chinatown blog.

recently I have been posting quite a bit on the chinatown blog. see below.

http://www.bostonchinatowngateway.com/

The Traditional Process

I have recently realized yet another genius aspect of the traditional process of teaching. Everyone pretty much knows that its good to warm up before practicing and part of that can be meditation. Usually the reasons given are for the benefit of the practitioner.
For instance its good to get yourself focused and your chi flowing through meditation. You need to stretch out and warm up to prevent from pulling something. You need to do horse stance and basics before you can learn moving. You need to all move in this drill that is simple before learning forms. You need to learn forms before learning to fight with these techniques. etc.

The childish argument against this is, "What a load of crap I just want to learn how to fight, lets start out with sparring." "Teach me the sword or that cool looking weapon whose name I can't pronounce now."

A more adult argument against it is that you should warm up while doing movements that more directly prepare you for fighting than "dancy" moves, or just sitting around with your eyes closed.

While I have rebuttals for the individual training argument, I often will warm up my own way when I practice myself to "cut to the chase" or when teaching a kids class because forcing them to meditate doesn't really help me.

However, I recently see how these warms ups, are far more beneficial when training an army, or village. This came when I had a thirty something group of semi- rowdy children at the school who were all beginners. When I started following a modified version of our warm ups suddenly everyone could follow along much easier and the group was easier to teach. Even though they weren't really meditating, or really working out that hard. Here's a list of the steps for the individual perspective and then from the perspective of the teacher.

Step one: Meditation
Individual: First you must focus your thoughts and prepare for the practice you are about to do mentally and physically, warming up your organs and blood flow.

Teacher: A group first needs to learn to sit down and shut up before you can teach them anything else. Other wise they will talk, fight, knock things over, hurt themselves etc. The longer you can make people sit down and shut up the more disciplines they are. Especally if they have to hold a painful position.


Step two: stretching and calisthenics.

Individual: classic warm up.

teacher: Now make them do a bunch of stuff that everyone knows how to do already and is somewhat difficult. These excercises also makes them stronger and flexible without really teaching them anything, Its hard to teach weak stiff people how to fight. Its easier to teach strong flexible people how to fight. Make life easy for yourself.

Standing Basics:

Teacher:
Now make them strong and train them standing so they don't bump into each other and can pick up the movements fairly easily. If the can't even move together standing still, they won't be able to move together running and walking. The group needs to learn to move as a unit in order to fight another group as a unit. Moreover, if you keep it simple they will be able to train like this by themselves without supervision within no time.

Walking basics:
This is essentially the equivalent of marching, except they train the body to fight ambidextrously at the same time. They also learn to move forward and backward as a unit.

Group forms: Now they can do complicated moves together. This should not be difficult if they really passed the basic levels.

Sparring and sparring drills: The proper high level drills are difficult to teach and will easily end in full on fighting and arguments among students if they are undisciplined. Furthermore, if they can perform drills well but are weak and of low endurance they still won't be that effective in a real fight. They must be broken down and built up through the previous training before they can appreciate the drills. Not only this, if they never fight, they will also not really understand the drills that well, or sparring that well either and will take it as a game with points and rules, instead of as a field test where both participants collect information to help with their training and understanding. Since this is the case, Just make rules regarding about students behavior. I.e. Students are brothers that are not allowed to speak loudly with each other let alone, argue, fight or kill one another. This way they can train and hit each other without the intention of killing each other. Furthermore, More experienced fighters can fight in a controlled manner with beginner students training them, in a way just as the predatory animals do with their young (wolves, etc.) At the same time they can benefit from a young beginner coming at them wildly without fear and understand that even if they are unable to make a good strike that a more experience fighter might be able to in a given situation. Besides, in the wild, Tigers rarely fight Tigers, Tigers attack prey.

Fighting: if this was a village or civilian type army, before during and after this training they would already be fighting in the way they knew how from instict and experience. The excercises they train will simply make them more effective.

Running a Kung Fu School.

