Sifu James Wing Woo interview on Sunday, January 13, 2002, excerpted from the book "Nei Jia Quan, Internal Martial Arts", edited by Jess O’Brien.
• • •
James Wing Woo has been practicing martial arts for more than seventy years, making him one of the most senior practitioners located in North America. He was born in California, but spent his youth in Canton (Guangzhou), China. At the outset of World War II he joined the U.S. Navy, finally ending up back in California. He eventually settled in Los Angeles and has been actively teaching since the early 1960s.
Mr. Woo is a relentless scholar, and his appetite for researching the martial arts led him to the doorstep of any teacher he could find throughout his youth, meeting and practicing with many famous teachers in both southern China and San Francisco. Through exhaustive study of anatomy and kinesiology, his knowledge of human movement is highly developed. And even exceeding eighty-two years of age, he is unquestionably capable as a martial artist.
We arrived to train at Mr. Woo's in January, so it was a cool morning in Hollywood, prelude to a scorching hot day. When we walked into the gym it was like stepping into a martial arts laboratory. Everything from his Daoist altar, to the dozens upon dozens of traditional weapons, to the numerous anatomy wall charts showed that his investigations into the workings of the human body have never ceased. After a workout in the Southern style basic training and an introduction to his Yang style Tai Ji Quan, we went to Mr. Woo's office to discuss martial arts. His bookshelves are crammed to overflowing with all manner of manuals and textbooks, both in English and Chinese, from detailed anatomy texts to philosophical treatises, as well as numerous rare, old, martial arts books. Over tea we talked for a long time. He told me many stories of his years in the martial arts and shared some of his insights into the true nature of Chinese gung fu. Above all, he emphasized that this isn't really about fighting. We use this art to learn about ourselves, and that study never comes to an end.
•
Chinese Martial Culture
The Chinese people generally have two different aspects of their culture: the scholastic arts and the martial arts. What happened in the past was that the scholastic arts tended to be dominant until there was a war, then the martial arts became more popular again.
In the past, martial artists were almost always illiterate, It was very rare that you found one with good martial arts and good scholastic skills. Of course, there was some cross-over. For instance moving the sword was considered a scholastic art. The bow is also considered to be among the scholastic arts. These are all arts from the beginning of time as we know it.
The Chinese martial arts have been handed down, mostly word for word, from person to person over the years. In the past, whenever people found secrets that made them become a better fighter, they would keep them to themselves. And if they did teach, they always taught only the boys (never the girls) to keep it within the family. There were a lot of things lost over the years for that reason.
When I trained in China, the teacher didn’t usually teach you directly. It was the elder student that taught us; we called them “student brothers”. The thing is, they usually wouldn’t teach any basics. They would just put us into the horse stance, make us do a few punches, and then we’d go straight into forms practice.
The problem with that way is that if you don’t have the basics practice that you do on your own to get the fundamentals of movement, you’re going to run into trouble. If all you learn are a lot of forms, you just become a good dancer. People believe they don’t need to worry about it because when the teacher gets around to them, he’s going to give them the secrets. But the teacher just drinks his tea, looks up at you and says, “Oh yeah, you’re doing alright, go ahead”. When the teacher passes away, he always has a favorite student. And that’s how. And that’s who he usually calls in before he passes away, so everybody thinks the student got the secret. But really the teacher only said, “Hey you, take over.” That’s it. After that, since everybody thinks he’s got the secret, the new teacher has to build up an image. I have seen a lot of bad teachers, even in China, that are all like charlatans. They train a little while, then go out and open a school, but they don’t know what they’re doing. At least they’re giving you exercise, but that’s all it is.
The hero worshipping is a big part of the martial art environment in China these days. All the little Chinese kids going to the martial arts schools want to be Jet Li, Jackie Chan, or Sammo Hung and make millions. That’s their goal, but in the past, it wasn’t. In the past the arts were in the family so that nobody picked on them. The idea was not that you were learning to fight, you were learning the martial arts to keep a continuous trend going. If the father teachers, the son will follow.
