For Part 1 of 2018 TCEKFMCX, click here.

The load-in for the 10th Tiger Claw Elite KungFuMagazine.com Championship went really smoothly. After loading in to the South Hall of the San Jose McEnery Convention Center for ten consecutive years, we’ve got it down. I skipped last year because I was across the street, setting the stage for our 25th Anniversary show, Grandmasters LIVE! and I kind of missed it. It felt good to be back.

I had a short respite from load-in to meet with Master Chenhan Yang and interview him for our FALL 2018 issue cover story. Note that there will be full coverage of our Tiger Claw Elite KungFuMagazine.com Championship X in that upcoming FALL 2018 issue. What’s more, subscribers will get an exclusive DVD of TCEKFMCX as an added bonus. To receive this DVD, subscribe by next Tuesday, July 31, 2018. That’s another short sales pitch, but we got to pay the bills around here to keep this all running.

These post-Tiger Claw Elite Championship blogs of mine are exclusive for KungFuMagazine.com. While it covers the same event, my blogs are written from my personal perspective. Apart from our Cover Stories, most all of the content on our website is exclusive to KungFuMagazine.com, even when they are about the same topic. In this same vein, we post different videos on our YouTube Channel from what will be available on our free DVD. The YouTube videos are from Bad Ass Bunny Productions, under the direction of Greg Lynch Jr. This year, his team consisted of Mark Maggi, Michael Schmidt, and Gary Shockley. Bad Ass Bunny has been documenting TCEC for us since 2009 when we launched our YouTube Channel. Our DVD is from our own in-house videographer, Jason Chang. There's a lot of overlap as both videographers capture the finalists, but they are from different perspectives and the supplementary material is completely unique. Given the diversity of Chinese martial arts and the expansiveness of TCEC, we strive to present alternative perspectives in order to bring you a more complete picture. Okay, maybe that wasn't such a short sales pitch because I'm still pitching. Bottom line – please subscribe. Back to the topic at hand.

In the previous installment of this post-TCEC blog I addressed a subject to death – my master’s passing. Forgive me for that, but when your master dies, there’s a lot of processing afterwards, and I process a lot by writing. The eulogy I wrote for my master, Grandmaster Kwong Wing Lam, for KungFuMagazine.com was personal. I wrote that in an L.A. hotel room while working on Season 2 of MAN AT ARMS: ART OF WAR, in the middle of the night right after I heard the news. I wrote the obituary in our print magazine Kung Fu Tai Chi a few months later. Writing your master’s obituary is an agonizing process, as I’m sure any of my fellow practitioners who’ve done it as well will testify. Hopefully, this post-TCEC blog will be the last time I have to grapple with it, at least with Grandmaster Lam. I’ve studied under many other masters, but who knows if I’ll outlive them too?

At every Tiger Claw Elite KungFuMagazine.com Championship, I gather a crew of volunteers from my friends as a special ops task force, the Dragon Crew, named after another completely different Dragon Crew that I was in for the Grateful Dead. But that’s another story. The TCEKFMCX Dragon Crew was Rich Anderson, Mark Badgett, Wilbur Chang, the Chew clan (Stephen, Wendy, Jordan & Nicole), Sylvia Davies, Jeff Ferriera, Nicholas Hancock, Elena Hung and her dad Jeff Hung, Shawnie Ledbetter, Chris Lewin, Dan Marx, Brian O’Shea, Edgar Puga, Mark Rodriguez, Manh-Tong Tran and his dad Hieu Tran, Marc Velez, Lori White, Ross Wilken, Alex Yu and his dad Yu Yu. Among this crew, Wilbur, the Chews, the Hungs, Brian, Chris, the Trans, Marc and Lori were all direct students of Sifu Lam (actually Marc, Gary (from Bad Ass Bunny – all those guys fall under the Dragon Crew list, but they're really their own entity) and Lori were on that original Grateful Dead Dragon Crew too and Gary and Lori are our copy editors). Stephen, Gary and Lori are among the 22 closed-door disciples of Grandmaster Lam. And Nick and Ross are students of Master Ted Mancuso, headmaster of The Academy of Martial and Internal Arts. Ted is my Sihing (elder martial brother 師兄) under Grandmaster Lam, so Nick and Ross are his grand-students and my Kung Fu nephews. After spending the funeral with my Lam Kwoon siblings two weeks prior, it was good to see each other again, and comfort in having processed our master’s passing somewhat. It was also good to be back in the martial world together, to know that our master lives on within us and we live on in the martial world.

