The appeal of the strange
Published: Tue, 04/15/14
The second martial art I trained in was Feng Sau Wu Shu (Hand of
the wind Martial Art). My instructor was Graham Horwood (who, I
believe, is still teaching although he has concentrated on Yang
Style Tai Chi Chuan for the past few decades. At the time I much
enjoyed the Feng Sau training and it has been influential on my
unarmed fighting skills ever since. The chief instructor was a
Chinese gentleman by the name of Professor Chee Soo and I met him
on a few occasions. At the time the organisation teaching this
particular style was quite widespread and was pretty successful
during the 1970s. As I have written a few days ago Kung Fu was the
big thing in Martial arts at the time and this was an authentic
Chinese system, which is probably why the description Wu Shu was
used since nearly every Karate and Jujitsu teacher was referring to
their system as 'Kung Fu' regardless of what they were
actually teaching. At Chinese new year there was a social
gathering which club members from all over got together with Chee
Soo presiding. I remember the event being rather fun and it
included some demonstrations of martial arts as you might expect.
One display involved Chee Soo, who was not a young man and of quite
diminutive stature facing a row of half a dozen or more of the
senior instructors (mainly quite hefty, youngish, Caucasian men).
The instructors tried to push the senior instructor back and he
simply extended the palm of his right hand and drove them all back
into a pile on the floor with the power of his Chi. Well, it
looked impressive at the time and there was a lot of talk about Chi
and using it in our training so we were accustomed to the concept.
In 1979 I went to work in Holland for a while, got smashed up in a
road accident in early 1980 and it was a while before I was fit to
resume martial arts training. In the meantime Chee Soo's
organisation seemed to fragment for some reason and most of the
senior instructors seem to have moved onto other teachers or
started out on their own. I know Graham Horwood wanted to
concentrate more on Tai Chi rather than the Wu Shu so had also
moved on from the Feng Sau. I did meet up with him while I was
recovering from my accident and I asked him about the stunt I had
witnessed at the Chinese new year social event. Was it genuine?
Graham said that what I had seen wasn't exactly what I had
thought I had seen. (I think that is the easiest way to describe
the conversation.)
Part of the appeal of martial arts in the 1970s was the mystical,
sometimes almost magical possibilities that seemed to be on offer.
If the Japanese arts seemed to embody profound philosophy then the
Chinese arts held the promise of attaining almost superhuman
powers. Well it is surprising what can be done with good teaching,
intense training and dedicated practice. It is also possible to
get people to believe that they have seen demonstrations of the
magical when there is really quite a mundane explanation. So does
this mean that all the stuff about Chi and special powers is just
nonsense to deceive the gullible? Well, sometimes, but by no means
always. I will tell you another story tomorrow which suggests a
slightly different perspective.
regards
Graham
PS Peacock Kung Fu will soon be available on Kindle from Amazon.
I will post the link as soon as it goes live. In the meantime you
can get a paper or pdf copy from
http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/lit.html