In China today, you still have people doing training, Some are professionals, and some are just hobbyists. I believe that the hobbyists are better off than the professionals because they don’t do things that other people want – they get to do their own thing. The hobbyists keep on moving and feeling, and keep the traditions going. When the communists took control in China, there were no martial arts allowed. After Mao died, these other bigwigs started thinking about big dollar signs, and they figured that if they rebuilt the Shaolin Monastery and put a bunch of attractions out there, people would come visit. That would be a lot of money coming in! It’s on a mountain in Hunan, and down around the edge of the mountain there are all kinds of martial arts schools. The original Shaolin Monastery was burned down in 1666 and it was never rebuilt. It was only rebuilt after they found out about the American dollar.
I admire some of the modern Wu Shu people that come out of China today. In my training I did the splits, I did the jumps, and I did the tumbling. But training means more than that. Some people do the light body training like Jackie Chan. That’s where you rush up to the ceiling and you turn around and spin the body three times sideways. They’re almost ice skaters the way they do the spins. If looks good, but what use is it?
In China there are a lot of different styles. North of the river you have the Long Hand style, which is Chang Quan or Cha Kuen. The Mieu Kuen and all these other different styles like Buck Tong Long, chichis the Northern Mantis. Then you have the Northern Tiger, the Kun Lun Pai, and the Wo Mei Pai. Most of the Northern styles gather together with the Shaolin system.
In the past people in the north were generally taller and their arms were longer. They tended to be the bigger people. That’s not true now, though; it seems like their people are shorter. The southerners used to have shorter arms and a smaller stature. That’s in the past though– it seems like the work has changed. That goes to show that eventually, everything changes.
Sil Lum
Most of the Chinese external arts come from the Shaolin monastery, known as the source of the Sil Lum system. The Sil Lum system started in the fifth century A.D. when Bodhidharma came from India and traveled to many of the temples in China to introduce Buddhism. Some of these Buddhist temples were a haven for bandits, and martial artists that were going to get killed by the authorities. They were outlaws, so they trained to keep themselves protected. Bodhidharma picked up things here and there during his travels. Eventually he landed at the Shaolin monastery, and the legend says that he sat there gazing at the wall for nine years. Of course, that’s just a legend. While he was gazing at that wall for nine years, one day he fell asleep. He got mad at himself and cut his eyelids off! When he threw them on the ground they grew up into two trees, which became the teas of China. Now, that’s a lot of bull! Anybody who believes that will believe anything.
Anyway, he taught Zen Buddhism (the Chinese call it Chan) to the monks in the monastery, but they all kept falling asleep on him. He was going on and on and on about throwing the books away and how they’re going to do this and that, and the guys all fell asleep. And so he said, “Now, wait a minute here. You guys are too weak! Let’s go outside and I’ll teach you something”. So he taught them what we now call the Muscle Changing Classic. He also taught them the Marrow Washing Classic. These were both qi gong movement sets.
The warm-up that we do in my gym is part of the Muscle Changing Classic. The idea is that you lock the body in place and nothing moves except one part, which then moves everything else. That’s how you learn to use the body’s stretching power, which has more strength than the contracting power. The contracting power is called the inner range power; the extending power is called the outer range power. In order to explode, you’ve got to have outer range power. Grappling uses inner power, like Judo or Jujitsu, anything that’s pulling in close.
Mechanics
One of the biggest problems with people training these days is that there’s just not enough emphasis on basics, on learning to move properly. Then again, you may ask, what are basics? The basics teach you to make the best use of your body that you can. Learn how the mechanics work and feel where the force comes from. Most people choke up physically because they can’t seem to feel their own power unless they choke up and clench their muscles. But you don’t have to choke up, you just have to move. Let the bones, joints, and muscles move freely. The bones are the structure of the body, the muscles are the power, and the joints are the agility, the ability to move.
Another to do is to learn the mechanics of the three lever system of the body. Identify the fulcrum, the power, and the extension. Use the three levers along with the laws of gravity and physics. Al these people doing “amazing” demonstrations are using physics. The man that can’t be pushed over, the man that’s breaking bricks, the man that’s run over by a truck – anybody can do those things.
Posture is another factor. You’ve got to feel the spine going straight up and down. Feel the seven cervical vertebrae go back and up, feel the lumbar vertebrae come forward and down. Then lift the whole spine up, and always keep it feeling like that. Anything that you can do to help the body get that feeling is good. You don’t have to lock your muscles up to feel it.
If people want to be successful in martial arts, they have to be willing to change their habits. At first, when they train, they want to feel power. And then all they want is to be fast. As strange as it seems, in the beginning, the more power they get, the slower they are. When they let go of all that power the speed comes on its own.
