My tradition of first-person accounts of our annual Tiger Claw events began in 2002 with The 10 Year Anniversary of Kungfu Qigong Gala Benefit Hangover: A Shaolin Side-Trip. There are so many stories that come out of Tiger Claw Elite Championships and KUNG FU TAI CHI DAY that I would be remiss not to weave a little behind-the-scenes tale of Shaolin shenanigans (if you want the official account, see our September+October 2015 issue). And as I’ve said before, these reports are as much personal therapy for me as they are entertainment for you, our loyal readers. This year’s installment serves as a prequel to that initial one. Thirteen years ago I opened with a hangover. This year, I get drunk. Srsly.

Now you’re probably thinking, “What the heck? How can the Associate Publisher of Kung Fu Tai Chi write about being drunk at 2015 Tiger Claw Elite Championships and KUNG FU TAI CHI DAY? How irresponsible. What kind of role model does that provide for our youth?” The truth is that I’ve been quite outspoken about Kids vs. Drunken Style, at least as much as our non-partisan journalistic position allows. Personally, as a parent myself, I am befuddled about why any parent would want their child to practice pretending to be drunk. Do they think it’s funny and cute? Have they ever seen juvenile alcoholism firsthand? They always make the excuse that the kids are “just pretending to be drunk.” As I see it, this betrays a basic perceptual error about what Kung Fu is. There’s a huge difference between imitating and pretending, especially where Kung Fu is concerned. But alas, who am I to judge other parents?

Regardless of my opinion, juvenile Drunken Style has become a sober dividing point between Traditional Kung Fu and Modern Wushu. Traditionalists reject drunken style for minors, so much so that this is now reflected in the competition rules for the Tiger Claw Elite Championships. Within the Traditional divisions, all drunken style competitors must be of legal drinking age in the state of California. Wushu doesn’t care. Surely this speaks to the underlying morality (or lack thereof) of Wushu overall, and therein lies the greatest pitfall of all modern martial arts. When we lose the moral backbone of our practice, everything collapses. This is particularly true when it comes to our next generation. But I’m not going to ponder this right now as it would distract from this tale.

Chinese martial arts are so wonderfully varied that I’ve always felt it my duty to showcase the diversity. It is this diversity that makes Chinese martial arts really stand out from the other styles. So every year I strive to launch some special spotlight division. Specialized tournaments exist in China where the competition focuses on some really unique skills. We developed a video on a major qigong competition titled Extreme Kung Fu Qigong (back then, Kung Fu Tai Chi was titled Kungfu Qigong, which is why our 10th Anniversary Gala above was also titled so). Extreme Kung Fu Qigong is one of our bestselling titles and rightly so because it’s a very engaging concept for martial arts competitions.

In 2010, I created the WildAid Tiger Claw Championship for the Year of the Tiger. I’ve supported WildAid since the previous Year of the Tiger in 1998. Actually, that was a different organization called Asian Conservation Awareness Program which, like WildAid, had Jackie Chan as one of their top spokespersons. I wrote an article on Jackie’s work for one of TC Media International’s previous publications, Embrace the Tiger, World of Martial Arts, November+December 1998. That was back in my freelance days; I didn’t sign on full-time with TC Media until the following year. Once I was on the payroll, it was easy to get the company on board with this cause because tigers are the mascot of Tiger Claw. This year, the WildAid Tiger Claw Championship expanded by adding two new separate divisions for kids ages 12–17 and 11 and under. We call them our WildAid Kid Tigers, and it was a great success. More on this later.

In 2011, I created the Songshan Shaolin Championship. In our Shaolin Special 2007, we published “The Gold Mountain Monks: 38 Shaolin Immigrants to the San Francisco Bay Area.” That was the last time we tried to tabulate all of the masters from Shaolin Temple in our area. There are so many now that we just cannot keep track anymore. Consequently, the standard forms disseminated at Shaolin Temple have been inundating the tournament floors for years. As a Shaolin practitioner myself, I designed this special division exclusively for Songshan Shaolin practitioners to be judged solely by Shaolin monks and disciples. But after four years, the Songshan Shaolin Championship went on hiatus this year.

I’ve experimented with a few other championship concepts with varying degrees of success. Last year’s Horse Stance Competition for the Year of the Horse was a complete failure. Even though our promotional YouTube was one of the most viewed vids of that year (second only to KFTC Day 2014: Grandmaster Chen Bing but still way ahead of the rest), we only had one competitor enter. It would have been silly to have that person sit in horse for a bit and then award him a trophy just for showing, so it was cancelled at the last minute and his entry fee was refunded. But to quote the founder of Aikido, Osensei Morihei Ueshiba, “Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something.”

