The Yi Jing contains many apt phrases, for this article I choose, "It will be advantageous to meet with the great man" which appears in the commentaries and/or judgements on four hexagram and There will be advantage in crossing the great stream which appears in the judgements and the commentaries on half a dozen hexagrams.
It all started when on behalf of the Taijiquan & Qi Gong Federation for Europe, I was invited to attend and teach at the Annual Conference of the North American Qi Gong Association in upstate New York in October 2001. Shortly thereafter some French Tai Chi friends told me of a book on Tai Chi Chuan written by a Montreal based student of Cheng Tin-hung. Despite training with him since 1975 I had never heard Cheng Tin-hung mention this Mr. Irving Leong, whose name was, however, recorded in Cheng's book on Tai Chi weapons. I had assumed him to be some Johnny come lately, long after my time, who'd picked up a teaching certificate and emigrated to Canada.
I ordered Histoire, Fables et Theorie du Tai Chi Chuan by Irving Leong (Humanitas ISBN 2-89396-218-1). It is a paperback of just over 100 pages, translated into French by Marie Desjardins, and contains a goodly number of illustrations, all by the author. As the title suggests, the book mainly deals with Tai Chi history, stories of famous masters (including quite a few about our own master) and the practical theory. I phoned Cheng Tin-hung who told me Mr. Leong was one of his students from the early 60s, an educated man, with a good grasp of the theory.
Students of Chinese martial arts always want to know what it was like in the old days; I am no exception, so through Marie's good offices I contacted Sifu Leong who said he would be pleased to meet me in Montreal after the Conference.
After four long days of eating rabbit food, drinking boy-scout beer and retiring before 8 p.m. every night at the Omega Institute in upstate New York, I was ready for Montreal. Sifu (Teaching Father) Leong picked me up at my hotel and proved to be a sprightly gentleman in his early seventies. He took me to a restaurant in Chinatown and told me he had a surprise for me. In walked a man whom I had not seen for 25 years, Leung Chi-keung, one of the most talented of my Tai Chi elder brothers from the mid -Seventies on the rooftop. He had married and was bringing up his family of two daughters and one son in Montreal and had taught himself in the meantime to become a Cantonese opera actor and musician.
Over the three days that followed I spent many hours in the company of my elder brothers, fine gentlemen both. Sifu Leong invited Leung Chi-keung and me to his club, where his students put on a demo for us and we in turn did a short demo for them, Sifu Leong then concluded the demos with a performance of the rarely seen Tai Chi Whip. As a special treat Sifu Leong showed us all a film from c. 1962 of our master and senior students demonstrating form and applications. What follows are the fruits of some conversations with Sifu Leong about the old days.
Sifu Leong is a Hong Kong boy who went over to Canada in 1949. He spent five years in the Canadian airforce and had the mixed blessing of being based in Ireland for some time. He later worked with Boeing before returning to Hong Kong in 1960 to find a wife, see the old place and take some time out to learn some of the traditional Chinese Kung Fu that had fascinated him since he was young. He was successful in all these endeavours.
He saw an ad from a master who taught Tai Chi Chuan for fighting and with weapons so he went along expecting to see an old fellow in a kung fu suit, but instead met a stocky youth slightly younger than himself. Thinking this was the assistant, he asked for Cheng Tin-hung; the youth said he was the very same and invited Sifu Leong to punch him. Cheng Tin-hung could withstand the blows on the body and cheek, so Sifu Leong decided to train with him.
In those days, not so many students came, but quickly Sifu Leong found himself one of a group of 4-5 regulars who would always be there training from Monday through to Friday and in the evenings they would go out together to eat and socialise. Cheng knew Leong was going back to Canada so he deliberately taught him a lot wanting him to teach when he returned to Vancouver.
On his return in 1963, Sifu Leong met Tony Jay who‰d been one of the regulars. Tony also knew Lamma Boxing, which he taught in his Tong (village association). They set up a Tai Chi club together teaching all the aspects of the art and a few of their students went on to become teachers themselves.
