Grandmaster Chan Tai San and the Tough Guy

I was passing on this story to one of the students tonight and remembered that it is actually a very funny story about Grandmaster Chan Tai San that should be told.

I was practicing a form in my normal spot, the park across the street from the apartment where Sifu was staying. It was convenient because he could watch me from the kitchen and if needed yell instructions at me from the window. I remember that I was practicing a broadsword form. This was back in the days when people carried around ghetto blasters on their shoulders. This guy was walking down the street and decided to stop and watch me. As usual when people stopped to watch me, I just kept on practicing and ignored the guy. He turned up his music on his ghetto blaster....I continued to ignore him. He started saying something but being the bright guy he was, didn't realize that I couldn't hear him over his music so I kept ignoring him. By that time Sifu had noticed him and come down to the park. Mr. tough guy looked at Sifu and said something like "what do you want, old man?" Sifu smiles at him and waves him closer. The guy walks up to Sifu and Sifu does a series of actions to his arm....really innocent looking stuff like pull his arm, squeeze a few spots, pat his shoulder, etc. Then Sifu walks away. The guy is confused and goes away and I return to my form....about 5-10 minutes later the guy comes back and starts yelling at me...."What did he do to my arm? He better tell me or else!!!" Trying not to laugh, I asked what was wrong. He said his arm was in a lot of pain and the old man better fix it. I yelled for Sifu to come down and told him that the guy wants his arm fixed. This is where it gets really funny....

Sifu goes through a series of interesting motions....poking the guy, touching the guy's nose, pulling his ears, rubbing his head, rubbing his shoulders...all of it with a big grin on his face. Then he walks away. The guy says tell him that it still hurts....all of that did nothing!!! I translated and Sifu says tell him it will feel better later. The guy goes away and returns about half an hour later. Still trying to be a tough guy, he explains to me that the old man was lucky because his arm feels better now.