I have a list of dream showcase championships for the Tiger Claw Elite Championships inside my head. And for years, a Drunken Style Championship has been on top of that list. As an adult of legal drinking age, I’ve always reveled in the notion of Drunken Style. I even dabbled in a tipple of Drunken Kung Fu when I was studying at Shaolin Temple in 1996, an episode which I discussed in my book, Shaolin Trips. Drunken Style is so unique to the Chinese martial arts. While some other styles might claim their own Drunken Style, they are all incontestably in deference to the Chinese precedent.

If you are familiar with my writing style, you know I have an annoying penchant for quoting song lyrics, and while this is horribly cliché, here goes. It’s a Drunkard's Dream if I ever did see one.

 

A Drunkard’s Dream

Drunken Style is a surprisingly simple concept to explain, even to someone who doesn’t know Kung Fu at all. However, it’s harder to sell to a liquor company. Getting a sponsor was key for me to stage such a competition. With sponsorship, it’s easier to push a new event to the other Tiger Claw Elite Championships organizers. Plus it alleviates my frustrations inevitably caused by the development process, as any new event is tremendously frustrating in its infancy. In terms of advertising, a Drunken Style Kung Fu Championship is a perfect fit for a liquor promotion. I have two very good friends who work at major California beer breweries, but the concept of sponsoring a Drunken Style competition at a Kung Fu tournament was just a little too foreign for their brewery promotions departments. In 2012, I was in dialog with a unique distillery that produced Qi Spirits in nearby Alameda. These were small-batch liquors distilled from green and black teas. Unfortunately, that company went out of business before we were able to seal the deal. I had first stumbled across Kung Fu Girl Riesling in 2009 in a news story that I posted on our online discussion forum. In October 2014, I sent them an inquiry on a whim. They responded immediately by sending us a case. With that one bold stroke by Kung Fu Girl Riesling’s marketing department, we were committed. A toast to them!

The next step was making a trophy. I had envisioned mounting some drunken symbol on a pedestal with a plaque. My first thought was to get an old fashioned drinking gourd like the ones seen in so many classic Kung Fu movies. Prior to the Championships, Gigi and Jonny Oh went to China for their annual factory and import inspection just before the events, so I asked them to look for one. My other idea was to mount a replica of an ancient bronze wine vessel known as a jiuqi (酒器), like the ones I’ve seen in museums. Gigi did manage to secure some gourds. She got a lot of nice small ones – real carved and painted gourds – the kind that you can hang off your rearview mirror as a good luck charm. We gave those out in our appreciation gift bags for our volunteer judges. She also got a nice one that was larger, but not quite large enough. That one currently sits on my desk now amidst an embarrassing and incriminating pile of clutter. And she also acquired a beautiful faux bronze wine vessel replica; it was a ding (鼎), a three-legged sacrificial wine vessel, one of the most prized types of bronze antiques. It was perfect.

There was only one little problem. Mounting a ding with its pointy little three feet wasn’t as easy as it seems, especially if it is to look nice. This was my task, of course. I spent weeks going to hardware stores and hobby shops, trying to figure out the best way to do that. “Just glue it,” Gigi kept saying. Anyone who is a craftsman knows that it isn’t so simple, and that comment didn’t help at all as tensions rose due the imminent approach of the Tiger Claw Elite Championships. I didn’t feel comfortable drilling through the bottom because we only had one, so if I messed up, we’d be at a loss. Eventually I did solve the problem by using a modified doorstop, some subtle notching of the trophy base, and some epoxy. With a little help from our senior graphic designer Patrick Lugo for the plaque, the 1st Drunken Style trophy even received a few compliments, so Patrick and I are contemplating going into custom trophy-making as a side business.

The other convenient aspect of having Kung Fu Girl Riesling sponsor us was that it forced us to restrict our 1st Drunken Style Championship to competitors who are 21 or over – California’s legal drinking age. Obviously a liquor company does NOT want to be represented by an underage champion. Sponsors do it for the publicity, and that would be bad publicity from any perspective. Perhaps I am betraying my traditional roots, but I was astonished to see so many Modern Wushu practitioners complain. “Why can’t my kid compete in the Drunken Style Championship?” Srsly? Some people just don’t get it.

