Chan Tai San stories

[red5angel]

The huge irony is, what these guys used was what a lot here would call "kickboxing".

makes sense to me, for the most part it's all short powerful shots that are no nonsense. No flower. The flower looks good but the quick stuff is what wins.
As for being tough and getting tough. I think it's a good idea. I'm not saying you shouldn't work on your defense but working with all these fancy blocks and dodges often times just gets you into trouble, sort of sets you on the defensive. In real fights atleast, taking the shots makes or breaks you.

[Palmer]

Originally posted by lkfmdc

I found more in common with Lama and Hsing Yi than Lama and "Shaolin" styles actually...

Thats interesting I also feel the same way regarding the Hop gar that I train and the Hsing-i I train. I think the strategy/mindset is very similar.

[Newb]

*deleted* off topic.

[lkfmdc]

People have asked me, am I as good as my teacher? Will I ever be as good as him?

The answer, it's easy, NO

He started at around 12, I started at around 9, but he trained EVERY DAY, all day, that is all he did. I did dumb stuff like go to grade school, junior high school, high school, college....

I've had a few "non sport" events in my life.... Chan Tai San had a life full of them. None of mine were really life threatening... I had a knife pulled on me twice, that's opposed to sifu having a gang with meat clevers chase him down a street with the real intent of killing him

Chan Tai San fought in three wars (world war II, civil war, cultural revolution). He has killed people, period, end of story...

I don't have the same mind set. I had a "challenge match" in college, I remember thinking, "well, this is supposed to be no rules, but no one is gonna get hurt"... after I broke the guy's nose I asked him if he wanted to stop....

Chan Tai San was the epitomy of the first of the Ten Character True Forumla = "Chan"

"ruthlessness; when fighting you do whatever is necessary"

Sifu Chan was in Toronto staying in a school when there was a gang war going on. The owner of the school was in one gang, a guy from another gang broke in one night.

Sifu Chan said, he knew the guy had a gun, he knew he was there to kill someone.

He didn't panic, he just crawled under the beg with a whip chain. He waited until he saw the guy's feet, swept them out with the whip chain...

"Then what" we asked? The quick answer, that guy didn't get a chance to use his gun.... Actually, I don't know what happened, sifu didn't say exactly... I actually prefer NOT to know...

Chan Tai San was staying with Steve Ventura for a little while (argument with his wife! Really!)

Steve and I were sitting at the dinning room table, talking about something. Sifu Chan comes home, he takes off his coat and starts cooking his dinner like everything is totally normal. Then mentions in passing he just had a brawl on the subway...

We freaked, "are you ok"? I wasn't even there, my heart was racing. For him, it was just "another day in the office" so to speak, no big deal, another fight, another one in a long history of them, wasn't the first, probably wouldn't be the last

The fact that he broke one guy's knee and threw another onto the tracks wasn't a big deal, it was "small talk" while he cut his chicken...

The time I ko'd a jerk who grabbed my ex-wife on the street, I sat quietly in a dark room for a few hours and tried to "deal with it"

Different mind set, different values, different life...

[red5angel]

The time I ko'd a jerk who grabbed my ex-wife on the street, I sat quietly in a dark room for a few hours and tried to "deal with it"

that's just because your an MMA sissy

[SifuAbel]

"The time I ko'd a jerk who grabbed my ex-wife on the street, I sat quietly in a dark room for a few hours and tried to "deal with it""

It is very hard to unleash the dragon and then put it back in the box without being devoured in the process.

[lkfmdc]

Well, I'm happier being a "MMA sissy" than being a TCMA tough guy...

I dealt with a lot of gang BS when we had a school in Chinatown. I dealt with associations, and gangs, and gangsters and some of my Sifu's KARMA....

I was asked by my ex-wife's family a few times to help them out with certain issues. I found myself having to be a "tough guy" and didn't exactly like the person who emerged from these situations... my ex-mother-in-law watched me one night deal with the people who were harassing her (my ex-father-in-law had a gambling problem, then skipped town, so they were harassing here and the grandmother). They were Cantonese, so I knew the "right things" to say and the right "names" to drop and "played the part".... my ex-mother-in-law said she'd never realized how part of me was "a Chinese gangster"

I did NOT like that observation....

[ShaolinTiger00]

Sifu Barry said something to me that I'll never forget one day after practice.

"Bill there are are 2 things that are more important to Chinese men than life itself.

One is gambling. The other is keeping secrets. And secret gambling is the ultimate."

[Sow Choy]

Sifu Ross...

These stories are great... I can see them in my mind the way you write them... Forget making a book, make a film...

I have some things in common with you, speaking Cantonese as well as being the white guy who teaches in place of the Sifu...

Someone once came all the way from Poland to learn from Master Lee Koon Hung and he watched for 10 minutes and passed him to me the rest of the time...

I have spent alot of time with his younger brother Li Siu Hung... and his English bad... So some of these stories are making me crack up cause I know EXACTLY where your coming from...

Anyway, hope to meet you one day, if I am up in NY I will try and look you up, if your ever down in FL, give us a shout...