By wanting to feel the power, they clench up. Don’t try to hold the arm back. Let it go! It’s important to feel the trunk muscles, feel the leg muscles. Most of all, put your arm out and feel your triceps engage. Use the lats and the triceps to move the arm. Learn to use the muscles for what they are supposed to be used for. Find out what the primer is and what the antagonizer is, then let the antagonizer do the primer’s work, and let the primer do the antagonizing.
Chinese Martial Arts in Canton
I started Tai Chi Chuan with my number-five brother’s godfather at his martial arts studio in Canton. I used to hang around quite a bit, and I learned the Tai Chi form there. I practiced there between the ages of eight and twelve. Until twelve, I didn’t know the difference between Gung Fu and Tai Chi. I learned it when some kids beat the heck out of me! I thought, “Wait a minute now, what was he using?” So I ended up going to follow his teacher, where I learned Hung Gar for a while. From there I kept on moving. I was catching stuff from different places, learning here, learning there, and putting them together.
At the time the five southern Chinese styles were popular – Hung, Lau, Choy, Lay and Mok. That was right after the coming of the Republic of China at the end of the Ching Dynasty. During the Ching Dynasty the five southern forms from Guangdong became popular in Canton. The Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1936. In 1937 they came in Shanghai, and most of the northerners from Manchuria and Shanghai fled to Canton. All the martial artists came down and there was quite a bit of martial arts going on, so you had your pick of good teachers.
The first thing you have to learn is how to watch and analyze what you’ve seen. Then you learn how to learn. Learning takes a lot of changing, don’t hold onto any one thing and think that it’s the only way.
Territorial Rights
In Canton, when I was training as a boy, there were a lot of fights between schools. The way it was back then, if I had a gym right here, there couldn’t be any other within the next five blocks. If there was one nearby, we’d check them out. We’d say, “OK, how good are you?” And then the fight was on. I saw lots of these fights when I was a kid, and these guys didn’t fight too well. Even if they trained well in the school, out there on the street they, would fight differently – a lot of wild swings and brawling. They didn’t use the techniques that they learned. They did learn to use weapons against each other though, and a lot of blood was shed.
If there was a small club without too may students, and the big club of fifty guys came at them, they’d end up saying, “Ok, OK, we’ll move”, and that’s what they did. Territorial rights were a big deal. In fact, the Territory issue was the same with the Tongs of the Chinese-Americans. All the big families had family associations. The Wongs were a big family, the Woos, the Chans, and so on. When they’d go into business they’d help each other out. If a smaller family was right next door, you’d kick 'em out. So all the small ones got together and grouped into the big Tongs so that they could get protection. That’s how the Tongs came into being in San Francisco.
The structure of the Tongs is like the structure of a government. You have the president, you have the vice-president, you have the treasurer, you have the board of members, as well as a leader for the single bachelors. Every three or four years they had an election. Before the thirties, forties and fifties, the Tongs were pretty prominent. Now there’s no use for them; there are just too many people around. They’ve ended up becoming gangs.
Everybody thinks these guys in the Tong train, but most of them don’t practice martial arts. You see, I’ve gone to train at the Tong before. At that time the Tong had two teachers. One of them was Lau, and the other one was Wong – they were both famous. And they were both opium addicts. Each one opened up a school that the Tong provided, and if you were a member you could learn from them. They were skilled because they’d trained when they were younger, but they were over here in America for thirty to forty years already and they didn’t keep it up. That’s why I say – always be a student, you catch more of what’s going on.
The Inside of the Body
The external form of Gung Fu is about using the external muscles of the body. The internal form is about using the inside muscles of the body. People wonder how to feel the inside of the body. How do you feel the inside of your rib cage? To begin with, you have to feel the outside before you can feel the inside. Between the ribs, on the outside, there are muscles called the intercostal muscles. Those are the ones that hang down from the top rib to the bottom rib. Now, the muscles layered on the inside stretch upward, from the bottom going up. Feel those muscles go up. Now what do they feel like? Are you feeling the inside of the outside?
