Talking Hands with the Southern Shaolin Master
By
Sifu Alan Hubbard
中 文 按 此
Talking hands or “Gong Sau” in Cantonese means when someone tries to
explain their techniques and want you to agree that his hand techniques
are effective. If this person can Gong Sau and make you agree that you
couldn’t defend yourself with your counter techniques, it meant he won
the Gong Sau. In other words, you lost the fight in a technical way.
Grandmaster Doc-Fai Wong came to the U.S. when he was 11 years old. His
first trip returning to China was in the winter of 1979. His wife’s cousin
Lee Keung took him all over the Guangdong Province for sight seeing
traveling on his motorcycle. Grandmaster visited famous mountains and
temples that he had read about. He went to many parks to watch people
practicing kung fu. He needed information for his monthly column with
Inside Kung fu magazine. Lee Keung had a friend who taught kung fu in
the village near Taisan city so he brought Grandmaster Wong there to
visit a master and found out that he was a traditional southern Shaolin
Kung fu teacher, his name is Cheung Chew. Grandmaster called him Sifu
Cheung and he was in his late 40’s. Lee Keung introduced Grandmaster
Wong as a kung fu magazine reporter from America who was willing to
interview him for an article.
There were a half dozen of students with Sifu Cheung at that time. He
gave an exhibition by having his students perform kung fu forms for
Grandmaster. Grandmaster Wong told Sifu Cheung that he teaches kung fu
in San Francisco. After he interviewed him about his teaching and
information of his kung fu system, Sifu Cheung tried to impress
Grandmaster by showing him his techniques and tried to convince him that
his system is very effective and so far no other kung fu school in
Taisan can compete with them. Normally to prove your claim you would
demonstrate your techniques on your student. However, he wanted
Grandmaster to do the attacking move. Normally this would not be any
problem for Grandmaster, however Grandmaster already told him that he
also teaches kung fu and at that time his wife’s cousin was there
watching him. It would be very bad for Grandmaster to lose face if he
had lost to Cheung. No matter how humble he was, Grandmaster must
protect his name for his teacher and for his students. Grandmaster could
not let him to have an opportunity to tell someone later that he “talked
hands” with him and Grandmaster couldn’t do anything.
Sifu Cheung asked Grandmaster to punch him with his left fist. So he put
his fist out in front of Sifu Cheung’s face slowly. Sifu Cheung used his
right hand to do an inward blocking and then grabbed Grandmaster Wong’s
wrist with his left hand and followed with a horizontal outward chop to
his neck with his right hand. At the same time, his right leg stepped
into the back of Grandmaster’s left leg and tried to take him down.
Grandmaster knew there was only one way to communicate with him so he
reacted immediately with his right hand to grab Cheung’s right hand
chopping to his neck and twisted it downward, at the same time,
Grandmaster’s left forearm pressed down on Cheung’s upper arm and
Grandmaster’s left leg retreated back like a backward sweep to counter
his take down technique. Cheung bent his right elbow and picked up his
right foot to avoid the sweep. Grandmaster picked up his right arm and
folded his hand upward to make a figure “4” joint locking position.
Grandmaster immediately saw Cheung’s face in great pain, the tables had
turned. Grandmaster let him off and stepped back and clapped his hands
and said to him, “good technique” in Chinese. Of course, his students
didn’t know what was going on, but Grandmaster’s wife’s cousin Lee Keung
saw Sifu Cheung’s facial expression at that time. He knew that
Grandmaster won the Gong Sau.
Sifu Cheung appreciated that Grandmaster didn’t make him lose face. In
front all of his students, he applauded Grandmaster Wong and said that
his kung fu is very good. Lee Keung also respected Grandmaster even more
from there on because he saw Grandmaster had the courage and respect to
allow his opponent to save face, something his opponent wasn’t so
generous to do at the onset. A Couple of years later, Lee Keung and his
family immigrated to San Francisco. He resides in the Sunset district
and he can still see that facial expression that told a secret story of
earned respect by Grandmaster Wong.