Hidden history: avoiding the real world in martial arts legends

As I have stated numerous times previously, martial arts stories are seldom real history, with one of their most important defects being a failure to recognize the intersection of the martial arts world with the “real world.” I’ve seen countless martial arts stories that patently ignore well established facts and realities. Worse yet, many students reading these stories never appreciate how the agendas and complexities of that “real world” have effected the accounts they read. Today’s blog post is about these “hidden histories.”

Jigoro Kano (1860 – 1938) was not simply the founder of Judo, he fundamentally changed the martial arts world with his concepts of randori (乱取り) and shiai (試合). Today, many appreciate his contribution to modern Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. An educated few appreciate his contribution to Russian Sambo. Most are ignorant of, or consciously try to deny, his link to modern Sanshou / San Da. The entire history of Kano, Judo, randori, and shiai is obscured by the influences of the “real world.”

For decades now, histories (if we can really call them that) of Judo have often failed to cite the role of Japanese militarism, World War II, and the post war occupation of Japan upon Judo’s development. Kano was actually an opponent of Japan’s militarism and resisted attempts to turn his Kodokan into a military academy. Some believe that Kano was actually poisoned by the Japanese government to remove him as an obstacle to inclusion of the Kodokan as a military academy. Keeping this in mind, in the post war occupation period, the Kodokan not only had to quickly distance themselves from their ties to Japanese militarism, they also had to reform their image as physical education and sport rather than fighting art in order to secure permission to re open their doors. Thus, discussions of randori and shiai as COMBAT TRAINING METHODS remained largely obscured in post-war Kodokan writings.

Note the rifles on the walls

Judo’s original format stressed throws designed to either knock out an opponent or injure them enough to make them submit. When that was not sufficient, ground work (newaza) would result in either a choke or joint attack that would make the opponent submit (or go unconscious). This is to say, Judo was not a “sport”, it was a COMBAT METHOD.

Nothing demonstrates this fact better than an 1886 challenge match between Kano’s Kodokan Judo and the so called “deadly” traditional Jujitsu Ryu organized by the Tokyo Police. The Tokyo Police were interested only in one thing, what was effective. The 1886 matches have been either obscured or ignored by most mainstream accounts for obvious reasons. They were “no rules” matches designed to prove which art was the most effective COMBAT METHOD. The Kodokan won 13 of the 15 matches (two being labelled “draws”?). Even more obscured, to further the Kodokan’s re-branding of itself as physical education and sport, is the fact that some of the traditional Jujitsu Ryu participants subsequently died from injuries they received from being thrown!

Our history now shifts focus to the former Soviet Union and the martial art of Sambo. A man named Vasili Oshchepkov was certainly one of the founding fathers of this martial art, if not THE major influence. Living on the eastern fringes of the Russian empire, in land of disputed ownership, Oshchepkov was admitted to the Kodokan at age 19, the first Russian and only the fourth European in history to receive a black belt ranking in Judo from Kano. Oshchepkov was exposed to how randori and shiai took traditional methods and made them alive and practical, and applied the same principles to native, ethnic Russian styles of fighting.

If you are unfamiliar with Vasili Oshchepkov, or Kodokan Judo’s relationship to Russian Sambo, it is due the very real world political realities that were at play in the former Soviet Union. Oscchepkov was accused of being a Japanese spy and placed in prison during political purges in the 1930’s. Once again, to ignore that traditions exist within the context of the real world, that martial artists are just as effected by the history and politics around them, is to fail to properly understand many things.

Other real world influences upon so called martial arts histories are nationalism and xenophobia. There is no place this is more true than China. Chinese martial arts stories frequently obscure or flatly deny any foreign influences, whether those influences are western boxing, Japanese Judo or Russian martial arts. Of course, you can deny all you want, but facts will always remain.

I’ve encountered many revisionists who have attempted to refute the following, but please see if you follow me. Let us begin with established historical fact. In January 1923 Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, leader of the Guomindang (Nationalist party) signed an agreement with the Soviet Union. The Russians promised Sun not only arms, but advisers as well.

“Since we wish to learn their (the Soviet Union’s) methods, I have asked (Soviet advisor) Mr. (Michael) Borodin to be director of training of our Party.”

Michael Borodin

Michael Borodin led a contingent of Soviet advisers to Guangzhou, where Sun had established a local government. Under Borodin’s tutelage, the Guomindang embraced Soviet principles of party organization and of party discipline and learned methods of mass organization, propaganda and infiltration. In 1924, the Whampoa Military Academy was established with Soviet assistance in order to train the party’s leadership cadre and create a modern military force. Soviet style political science classes were instituted (taught by Zhou Enlai) and the Peasant Training Institute, where the young Mao Zedong served, was created.

Whampoa included in it’s curriculum close quarters combat (CQC) training for its military cadets. This trained was influenced by the current Soviet methods of CQC, i.e. Sambo. Of course, Sambo had been influenced by Oshchepkov’s Judo training; concepts of randori and shiai. These were the beginnings of Sanshou / San Da. Yet many revisionists remain who want to deny this.

