were not insiders. He definaltely has some cool sh!t, but whether he has any real fighting skill or knowlege was not resolved in our training with him. I would venture to guess that based on seeing some of his students who had been with him for a while (two of whom i met later thru a different connection and trained a bit with), and some of the movements that he demostrated, he is not teaching fighting to anyone and if he does have some good wushu he hides it very well.

[Mutant]

Are you talking about the guy in the book "Chronicles of the tao" ???

Yes, same guy.

[mickey]

Greetings,

I am looking for contact info for Kwan Saihung. Does anyone know his whereabouts? You can send me a pm if you prefer.

Thank you.


mickey

[Dale Dugas]

Shifu Kwan Sai Hung was living in Western Massachusetts the last I heard. One of my kung fu brothers was studying with him recently.

He is reclusive by nature.

I think he is not teaching much lately.

[mickey]

Thank you.


mickey

[ookami]

From the various postings I have seen, it appears that the hoaxster Kwan Saihung continues to extract a living from the gullible and unsuspecting American public.

I studied with Kwan Siihung as a high-school student in San Francisco, starting in about 1974. Kwan led group practices on Saturday and Sunday mornings in St. Mary's square, which has an entrance on the south side of the street across from Old St. Mary's Church on the California near Grant.

Previously, I studied Taiji, Northern Shaolin, and Xingyi for several years with two renowned teachers, whose names I will leave out of this sordid recollection, in San Francisco's Chinatown.

I learned of Kwan from a friend named Derek, who at the time was working on his bachelor's degree in Kinesiology at Berkeley. Derek described Kwan as a master of Monkey, Drunken boxing, Mizhong Yi, Bagua, and several other arcane styles. With my youthful enthusiasm and lack of perspective, I imagined that I would learn from Kwan all of the great "secrets" that my other teachers either did not possess or were reluctant to impart. Indeed, Kwan's approach to teaching was very different from the slow, methodical, and highly demanding ones I had previously experienced. My other teachers expected students either to come equipped with or otherwise to develop tremendous patience. They would only teach a few movements of a form at a time. Only after it was evident that a student had absorbed the essence of those movements would they teach the next sequence. Waiting periods between learning new sequences could be on the order of weeks or even months. Kwan, on the other hand, would take a new student and expose him (Kwan had only male students at the time!) to entire forms in a single day.

Within less than a year of studying with Kwan, I developed serious doubts about his qualifications. The forms would change from week to week or even sometimes during the course of a single day. As the photo at www.thetaobums.com/lofiversion/index.php shows, Kwan is what one would politely call "portly." He is also somewhat clumsy and possessed very little flexibility compared to what I was used to from my previous teachers and had worked diligently to develop myself. For instance, at least during my time with him, he could never come close to performing chin to toe. Kwan possessed nowhere near the mastery that my previous teachers possessed.

Most troublingly, Kwan displayed the characteristics of an inveterate liar. He told us that he was an apprentice in the Beijing opera as a boy, that he studied with various illustrious masters, including Wang Ziping, in China, and that he was a Golden Gloves boxing champion. On several occasions, Kwan also mentioned having lived in Germany. The stories often contradicted one another on the most basic level—timelines for the various events were conflicting.

Together with his then senior student, Jeffrey, Kwan worked tirelessly to create an aura of mystique around himself, the guiding principle being that he was an all-knowing, god-like entity. This resulted in an almost cultish atmosphere where questions or rational discussion were completely stifled.

The watershed event for me occurred when Kwan began to teach us Xingyi. It immediately struck me that he had picked up a book on the style and was desperately and not very successfully attempting to synthesize and impart the partial information contained therein. He was unable to remember the forms and continuously stumbled over the choreography, often changing the nature or order of movements. Anyone who has studied Xingyi knows just how spare the forms are in comparison even to Taiji. By analogy, consider the relative economy and simplicity of tantui when compared with any intermediate or advanced form in Northern Shaolin. Kuan's teaching of Xingyi was farcical.

