On Friday, March 2, we first got word through a text from Grandmaster Lily Lau who was in Holland at the time. Within an hour, it was confirmed through the Chinese Kung Fu Academy Southern Praying Mantis Federation’s facebook page: Grandmaster Henry Poo Yee had passed away peacefully that morning.

Grandmaster Yee graced the second cover of Kung Fu Tai Chi, back when we were titled Kung Fu Wushu. That was our Summer 1992 issue. Our magazine was founded by Roger Hagood, who was a pupil of Grandmaster Yee. Hagood released the magazine to Tiger Claw just two years later. After that, Grandmaster Yee visited the Kung Fu Tai Chi Santa Clara office in the mid-nineties, prior to the move to the Fremont Headquarters where it is today. Gigi Oh, our Publisher Emeritus, remembers him fondly from that visit. She was still new to the world of Chinese martial arts, and Grandmaster Yee’s Southern Praying Mantis was indecipherable to her, but she could respect its obvious power.

They went out to dinner and she was very impressed with his ability to serve fish. The fish is usually the finale main course, the pièce de résistance for a Chinese banquet. And Grandmaster Yee could debone and serve a fish expertly with those large Chinese serving spoons. As it turned out, Grandmaster Yee used to own and operate a huge restaurant and nightclub in Texas. It was there where he cultivated his fish-serving skills, as well as his Kung Fu. Running that business in Texas, he had to resolve many conflicts, from local gangsters trying to extort "protection" fees to drunk cowboys trying to rustle up a fight with some Chinamen.

Gigi also remembers being enthralled by Grandmaster Yee’s tales of receiving an extreme Traditional Chinese Medicine treatment from his master Lam Sang, after surviving a devastating car accident that left him partially paralyzed. He was "cooked" in a vat of healing herbs, just like in the books and movies. Prior to hearing that, Gigi thought those stories were just stories.

Grandmaster Yee was always friendly to me, long before I was anyone in the martial world, back when I was just a writer and practitioner, not a publisher. We used to cross paths at Master Jimmy Wong’s Legends of Kung Fu & Taiji Legacy gatherings, and he was always quick to greet me, always affable and friendly. He often made an effort to pull me in privately and share something with me, and those mantis hands of his were irresistible. Once he locked hold, there was no escape. But he was always gentle with me, even when demonstrating his power. He had me cross hands with him a few times to make some point about Kung Fu theory, and would just give me enough of a jolt to let me know that he could’ve blown through me if he wanted to, but never so hard as to injure me in any way.

Many years ago, he pulled me aside and said he was thinking of doing a retirement ritual. Known as "Washing hands in the Gold Bowl (jin peng xi shou 金盆洗手),” it is an ancient observance that dates back to days when martial arts masters had a lot of blood on their hands from past fights. The hand washing ritual served to absolve past violence and allow the master to be at peace for the remainder of his days. Masters seldom do it nowadays, and I was very intrigued to witness one of these rituals. Grandmaster Yee sensed that and said back then that he would invite me to cover it, but that never came to pass.

The passing of Grandmaster Poo Yee marks the loss of yet another pioneering traditional Kung Fu master for the United States. Although he was born in Guangdong China, he immigrated to America and chose to live and teach here for over sixty years to share Kung Fu with our great nation. Deep in the heart of Texas, one of our brightest stars just went out.