Funny thread
some stories of the teachers I've known and styles practiced
You might remember my saying that a lot of Mr. Long's students used his White Crane in the streets -- just as there were guys in our later school where were bouncers. But some of Mr. Long's students were street gang members, and a few of them had developed really interesting and unique ways of using White Crane. As usual, I was pushed into sparring with pretty much anyone who walked through Mr. Long's door, and one of the most interesting of his "older" students was a gang member who had a very tricky way of using the Crane style.
I was warned about this in advance by Ron, so I had a little knowledge to start off with, but when we squared off in the middle of the room, he had a very modified version of the crane horse... so modified that you would never know he was taking up any kind of ready position.
https://rumsoakedfist.org/viewtopic.php ... f&start=30Lots of stories about the enforces of Chinatown back in the day...
another one of my teachers long ago in Korea teaching mantis
Park Chi Moon.
Shifu Park Chil Sung was born in 1930 in what is now North Korea. He first began studying gong fu within his family at a very young age (around 7 or 8 years old). He later traveled around the Korean peninsula studying under any master he could find. At that time he met his main master, shifu Lin Ping Jiang.
During the Korean war he along with most other young men from his home town were recruited to fight for the south as guerilla fighters not actually associated with the formal army.
After the war he was able to relocate to the south and has not seen his family since then.
Shifu Park Chil Sung worked for some time after the war for the South Korean equivalent of the American CIA, training in hand to hand combat.
He has been teaching at Camp Casey Tongdushon (a U.S. Army post just south of the DMZ - north of Seoul) since the 70's, with many of his students being U.S. Military personnel. In the year 2000 he was still alive and teaching in Korea.
http://www.oocities.org/mantiscave/parkchil.htmVery interesting in that one could not really spar with him, with out getting hurt,,,,,
His training and experience wouldn't allow him to pull something that was just built into
his reactions ...
He mentioned they used to go up into the mountains and hunt the communist,,,often having to deal with them at very close quarters.
At the time he never mentioned his teacher,,,,we used to try getting him drunk over a Korean meal with 소주 "soju" to talk about him,,,,
Back in the 70s,,the soju, was pretty strong as I remember....aside from a hangover,,you bones would ache too...
good stuff, probably not healthy stuff ....