Whoever coined the phrase "More fun than a barrel of monkeys" never faced real monkeys in the wild. Monkey aren't always fun. They can be vicious, not just because they have huge fangs, but because they are intelligent. They can do more than attack you physically. They can get to you psychologically. I say this for two reasons: #1. None of my personal encounters with wild monkeys have ever gone well, and #2. 2016 is the Year of the Monkey, which had a profound effect on this year's Championships. The 2016 Tiger Claw Elite Championships was fraught with challenges and obstacles, more so than any previous year. We've been producing the Tiger Claw Elite Championships since 2006, and since 2009 we've also been producing the Tiger Claw KungFuMagazine.com Championship under the Tiger Claw umbrella. You'd think we'd have it down by now. But there's just no accounting for Monkey mischief, no matter how well prepared you might be.

Kung Fu Tai Chi’s Publisher, Gigi Oh, blamed the bulk of our misfortunes on 2016 being a Fire Monkey year. Now, I’m not a believer in Feng Shui, and this is a constant source of contention between Gigi and me. Gigi has a lot of faith, especially in Chinese culture. I was trained as a scientist in grad school, plus I'm a skeptic by nature. It has served me well with all the martial charlatans that come my way. There's nothing like the rigor of science. Only science can advance medicine and technology, providing us with luxuries like the computer that I'm writing this on now and the internet which you are reading this on too. But science also robs us of our faith. It's like the forbidden fruit of Genesis. Once bitten, "your eyes shall be opened" and you are cast out of that Eden of naiveté. And after you see the Emperor's new clothes with your own naked eyes, you can never un-see that.

But sometimes, I must concede. To quote Ian Fleming from his Bond book Goldfinger, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it's enemy action.” My addendum to this is that anything over four times is the Fire Monkey mucking up your year...and your tournament. This year certainly wasn’t "barrel of monkeys" fun. Submitted for your approval, my annual behind-the-scenes look at the 2016 Tiger Claw Elite Championships. I apologize that it’s a little tardy this year. I said I would have this up when the September+October 2016 issue came out on the newsstands where the official report on this event is published; that issue will still be on the newsstands when this is published, but only for another week or so. At least this will allow me to make an announcement at the end, so read through for that. But I do have an excuse for the delay. Blame it on the monkey.

 

A Tiger Cannot Beat a Troupe of Monkeys

The Year of the Fire Monkey is one of turmoil, especially in politics, as we've all seen. The United States was founded in the Year of the Monkey, so perhaps we're getting more than our fair share. Many mistakenly believe that good fortune awaits you in your birth year, but Feng Shui doesn't always work that way. Sometimes, it's quite the opposite. So I'll start this tale by relating a personal Monkey Astrology story to explain my monkey animosity. In 1997, I was traveling across India studying yogaand making pilgrimages to the Buddhist sites with my wife. My wife is into astrology, so while we were in the sacred city of Rishikesh, a renowned center of spiritual studies, she found an astrologer to do her horoscope. It was an amazing experience. After a night’s work, not only did that astrologer deliver a sheaf of hand-drawn diagrams and explanations specific to her birth, he made out a prescription for jewelry, set with specific semi-precious stones in a particular order that was allegedly attuned just to her astrological needs. We found a local jeweler to custom make an extraordinarily beautiful piece based on this prescription. Whether you believe or not, I highly recommend this should you ever find yourself in Rishikesh. That jewelry remains a treasured souvenir. In case you’re curious, Indian Astrology uses a zodiac similar to Western Astrology. It’s not the Asian animals of Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon and so on. It’s the Aquarius, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, what most Westerners know as the zodiac.

I bring this up not as any sort of validation of astrology, but as a testament to monkey intelligence, more specifically, how a monkey can get in your head. As the astrologer explained his forecast to my wife, I sat waiting in the tiny courtyard of his abode. It was a warm Indian summer day, and I was drowsy from traveling. Suddenly, there was a loud clang. A rock landed on a corrugated steel roof, close to where I was resting. I looked up to see a large black monkey in a tree outside the courtyard staring me down like an MMA fighter at a weigh-in. Warily, I tried to ignore it and doze off again, when CLANG! Another rock on the roof. The monkey didn’t break eye contact. It kept staring at me as if to say, "What you gonna do?" This went on for a long time. It was really irritating. Finally, the astrologer came out and said, "Black-faced monkey?" I nodded wearily. "This monkey has been bothering me for weeks. Always the same. Rocks on the roof. He doesn’t want food. He just wants to bother me." That monkey kept biding his time, until I’d drop my guard, then toss another rock on the roof. He could have thrown a rock directly at me if he wanted, but it wasn't about that. It was about monkeying with me personally, monkeying with my mind. I gave the monkey a nasty look and could have sworn he was grinning back in a smarmy way, gleeful about tormenting me, just for the fun of it. Monkeys are like that. Not only do they mess with you, they do so with malice aforethought. And they think it's funny.