2018 KUNG FU TAI CHI DAY Dragon Crew: L-R: Chris Lewin, Jeff Hung, Gene Ching, Stephen Chew, Ross Wilken.

 

TCEKFMCX came together really well overall. Last year, our Publisher Emeritus Gigi Oh announced her retirement at the 25th Anniversary Banquet, and it’s been a challenge for me to step up to the role of publisher ever since. Part and parcel of her retirement was transitioning Kung Fu Tai Chi from bimonthly back to quarterly. It was my first major act as Publisher, a necessary move to remain viable on the ever dwindling newsstands. We debuted our first quarterly issue of the new millennium, the SUMMER 2018, at TCEKFMCX. It's been a gradual transition. Few attendees noticed because they were preoccupied with the competition, but all the volunteers received an advanced issue in their "Thank You" gift bags.

Gigi, despite having a diminished presence in our office, was ever present at TCEKFMCX. I am a martial artist and a writer, but I’m American-born Chinese (ABC) so much of the trappings of Chinese etiquette escapes me. I’m good with martial etiquette, especially having studied Japanese and European combat arts as well, so I have a decent grasp of the universal concepts. But Gigi is a much better ambassador when it comes to the conventions of Chinese amenities, especially because she’s a native Mandarin speaker, and my very limited Mandarin is broken Dengfenghua – the rural dialect spoken around Shaolin Temple. She was eager to come back and help out as the hostess of TCEKFMCX. It is something in which she truly excels. For TCEKFMCX attendees, they wouldn’t have noticed the change of command.

What they surely noticed was that Saturday was packed. Both the Tiger Claw Elite Taekwondo Championship and TCEKFMCX increased in size, and there was a point in the middle of the day when even the massive white circus tent of South Hall was full. But even with such a huge crowd, things ran smoothly and efficiently. We started and ended on schedule, no small achievement in the Chinese martial arts tournament world as any veteran will tell you. Saturday also marked the launch of our experimental new division for Songshan Shaolin and that was an unparalleled success. Songshan Shaolin drew more competitors than either Traditional Kung Fu or Modern Wushu. All of the judges were coaches and masters of Songshan Shaolin and the entire division ran quickly and without conflict. The two Shaolin masters overseeing this new division, Chen Fei and Xu Dezheng, did an extraordinary job keeping judging fair and the competition moving efficiently. I was worried that school rivalries might taint the rings with controversy. But everyone played nice. I think they really wanted it to succeed. We all did. Next year might be more contentious, more like a normal martial arts competition, or any competition for that matter, but this year was perfect.

Having three external divisions also allowed us to poach another concept from the larger Martial Arts Open Tournaments – an evening Grand Finale. For last year’s 25th, we staged two major demonstrations – the aforementioned Grandmasters LIVE! and our annual KUNG FU TAI CHI DAY demonstrations. That was a lot of demos. This year, we decided to take a break and stage a Grand Finale competition for the Overall External Grand Champions. We did allow a few visiting masters from out-of-state to demonstrate in between the competitions, but only a few. The Overall External Grand Championship pitted the Grand Champions from Traditional Kung Fu, Songshan Shaolin and Modern Wushu for a Grand Prize trophy and a Claw Cash prize from Tiger Claw. It was great fun, and of the five age divisions two went to Songshan Shaolin, two to Modern Wushu and one to Traditional Kung Fu. That was as even a split as could be. It was another success. All of the Grands action is on that FREE DVD that you’ll get if you subscribe before deadline next Tuesday. Some of it can also be seen on our YouTube channel for free. Like I said earlier about how our print articles are unique from those on the web, our DVD videos (produced by our staff videographer Jason Chang) are distinct from the YouTube videos (produced by Bad Ass Bunny Productions).

The afterparty went much later into the night than usual. There was an early issue about some odiferous broccoli in the snack platter, but it gave the gathering an air of authenticity because China can be fragrant. The afterparty was very well attended both by the masters and competitors – and, of course, the Dragon Crew. I suspect the presence of Coach Wu Bin drew the crowd. But even after he left, the afterparty raged on late into the next morning.