Once again, the historical record is very clear. Every single aspect of both the Guomindang party and the Whampoa Academy was subject to Soviet influence; the party organization, the party discipline, the political indoctrination, mass organization methods, Soviet style infiltration and sabotage methods, political science courses, etc etc etc. I’ve confronted these revisionists with this, they don’t (because they can not) deny it. Their response? Every single aspect of the Guomindang and Whampoa during this period was under Soviet influence EXCEPT the martial arts training! I will leave the reader to ponder this claim.

Thanks to the many who shaped me…

Wanted to thank just some of the MANY people who in my life have shaped me as a martial artist. A few are very obvious, others less so. Also, I am not doing this in a particular order and the list here will NOT be complete.

I had done some boxing in the PAL before I met Master Pong Ki Kim, but he was my first formal martial arts instructor. I earned 2nd degree black belts in Taekwondo and Hapkido under Pong Ki-Kim and also did AAU full contact Taekwondo while training there.

I began training with Chan Tai San in the Chan Family Association building in NY’s Chinatown in 1986. He taught me Lama Pai and the San Da he had learned in the Chinese military. I also learned a bit of Choy Lay Fut and White Eyebrow from him.

Erik Paulson influenced me for years before I ever met him in person. His well balanced, all around training program convinced me I could take my San Da in a new direction. Meeting and training with him in person was like meeting a rock star! This year I have been lucky to now be formally affiliated with him!

I wasn’t very fortunate in highschool, we didn’t have a wrestling team. I knew almost nothing about wrestling, except that in MMA Randy Couture and Matt Lindland were two of the best wrestlers. I attended the first Team Quest MMA camp and got to train with them for 3 days. Pummeling with Randy was like getting mugged!

I attended a seminar with the Rua brothers, Shogun and Ninja, when they were still PRIDE fighters… in fact, Shogun was “brand new” at the time. The Chute Boxe way is a unique approach to Muay Thai in an MMA environment.

There have been MANY MORE… and I’ll get to them SOON

NOW GO TRAIN!
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The rise and fall of US Sanshou/San Da

In Asian, the only form of competition that Chinese martial arts knew was full contact fighting. Though rules were unclear and inconsistent, under the umbrella term of “Lei Tai” many events were held. American students of Chinese martial arts got their first experience with these events when their sifus took them to Asia to compete. For example, the late Dean Chin took his students to Taiwan to compete.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s Fu Jow Pai sponsored full contact events in the NY area. While back then kung fu was called “soft style”, it is important to remember that at the time the ONLY full contact martial arts were these Chinese sponsored events.

NACMAF reintroduced full contact fighting to the Chinese martial arts community in the 1990’s with their national tournament in Baltimore. As Jason Yee noted, the rules were thrown together and had no bearing on either the Lei Tai events going on in Taiwan or the Sanshou events going on in mainland China. A team of Russian sanshou fighters were invited to compete against a US team and it was immediately apparent that the US fighters were poorly prepared.

Eventually a real Sanshou circuit was set up, especially when NACMAF became the USA WKF. I begin putting students into these events in 1996. However, I was never that fond of the format. I didn’t like the Lei Tai stage. I didn’t like the “push out” rule. I found being told you couldn’t punch the head in what was being billed as “full contact” absolutely ridiculous. . That particular rule was so wildly unpopular (and illogical) that even the IWUF eventually was forced to abandon it.

The IWUF continues to ban the use of the knee strike. Chinese martial arts have long recognized the value and power of the knee strike. In the past, many Chinese based competitions have allowed the knee strike. It appears that the only reason the IWUF initially excluded the knee from San Shou competition was political, to differentiate San Shou from Muay Thai (Thai boxing) in its quest for Olympic recognition and inclusion.

My first “challenge” to the established powers was setting up an event in 1995. It followed the established rules and was held on the Lei Tai stage, but instead of a tournament I had single prearranged matches like a boxing card. I was told that it would “never be popular”! Of course, later on it was the most popular form of Sanshou/ San da competition and that is what made it popular with people outside of the very small kung fu circle.

In 1997, I promoted the first professional match (where people were paid to fight) and introduced a format with knee strikes. This was a good year and change before China’s “Sanda Wang” events. I was increasingly having issues with the USA WKF and how they were mismanaging sanshou.

Shawn Liu was appointed US national team coach, though no one could ever explain why with a straight face. Shawn Liu had arrived in the US a complete unknown. He was shown around the country by Sifu Tai Yim, a very respected traditional teacher, as a courtesy. At that time, Shawn Liu was introduced as a WUSHU COACH. He never been able to acquire a full time position in China and thus had come to the US seeking opportunity.

Shawn Liu first became “infamous” when he acted as Chinese Wushu Association president Xia Bahua’s translator. Xia Bahua discovered to his horror that Shawn Liu was not translating what he was saying and was in fact pushing his own agenda. Professor Xia complained through the Chinese Wushu Association. This forced USA WKF president Anthony Goh to demand Shawn Liu issue a formal apology.

Shawn Liu set up an institute in the United States but his students never made a dent in the US San Shou community. Even at his own event, the US Open, they lost consistently to other teams, even non “Big 6” people. A former national San Shou coach said of Shawn Liu, “he’s a nice guy from the same province as me.” but when asked about his skills and accomplishments as a fighter? The coach said he had no comment. Why was a man who has never produced a champion the US team coach?

