Grandmaster Chen Rong En and the Knife

Some of my students will remember this story if they were around 7 or 8 years ago. Back at that time Grandmaster Chen Rong En still had his own school and I brought my students there once a week to practice and get direct exposure to my Sifu. I thought it was important for the students to get as much time as possible with Sifu since he was always happy to help me by correcting techniques and explaining theories. In exchange for his help, I allowed any of his students that were interested to join our class without paying an extra fee. This was before I formed The National Fut Gar Kung Fu Training Centre as it exists today.

One night I was teaching a regular class at Sifu's school. There was a group of people that had asked Sifu to borrow the back room of his school to get together to play cards. Sifu was talking to me as the students trained when suddenly we heard yelling coming from the back room. We looked over and one older gentleman came running out and said someone pulled out a knife due to an argument. We all knew that there was no back door so everyone could only come through us. Sifu told me to close the door behind him...when I tried to argue, he told me not to worry and just to make sure that my students were OK. I quickly asked the younger students and female student (I believe there was only one present at that class) to go in the change room and close the door until we told them it was OK. Sifu had already gone into the back room and closed the door. I instinctively grabbed my sword and my senior students grabbed their staves. Here is the funny part....we looked over and the older gentleman that had come out of the back room was holding a mop!!! We all waited....silence. We continued to wait.....still nothing. Finally Sifu came out of the back room and said don't worry, everything is OK. We watched the guy that was holding the knife leave...without his knife. Once everything seemed OK we got the students back and finished the class.

I later asked Grandmaster Chen if he had to fight the guy. He said no. I clarified...so he just put down his knife? Yes. Finally Sifu explained to me what happened. He walked in and the guy was very angry. He had pulled his knife because he had gotten into a dispute with one of the people in the room. Apparently he was not a person that knew them very well but was brought by one of them. When he walked in the room and closed the door, he asked the guy if he realized where he was. He said "you are pulling a weapon on my friends inside my Kung Fu school. You are giving me no choice but to kill you." The guy put down his knife and apologized. Sifu told him he should leave. That was the end of the conflict and we never saw the guy again.

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.

The Most Important Weapon in Martial Arts

Martial Arts, especially Chinese Kung Fu contains many types of weapons. There can be much debate over which is the strongest weapon or the most useful weapon but it is clear that one weapon is the most important weapon to be taught in a school. That weapon is the staff or stick.

The main reasons that this is the most important weapon are:

• It is the base weapon for all weapons. This is the reason it is known as the "Father (or Grandfather) of all Weapons" in Chinese Martial Arts. This means that staff techniques are the foundation for forms with other weapons.
• If a school is going to teach weapons, staff is likely the one that is taught. It is unlikely that you would find a school that only teaches one weapon and have it be something other than staff.
• For the above reason, schools can be judged on their staff forms by other schools. Not all schools teach another weapon outside of staff so it would be impossible for those schools to compare with other schools.
• For beginning weapons practitioners, it requires the least amount of precision as they are learning to use the weapon. Although you learn to strike towards the end of the staff, you would still do damage with a proper strike that is further down the shaft. Being round, it also eliminates the need to know where the cutting edge of the weapon is such as when using sword.It is the most accessible weapon in surprise combat situations. You are more likely to find a stick on the ground than a sword.

Staff is one of four weapons that are considered foundation weapons in Kung Fu. These are the foundation weapons because all other weapons techniques can relate back to these four weapons. Although the staff is the base, there are some more specialized techniques taught in the other foundation weapons. The others are:

• Broadsword (Dao) known as the "Marshall or General of all Weapons"
• Straight Sword (Gim) known as the "Gentleman or Prince of all Weapons"
• Spear (Cheung) known as the "King of all Weapons"

To further classify the weapons into weapon types you will often see a generalization of weapon types. The members of my school use the breakdown of Long Weapon, Short Weapon and Flexible Weapon. I have seen other classifications such as medium weapon or special weapon but do not believe these are necessary.