Literature Spotlight

In a prewar building on the fourth floor of 16 Mott Street, I grabbed a stick

from the weapon rack. Our club has a rule that students are prohibited from touch-

ing any weapons that they have not yet learned. I ran rebelliously with the stick,

while my father’s students were practicing their drills. I lost grip of the stick and it

flew across the room and hit the mirror. The bottom of the mirror shattered, and

all of the students stopped and stared directly at me. The silence in the room was

one of the biggest embarrassments of my life. I received a major scolding from my

father despite my countless apologies. This was the mid-1980s when I began to

accompany my father to the kung fu club on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

I was not interested in kung fu and spent countless hours engaged in child’s

play at the club. I did not have any appreciation for what the students were prac-

ticing diligently. However, the weapons and the advanced forms of Dragon Style

Kung Fu greatly captured my attention. I was relegated to start from the basics.

 

These encompassed individual hand techniques extracted from a number of foun-

dational level forms. I found this to be boring, and I loathed the time spent doing

monotonous and repetitive stances and footwork. I was as bored as a typical lay-

person of kung fu who visits a class and observes forms and techniques being done

over and over again. To an untrained eye, the drills seem pointless. A Muay Thai

boxer hitting a bag or pads seems much more appealing with more promise of

tangible results. I did not see the utility associated with spending time on such ap-

parently pointless drills. Given my effort was half-hearted, I did not advance much

in my early kung fu training days. This would all change following a pivotal event

in my childhood.

 

Arriving back from my afterschool program on a cold evening in February

1988, I entered the elevator in my building and punched the button to my floor. A

group of teenagers asked me to hold the elevator door for them, and I complied.

Shortly after the door closed, I was sorry that I did. The group looked me up and

down and around the elevator a little too much. I left the elevator apprehensively

and went down the hallway. From a distance, the teenagers ran towards me. I froze

and none of my superficial knowledge of kung fu kicked in. The teens demanded

money. When I told them that I was not carrying any, two of them ransacked my

backpack. Before they were done scouring the contents, the group heard the un-

clicking of a lock. The group ran past me and scurried down the staircase of the fire

exit. My mother opened the door and saw me standing there, filled with emotions

from both fear and anger, and asked what happened. I told her of the attempted

mugging. I was shaken and sat on the sofa in shock.

 

             Later in the evening after completing my homework, I vowed to practice my kung fu with diligence and dedication. When my father returned home and heard about the attempted mugging, he came into my bedroom. I was busy practicing the Flower Form (Faa Kuen) that I had previously only half-heartedly rehearsed. Ironically, this was the form that I despised the most, but I was determined to master it. In retrospect, my dedication in kung fu initially was thus rooted in fear. Kung fu over time helped me overcome that fear by empowering me. It has now become a lifelong passion and continues to help me better my mind and body every day.