Since my website opened years ago I’ve heard from different people. Many were strangers, some were students, a very few were friends and relatives. Strangers often ask me the location of the legendary John Chang, the Magus of Java, or the mysterious monk Xuan Kong, the Huangshan hermit. I always answer I do not know. I usually do not hear from my relatives, many of whom do not know what I am teaching or what my projects are. My relatives are often surprised to hear that I have taught in Egypt or UK.
One woman, who was my girlfriend in high school, wrote to me with the line, “Guess who I am.” After a couple of exchanges, she revealed who she was. I had not seen her since 1968 in Manila. I remember she was getting married at the time. Now she is a grandmother and widowed living in California. Her name was Americanized from the Spanish. She refused to give me her address. Upon insistent prodding, she sent me a photo of herself. She had not aged, she had retained her good looks from college. She did not look like she had dyed her hair but it looked dark. She was still playful and childlike, if I could tell from our correspondence. In our last exchanges, she asked me, “Have you found happiness?” I said, “I am not looking for it.” She has since then stopped writing.
I mentioned before that I have been teaching off and on for 20 years in the Philippines. Annie Sollestre, my indefatigable and patient assistant in the Philippines, has been working on a powerpoint presentation of the highlights of my work over the years. The very first seminar I taught was held at the Titus Bransma Center in New Manila in February 1997. The subject was Qigong and Chi Nei Tsang internal organs massage. The second seminar held the following year was on the same subject also.
Since I first started teaching in the Philippines, I have been to villages in the islands sharing my knowledge of massage, healing, and meditation with survivors of the typhoon Haiyan, taught seminars for blind masseurs and victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation and urban professionals in the Manila, spoke at an international conference of blind masseurs (the only seeing presenter). I have taught different Tai chi chuan classes for the last 15 years. If you are in the Philippines, you can check on the Tai chi chuan class on Saturday afternoon at INAM Philippines, 82A Malakas Street, BRGY Pinyahan, Diliman, QC.
You can see from the photos (see the photo gallery here) that my dark hair turned gray in less than 20 years. Haha
The photos made me think about the past. I thought I should give an outline of my training here. I started formal training in Asian arts – Wado style karate with my younger brother Florante – in 1962. It was just a family affair. Robledo Sanchez, a young teacher from the next province, Pampanga, came twice a month to Tarlac, our hometown, to teach Florante and he taught us in turn. Much of the training was on the first 2 or 3 pinan/forms, choreographed exercises from Japan. My understanding is that Sensei Sanchez studied with an American in Clark Air Force Base in Angeles, Pampanga. In 1963 I met Master Johnny F. Chiuten who taught me a form of Hung Kuen, an ancient 5-Animal System from Southern China. Three years later Johnny introduced me to the legendary master Lao Kim, his teacher, who took me in as a private student. That was the beginning of my serious quest and the slow transformation of my goals in life. My training in Wudang/Taoist martial arts started at the Hua Eng Athletic Club in Manila’s Chinatown in 1968. That’s the school where I studied the Yang Family Tai chi chuan solo fist form (108) large frame with Chan Bun Te, the cousin of my Chinese godfather Chan Tek Lao, and Pa Kua Chuan with an old Chinese who was also a Chan. In 1970 I studied Yang Family Tai chi chuan with Lao Yun Hsiao from Taiwan who was visiting the Philippines.
My studies with Johnny F. Chiuten and Lao Kim were the most important Shaolin transmissions in my life. Between the two of them, I studied different forms – Cross, Dragon-Tiger-Crane Combination, Dragon, Fairy Child Praying to the Goddess of Mercy Guanyin, Plum Blossom, Kang Li, Wat Let, Staff, Hoe, Spear, Broadsword, Straight Sword, 5 Sectional Whip, and Guandao. * Lao Shigong also had other weapons forms like the Tiger Fork but I did not study it.
A new period began in August 1970 when I migrated to the US. In 1972 I met Amante “Mat” Marinas, a master of Philippine stick-fighting. I trained with him in Elmhurst, Queens and was certified as an instructor in Arnis Lanada. In 1978 I studied Wu style Tai chi chuan, a small frame style, with Leung Shum, master of Eagle Claw, in NY City. In 1983 I studied with GM Mantak Chia of the Healing Tao (www.healingtao.com ), eventually getting certified as a senior instructor in 1989. (I was chosen Instructor of the Year, too.) In 1983 I spent almost 2 months studying Hsing-I Chuan, Wu-Shu Chang Chuan, spear, and Monkey Fist and Cudgel in Sichuan. In 1986 I left lawyering and, after the fall of Ferdinand Marcos and the dismantling of his dictatorship, I went home and stayed in the Philippines for several months while I thought about what to do next. Meantime I stayed with Johnny Chiuten in the island of Cebu and studied arnis de mano with him and several teachers. One of them – Felimon Caburnay — taught arnis de abanico/fan style Philippine stickfighting. I was also certified as an instructor in this style. Another arnis teacher was Guiling Tinga, a healer. When I returned to the US in mid-1986 I took the instructors’ certification training with Mantak Chia in Big Indian, Catskill, NY. For 5 years thereafter I became Chia’s assistant in the summer retreat program, leading classes and testing candidates for the instructors’ curriculum. (I examined many of the candidates, some of whom have since become senior instructors.) In late 1989 I moved to Boston to study at the New England School of Acupuncture and for the next 6 years I studied Chinese and Japanese acupuncture and traditional Chinese herbology. At the same time I also studied Traditional Yang Family Tai chi chuan with GM Gin Soon Chu (www.gstaichi.com) in Boston’s Chinatown. The curriculum I studied included the 108 solo fist form, Dao/broadsword (2 sets), staff-spear, jian/straight sword (2 sets), sansou/2-person sparring set, Push Hands, Dalu/Great Pulling, and Tai chi chuan Chang Chuan. I wrote the internal alchemy/neidan manuals Greater Enlightenment of Kan and Li and the Greatest Enlightenment of Kan and Li for the Healing Tao. In Phoenicia, Upstate NY in 1990/91 three of us senior instructors – Ron Diana, Gilles Marin and me – developed the syllabus for Chi Nei Tsang internal organs massage and the “passport” for the different Healing Tao courses (it’s a comprehensive list that was to record the courses taken). In 1993/94 I began teaching Qigong (including Tai chi chi kung, Inner Smile, 6 Healing Sounds, meditation on the 12 regular meridians and Microcosmic Orbit) at NESA.