Running a traditional Kung Fu school of a Traditional and Unique art is like carrying around a Jade Treasure the size of a Boulder. You hold something valuable
but it weighs you down. And then if you happen to drop it, well cracked Jade only does bad for you.
Okay so the analogy doesn't necessarily work but this problem/goal/dream has been on my mind perhaps for ten years. At the old school, the overhead was way too high, but we kept the school a float in the hope that we would one day have more people, and also we needed a place for our stuidents to practice, to get better, to learn as much as possible to possibly pass on the art. (That is as much of it as possible)

We closed down/moved to a new location with a much lower overhead. However, we are still not breaking even but in fact paying into the school since, we are now a school of instructors and no students to be trained. Even the children I train that are related by blood to my Sifu, do not have what it takes (so far) to pass on the art. Yes they are children, but they are actually getting worse and not better at the Kung Fu aspect. though they are getting bigger and stronger.

I tecah many people through workshops and outside classes. These workshops benefit them /the student but they learn for themselves and not for the school so they are not really part of the family. Moreover, These classes do not pay and even oif the did, would not be able to cover overhead.

I was thinking, none of the fantasy kung fu novel masters have schools. They always save lives moving from town to town. Then I thought again. No, they do have schools, on their mountain or whatever, and (especially in Siu Ngo Gong Wu) they all go crazy or die terrible deaths due to the difficulties of runing a school. Students betray them, other schools try to start wars with them.
But at least they have students.

If all we were teaching was some regular Kung Fu that I see everyone else teaching, I would not even be interested in teaching I think.
It is beacsue I don't want this art, this real art, that I never have seen anywahere else, to die out. If I had the money I would pay people to learn if they had the right heart. But I don't, and I need to make money for the school and it would be nice to make some for myself as well.

Other people do it, whether it is Yoga, or Personal Training or whatever.

Our Mission Outside of Moh Goon

We have worked with many organizations in order to reach out and Promote Chinese Culture, Art, and Health Awareness
through classes, workshops, and performances
Organizations we have worked with are
Kwong Kow Chinese School, Wang YMCA of Chinatown, Chinatown After School Program, a part of Phillips Brooks house, a student run nonprofit at Harvard University, Groton School,

We also have performed in Chinatown yearly in partnership with the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association and Chinatown Main Street.

Other performances include Northeastern University, Boston University, Stonehill College, Groton School, Various Restaraunt Openings, Personal Parties, Weddings, Elementary Schools, Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Association's Oak Street Fair.

Tall Man Three Tests Woo Ching

Tall Man Three, as they called him, was a commander during the Communict revolution in China. He was famous for being a fearless leader, successfully the troops into Guangdong. This gained him respect among the soldiers following him. He was also famous for having an uncontrollable temper and not caring much for rank, manners, or rules, which meant that after the Communist Party took over, he was never promoted further and many of the soldiers once under him eventually held influential posts, while he simply grew old and lived in the village. He would get into fights and arguments often and was brought before the authorities oftenn screaming at them and refusing to listen.
Luckily those promoted soldiers, now in influential positions, still respected him and he got away with warnings most of the time.


He studied some Kung Fu as well, for fighting only, and knew something of the White cRane system as it was taught in Mee Nam Village. Their white crane is different than ours, in that it is harder, and when they throw a stamping punch they only thinking of knocking the person out or breaking their head, If they are unable to break that person's head or knock them out then they will break their own hand trying. This is how they practice and this is how they fight.

Our Sifu grew in fame and became respected as one of the best around, if not in fact the best. But Tall Man Three wanted to know just how good this Master was, as a lot of people who were master's were just okay and not even as good a fighter as himself.

He had the oppurtunity to meet Our Sifu, Woo Ching, and spoke to him continuing to ask him questions about Kung Fu finally saying, "When I throw Chuen pow cup, I throw so fast and hard that nobody can get near me."

Woo Sifu, hearing this, calmly responded, "You can throw cup punches all you want. I will push them aside with touching hands and then hit your solar plexus with the golden bright finger." (a fist with the middle finger bent and protruding out as is done with a noogie on the playground. Sometimes referred to as a Phoenix Eye's fist.)
"If you don't believe me," said our Sifu," Then Come and try it."

Tall Man Three said "Ready!" and then started with a meteor shower of downward striking punches aimed to bust open Woo Ching's face. These continuous punches like a windmill of Gorilla arms Swining down are what we call cups.
Just as he said he would, our Sifu brushed them all aside timing Tall Man Three, then changing that brushing hand into a powerful pulling force suddenly pulling the Taller Tall Man three off balance and at the same time striking out with the Golden Finger hitting him, though holding back, in the ribs.

Tall Man Three was forced back by the hit. Touching his rib he said, "You hit me in the rib, not the solar plexus."