Some appointments are “political” but Shawn Liu never had influence to help out a US Team member when the IWUF was trying to do them wrong;
– Not when Cung Le was wrongly disqualified in Italy.
– Not when Ray Neves was lied to and then dropped at the last worlds.
– Not when Albert Pope was robbed at the World Cup.

He isn’t a great trainer, hasn’t produced any national champions of his own, and has no influence with the IWUF. Thank god he was Chinese we guess?

After some back deal negotiation that no one was privy to, Anthony Goh’s USA WKF, abandoned San Shou entirely and handed it over to Shawn Liu. The decision was made to let Shawn Liu administer all IWUF related San Shou activities; the team trials were made part of his event, he retained power to pick the final composition of the team and he continued to serve as the head coach of the national team. In addition, the USA WKF dropped San Shou from their national competition in favor of letting Shawn Liu run his own “national tournament”.

All of the coaches of the traditional “Big 6” protested. They all contacted Anthony Goh not only to protest but also with constructive suggestions. They were all given nothing more than lip service and ignored. Cordial language was exchanged and handy phrases were used, but was the decision really in the best interests of the sport?

Subsequent events begged the question, had Shawn Liu gone power mad?
He refused to attend either the US Wushu Union or the Arnold Classic sanshou events (the Arnold being the LARGEST EVER SAN SHOU event in the US to date) because he didn’t get “a special invitation”. Shawn Liu had already arranged for the USA WKF to drop San Shou and for the team trials to be held at his event. Shawn Liu also originally scheduled his event in conflict with Cung Le’s.

At one event, when a coach of one of the super fight participants argued with him, Shawn Liu’s answer was to have security remove him from the building. Did we mention that the coach in question was correct, and that Shawn had acted against the terms of a contract IN WRITING.

Have we mentioned that Shawn Liu never paid many of the coaches and athletes the money he has promised them for their participation in his events?

Finally, let us never forget that at the 2001 US Open in Atlanta, Shawn Liu told the coaches of the “Big 6” San Shou teams that the new federation was for them and that he’d only act as an “advisor”. However, he appointed himself president and CEO. Did anyone vote for him? Was there a vote?

The Chinese martial arts organizations either completely ignored sanshou or failed to promote it properly. The traditional “Big 6” eventually became so frustrated they moved on to mainstream fighting organizations and other formats like Muay Thai and MMA.

There had been a bright window, a small window, but it closed rather quickly. Today, sanshou is dead in the US. Contained here are a few of the reasons why.

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More on Chan Tai San

Sifu Chan Tai San passed away on Sept 1, 2004. He had spent the last 3 or 4 years of his life in a hospital, in bad health and secluded from the world. Once he got sick, he never went out. He never wanted anyone to see him as anything other than the tough guy he had always been. All of his students basicly lied when asked about him, “oh, he’s doing good, he’s fine”

The last few years of my teacher’s life was a difficult time for me. After completing the system with him, and after he was semi-retired, it was no longer about showing up to “work out” or to learn. It was all about personal relationships, and about confronting both the positive AND the negative things he’d done over the years. It was like having a father you never really agreed with. You loved him, you were comitted to him, but you were conflicted over how you felt about things that he had done.

My teacher, like a lot of Chinese teachers, felt that those who mattered always knew the real deal and those who didn’t know the “real deal” never mattered. A sifu in the martial arts community (Mo Lum) knows exactly how a real Baai Si (adoption) ceremony takes place. If you say you were adopted and don’t have the right things, a real person in the Mo Lum is going to laugh his azz off at you and take you for a clown. Of course, most Americans don’t know thing #1 about this sort of stuff

A real Baai Si is a public event. It is usually announced, often in newspapers. Mine was. A fortune teller is consulted to find the right date, you must submit to your sifu your date and time of birth. A real Baai Si must have witnesses, at least one a MAJOR figure in the Mo Lum. My #1 Baai Si witness was Sifu Frank Yee (Yee Chi Wai) of the Dang Fong Hung Ga lineage. My other two witneses were a Choy Lay Fut teacher and a member of one of the associations. A real Baai Si involves you receiving a reb paper books which has important Kuen Po and which is signed by you, your sifu and the witnesses. To my knowledge, my sifu did four Baai Si in China before coming here. He did three official Baai Si in the US, all done in the Mineola school myself and Michael Parrella opened.

I bring this up because my sifu, like many sifu I know, was also capable of turning to someone and telling them “hey, you got $500? I’ll adopt you. Come to my house on a Thursday night with teh cash and BOOM you’re adopted!” The senior students had a huge issue with Sifu Chan over this sort of stuff. My sifu always scoffed and laughed. He said that anyone who mattered, ie real people in the Mo Lum, would never take someone claiming to be adopted from one of these “late night cash sessions” seriously. And if another ignorant American believed someone was an adopted disciple because of this? WHO CARED. They didn’t matter anyway…

Sifu Chan ran things like a lot of the old school people did. First, he had his students and he had the “outsiders”. If you were a regular student, you had a regular monthly rate, you learned what he thought you should learn, you put your faith in him. He did spend more attention with the regular students.