After class on Sunday's the group would sometimes eat at a restaurant named Huibing Lou, which was on the north side of Jackson, west of Kearny. Kwan apparently knew one of the waiters or cooks there. Once, after class, we instead went for a barbeque at Kwan's apartment in the Mission district. It was a ground floor unit, overlooking the backyard of the building. Kwan was sharing the apartment with Jeffrey. The garden had at least one Wing Chun dummy (Jeffrey had previously studied Wing Chun) and quite a bit of weight-lifting equipment, which didn't square with my preconceptions about the training practices of a master of the internal arts. There were shockingly vile and tasteless (at least to my rather sheltered eyes) pornographic magazines littered throughout the place (we aren't talking Playboy or Penthouse, or even Hustler), which was a shambles and smelled rank. I was being raised a single, working mother, so I certainly wasn't accustomed to luxury or pristine living conditions. Nevertheless, I couldn't have been more surprised by the way Kwan and Jeffrey lived. There was also something odd about the relationship between them. The unit where they lived did not appear to have two beds or, even, room for two beds. Perhaps Jeffrey was showing his devotion by sleeping on the floor. Perhaps something less savory was going on.

On this occasion, a fellow student ran across Kwan's passport. I do remember clearly that the first name on the passport was "Frank." Less clear is my memory of the nation of issue. Singapore and Malaysia are possibilities. So is the US. The passport certainly wasn't Chinese. This raised a giant red flag.

During this period, Kwan, Jeffrey, and one or two other students began to study Qigong with a herbalist whose business was located on the west side of Powell just north of its intersection with Broadway. They became obsessed and would practice Qigong incessantly during our sessions on Saturdays and Sundays, I found the loud snorting, with streams of mucus flying from nostrils, and the awkward postures that they would assume during their exercises to be completely lacking in the beauty, grace, and athleticism that I had come to associate with Chinese martial arts. It was really quite disenchanting to watch.

The most important consequence of this, however, is that Kwan's knowledge of Qigong was acquired somewhat late in life, in San Francisco, from a enterprising businessman who had a put up a shingle, not from an ascetic on Mount Wutang or some other exotic locale in China. By the way, I remember hearing Kwan and Jeffrey commiserating about how much it was costing them to learn Qigong and scheming of ways to attract new students and thereby make up the difference. I also recall vividly that Kwan's primary goal was to lose weight as a consequence of the exercises. Well, from the photo referenced above, he certainly hasn't lost any weight—despite decades of practice. To be fair, however, it doesn't appear that he has gained much weight either.

I continued to study with Kwan until finishing high school and going on to Berkeley. This gave me the opportunity to extricate myself, without controversy, from a decidedly toxic environment.

To this day I regret that I did not stay with my previous teachers. These teachers were genuine masters of what they taught. Only much later in life did I realize the immense value of the patience they tried to instill. They succeeded in doing so. Unfortunately, my response was delayed.

For the record, after leaving Kwan's group, I continued to stretch and practice my Xinggyi, Shaolin, and Bagua (which I learned from a fellow student of Kwan's who had learned it from a student of Richard Kim) forms for several hours a day, rising at 5 AM, about 4 years. Upon graduating college, other priorities took over and I gradually took up other less schedule constraining approaches to fitness and well-being.

[mickey]

Greetings ookami and welcome to the forum,

I appreciated Mr Kwan from a different perspective. He stressed the importance of a balanced practice, mind, body, and spirit. It was the first time that I saw it. I cannot accuse him of teaching martial arts. I can say he taught health practices. I met him in NY at a seminar he gave and he was lean. He conducted a 15 hour workshop over three days. The guy was a relentless ball of energy.

I had the opportunity to meet a couple of his students, one being the author of the Chronicles of Tao trilogy the other whose name begins with the letter B who happens to be in law enforcement. Both guys were pretty strong, especially the latter. The guy had shoulders like buttocks and his body control was amazing.

I never saw him as something more than human. But others have. And he has a knack for getting rid of them.

mickey

[Mas Judt]

The guy had shoulders like buttocks and his body control was amazing.

Easily the most unfortunate turn of phrase I've seen yet. Truly sig worthy...

[mickey]

Well,

Maybe I should have wrote that "each shoulder was big, firm, and rounded-- like a buttock."

Mas Judt, would that do it for you?

Always with a smile,

mickey

[Mas Judt]

sorry, it doesn't do anything for me.

My comment was 'unfortunate' not 'exciting.'

Raymond Chandler you are not, bud.

[Mr Punch]

ROFLMAO etc!

[mickey]

Mas Judt,

Don't you talk to me like that. I outrank you in posts. Show some respect.


mickey