Woo Ching smiled. This was indeed true as he had pulled too hard with the initial brushing hand that pulled the targets chest around causing Our Sifu to hit him in the ribs instead.
"Okay." said Woo Ching, try it again.
Tall Man Three paused for a second watching carefully more determined to land a blow on this man and knock him out with his cups. How did he manage to brush them aside as if they were nothing was his inner thought.
He screamed out and charged at Woo Ching stronger than before. Woo Ching again stepping back deflecting the attacks by seemingly brushing the might blows aside.
This time he pulled with the brushing hand more slightly so as not to move the target but let some of the power in the golden finger strike go right into Tall Man Three's Solar plexus, not holding it all back like the first time.

"Ughhhnnghh got it! you got it! right There!" Groaned Tall Man Three in satisfactionas he collapsed to the ground. The man was indeed fearless.
He later gave Woo Ching the thunmbs up saying he was indeed a real Master and that he deserved the reputation he had.

August Moon 2009

This past Sunday we performed for the August Moon Festival on August 16th. Roughly based on the Mid Autumn festival which usually falls around September or October on the western Calendar. My first performance for the School had been on stilts when I was fourteen years old for that years August Moon.
This year we did not do stilts. It was too much of a hassle.
Considering where we were at as a school we did I good job. They wanted us to stretch out our performance for about an hour since we were last and they had time to kill. I ended up bringing the audience participation into our segment as if I was more, teaching kids of my own instead of performing for strangers. We taught a little bit of Kung Fu and allowed children to try the child's head at the end. This was something that before, we would probably not do. But today, it was okay.

One of Sifu's students from the village met me in back of the stage (which was outdoors) and began talking about the proper way to perform the Tiger Fork. Sifu had shown me some things before but not everything. In the village, the Fork Represented a Master and so there were many rules and rituals associated with it. But Sifu knew that for Boston, I was good enough.
If they challenged us, we could fight them. If they only did so verbally, the truth is that they were only blowing air out of their mouth anyway because they didn't know what they were talking about.

Nonetheless if someone who actually knew something had comments for improvement of how I was doing things, Of course I would choose improvement over irgnorance.

He explained that I did some of the technques but I had to also do the other ones. (Some of which Sifu said, were not as important because they were for look and performance and not for real Fighting. Sifu had told me PA but lay sun, the Flying Paddle (Tiger Fork) should not leave your body. You keep it close so that you have power, This Represents you fighting a Tiger. You don't jab out long to attack, but if the Tiger comes near you then you kill it using the force of you whole body behind the Fork. Otherwise the tiger will be able to get past a weaker extended fork.)

Now Sifu's student, an old man fairly newly arrived from China, began going over some of the customs of the performance with me backstage.

"Do you understand me when I talk to you?" He says in Taishanese.

"Doong" Although honestly, not clearly.

"The Pah, you first Lift it rising up right?, but when come back down around your hands have to switch to this grip," he said showing downward facing fist. "Also you start off the Pah has to face down. " I nodded as I had been doing that, " then you have to attack like this and this." he showed and I watched carefully trying to remember and see if I missed anything. "Then there are some performance moves too you haven't been shown, crossing the shoulders, You have to be shown that, And you throw up the pah and catch it, ending the form, it has to be facing down again." I had been facing it up at the end not realizing this was a rule. "it has to be facing down," he said when I aske d again, "Not facing up to the heavens."

This Uncle here was from another village and recalled one of the performances.

"We went to another village and performed, but the old men wouldn't let us leave. This was the 60's and those guys had their beards down to their waists. They were judging us by old standards from the Qing Dynasty. The said we could leave because we hadn't given them a real performance yet. They were probably 90 years old and had Manuchrian tail styled hair, you know the old hair style from the Qing. Sifu
saw this and sent someone to get Shh MM Hung Monkey King" (nicknamed after the mythical god) from his village. This was a short guy under five feet who looked like a monkey, hence the monkey king nickname. He focused on acrobatic and monkey like kung fu.
"He came and Sifu told him and me what to do. He stood on the Tiger Fork and one, two three! I liftefd him up in the air . Standing on the fork he performed Monkey King Moves while I held him, keeping on turning the fei pah at the bottom, Turning, turning,, keep on turning.
Then Finally he jumped off with a flip and the old men watched and nodding gave us the the thumbs up, "Good Stuff."
Only then would they allow us to leave." he laughed.

Fu Hok Song Ying