Joe Keit

www.leekoonhungkungfu.com

[lkfmdc]

I knew your sifu

Here's a pic

http://message.axkickboxing.com/imag...fmdc/group.jpg

Sifu Chan, me, Lee Koon Hung, Wai Hong, Deric Mimms, Anthony Goh

The sort of picture only someone associated with Chan Tai San could wind up in, at the time, Wai Hong and Anthony Goh HATED eachother and were in the very climax of the Easter US Federation vs. USA WKF thing!

[lkfmdc]

My friend in the UK, Steve Richards, did me a great service by saving some pics on his web site... since we are traveling down memory lane...

Sifu Chan teaching applications
http://www.tibetankungfu.com/david_7.jpg
http://www.tibetankungfu.com/david_8.jpg
http://www.tibetankungfu.com/david_5.jpg
http://www.tibetankungfu.com/david_26.jpg

Sifu Chan with White Crane master Chan Hak Fu
http://www.tibetankungfu.com/david_23.jpg

Sifu Chan, myself, Gus Kapros, Mike Parella in SF with the Leung brothers, White Crane under Kwong Boon Fu
http://www.tibetankungfu.com/david_29.jpg

Us with Leung brothers and their Lion dancers, Ming Lum also made his way into the picture
http://www.tibetankungfu.com/david_1.jpg

Hard Qi GOng demo in Canton (year?)
http://www.tibetankungfu.com/david_34.jpg

[DF]

David,

You should tell the folks more the human side of Sifu Chan, how he was just a regular guy with great skills, no super ego,king of the hill type of attitude we see from so many so called masters nowaday. I remembered one time at dinner, he asked the waiter to bring him some shrimp paste ( a sort of dipping thing like soy source) and ate up two bowls of rice before we even ordered dinner. When I asked him why he ate just rice and shrimp paste and didn't wait for the rest of the food, his repied was just," I was hungry and need to eat now",lol. I thought it was just hilarious the way he said that.
Hard to believe that was over twenty years ago, time sure went by fast.
Dixon Fung

[lkfmdc]

Dixon,

I really don't know if I'd call Chan Tai San "a regular guy", I know what you mean, but "regular" just isn't the word that pops into my head regarding him!

In some sense, he had no pretenses. He was a regular guy in that he'd show you the new jacket he'd bought, tell you how he got a deal. He'd sit and eat with you like you were a regular person, he never tried to be the "high and mighty master" in that sense. As the seniors opened their own schools and had their own students, Sifu Chan still would find time to say "hello" and show something to every student. Maybe it was a move, maybe he'd grab me, a senior, or even my ex-wife to translate and tell them a little "gem", a pearl of wisdom, but if you were "in the family" he'd be a good "grandfather" and give you something

But then there were certainly other aspects of his personality. There is an advanced movement in Choy Lay Fut called "to divide both high and low", supposedly it is a technique in one of the more advanced forms, reserved for "in the door" and a big deal. Well, sifu thought this whole idea was funny, I forget what got him started, but he decided one day that everyone that was studying with him was going to learn this move. Then one year at a NACMAF event he grabbed all of us and made us show the move to this highly regarded Choy Lay Fut sifu. Chan Tai San told him "I know you waited a long time for YOUR sifu to show you this move, I just showed it to everyone in my school".... it was sort of f-ed up! Sifu Chan had this evil grin on his face



Sifu Chan did have an ego, and it was built up by the very real fact that he had stuff that others did not. He made me demonstrate many times to other teachers, once I had to do forms in a suit and tie because we were at some big event in SF. I had to show a form, to show the stuff that was "go kahp" (advanced) to this Hop Ga guy... his own students stood there going "wow" and asked me later if we were in SF... I told them no, we're in NYC, they were sort of crest fallen, apparently they'd spent a lot of time and not learned a lot of things at all..

And Chan Tai San knew all the dirt, knew where all the bodies were buried. As "open" as these posts seem, they are the tip of an iceburg really....

[DF]

LOL David, you know what I mean when I said regular.
As far as the advnaced or secret techique in CLF, I am from the Buck Sing Clan, to us there is no such thing. Any technique drilled a million times will become advance,lol.

True about Sifu Chan willing to share at the moment of his liking. I remembered one time by Henry Street ( not the church, the workers union place), I was training on my own and Sifu Chan droppd by. We were talking and he said you wanted to learn iron palm. Sure I said, then he took me arounud the construction site around the corner looking for concretes to break,lol. We had a fun afternoon breaking concretes.

BTW do you still keep in touch with Gus?

DF

ps Tip of the iceberg,lol those been around know who these folks are. Keep in mind, if let all the dirts out, there might be only a handful sifus left in the North America,lol. Don't know is that a good or bad thing

[lkfmdc]

I think what is more depressing is knowing how much real kung fu is out there but not at the public level. I met all sorts of guys who do all sorts of things. Many taught only in associations, or small groups, a lot didn't teach at all...

There are all these public schools that people know about, and yet so much that the average person knows nothing about. Say "Hung Kuen" and everyone knows the WFH version, but the variations of village styles, the stuff in them....

I even have a hand written manuscript on one village Hung style that a friend of my sifu wrote, all sorts of stuff in there.... but he only taught maybe 5 guys in his lifetime...