Now I said earlier that I’m a skeptic. I’m not superstitious, except for one thing. I believe that when Mercury goes into retrograde, chaos ensues. If you know astrology or astronomy, you know retrograde motion. If you don’t, retrograde motion is when planetary orbits appear to move backwards. This is based on the medieval assumption that the sun, the moon and all the planets revolved around the earth. Now we know that only the moon revolves around the earth and everything revolves around the sun; but back in ancient times, retrograde motion was an explanation to cover up the fact that the observations didn’t match with the theory. It’s an excuse, a massive rationalization to hide a fundamental error in the paradigm. Such rationalizations occur throughout history and I’m sure there are many still in play today. Heck, my scientific side says that blaming my misfortunes on monkeys is a massive rationalization. I’ve always thought Mercury in retrograde was a funny historical footnote until my wife started pointing out how many things go awry during that period. Maybe it’s just that I focus on them more during Mercury in retrograde, so I notice them more often. Perhaps it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy now. Whatev. I just know to be cautious during these times (Mercury goes into retrograde for a few weeks three to four times a year). In 2016, Mercury was in retrograde from April 28 to May 22. The Tiger Claw Elite Championships and KUNG FU TAI CHI DAY were May 21–22. So my "scientifical" side was denying Gigi's foreboding Feng Shui forecasts, but there was a nagging superstitious voice in the back of my mind saying, "Beware Mercury. Beware monkeys."

As the Tiger Claw Elite Championships approached, I wasn't in good shape. I was dealing with some bad tendonitis in my right arm, akin to tennis elbow. More specifically, it was "sword elbow" but that sounds horribly pretentious. I've been a swordsman for four decades. It's what drew me into Kung Fu. I’ve practiced swordplay regularly since middle school and had been training Shaolin Meihua Dao assiduously under Shi Yantuo until he moved his school to San Diego. Then I transferred to train in Seven Star Praying Mantis under Master He Tao. It was the first time in my life that I stopped regularly training with swords, and wouldn't you know it, I blew my elbow. That's the problem with Kung Fu sometimes. If you've been doing it all your life, sometimes you just can't stop or you'll hurt yourself. I was getting regular chiropractic treatments on my elbow and had to wear an elbow band, and you never want to go to a martial event with such an obvious injury. It's a sign of weakness, and you never want to appear weak in the martial world. It made me very self-conscious.

The first sign of monkey business was the Tiger Claw Judges' Union meeting. For the past four years, we've been holding two meetings just prior to the Championships in order to go over rules and get all the judges on the same page. Judging is key to the integrity of any contest, but most Chinese martial arts tournaments don't even hold preparatory judges' meetings, or if they do, they are really short and just prior to the competition. The TCJU meetings last a few hours and are catered, plus we give all attendees some gifts and back issues as further incentives. Almost every single martial arts tournament in America is judged by volunteer judges, and as the old saying goes, "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." Through the TCJU, we strive to elevate the level of judging by rewarding the judges with more perks. They even get Claw Cash rewards for every competitor they judge, which is a lot better than peanuts.

I am tasked to lead the judges meetings, and they are usually very insightful. But this year, one of the meetings got totally derailed by an attendee who took the short introduction period as an opportunity to promote himself. As he stuffed his face with our provided lunch, he launched into an absurd rant about how he was involved with the Taiwanese Navy, how he held multiple doctorates and how he was one of the world's greatest scientists. My charlatan skepticism radar immediately sounded the alarm. Same with the other attendees. I'd never met this person before (we always get newbies – that's part of the point of these meetings) and I didn't want to be impolite, but after a few minutes I had to shut him down. It was getting too weird, too off topic, and wasting too much time. As it turned out, he wasn't even a judge. He was a driver for one of the attendees. What the heck? Blame the monkey.

As the event drew nearer, tensions grew at the office like they always do, but many of the obstacles were beyond our control. The hotel we had originally reserved for our guests was oversold, despite our contract, so we had to scramble to find additional lodging at the last minute. Most of our staff had to be moved to another hotel that was miles away, near to the airport. There was also an issue with the confirmation numbers, which mysteriously changed halfway during the booking process, sending many of our attendees into a tizzy. What's more, we were working with a new silk-screening process for metallics. We were all very excited to debut our new line of Red Asian Henleys for the official judges' shirts, and these were to be emblazoned with these new gold metallic images. The gold came out really nice, but backwards. There was some monkey business in production and we didn't get the product until it was too late to fix. We were still able to get the front logos in gold, but the custom back labels that designated the Judges and Staff couldn't be saved. Fortunately, Tiger Claw does tons of jobs for tournaments so we have stock "Judges" and "Staff" logos, but they were far inferior to what we had envisioned.

What’s more, while the custom medals came out well this year (over a pound each!) again, there was monkey meddling. For some unknown reason, the manufacturers only stained the bronze medals, not the gold or silver medals. The staining brought out the details of the design more vibrantly, so the bronze medals ended up looking the best. All the medals came out well, but they would have been far better if all of them had been stained. So before we even got on site, there were a lot of left-handed monkey wrenches thrown into the works, but none as devastating as what was to come.

For 2016 Tiger Claw Elite Championships: Part 2 – Monkey Steals the Peach, stay tuned to KungFuMagazine.com.