The outsiders were those who showed up, wanted to learn something and were charged based upon what they asked for. If you did this, you got no more, and frequently, if you turned out to be clueless, you got less….

Among the regular students, there were the seniors and there was the group class. the seniors ran the group classes basicly while Chan tai San watched and would tweek things. He expected his seniors to be resposible and do stuff themselves. We’d show up, he’d ignore us. It was our job to warm up, do basics and then start reviewing whatever we were working on with him. If we apparead to have a grasp on what we were working on, then he’d work with you. The seniors were the only people Chan Tai San worked directly with on a long term basis. The price for that, he expected that you already knew what you were doing. There were holes you had to fill in for yourself, or, if you were smart enough to ask specific questions, he’d fill them in if you asked the right questions…

The group classes were for Chan Tai San a way to maybe find some people worthy of being seniors and actually learning from him. Again, it was a survival of the fitest thing, you were thrown in the pool, if you swam, you’d stand out and get more. Many drowned.

Regarding Sifu Chan’s regular students, the training was very much about FIGHTING. Those who came and just paid for something, who asked for something and did a straight, I ask, I pay you give, got what they asked for, never more. And usually Sifu Chan looked down on these people, thinking their attitudes sucked…

If you put your faith and your trust in Sifu Chan, he’d actually put effort into what you should be doing. That is why most of his students were trained differently, they weren’t all the same guy, cookie cutter produced on an assembly line, so why treat them that way?

From Sifu Chan’s point of view, forms were just a way to get the techniques across and make you do them over and over again. There was NOT a particular reverance for the sets, even for the exact sequences!

A very common thing that would happen; “Sifu, is the movement this? or This?” A technique could be done several ways, several different angles, maybe even the sequence was open to some variations….

“Sifu, is it this, this or that?”

Sifu Chan would inevitably say “yes”… as in, it is all those, and MORE

The first set I did with Chan tai San was Siu Lo Han (lesser Boddhisattva set). it is one of the core sets (there are 5 core sets), in reality, you could well study this one form and make an entire fighting style out of it. I won’t say it has “everything” but it has certainly enough to make a strong cross section. The basic shooting star fists are in this set, the basic concepts are in this set. There are four basic kicks, plenty of throws and joint locks. A few really nasty advanced “Neih Lahk Sau” tactics…

I learned 5 versions of the same set.

The sets became “conversation pieces”, ie they stimulated talk about application and theory. A good part of the practice was taking apart and re-assembling the sets to find the applications. But the way my sifu did it was probably “unique”

Certain applications he took the initiative to teach you, ie he’d stop you, show it to you and make sure you grasped what it was about…

But that was HALF the process. He expected you to hold up your end, to ask him about other applications. If you had no initiative, you’d been shown very little. The best stuff by far you got by asking, by askig again, by having follow questions. Once you got Sifu Chan going, it poured out, but if you didn’t make the effort, he let you go on your merry way ….

But the other half of the equation was, you FELT the applications, there was no “show” it was all “tell”! If it was a punch, Sifu Chan PUNCHED YOU! If it was a kick, he kicked you, if it was a throw, he threw you, joint lock, you get the idea. I regularly got kicked, tripped, thrown, poked in the eye, kicked in the groin !

When it came to sparring, it was up to us to get gear. By the time I had met Sifu Chan, I’d been around martial arts a long time already. With the group classes, we had everyone get a mouth piece and a cup, we then had a number of boxing gloves we handed out to spar with. Sifu Chan was fully supportive of sparring and sparring with gloves. He noted that there were too many injuries bare knuckle (which we had already discovered) and noted that the best part of being in the army had been that they had gear. When he was just an orphan in a monastery in the middle of no where, the kung fu was good, but they had NOTHINGLater, we added in shin guards. Less injuries meant we could spar more often. The irony, after we did it, that’s exactly what Chan tai San said “good, now you guys can spar more, less injuries.” A lot of Sifu Chan’s training was based upon self initiative, he spoon fed no one….

Like most traditional Chinese systems, the sparring was what most would call “stand up”. Sifu taught three different ground fighting sets as part of the Lama, and the Choy Lay Fut had ground fighting sets, and Sifu also had a two man set that was like Fukien dog fighting, but the primary emphasis was hitting and wrestling standing up.

In sparring, if you were thrown, swept or fell, we didn’t jump right on top of you, but you were expected to get right back up. In one of the first sparring sessions we ever did with Sifu chan around, a guy just stayed on the ground, he didn’t curl up, he didn’t try to get back up, he just stayed there…. Sifu Chan SCREAMED “if he stays there, HIT HIM”… I actually think that’s how the ground set got started, because he actually walked over to the guy and started showing us ways to attack a guy who was on the floor….

Ove they years, that’s often how material would get started, a deficiency that popped up would prompt Sifu Chan to address it. The week one of the students got attacked with a knife on Mott street resulted in two weeks of knife disarms for example.

Chan Tai San was a fighter, in every sense of the word. I was in the association hall on Bayard late one night. At the beginning especially, we’d often be there until 11 or later at night. We fell in love with practice, so much so I dropped out of school for a semester.