Meditation helps, because you can use the mind to help you feel inside. Looking at pictures in books also helps. Get a good anatomy book and look at what each muscle does, and how best to move it. People in the past didn’t have anatomy books, so they used words to remember the secrets. Phrases like “Contain the chest, draw up the back.” - everybody in Gung Fu does that. “Contain the chest” doesn’t mean to suck the chest in, though. It just means to hold it where it’s at. Then draw the back up without inflating the front. Now, feel the shoulders widen; feel the elbow torque.
The head should always be up, not coming forward. One way you can get your head up is to remember this: move as if you have four eyes. Two eyes in the front of your head, and two eyes in the back, looking the other way. Now, what happens to the head when you do that? It should help it to lift up straight. Every little thing helps. Little things eventually make big things. After all, there are only so many bones and so many muscles. Concentrate on the ones you want to control.
What you get out of martial arts all depends on what you’re looking for. People are looking for a lot of different things. There’s all kinds of trickery going on, too – people hitting five pieces of ice with their head and so on. Now what does that prove?
Jeet Kune Do
As far as Bruce Lee goes, I give him credit for bringing Chinese martial arts to the world at large. But he was a horrible martial artist! All of that Jeet Kune Do, I call it B.S. Do! I told that to him and he didn't like it, so I said, "If you don't like it, what will you do?"
I first met him when he was doing Kato in the Green Hornet series. I was called by Black Belt magazine to write an article about Tai Ji. I was up in their office when in came Bruce Lee. I was sitting down, and he was standing up over by the door. You know, he was only five foot five inches tall, and I looked at his shoes and they had inches of extra sole on them. The first thing he asked me was, "Do you box?" I said, "I boxed a little in the Navy." He dropped that subject really quick.
Then he said that he was going to show me Jeet Kune Do. I told him, "B.S. Do! You should stick to Wing Chun, you'd be a lot better off!" At that time he hadn't yet had the big fight with Wong Jack Man. He asked me, "Well, what do you think, are you going to demonstrate for me?" I said, "Now, wait a minute, if I get up out of this chair, only one of us is going to leave through that door, and I don't care if it's you or me. So let's not get into it." So he romped out of there.
There has always been a lot of talk about Bruce Lee's fight with Wong Jack Man. Five different people were there, and I heard five different stories. So what can I say? The story most likely is that Bruce Lee was waiting there at the school in Oakland, and Calvin Chin drove Wong in the car from San Francisco. It was after class and all the students were sent home already. So these five people walked in and they all sat down. Calvin Chin was the instigator. He said, "Come on, Wong, let me introduce you to Bruce Lee." Bruce Lee was standing there and Wong was stupid enough to put his hand out. As soon as he put his hand out, Pow! Bruce nailed him and put him right back against the wall. From there on I don't know how it happened. They fought for fifteen minutes, but neither one got hurt. They were making so much noise that some of the neighbors called the cops. Then they stopped it. When I talked to Wong's student, he said that he won. When I talked to Bruce Lee's friend, he said that he won.
One thing I'll say about Bruce Lee, though - after that day he found out that he wasn't so great, so he started training like a madman. He used to have a studio at the end of Chinatown here in L.A., over by the Meredith Theater. He used to use all these guys as training dummies: Chuck Norris, Bill Wallace, Mike Stone, Danny Inosanto, and this guy Wong, who's teaching now. He'd turn the record player on and used dancing to put rhythm in the kicks. They also did the Chi Sao, which he did pretty well.
Bruce Lee went back to China on a contract for fifteen thousand dollars to do a part in a Shaw Brothers movie. When he got to Hong Kong, he said, "I don't care about the money, but I want a starring role, not just a part. I want to be the star! Not only that, I'd like to write my own story. And maybe I'll direct it, too." But he couldn't have it all so they let him go. He was on his way back when he met Raymond Chow. And Raymond Chow said, "Fine, let's do one since you're here. I'll give you the same fifteen thousand dollars, and we'll go to Thailand and do The Big Boss." The Big Boss broke all the records in Hong Kong. Then the second movie broke the records. Then the third one broke the records and he started to get some clout. Luo Chit was the director of the first one; he was a gangster in Hong Kong.
Sometimes people wonder why he died, but it's not too hard to figure out. How many ways can you burn a candle? Top, bottom, and the middle. The guy had two girlfriends on the side, he was writing and planning for all these movies - you know, that's a lot to do for one person. He ended up dying at one of his girlfriend's places. People say, "Somebody hit him with Dim Mak [death touch]." No way, forget it. He'd always had those headaches.
