Despite working on our Kung Fu Horoscopes for two decades now, I’m not particularly superstitious. However, I do look to the skies, not necessarily for the astrology of it, but more so for the weather. It’s because of the first chapter of Sunzi’s Art of War. Sunzi opened his masterwork addressing the weather “…the effects of night and day, of good and bad weather, of winter’s cold and summer’s heart; in short, the conduct of military operations in accordance with the changes of natural forces.” Having worked outdoor events that were affected by bad weather has made me always cautious. This year, the rains went unseasonably long as if climate change is happening quicker than anticipated, so much so that it changed a lot of my summer plans. A storm was approaching for the weekend of May 18 and 19 when we had scheduled our 2019 Tiger Claw Elite KungFuMagazine.com Championship. In Chinese mythology, rain is governed by dragons. When it rains, it’s a dragon’s blessing. Nevertheless, it all felt ominous, even astrologically as there were foreboding aspects aligning there too.

Chinese astrology follows the lunar cycles and the 18th was the May full moon, the "Flower" moon as we call it in the west, as well as a true Blue Moon. I had always believed that a Blue Moon was when a full moon occurs twice in a single month. That is the generally accepted definition. But there’s also an astronomical Blue Moon – when four full moons occur in a single season, the third is called a Blue Moon. The Spring Equinox was March 20, and May 18 marked the third full moon since then, with the fourth landing on June 17, just prior to solstice. This celestial event happens once every two or three years, so it’s not that rare, but coupled with a May rain storm, it seemed prudent to keep my guard up. I should’ve sharpened my blades, but I’ll get to that later.

Speaking of Rain, just prior to TCEKFMC, I got a call from Rain – the Rain from that cult Kung Fu classic film, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (1986), martial artist and veteran actor Peter Kwong. We first met well over a decade ago when he came by Tiger Claw. I remembered him as charming and witty, slyly showing off his skills with some high and stable single-leg lifts while trying on some shoes. He also got me to laugh with his wicked spot-on impersonation of James Hong, his BIG TROUBLE co-star who played Lo Pan and hosted our 10 Year Anniversary.

Peter was a really nice guy and I was quite surprised he remembered me.  He seemed surprised that I remembered him too. He called because he was curious about the Ku Yu-Cheung Bak Sil Lum Championship. We share this lineage. We are Kung Fu cousins. Peter trained under Grandmaster Johnny So, who was the elder Kung Fu brother to my first Kung Fu master, Kwong Wing Lam. I was embarrassed to tell him that registration for the BSL KYC was very poor this year with only half a dozen competitors signing up, far below what I had hoped for given all the positive feedback I got last year. It was likely to be the last one because our Showcase Championships are only perpetuated if they grow. He still wanted to come, and my Shaolin sense was tingling, but I was so preoccupied with Championship preparation that after our chat, I just moved on.

Apart from the low attendance for the KYC BSL Championship, progress for TCEKFMC 2019 was going well. The only notable issue was a failed experiment with our medals. One of the luxuries with running our own tournament is that Tiger Claw gets to experiment, and one of the services Tiger Claw provides is custom medal making. Every year, we push the edge of the envelope, testing out new processes with our own medals before adding them to our offered services. For this year, our senior graphic artist Patrick Lugo ventured into a three-color process. It came out almost perfect. The black and white colors really popped on the image of the Tiger emblem. Unfortunately, instead of orange, the tigers came out green. They still looked beautiful since green is a very robust color, and we dubbed them our "Jade Tigers" and kept the green motif with the rest of the logos. It was one of those "no mistakes, just happy accidents" situations, and now we know how to do it correctly, so if anyone wants a three-color medal, contact Tiger Claw.

Friday Load-in

I arrived first at the cavernous San Jose Convention Center South Hall and took the liberty of driving my car around the place while it was empty. To our advantage this year, the stage was already built in place when I arrived. Usually we have to wait for the union team to set that up. That was all that was set up, but we have to load in from one end and the stage is in the middle, so when we have to wait for it, it can slow us up. Another advantage was that Tiger Claw now houses a Wushu carpet making moving that from our warehouse loading dock to South Hall much easier.