This was early on, I didn’t speak Cantonese really yet, so what transpired remains a mystery to me. Chan Tai San was cooking dinner, a common thing around that hour for him. Two guys came into the association hall, one middle aged (50’s) and another rather young (he was my age, early 20’s).Whatever was going on, the middle aged guy did the talking, Chan Tai San was obviously annoyed and waved his hand at the guy. Chan Tai San walked around and the middle aged guy followed him around. The volume of the “discussion” went up and it was clearly an argument after a minute or so….

Sifu Chan was walking across the floor again, when suddenly the young guy took a fighting stance, looked like a Muay Thai stance, and started dancing around Sifu Chan.

I was young and stupid, at first I thought “wow, Sifu is old so I’d better fight this guy.” I was about to learn my lesson. Sifu Chan didn’t take a stance, he said something to the guy, who made a funny face (knowing Sifu later on over the years, I can guess the sort of thing he might have said). The guy was still in his stance, sort of dancing about, Sifu Chan made his “chyuhn choih” noise, hit the guy ONCE. He went all stiff like a board, fell back on his heels, fell flat on the ground.

Sifu Chan said something to the middle aged guy, I can be pretty sure it must have been to teh effect of “now, get the F out of here.” The middle age guy helped the young guy get up, the left, and I never saw them again.

Sifu continued to make dinner and I was numb….

My thoughts on “style” or “system”

What was Chan Tai San’s favorite system? What style do you teach? Which style is best? Is it a northern system? Etc etc blah blah No offense to my student who asked a question that prompted this blog entry….

Before I ever met Chan Tai San, I had done western boxing, had second degree black belts in Taekwondo and Hapkido and had studied Shuai Jiao and Hung Ga.

I learned a lot of things with Chan Tai San, but my primary area of study was “Lama Pai”. What exactly is (was) “Lama Pai”? Western Chinese long arm, Northern Chinese kicking, Mongolian wrestling, Southern Chinese short arm and a good deal of Indian martial art as well. To think of “Lama Pai” as a “pure system” is to miss the point entirely.

I should also note that Chan Tai San studied anywhere from 5 to 9 different versons / traditions / lineages / different teacher’s version of “Lama Pai” so his version was a mix of many things. Of course, Chan Tai San also knew Choy Lay Fut, Village style Hung fist, White Eyebrow, Mok Ga, Hung Fut and bits of a lot of martial arts. Some of them not even Chinese! Chan Tai San was very fond of both Japanese Judo and western boxing.

When we did demonstrations, whether it was Chan Tai San or any of the students, people were always confused. They would see elements of all the systems mentioned on our demonstrations. “Which was it” they wanted to know? It was Chan Tai San’s method, often influenced by what we the students had also done (a lot of my demos were influenced by my Hung Ga background as well)

Was Lama Pai Chan Tai San’s favorite system? NO. I can safely say that Chan Tai San’s favorite system was “take my fist and smash your face”. He was also pretty fond of “Kick you in the nuts”.

Of course, he had a lot of variations upon these systems. I still teach variations of “take my fist and smash your face” and “kick you in the nuts”. I was already teaching my own versions of these systems when Chan Tai San was still alive, and he was pretty supportive of my versions.

People don’t get who I am and why I am the way I am. They wonder (aloud) why I “left Chan Tai San’s teachings” when in fact they have no idea what Chan Tai San’s teachings were about. Only my hing-dai (training class mates) get it, because THEY WERE THERE. Even a lot of them don’t get it, because they were busy drinking the kool-aid….

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REAL history of martial arts

More from recent research into the history of traditional Chinese martial arts.
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The virtual collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and the establishment of the Chinese Republic did little to change the state of martial arts. While some individual martial artists had gained status and social acceptance, as a group they continued to present a problem to central authority. Martial arts schools produced trained fighters who remained loyal only to their own teachers and traditions. Many still supported groups which openly challenged the newly established government, particularly secret societies. Doak Barnett, a well known historian who described conditions in Szechuan province during the Republican period, observed:

“There was nothing secret about [secret societies]…. The fact that it is outlawed by the central government does not seem to bother anyone concerned, or, it might be added, deter anyone from becoming a member if he is invited.”

The first Chinese Republic soon collapsed, fragmented and ruled by an assortment of regional military warlords. These warlords carved out autonomous districts with their own armies and tax systems while fighting each other in a continual battle for more land. The New Culture Movement sprang from the disillusionment with traditional Chinese culture following the failure of the Chinese Republic. Scholars whom had classical educations began to lead a revolt against the traditional Confucian culture. They called for the creation of a new Chinese culture based Western standards, especially Democracy and science.

Of course, traditional Chinese martial arts were a product of the traditional culture and were steeped in Confucian structures. The popular perception of the martial arts following the Boxer Uprising was also that the martial arts community was composed of poorly educated peasants who were superstitious, violent and backward.

In the private sector a number of societies were organized to promote a new vision of martial arts in modern China. In 1912 the Beiping Physical Culture Research Institute was established and began to publish a magazine called Physical Cuture. The Jingwu Physical Culture Society was the biggest and most popular Chinese martial arts society which spread through China and South East Asia from 1917 to 1929.