I had to cut out before it all wound up, once again passing the baton to my Sidai (junior martial brother 師弟) Chris Lewin. He has had my back through many of these TCEC adventures so I’m very sad to report that he is leaving Tiger Claw as I write this, moving on to other prospects. He says he might come back for TCEC next year, but we shall see. It’ll be tough to lose him because he’s been Dragon Crew sergeant-at-arms since he joined the company. But all things are impermanent, and we all wish him well.

Sunday was even more mellow than usual because we didn’t stage any demos. It was just the Simplified 24 Tai Chi Recital, the Internal Divisions, the Showcase Divisions, and some free workshops. That seems like a lot but it was less than in previous years. The Simplified 24 Tai Chi recital went really well for me. No, I didn’t review the form at all. I just followed along, surrounded by a quartet of Dragon Crew members who wanted to play along just to get the 2018 KUNG FU TAI CHI DAY T-shirt.

The other Shaolin addition to TCEKFMCX was our Showcase event, the Ku Yu-Cheung Bak Sil Lum Championship. The concept was the brainchild of our staff writer Emilio Alpanseque. We've both been working towards bringing more spotlight to the traditional external styles, and Emilio noted that TCEC has a goodly amount of support from the Bak Sil Lum circles within our judges, so it was a natural selection. I managed to corral several leading masters who knew Bak Sil Lum well, specifically masters Bryant Fong, Ken Hui, Gordon Lew, Robert Louie, and Ted Mancuso. Sihing Ted also agreed to donate several of the books he authored about Bak Sil Lum through his company Plum Publications. I currently train at Ted's school, The Academy of Martial and Internal Arts. Tiger Claw added to the prizes by donating one of the new Five Tiger Swords too.

The Ku Yu-Cheung Bak Sil Lum Championship went really well. There was a moment of awkwardness when Apollo Le stepped on the stage wearing a Shaolin Temple style robe. Everyone raised their eyebrows because he was from a school that propounded Songshan Shaolin, not Bak Sil Lum. However, much to everyone's surprise and relief, Le competed with Bak Sil Lum #6. I had considered making the event in honor of my master Sifu Wing Lam, and while I'm sure that the participants would have all agreed, I was too preoccupied about it succeeding. Maybe next year. The feedback was very positive, so although I can't promise anything this early, I'm hopeful that we will stage another one in 2019.

My only disappointment for TCEKFMCX was our longest running showcase, the WildAid Tiger Claw Championship. This has been my pet project since 2010. The competition went well, but it was the first year when we had a decline in attendance. This is a benefit championship, with all proceeds donated to WildAid, which works to protect endangered species in the wild. It's our most high-profile competition because we salute whenever martial artists support a cause like WildAid. For our launch, we donated an iPad to the winner to entice competitors, but after that, the exposure became prized enough. I'm very proud that it has continued to grow, at least until this year. Next year will be the 10th WildAid Tiger Claw Championship so I truly hope we'll have increased support for 2019.

We also did a Showcase Championship for Year of the Dog – our Top Dog Championship. That emerged from an off-color comment I made in a Publisher's Corner (which I have since apologized for profusely) that evolved into our May+June 2018 cover story: "Close Encounters of the Canine Kind: Wushu Pioneer Kenny Perez and His Pursuit of Dog Boxing" by Emilio Alpanseque. Funny how things work out sometimes. The Top Dog Championship didn't do as well, although that was to be expected. Several local masters voiced support when we were toying with the idea, but in the end, only two competitors entered. That was okay by me actually. It was fun, doggonit.

The YEAR OF THE DOG – TOP DOG CHAMPION is Max Lwin - Kung Fu Dragon USA, Pleasanton CA.

 

Next year is the Year of the Pig. There is no pig style really. My master, Sifu Lam, had a very obscure set that was relevant – Heaven General Nine-Pointed Rake. The Heaven General was Pigsy from Journey to the West, the epic tale of the Monkey King who wielded a nine-pointed rake. Sifu Lam had a wicked rake too – nine points of solid steel that could punch through a car hood if you dropped it on one. But that is such a rare set, even more obscure than Dog style. Once, many years ago when I was working for Sifu Lam, I made an ad based on Journey to the West that promoted that video, Monkey Staff and Monk Spade. It flopped. We didn't make a single sale off it. So I doubt that we'll do much piggy stuff next year because it just isn't viable. We'll do something else for sure.

That being said, I hope this sales pitch is more successful. Subscribe by next Tuesday, July 31, 2018, and get a FREE TCKFMCX DVD. Thanks for reading and for your continued support. Now back to practice with you.