This narrative will not be complete unless I mention that in February 2006 through the help of David Verdesi (www.davidverdesi.com ) I spent a month in Java to see John Chang, the Magus whose incredible feats are documented on youtube. The following year David also introduced me to Xuan Kong and Jiang Feng, two masters whose powers are described in my essay “Thunder Path in Huangshan.” My encounters with these masters opened doors to transmissions that I had not even imagined before.
I should likewise mention that I learned a lot from Yao Zhang in Chinese herbs and acupuncture, Kiiko Matsumoto in Japanese acupuncture and Jeffrey Yuen in Classical Chinese Medicine and Taoism. I’ve followed Jeffrey Yuen the last 12 years as he taught in New Jersey, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Maryland.
It is 2018 now. Counting the brief family flirtation with Wado karate, I have been involved a total of more than 55 years in martial and related Asian arts. In my retirement, I am spending more time in private practice, covering what I consider the most important forms I have studied from the repertoire of Shaolin/Buddhist sets, Traditional Yang Family Tai chi chuan, and alchemical formulas from the Healing Tao and Thunder Path. When there is opportunity, I teach private students in Easton, PA and seminars in the Philippines.
*I would like to explain a few things about this old and rare Shaolin style. The system has very strong stances, shifting from the horse to the bow and arrow to cat and other stances and going in different directions. (My colleague Dr Jopet Laraya and I were drilled for months in these basic stances in the Philippines.) It has an elaborate salutation – with the audience on the left — before the actual form begins, a salutation that I haven’t seen anywhere. It is difficult to trace the lineage of the style. But from what I have seen in my more than 55 years of research, I can conclude that the style belongs to the 5 Animal System (Crane, Dragon, Tiger, Snake, Leopard) often associated with Hung Kuen. There is no verifiable documentation of who Hung, the alleged founder, was. Nor is there a credible proof of the chain of transmission from its founding. At least I haven’t seen any. The claims are just just myth and legend from my point of view. I have not seen anything that can be called history. My Shaolin masters Johnny Chiuten and Lao Kim never did give me a history of the system by way of a lineage, not where it came from or where GM Lao studied. Chiuten shifu called it Hong Cha, not the Hung Gar of Tiger-Crane but an ancient system whose emphasis was the Dragon-Tiger combination. Hong Cha does not have the single-finger (index) dynamic tension that is found in modern Hung Kuen and Chow Li Fut. Lao Kim’s Hong Cha uses two fingers – index and middle — from Dragon Claw. It does not have an ambidextrous approach, where a movement is often done on the left and right side; it’s more right-handed. I believe it is a very ancient system of southern style Hung Kuen or Hung Ga. It is possibly the oldest system of martial arts I have seen. There are hardly any repetitions in the movements. That intriguing form Fairy Child Praying to the Goddess of Mercy Guanyin, one of my favorites, probably came from a Buddhist temple. I am saying this because, Where else would something so unique and beautiful come from? Who but a practitioner with a strong Buddhist background, possibly a monk, could choreograph such a form? It is the most unusual of all the Shaolin forms I have seen or studied, it is the only one that has predominantly yin, empty hand, open palm, not fist, techniques. It seems to have been choreographed so long ago that it is lost to time. The form alludes to certain images in Buddhist arts and episodes in the epic “Journey to the West.” I have a reproduction of a painting in my study showing the Fairy Child, a young immortal, bowing to Guanyin. It came from a series of 12 paintings that were part of a calendar during the Monkey Year more than 30 years ago.
There are possibly only two practitioners left of Lao Kim’s Hong Cha – Dr. Laraya and me – unless somewhere in China, Philippines or Hongkong, one of Lao Kim’s disciples is teaching it to a new generation of students. If you have any information about this system or something similar to it, please get in touch with me. I will appreciate any information about it or about GM Lao Kim (also called Goon Tiong). Please read my essay “The Mysterious Master of Kung-Fu” in the Writings section of the website.