Can I be linear?

I wondered if I could put this blog into a logical sequence. It might make more sense that way as opposed to a string of out of time sequence anecdotes.

I moved to the big city. I was not a physical person. Just your regular corporate worker kind of guy. I had never lived in a big city before. I approached the experience with caution and trepidation. It was almost like I expected.

For some reason, I seemed to have trouble follow me. I felt I minded my own business in my travels around town. Maybe my experiences are familiar to any person in a large city. I had a few instances of conflict with total strangers on public transport or on the street. It was like I was a magnet drawing these troublesome people to me.

Maybe I asked for it. I was wide eyed with wonder at the sights of the big city. If I saw prostitues or homeless people or troublesome looking gang people, I looked at them. I had never seen that before. I was curious and wanted to figure them out. Looking back now, I know that those kinds of people feel threatened by attention. My interest might have caused them to react to me.

I was on public transit one day. A guy sat next to me and began to give me trouble. I ignored it for a little bit. When it became apparent he was not going to stop, I got up and moved away.

The man was drunk. He was openly obnoxiuous on the train. After I got up and walked away. He continued to talk loudly and make comments to the people around him. After I moved, I noticed a very large man in a security uniform. I gave him a meaningful look as if to say, "you are security. You should make this man behave". I don't know if he was security for the train or not. He might have been on his way home from work.

He just looked at me and didn't react. He probably was going to or from work. I had an epiphany at that moment. If you couldn't trust security to make people behave, you could have some real trouble in the big city.

That incident cemented my decision. I had entertained the idea of taking a self defense class before. There didn't seem to be a real need. I had looked at one that was closed when I was there. My urge to sign up was not strong enough to bring me back. This incident changed those feelings.

I decided I was going to sign up for some kind of self defense class.

You can never trust people

Once upon a time there was a chinese man who came to the USA from Hong Kong. He was a typical chinese man in that he was very short. Maybe 5 5 or something like that. He claimed to have learned Wing Chun in Hong Kong and to even have trained with Yip Man.

When the Wing Chun instructor came to the USA, people were mean to him. This was when racism against chinese people was an obvious and accepted thing. He was also treated poorly because of his size. I gather that he received a lot of ill treatment because he looked like a munchkin.

The man eventually opened a school to teach Wing Chun at. He taught for literally decades. I met this man when he was older, perhaps late 40's or 50's. He had been established as a teacher for a long time. Had a coterie of long time established student he could point to as his accomplishments.

The man was gregarious. He never stopped talking and he always seemed friendly. I spent a lot of time at the school. The school was not set up with traditional classes. It was open from 5 or 6 til 10 or 11 at night. I came to discover the man basically used it as a hang out to get away from his wife.

I would go hang out for literally hours and hours, many days a week. The school got to be my hangout. This allowed me to see how the man truly was. I was not getting the sanitized instructor accepting money. I was getting the regular guy who used the school as a hangout.

When you spend time like that with people, they get sloppy. The become accepting or patronizing or maybe they even forget you are there.

At some point in time, for some reason I cannot recall, the man said something like "why should I give a damn about white guys?". I am a white guy. He talked about how they were prejudice to him. How they gave him trouble about being short. He also sad something new. He mentioned how the British had forced opium on China and turned the people into addicts. He looked me right in the face and said "White people messed us up. Why should I do good to them?" Or something similar.

Obviously this made me think. The man is looking me in the face saying why should he help white people and I am white. I began to pay more attention to what was going on in class. I noticed a curious thing. All of the Asian students seemed to do very well. They also seemed to practice in a much different way than the white or black or other people.

As I began to watch more and more, I noticed that the man would encourage the white and black and other people to practice very strongly and forcefully. When I looked at the Asians, they had a power in what they were doing, but it was a very reserved and controlled and hard to see power.

At some point I realized that it was not just me. The man was teaching Asian people differently from everyone else. Then I began to notice something else. Many of the white people or black people or other people started to have health problems. They would drop out of class for months. When they came back they would talk about how they had been sick with this and that.

Another phenomenon I noticed was that the non Asians seemed to have mental problems. Some of them were honestly crazy acting. Others became very aggressive and brutal. They would talk about how they went out looking for trouble.

One guy in particular stands out. He was a great guy. One of the types of training was body hardening by hitting parts of your body on stuff. Or you could hit your body with something. This man had a metal bar he carried around with him. When he had spare time, apparently he would pull it out and start hitting himself. The man was huge. 6 3 and 230 or 240 of mostly muscle. He says "I was in the public transit hitting myself with the bar. I could tell people thought I was crazy".

I could tell that too. He did not even realize what he was saying. He was so pleased at intimidating strangers, he didn't consider that the strangers looked at him as a possible dangerously violent nutcase.

This went on over a period of years. At some point the conclusion was inescapable. The Wing Chun teacher was purposefully teaching non Asian people so that they because sick. They became either mentally or physically sick.This did not happen to all the non Asians. Only the serious students. Looking back, I think it was the amount of exposure to the instructor that was the key. Casual student were not exposed to him enough, and did not practice hard like he recommended, so they did not get sick. It was the serious people who followed every word of advice that came out of the instructors mouth that seemed to get health problems.

The reason he could do this right in front of everyone was because, being non Asian, they knew nothing about Chinese Medicine, Yin Yang Theory, 5 Element Theory, Acupuncture theory, nothing. The instructor would do something right in front of everybody to make a person sick. He would set it up as a strength test.

He would say "can you take my power?" It was like a bunch of kids saying who was strongest. Of course the students wanted to please "daddy". They always said they could take it. The man would then grab some acupuncture point or the other and squeeze it so hard that the students arm would literally turn black and blue. The student would stand their proudly beaming because he had proved how strong he was.

What he didn't know was that the instructor had just made him sick by applying pressure to an acupuncture point. I never saw the instructor do this to any of the Asian people. They would always back away and say no.

I titled this post the sadist. It is a warning for people think the world is inhabited by good guys. This Wing Chun instructor had a grudge against white people. They were prejudiced to him and made fun of him because he was short.

He started a Wing Chun school and spent his days getting revenge on any white person that walked in. He didn't care if they were the ones that hurt him. He only wanted revenge. On any white person that he could get revenge on.

If anyone decides to take the tack "We don't know the whole story". "He wasn't that bad". "People should only talk good about their masters", etc etc. I would advise you to hold your tongue.

I have many many many stories about this man and his students. By the time you finish hearing them, there will be no doubt in your mind that he was capable of what I have described.

Kung Fu is serious business. It is not a play toy. If you are serious about kung fu, you MUST learn about Chinese medicine, Acupuncture, Yin Yang Theory, 5 Element theory, etc etc etc. That is the only way you will make true progress. It is also the only way you can protect yourself if you meet someone like the man above. If you are knowledgable about the things listed above, you will know if a person is bad and doing bad things to people. You can run away before you get hurt.

Initial post

This blog is devoted to anecdotes about a martial arts school.

I have written most of this across the internet in various forums. Instead of repeating myself over and over and over, it seems like a good idea to have a central repository for them so I can cut and paste if I find a new forums that looks like they might be interested in any of these anecdotes.