Sabrage

The week prior to the event is always the craziest. Not only are we running about trying to tie down all of those loose ends, but the masters and competitors begin to arrive. Professor Wang Peikun, our March+April 2013 cover master, came out again from China to support us. Last year, we did a feature article with him, “Three Steps to Improve Your Tai Chi with Professor Wang Peikun,” in our September+October 2014 issue; but with the pre-event pressure, I was never happy with that article. It was too rushed; I wasn’t focused enough to be able to capture all of the pearls of wisdom that the good Professor was dropping so quickly. I wanted another shot at him, or perhaps better said, another slice.

Professor Wang is one of China’s greatest swordsmen, the creator of the modern southern wushu sword, the nandao. I have always loved swords. In fact, it was my love of swords that drew me into Kung Fu. I studied European Fencing and Japanese Kendo throughout high school and college out of my love of sword. Here was an opportunity I just could not pass up – working with Professor Wang on a sword article – maybe even crossing blades with the Grandmaster.

At the press conference, Professor Wang recited a small portion of a jian form. It was a quick demo; usually Professor Wang abstains from demonstrating very much, but he always generously obliges us. What was striking was that he didn’t warm up beyond throwing a few snappy crescent kicks. That might not sound like much for most practitioners, but Professor Wang is in his seventies. Those cold crescent kicks were stronger than I could throw when warmed up, and I’m two decades younger. He’s so impressive that way – you don’t really see it unless you’re in the room with him. When he demonstrates, it’s very quick – so quick that if you don’t have a decent eye for the martial arts, you’ll probably miss it. I can’t say I blame him. Given his lifelong dedication to the martial arts, I’m sure he’s had to demonstrate countless times. I’m sure sometimes those demos were for keen observers of martial arts, but most of the time his skill probably went way over the heads of most of his audiences. So why bother?

However, ever courteous and always the gentleman, Professor Wang consented to an interview and photo-shoot on the topic of sword. Now, extracting a concise cogent feature article out of someone like Professor Wang is not as easy as it sounds. He is such an authority that the interview can easily stray into random tangents, so it was important to ask the right questions to keep him on topic in the limited amount of time we had. I felt I was up for the challenge and proposed tackling the difference between dao and jian. He was all for it.

The present emphasis on weapon usage in Modern Wushu has neutered the weapons. Scores are bolstered by landing a 720-degree turn. Proper weapon usage minimally affects scores. So today, many dao and jian forms have lost their distinctive character. Competitors never work with sharp blades, just shiny ones, so they don’t know how to cut. They only know how to be flashy. This, like kids acting drunk, is another personal pet peeve of mine. When I presented this topic to Professor Wang, he heartily agreed and was eager to share his opinion on the matter. He even took the subject further, pointing out where traditional Kung Fu was flowery.

This article, “Professor Wang Peikun on Dao and Jian,” may be found in our September+October 2015 issue, and there are two behind-the-scenes tales I will share about this. First, we are in casual clothes. I had this hunch that Professor Wang wouldn’t want to uniform-up for the shoot. That’s just not his nature. He’s dressed in a casual sweater and slacks. I dressed professionally in anticipation of this. I’m a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy usually, but I wore slacks and an official Chinese Wushu Association polo shirt in his honor. That might look a little odd to some, given that swordsmen seldom don such attire, but it worked for us. Second, and more to the point (or the slice), my flinches in the recorded footage are real. Professor Wang did not slow down his cuts for the shoot. He came at me full speed, stopping just short of hitting me each time. Now, given my position, I’m called upon to be the xiashou from time to time. Xiashou literally means “lower hand.” It’s the Chinese term for the recipient of the technique, what is more commonly known in American martial arts circles by the Japanese term uke (literally “recipient”). It’s the fall guy, a role I generally avoid as I’ve done it so much in my decade-and-a-half watch here at the magazine. I figure most of our readers are tired of seeing me get beat up. Well, maybe not. But nevertheless, I abstain from it for the most part, with the exception of masters like Professor Wang. That being said, I’m not a flincher. I’m used to getting beat up on camera, probably too much so. I usually have to act like I’m in pain, but not with Professor Wang. He demonstrated every cut and thrust at me at full speed, stopping just short of my flesh, and then grinned at me with a twinkle in his eye. For a moment, I felt like I was in one of those Kung Fu movies where one master shows his skill to a crowd and only another master can see it. I’m far from a master, but I got Professor Wang’s point, and his edge. Experiencing his swordsmanship first-hand like that was a dubious honor, but it was one I shall always savor.

KFTC Day 2015: Professor Wang Peikun

For 2015 Tiger Claw Elite Championships & KUNG FU TAI CHI DAY – Part 2, Click here.