Judo
“Judo” Gene LeBell is a good friend of mine. He’s a rough one. There’s a story about how he and Milo Savage had a fight in Utah. In the early sixties, some magazines had an article called “Judo Bum.” It talked about how all the Oriental martial arts are nothing, about how the practitioners are a bunch of bums and son on – it tore them down. So Gene wrote a letter to the publisher asking if he could talk to the writer. They got him and the writer talking together and he told the writer, "Tell you what, you get whoever you want to fight me, and I’ll represent Judo. We’ll meet at Utah, we both put ten thousand dollars up, and winner takes all.” In 1960 ten thousand dollars was a lot of money! Then again, you have to remember that Gene LeBell is an Eaton, and they’re a very rich family. Before Gene went, he and the other guy got a hold of a middle-weight boxer, about a hundred and seventy-five pounds. At that time Gene LeBell was about a hundred and eighty pounds, short and strong.
Gene took the ten grand to Utah, and he won. When he came back, he told me, “It’s a good thing that guy didn’t follow up on that first jab.” The boxer was allowed to use those bag gloves with the metal strip in them, the gloves that you use to hit the heavy bag. And "Judo" only wore a gi and gi pants, no gloves, so he could grab. The guy went in there and Wham! Hit him once, nailed him back. Man, he felt that punch. LeBell said “If he had followed through, I would’ve been down.” So he got his breath back and took a little while to run around. Then Gene took him down and choked him out and that was that.
The funny part about it was that after he came back, two weeks later somebody called me and said, “Hey, Jim, are you fighting Gene LeBell?” I said, “What are you talking about?” Then I thought for a second and I called Gene up. I said, “Hey, LeBell, want to fix this one up?” He just laughed. It’s funny how things go along. I see him once in a while at auditions, you know. He works as a stunt man quite a lot.
Lethal Weapon 4
I met Ji Li on the set of Lethal Weapon 4, and he told me he had made twenty-two movies. He’s not bad, he’s a nice fellow, but he doesn’t talk too much. He has his own crew and choreographer, as well as one student and his body double. The student does stand-in, and his double does his stunts. But he still does a lot of the stunts himself. He’s getting a little chubby, though. I remember when he first came in 1972. At thirteen years old he was the head of the Wu She troop.
One thing about Jet Li is that he’s studied everything. You name it and he’s learned it. He maintains a school in his hometown in Hong Kong. He hires people to teach there in his name. He can afford it, you know, so he doesn’t charge people. He just lets them come and train. That’s why all the kids want to be Jet Li. Now, one thing about Lethal Weapon 4, that scene where he disarms the man and takes the gun apart with one hand – it just can’t be done. I don’t care who it is, but he looks nice doing it.
In the movie I was the only one that stayed alive; they never showed me getting killed. They planned to kill me, though. In fact, we did a scene where Danny Glover grabs a hold of me, grabs off my glasses and breaks them apart, picks me up by the crotch and throws me in the garbage can. But he couldn’t do it. So they used a double because the double agreed to jump. They didn’t like the looks of it, I guess, because they didn’t end up using it. It took almost half a day shoot that scene.
Real Power
People talk about how much bigger and tougher fighters are today than before. Actually, there isn’t any difference; there were people like that even n the old days. In the martial arts, there’s more than meets the eye. People think it’s all about how big you are. So what! An elephant is big, but some guy can move it around with a little hook. The real power is when you learn to give. Yield, give, then if you have to, take over. Some of these big strong guys look like they could punch straight through you. But big arms aren’t everything. Look at a big guys leg, then look at his ankle. The ankle is tiny compared to the rest! You kick him in the ankle, then what happens?
They used to say that any man who graduates from the Shaolin Temple has to carry a red-hot thousand pound urn! What? That’s a lot of bull. I mean, it is a good legend but in the first place, if that urn were hot, how would you grab hold of it? In the second place, if it burned into the arm, there would be scar tissue, They’d be no symbols, just scar tissue. But it’s a nice story, like the one about the 108 wooden dummies you had to fight to get out of the temple. These kinds of legends make up a lot of the stories in the martial arts.