To our disadvantage, we were missing several crucial crew people this year. Two key Tiger Claw employees, Manny Melendez and Chris Lewin, left the company to pursue other careers. They were critical to our load-in. Manny did show up on Saturday to help out. Chris had planned to come too but life got in the way. On top of that, our longtime outsourced videographer Greg Lynch Jr. of Bad Ass Bunny Productions was skipping this year. He usually would come for the load-in to get set up. Our load-in crew was very light.

Our first order of load-in is laying out puzzle mats. Tiger Claw rents out mats to the local tournaments. They get worn out and it’s during this load-in when we toss out all the bad ones for the year and break out hundreds of new ones. It’s not hard but it is very tedious. There’s a puzzle of puzzle mats because the teeth of the bad ones can’t be in the middle of the rings, only the edge, or they need to be tossed. And there’s a lot. The Tiger Claw Elite Championships combines the Tiger Claw Elite KungFuMagazine.com Championship and the Tiger Claw Elite Taekwondo Championship so we use a lot of mats. Someday I should remember the math behind this – how many mats we actually use. I’m sure Jonny Oh (Tiger Claw President) knows.

Setting out the chairs, barricades and tables are all handled by the venue union team but mats are puzzled together by us. There’s all sorts of additional odd tasks like preparing all the tables, hanging banners, positioning supplies and setting up the standees. Like the mats, setting up standees can be tedious. Our standees are well used and many require quick repairs.

Nevertheless, this was the fastest load-in ever. We were done by the early afternoon. Usually we go into the evening and I have to cut out early to get to the Welcoming Banquet. This year, I actually had time to shower before the Banquet, which was quite refreshing and felt strangely luxurious. Only I was so delighted at being able to be more presentable that I cut myself rather badly shaving, so most of my prep time was spent stopping myself from bleeding. Like the impending rain and the blue flower moon, bleeding so early seemed inauspicious.

Once again, I escorted my dear friend, Master Grace Wu-Monnat, plus her student MIchael, to the Welcoming Banquet. Master Grace embodies her name when it comes to generosity. She’s always one of the first to help sponsor our event and has been sending a spectacular bouquet to our The Welcoming Banquet was held at the World Gourmet Banquet Hall again, like usual. It’s close to our office and we take guests there often, but it’s never been the same for me since 2016 when my then new car was broken into – during the Welcoming Banquet no less. This year went well however. The Welcoming Banquet is open to everyone and is well attended by our VIPs, masters and coaches. It's always such a delight to be able to bring the Wulin together and reunite with old friends. These informal meetings serve as the eye of the hurricane for me, a treasured time when I can relax and enjoy this Wulin gathering which we have wrought. There's always a few new people joining our Banquet, and this year, there were more newbies than usual, which made it especially enjoyable.

After the Banquet, I returned Master Grace and her student back to the hotel. I had mentioned that I had a nice bottle of Teelings whiskey in my room, so our staff writer, Emilio Alpanseque, stopped by for a nightcap, and Master Grace joined in for a friendly chat. Emilio jumped at the chance to pick Grace's mind and memory, reminding me again what an amazing resource she is. Sometimes I forget just how incredible the lives of these masters are because they are my friends. As the granddaughter of the legendary Grandmaster Wang Zipang, Grace got to meet and study under many of the most esteemed grandmasters of the last generation, true titans of Kung Fu that I've only read about. That conversation went much later than it should have, given that we all had to be up bright and early in South Hall Saturday morning, and Emilio and I put down a lot of Teelings. Both Emilio and Grace serve as Head Judges, so we all had to be on point first thing. But those late night chats at tournaments are so enjoyable that it's hard to go to sleep. The FOMO is real.