Jingwu Physical Culture Society was the first sports society to combine Western and Chinese physical culture, which not only taught Chinese martial arts and military training, but also taught Western sports, such as gymnastics exercise, athletics, football, basketball, volley­ball, tennis and swimming. It marked a transition from the martial arts serving solely as a soldiers’ tool to a middle-class recreation which had the potential of improving Chinese society as a whole.The Jingwu Association challenged the popular view of the martial artist, “Chinese martial arts practitioner does not equal ‘gangster,'”thug,” or ‘goon.”

The martial arts also survived and expanded in this period because of external problems centered on the extension of Japanese imperialism and the continuing influence of Western imperialism. These events also produced critical debates on sport. One debate focuses upon the relationship of physical education to military training. The notion of a martial spirit was one of the essential educational principles from 1912 to 1917. Militarism was the core concept of physical education in schools. Accordingly, physical education and military training were seen as over­lapping physical activities in schools.

Martial arts were suggested as the core part of education in schools to raise national martial spirits. In 1915, the Ministry of Education proclaimed that the proposal of military education should be put into effect. The proposal was that all schools should teach traditional Chinese martial arts and martial arts teachers should be educated at teacher training schools.

It was the first time that martial arts was put on the school curriculum formally in China. Also Chinese martial arts teaching methods had changed, from traditional individual teaching to group teaching which following instructional command and movement. Obviously, the new martial arts teaching method was influenced by Western gymnastics exercises and military drill.

The New Culture Movements was active and influential in China from 1907 to 1923, among university students and intellectuals who had studied abroad and embraced modernity. Of major concern was the health of the Chinese population, which suffered due to a combination of poor diet, disease, poverty, crowded living conditions, opium addiction and finally, a lack of concern about and knowledge of public health. Following the first Sino-Japanese war in 1895, many Chinese felt also that their country had become a “sick man” who needed strong medicine.

Proponents of modern physical education also confronted a Confucian society had deeply rooted prejudices about what the proper man looked like physically. He was pale skinned, thin, almost emaciated. This aesthetic reflected the many hours a Confucian scholar spent studying books and writing calligraphy. Also, musculature was viewed as an indication that the person engaged in manual labor. Compared to Western physiques, the Chinese insisted that they maintained moral superiority due to this Confucian ethic and lifestyle.

The debates on military training and physical education were launched by Chinese intellectuals. Ideas such as social Darwinism and survival of the fittest, which were introduced at this point in time, influenced some to believe that military drills could strengthen Chinese martial spirit to save China from imperialist invasion.

However, in the view of many intellectuals of the period, military-style calisthenics was not suitable for school curriculum, not only because of the context of military calisthenics but also because of the corrupt soldiers as teachers in schools.

” your average unintelligent, immoral soldier coming right out of the barracks and in one swoop becoming a teacher”
– 6 Physical Culture Weekly Special Edition, January 1920.

Chen Tu-hsiu, one of the Chinese Communist Party’s founders and editor of a magazine entitled New Youth, criticized the classical feudal education system for over emphasizing literary memorization and neglecting physical exercise, yet disagreed about putting martial arts in the school curriculum because of his anti-traditionalism and anti-militarism positions. Chen called for “no boxing and no violent competitive games”20.
20 New Youth, 1 January 1920.

The public also still held strong negative opinions about traditional martial arts, One of the other famous anti-martial arts writers was Lu Xun, who argued that the propaganda of traditional Chinese sport was based on superstition, feudalism and anti-science.

In Lu’s view, over-emphasising the function of Chinese martial arts might raise a similar patriotism to that of the Boxer Rebellions in 1900.

Lu Xun satirical take upon the traditional martial arts published in New Youth, 1918:

“Recently, there have been a fair number of people scattered about who have been energetically promoting boxing [quan]. I seem to recall this having happened once before. But at that time the promoters were the Manchu court and high officials, where as now they are Republican educators–people occupying a quite different place in society. I have no way of telling, as an outsider, whether their goals are the same or different.

These educators have now renamed the old methods “that the Goddess of the Ninth Heaven transmitted to the Yellow Emperor”…”the new martial arts” or “Chinese-style gymnastics” and they make young people practice them. I’ve heard there are a lot of benefits to be had from them. Two of the more important may be listed here:

(1) They have a physical education function. It’s said that when Chinese take instruction in foreign gymnastics it isn’t effective; the only thing that works for them is native-style gymnastics (that is, boxing). I would have thought that if one spread one’s arms and legs apart and picked up a foreign bronze hammer or wooden club in one’s hands, it ought probably to have some “efficacy” as far as one’s muscular development was concerned. But it turns out this isn’t so! Naturally, therefore, the only course left to them is to switch to learning such tricks as “Wu Song disengaging himself from his manacles.” No doubt this is because Chinese are different from foreigners physiologically.

(2) They have a military function. The Chinese know how to box; the foreigners don’t know how to box. So if one day the two meet and start fighting it goes without saying the Chinese will win…. The only thing is that nowadays people always use firearms when they fight. Although China “had firearms too in ancient times” it doesn’t have them any more. So if the Chinese don’t learn the military art of using rattan shields, how can they protect themselves against firearms? I think–since they don’t elaborate on this, this reflects “my own very limited and shallow understanding”–I think that if they keep at it with their boxing they are bound to reach a point where they become “invulnerable to firearms.” (I presume by doing exercises to benefit their internal organs?) Boxing was tried once before–in 1900. Unfortunately on that occasion its reputation may be considered to have suffered a decisive setback. We’ll see how it fares this time around.