A lot of books talk about Taoist power. It’s all in the imagination. Same goes for all the books on Dim Mak. When I was in China, realized that that stuff was a lot of baloney. I always asked people, “Who can do it on me? I’ll volunteer. Try it on me!” The old saying goes that if you can do it on someone, you can also make them come back to life and reverse the damage. But nobody could do it in the first place. I couldn’t find anybody who would admit to it.
On the other hand, I have seen some things that can’t be done. One guy put a mirror in front of him, then a candle right here behind it. He could shoot out a punch and put the candle out. Now, I don’t want to explain that. The man has such a velocity that his punch goes right through the plane of glass? Like I said, it can’t be done! But I saw it once.
You have to remember one thing, everybody works on their legend. Like my legend around here, one time I went over to the Paramount Theater to do a job. Some guy came up to me kind of sneaky-like and asked, "You, are you James Wing Woo?" I said, "Yeah." "Are you the guy who killed two hundred people?" I asked, "What are you saying!?" I have a lot of students that are actors and extras, and they always like to boast. You never know what they'll come up with next.
The Three Bigwigs of Canton
In the old days in Canton, Ku Yee Cheong, was the one that everybody talked about. He was a slim one-hundred-and-forty-pounder who could hit a stack of bricks and crack any one that you wanted cracked, or all of them. He and “Eagle Talon” Chan and a Tai Chi teacher by the name of Jang were known as the Three Bigwigs of Canton during the twenties and thirties. Ku was the head of the Jing Wu Association in Canton. Chan was the head of the Eagle Talon school. One time I saw Chan do something pretty unusual. He had a guy stand there, almost in a horse stance, and he did the splits right between his legs, and stood up in back of the guy. Can you imagine how much leg strength he had? I was amazed by the velocity of the movement and how much power he put into it. But he shook it off like nothing.
I learned some of Chan’s Eagle Talon system, and I also learned some of Ku’s martial arts. He taught Chan Kuen and Tam Tui. In the Jing Wu there are ten big forms that they teach. You’d go in there and have form classes but no real basics. You’d just go to class and follow each other. I was a kid, you know, and I would sometimes wonder, “Why isn’t the teacher teaching us?” But that’s how it was done in those days.
Tai Chi Chauan
My fifth brother’s godfather and his friend Choy who lived up the block both learned Yang style Tai Chi from Chen Wei Ming. They started teaching it all over Canton. I started at eight years old, and I think at nine years old we did a demonstration in some park – my brother and I were both there. I never learned the Chen form, but I studied the Wu form and the Sun form. I didn’t like either of them so I stuck with the Yang style. I just play one position, that’s it, the Yang form. It’s the same form that I practice today.
People always argue about internal or external martial arts, but it doesn’t matter. They used to ask me, “How would a Gung Fu man deal with Karate man, or how would a Karate man deal with a JuJitsu man?” It’s the man, not the style! It’s how much intelligence he has and how well he’s trained. And it also depends on what degree he’s been trained, because nobody is on the exact same level. There’s always a little something that changes the balance between two good fighters. If you’re in that position, you have to learn the Chinese art of war from the book by Sun Tzu. Make us of it; it’s the Chinese version of How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Tai Chi training is not that much different from other styles, except that it’s more about internal awareness and using the whole body correctly. The thing is this: it’s always the legs that are doing the job. The legs or one leg is doing the job. One side of the body is doing the work. But it should be the same in Gung Fu. Except that the legs in Gung Fu use the external muscles and that’s why people tend to choke up. Don’t choke up, use expansion, extension, and explosion. Those are the three E’s to remember.
If you talk about fighting with Tai Chi it’s always the circular motion that controls the straight movement, whereas the straight movement stops the circular movement. It’s a catch 22, depending on where you are. The you say “circle,” it could mean circle the wrist, circle the arm, or circle the body. When you say “straight,” it could be anything that’s straight.
A better way to say it is that internal movements are invisible. External motions you can see. Internal martial arts training aims to really stretch out the body on the inside. Keep the shoulders in place and just let everything move. Don’t force it. Always use the legs to activate the movement. Pull and push on the inside. In the external styles, usually there is the same goal, only it’s more of a muscular feeling. You lock the shoulders out, you feel your arms pump up, feel your body stretch out, and feel the lats tighten up. You also feel your abdominal muscles tighten up. Then you let go of the outside tension, keep the stretch inside, and notice that if feel like. There's a definite feeling. Both internal and external aspect have to be used.