Saturday – The External Divisions

My special ops team, the Dragon Crew, was lean and mean this year. Not only were we shy my right-hand man Chris Lewin and Bad Ass Bunny's Greg Lynch Jr., my squad was down by 20%. This year's Dragon Crew was Rich Anderson, Mark Badgett, Jeff Ferreira, Nick Hancock, Edgar Puga, Hoel Rainier, Sheri Rath, Travis Rath, Gary Shockley (our copy editor too), Elena Hung, Jeff Hung, Shawnie Ledbetter, Mark Maggi, Brian O’Shea, Eddy Parry, and Manh-Tong Tran. And the Dragon Crew Rock Med team was David Hardy, Kumi Monster, and Marcus Padilla. The Dragon Crew guards the gates mostly, although they'll take on any assignment, especially dealing with the emergency situations. They appear like security and medical, although security at a martial arts tournament isn't quite like anywhere else. For one thing, anyone can walk around with weapons. In fact, that's encouraged. It's not like open firearm carry, and so many of the weapons are Wushu weapons now, which are ineffective as killing tools, but martial arts tournaments are one of the few places where Nunchucks are permitted, so that's cool. Most schools still teach some weapon-carrying etiquette, so despite everyone being armed, it's safer than most environments. Actually, the most challenging opponents that the Dragon Crew face are the rabid parents.

For the most part, Saturday went smoothly. Ironically, the biggest fire was in a traditional ring. Last year, we separated Songshan Shaolin competitors into their own separate division, distinct from Modern Wushu and Traditional Kung Fu. This was because the curriculums propounded at Shaolin Temple today have both traditional and modern elements. Shaolin is a big place with lots of schools teaching literally tens of thousands of students. Some Shaolin schools are very traditional. Others are strictly Modern Wushu. Now Modern Wushu players don't really care if traditionalists compete in their rings because they won't win. Modern Wushu is designed for competition. Traditional is not, so they are always at a disadvantage in the rings. Even though we tell our traditional judges to reward the athletes actually doing traditional Kung Fu, sometimes they get hypnotized by Modern Wushu acrobatics, so separating Songshan Shaolin out not only honors Shaolin Temple, but it makes the traditional rings a little cleaner. It worked last year, but this year, many Songshan Shaolin competitors slipped back over.

One traditional ring was a total catastrophe. A particular master, who shall remain unnamed, decided to disrupt one ring by serving as a judge even though he wasn't positioned there. He insisted on taking pictures with every single competitor, slowing down that ring horrendously, and once a ring falls out like that, it's hard to get back on track. That same ring drew a vociferous complaint because it was too small. Too small? The ring sizes were made explicit in the rules and the traditional ring dimensions have been long established. But this competitor was clearly wanting to do a Modern Wushu form because he needed the running room to set up his aerial techniques. He didn't win because he just didn't read the rules or understand what was happening. It was a very fresh-off-the-boat from PRC error. With all this chaos, some of the judges lost sight of the traditional elements and started awarding wins to athletes who were clearly reciting Modern Wushu forms. Only Master Lester Wong was scoring the competitors correctly, and he was getting perceived as the bad guy. I have great respect for Master Wong and didn't catch on to what was happening until too late because I was distracted by other tasks. After the event, I spent a late night messaging him, apologizing for putting him in that awkward situation.

I have promised Master Wong, and myself, that I will do my best to fix it, so for 2020 I'm reworking the rules to be even stricter for Traditional Kung Fu, as well as bringing in some pinch-hitter judges. As a traditional Kung Fu practitioner myself, I'm ashamed that this went so poorly this year and will redouble my efforts to improve it.

With the exception of that ring, the rest of Saturday ran smoothly and on schedule. The night show went well too, although the awards presentation made for a cumbersome start and the addition of the International Wushu Sanshou Dao Association Grand Champions created a lot more final rounds, maybe a little too many to keep the audience engaged. And Rain – I mean Peter Kwong – did appear. He was clad in the most awesome BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA jacket I have ever seen, and graciously posed for selfies and talked to fans. And he pulled me aside and let slip that he was on a covert mission for his master. More on that on Sunday.

Once again, this post-TCEKFMC blog is part my personal tirade, and part sales pitch. Please subscribe by next Thursday, August 1, 2019, and receive a FREE TCEKFMC DVD. The continuing decline in the newsstands has been the death of a thousand cuts for every print publisher. We now rely heavily upon our subscriber base. Without you subscribers, we won’t be able to continue bringing you all this free content on KungFuMagazine.com or the Tiger Claw Elite KungFuMagazine.com Championships, so please subscribe.

For Part 2 - 2019 Tiger Claw Elite KungFuMagazine.com Championship Part 2 – Is It Raining with You? CLICK HERE.