(This is from p. 230-231 of Paul A. Cohen’s, History in Three Keys.)

What is “internal martial arts”?

Chances are you might have seen older people doing Tai Chi in the park. It probably looked like good exercise to you, but probably didn’t strike you as training for combat. In most urban centers, people have taken a yoga class or two. It’s a nice stretch and gets you to sweat, but did you ever consider it the preliminary training for warfare?

In Chinese martial arts circles, these days you see people who, quite frankly, are yahoos (and I don’t mean the search engine) trying to tell you there are “secret techniques” but more importantly that “chi” or mythical energy will make you a fighter. I’ll cut to the chase, it’s all cattle dung.

Until recent history, no one who did the so called “internal martial arts” talked about Taoist monks, health, chi or such nonsense. Hsing-Yi for example was commonly utilized by caravan escorts and bodyguards. There is a whole history, several actually, to explain why battlefield methods were suddenly wrapped in mythic cloth but never forget that is what happened.

Internal is about structure, but any successful fighter (or athlete) knows that proper structure is the key to execution.

Internal is about the proper, efficient use of all the body parts in coordination and harmony. Does anyone think that Olympic power lifters don’t engage in this to lift those insane amounts of weight? Or wrestlers when the shoot a double leg takedown?

Internal is often linked to proper breathing. Again, high level athletes all know the important of controlled and regulated breath.

People seek “secrets” because they want the magic bullet or the magic pill that will take the place of hours of hard work, sweat, pain and some blood. The secret is there are no secrets. The secret is that only long hours, sweat, pain and blood are the way to skill.

Be well and train hard…..

www.NYBestKickboxing.com
www.NYSanDa.com

Nothing “traditional” about TCMA today

About 28 years ago I was in a certain “mo gwoon” (Cantonese for Kung Fu school) in NYC. Back then they had a box of boxing gloves in a corner and had certain nights they sparred. Back then this was NOT unusual. Back then the Fu Jow Pai federation was hosting full contact events, so were other kung fu schools up and down the eastern seaboard.

HOWEVER, sparring there one night I started kicking. I had of course already done both Tae Kwon Do and Cheung Kyuhn (long fist). But this was a short hand style school and I was quickly told that since kicking wasn’t part of the school, I wasn’t allowed to kick in sparring.

Of course, my first observation was “what if you have to fight someone who actually kicks”? What are you gonna do, tell him NO? I also of course observed that I was sparring one of the sifu’s favorite guys and he didn’t know jack crap about defending against kicks, could that be the reason?

So, remember, back then they at least did spar with contact, with gloves, but there were always some “strange” or questionable things circulating in the Chinese martial arts. My question is, how did we go from there to TODAY? Today, that school still exists, but they do NOT spar AT ALL.

Chinese martial arts have always had a lot of baggage, but surely one of the biggest problems has been the desire to portray themselves as “better” and “superior” and to try and stand above the rest of the martial arts. In trying to do this, they slowly started down the road to the absurd.

The good old days of national events and national organizations was upon us and the AAU tried to set up a NY chapter. Of course, the AAU barred any kind of full contact so I wasn’t all that interested honestly. The conversation was about point sparring.

Aside from the absolutely absurd idea of judging sparring based upon “style points” – (ie I can get kicked in the face but as long as I am making a nice mantis claw I win! Really?) – the REAL issue was how to keep non-kung fu people OUT.

Being me, of course, I had to interject. I asked all the people present “isn’t kung fu BETTER than karate and other stuff”?

OF COURSE IT IS they all declared!

“So then shouldn’t you just be able to beat them and not care if they enter your sparring competition”?

The response was dead silence.

I am still not sure, may never be sure, where and when TCMA made the decision to become what it is today (to me, a JOKE), but I do know that the seeds were long there.

50 shades of gray…..

Did the title of today’s blog get your attention? Well, don’t perv out, this isn’t about “S and M” unless that stands for Stupid and Morons. Today’s blog is about the fact that very few people can actually appreciate the many shades of gray in an issue. They always want to turn things into black and white. Or, perhaps, they are simply incapable of understanding that things are NEVER black and white.

Chan Tai San teaching fighting techniques

I have written at great length about my late teacher, Chan Tai-San. I have always presented him exactly as he was, the good, the bad and the ugly. The typical response to my writings has been either (1) talking about the bad things about him is somehow abandoning or disrespecting him or (2) I have no right to talk about the good things he did because I am no longer identified with nor teach traditional Kung Fu.

Chan Tai San was famous thoughout China. This is a copy of Kwanghai News

It’s sort of sad that people can’t wrap their minds around a pretty simple idea. Chan Tai San was a fantastic example of what traditional kung fu was about and why it is where it is today. He was a good fighter with functional skills. This isn’t just “story” or “myth”. I personally saw the certificates showing he was All Military Sparring (Sanshou) Champion. In addition;

– You can look up the 1954 Guangdong province sports almanac and see he took third in the provincial sparring championships that year

– You can look up the Daily News and Newsday from 1982 and see a story about how he was attacked by guys with knives on 42nd street and put them in the hospital.