This is why one of the laws of Tai Chi is to let the internal and external come together. That way you can use them as one. The three planes of the body – the left and right, the front and back, the top and bottom – all have to be used together. It’s a hard thing to do because people have a lot of bad habits.
One time I trained with Yang Cheng Fu. It was in 1936, the same year that he died. He was teaching in the Canton City Hall. I went with Choy, who lived on the same block my family did and had studied with Yang. He invited me so I went, but I wasn’t impressed. It was partly because Yang was so fat and partly because everybody just did what he wanted them to. If he touched them, they would just fall back. Of course I was only a little tot then; I was just fourteen years old. They were also practicing joined hands, but I just followed the form with them. And I didn’t like the way they did the form either, so that was that. It’s like I say, we all have likes and dislikes and everyone is different.
I’ve noticed that in Tai Chi a lot of people move their bodies too much. They’re using the body to move the legs instead of letting the legs move the body. Since I was young, I’ve trained the legs to move the body. Take a look at a car. What moves first? The wheels do because they’re on the ground. It’s only common sense. I usually use this example: if you have a cart that weighs five hundred pounds, how does the horse get that five hundred pounds moving? He pushes against the ground, then he lifts up and goes. It’s basic physics.
Taoist Martial Arts
There are three Taoist forms of martial arts: Tai Chi, Xing Yi, and Ba Gua. I trained in Xing Yi and Ba Gua but I didn’t like them. I liked Tai Chi better. Xing Yi is a little harder, more like straight Gung Fu, but it involves Taoist practices. Everything Ba Gua has, Tai Chi has too. So why practice Ba Gua?
One of the teachers that my brother’s godfather hired was from Shangtung, and he taught us Xing Yi, Ba Gua, and Tai Chi. His name was Chang. His family used to be road guards – bodyguards who accompanied shipments from one city to the next. In China, martial artists would hire out on guard duty from one state to another. His family had been doing it for three generations, so he was a born fighter. He sometimes trained with a pair of marble spheres. He would throw one up and catch it with his neck, shoulder, or foot. But his main practice was either stretching or forms, no basic training.
Lien Wan
I got the hell beat out of me one time. So I made friends with the guy and asked him, “What do you train in?” He said, “I train with a teacher who’s only got two students.” I asked, “Can I go?” And he said, “I don’t know, you have to talk to him.” The teacher was a businessman by the name of Lu who told me that he had enough students already. So I had to bribe him – take him to the movies, or out to have tea cakes. After a year he said, “OK I’ll start training you.”
Instead of putting wax on the floor like I do today, he poured cooking oil on the red tile floor. When you put your foot down on it, the shoe stuck to the oil and couldn’t pick that foot up. If you wanted to jump, you’d have to take all the weight of the body and lift it up just so you could move. But he could do it like he was walking normally.
He taught us a Northern system called Lien Wan. It means “repeating”. It’s not a system that anybody knew much about. He studied it back in the mountains when he was a young kid. If you propped up a pole on the floor, he could sweep his leg into it and break it. But his legs were all black and I didn’t want to end up like that. He would have us run through the horse stance moving drills, the box step [a square-shaped stepping pattern], and the "H" pattern [an H shaped stepping pattern]. I teach those patterns today to my Gung Fu students.
Another person who taught that was Wong Kit Man in San Francisco. They used to do it on a cement floor. They did the H pattern and the box pattern. Some people do it, some don’t. But those who do have a little more strength in their legs.
Without power of the legs there’s no punch. I don’t care how much weight you can carry. The force has got to be coming up and going out. The mental focus is to try and learn to use the force of the bottom of the foot. Feel two pegs in the bottoms of the feet and connected to the floor. Pull and push on those pegs. Remember that you have to move them – you can’t just stand still.
Not too many people emphasize the horse stance that I use. Everybody sticks their butt out. You can see it in all the books, they go down low but they stick their butt out. I want the front half of the body pushing into the back. Use the dorsal flexion of the ankle with the toe and shin bone. And try to get the weight off the knees. That’s the biggest problem with people. The knee is an instrument that’s only got two meniscuses and two crucia, and they can break pretty easily. Learn to use the whole leg, not just part of the leg.
Using the Chi
Chi is energy. Usually you discuss Chi in terms of the prenatal Chi and the postnatal Chi. Prenatal Chi is created when you are conceived – when you are a kid and the life first comes into you. Then there is the postnatal Chi, which forms all the body: the trunk, the essentials, the organs, and so on. Prenatal Chi splits into two points, the heavenly Chi and the earthly Chi. Heavenly Chi is the breath you take in and out. The Earthly Chi is all the food and water that gives you the strength in your body and organs.
Prenatal Chi is always in the body. You're born with it. In martial arts, you pump the prenatal Chi, keep it expanded, extended and ready to explode. Then you use the joints to do the movements. You use the legs, through the body, to put the movements out. This is how you work with the Chi.
As far as breathing is concerned, always breathe up and down the spine. Breathe in the nostrils, go down the spine, and exhale up the front. Feel the body expand on the exhale. Forget the inhale. It’s like squeezing a ball with a hole in it. When you squeeze it the air goes out, but when you release it the air goes in by itself. That way you never have to gasp for air. Just let it come in naturally.
You pump the prenatal Chi by letting everything stretch out. Stretch out, extend your arm, then expand your arm. Let it expand and extend, don’t freeze the ball joint. Feel the expansion, feel the tendons, feel the muscles. Give it time and it’ll come, but don’t contract all the time. When you contract, you become slow. When you extend, if just happens. Don’t try to affect the prenatal Chi, just let it move, let it change. The changes make the difference. Moving it left and right, up and down, keep it changing with the mind. Give it enough time, then you can do it. Chi is only a little part of it, you know. The body has to do it. The mind can’t do it! The mind can only help and plan it. The body has to do what you want it to do, with muscle, bone, tendon and nerves.
Sparring and Fighting
When it comes to sparring, my advice is don’t do it. You build up too much respect for the other person and you don’t really want to hurt them. Remember this: I want you to punch him all the way through up to your elbow. I don’t want you to just hit him with a fist! And someone’s going to get hurt.
Chinese martial arts aren’t the same as western boxing. The boxer goes for three-minute rounds, and then he rests. Boxers go for twelve rounds these days, not fifteen. But when you’re in a fight you don’t get a rest. You don’t get any three-minute rounds. If you can’t do it for real, you better go ahead and get out of there. Also, a boxer doesn’t worry about anything from the belt down.
And as far as kickboxing, forget it. They’re full of bull. If they’re so strong and powerful, how come nobody ends up in the hospital? These kickboxers, they kick all right, but they don’t know how to throw punches. And when you kick the leg out like that, you open up your treasure. Who’s going to keep the treasure protected for you?
Suppose you train at a martial arts school and you work at a job to feed your family. One day you go to the school they say, “It’s time for the tournament and you are going to represent us”. If you get hurt, who’s going to take care of your family? Who’s going to pay for that? And it can happen any time. Nobody is so good that that can’t get hurt. If you’re there expecting not to be hit, forget it, don’t fight.
Now my student Leo Whang loved to go out salsa dancing. He went out with a girl one night and took her back to East L.A. where she lived. The girl handed him the key to open the door. But her boyfriend was in the house. When Leo opened the door, the guy put a two-by-four over his head! Leo just blocked it with the right arm and shot out an overhead punch. Whack! And the guy went down that way. It just happened on its own because he knew how to put out the punch.
You don’t want to set your hands up and fight, or watch each other and dance around for ten minutes. They don’t happen that way. Not real fights, anyway. So why should you do it? It doesn’t make any sense!
This is not to say that you can’t do techniques back and fourth. I do have students doing things like Chi Sau, or arm blocking drills like the Three Stars drill. The purpose is to get extension in the arm to get it pumped and learn how to roll the arm when you touch. Touch and roll. When you roll the bones, it takes the shock out of the impact. The blow doesn’t hit as hard. If the arms clash, you’re not rolling. The arms need to deflect off each other, to get the extension and roll. So when you touch somebody, you should be able to deflect them away. The two-man drills still aren’t fighting – they’re training the arms, training the legs, training the body.
Professional Students
Be a professional student always. Master’s degrees are not for us. Every person should be a professional student. It doesn’t matter how long they have practiced. Learning is all right. Learn everything you want, you can always discard it. But don’t think it’s all true! Only believe half of what people say. Writers these days have their heads in the clouds, imagining they know everything. I don’t know how many times I’ve re-written my book – over and over again for the last thirty years. It changes and I’m never quite satisfied.