Does this mean he was unbeatable? HELL NO. What I always found interesting about Chan Tai San was he NEVER told us a story about him winning a fight. Every story about his victories and achievements I heard from third parties (also making the claims much more credible!). When Chan Tai San told you a story, it was always about how he lost, often beaten pretty badly.

I always believed that was one of Chan Tai San’s greatest contributions to us, teaching us that people lose, that we have limitations, but that we never give up because of those.

Have I ever claimed Chan Tai San would have won the UFC, was the best ever, had magic powers, etc etc? Easy answer, NO. He had skills and was good for his day. However, he spent a considerable amount of his time doing things that had little to nothing to do with fighting, and that is the problem with much of today’s kung fu.

When Chan Tai San did talk about fighting, the techniques he showed and the approaches he advocated would not surprise any fighter. He was light on his feet, he liked working from behind a jab, and he liked throwing uppercuts as you entered a clinch. He taught knees in the clinch (look at picture above). Many of his kicks were low kicks to the legs, sweeps and trips.

Unfortunately, Chan Tai San taught forms a lot, and in those forms were often techniques that would NEVER work. What most people find even stranger, Chan Tai San KNEW they would NEVER work and was straight forward about it!

I always found this strange, a waste of time. Why teach and practice things you know will never work? For Chan Tai San, the answer was “tradition”. Also, and people never wrap their minds around this one, to impress people who don’t know any better!!! Yes, that was something Chan Tai San told us.

For many years, I’ve had my own school NY San Da and have been free to teach and do what I want. This was true even when Chan Tai San was alive! He never expected any of us to be copies of him. He was NOT a copy of his teacher, in fact he had too many to just copy one! People frequently ask me things like

– Do you teach Lama Pai?
– Do you teach real Chinese San Da?
– Is it kung fu?

Frankly, these questions are meaningless and miss the point entirely! PLEASE READ CAREFULLY (and slowly if you have to!)

My interest has always been practical and efficient fighting. I don’t care about “tradition” and have no interest in doing things just to impress the “rubes”. The practical fighting techniques that Chan Tai San taught me I kept, the rest I forgot about.

The same rule applies to the Taekwondo and Hapkido I learned from Pong Ki Kim, the Shuai Jiao I learned from Jeng Hsing Ping and James Chin and the other things I studied over the years.

I continue to learn things and incorporate them into what I do. I have learned a lot of Muay Thai from a great fighter, fantastic coach and cool guy Jeremy “Primo” Bellrose. His friends Mark “Hyena” Beecher and the “Soul Assassin” Kevin Ross were recently in my gym doing a seminar and we learned a lot of great stuff from them. I feel blessed to have met these great people and have the opportunity to learn from them.

If you are looking for black and white, you are out of luck in life. Enjoy your shades of gray.

NOW GO TRAIN
www.NYBestKickboxing.com

Amateur MMA – no one studies the history

Today, most people think that Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) began with the Gracie family and the UFC. The UFC is a strictly professional venue, and so a lot of people also have varying opinions on amateur MMA. For most, it is an after thought. In my opinion, this is missing the larger picture.

The closest thing we have to modern MMA began in 1986 in Japan as Shooto. The former pro wrestler “Tiger Mask” (Satoru Sayama) combined his training in Muay Thai, Russian Sambo and Catch Wrestling into his Shooto system. The first matches were all amateur. Eventually, they developed a well organized amateur program with a class system. When westerners eventually found themselves going to Japan to fight professional Shooto fighters, those fighters had been molded by a well thought out amateur program.

In pretty much all sports, the majority of the competition is amateur. So having a good amateur version of a sport is essential to making it popular. But never forget that a good amateur program also develops the elite competitors. Do you think our wrestling team would do well in the Olympics if they hadn’t wrestled since they were kids in thousands of matches? In boxing, the professional have extensive amateur careers.

With Shooto as my primary inspiration, I tried to establish the first amateur league in the US in New York City in 1997. We stared with “C Class” rules, that is with headgear and no striking on the ground. Like any new sport, we were experimenting and trying to learn from the actual events. Then we got shut down when New York State went after not only MMA events but ALL martial arts events.

There were (and still are!) people who raged against the idea of an amateur MMA. They scoffed at any changes in the full MMA format (ironic, since over the years even PROFESSIONAL MMA has changed!). But I never gave up hope. My good friend, the late Paul Rosner, former president of the USKBA, finally felt the time was right to approach Nick Lembo and the New Jersey Athletic Control Board (NJSACB) about an amateur MMA.

Once again, we looked to Shooto, but with the experience my short lived 1997-1998 league had also provided us. We then made compromises to try and appeal to the commissions, many of which were not MMA friendly. Some rules we had NOTHING to do with, they came from the commissions (no kicking to the head, that is a LONG STORY!). But ultimately a set of rules was put into being, adopted by a lot of places (not just NJ). In NJ, the program has been a HUGE success.

So I ask myself……

WHY DO SOME PEOPLE STILL TRY TO RE-INVENT THE WHEEL?

Yup, today someone showed me some “new rules” for amateur MMA…

Back to 1986 again……

NOW GO TRAIN!
www.NYBestKickboxing.com