Eventually, Sifu Leong moved to Montreal, some friends who knew he trained in Tai Chi Chuan encouraged him to teach which he did at home and they trained together in Nei Kung (24 Yin and Yang Internal Strength exercises), tui shou (pushing hands), san shou (fighting applications) weapons and hand form. After a while, with two partners, Sifu Leong opened a club, which has been running for about 10 years. Subsequently, the partners split up and Sifu Leong started his own club. Peter Yu who also trained in Wing Chun, also started his own Tai Chi club while the other partner discontinued teaching.
Sifu Leong agreed with me about the importance of Bai Shi (ritual ceremony of discipleship) which he requires all students to undergo before they are taught Nei Kung. As Montreal is predominantly French speaking, a lot of the students are French Canadians, but with some Chinese and with more ladies than used to be in our master's place. His students tend to be young, as older folk who want to train in Tai Chi Chuan prefer to go to Chinatown.
We talked about competition. When Cheng Tin-hung was training his first group of fighters for Leitai (literally platform, refers to traditional Chinese full contact fighting) competition, Sifu Leong would practice wrestling with them. One day Cheng Tin-hung asked him to spar. Sifu Leong found Cheng could read him like a book and though he was able sometimes to escape, he was not able to attack him successfully as Cheng was too quick and alert sensitive to every change and with fast reflexes. However, more usually Sifu Leong practiced throwing free wrestling as well as techniques such as Raise Hands Step Up, Embrace Tiger and Return to Mountain, White Crane Flaps Wings, Pioneer Arms, Seize Legs etc. The competition people were very quick with good technique.
Ng Woon-tong, the leader of the group was thin and friendly, nut in pushing hands he was very dynamic and with little effort, he could bounce people off the wall. Some students became boastful and one was kicked out of the school; he said he could take anyone's punch and charged people $5 per punch, but this was like a challenge to other schools so Cheng Tin-hung wrote in a newspaper that this fellow was no longer a disciple as he wished to maintain good relations with others.
Sifu Leung said, Sometimes during the training we might compete to see who could hold Nei Kung postures like Golden Tortoise for the longest time. Occasionally we would go to the hills around Hong Kong and practice Nei Kung in caves. Sometimes we would play "king of the ring" where one person would fight each of the others in turn. At that time also, Cheng Tin-hung was preparing to write a book on Tai Chi Chuan. He got a good calligrapher to commit it to paper and asked me to design the front cover. I drew different postures showing wrestling and weapon techniques. (Sifu Leong was unaware that the publisher has for many years been using the same design on his other martial arts books also). At Sifu Leong's request Cheng put his name and address on the book and subsequently got a lot of students in this way.
There was no set routine to the training, when students first came in they learned square form (simplified form, like block letters) after you could practice a little by yourself, he'd teach tui shou and san shou, there'd be a lot of throwing techniques then weapons. Cheng was in good shape in those days and practiced with the students individually usually taking the role of the attacker in san shou, so every day he would be taking repeated hits to the body.
Oftimes, they would all go with the master to play mahjong together or go to drink tea instead of training, so it was very much a social as well as a martial relationship. His wife at that time (the first of three) also helped to teach as did some of the more experienced students. In fact there were never many lady students in those days (a situation which, with the Hong Kong Government's opening of Tai Chi classes in housing states, has been very much reversed).
There was no structure to the training and each student was treated differently, if Cheng Tin-hung liked you, he would teach you more; if he didn't like you, he'd hardly teach you. He was very good in theory and explaining the principles. They didn't have much contact with other martial arts schools at that time. What he particularly liked about Cheng Tin-hung's method was that the self defence was simple secure and effective, allowing a fast response, while not putting the practitioner in danger, so to effectively punish the opponent.
There are some interesting differences in how Sifu Leong does the sabre form and in how Ian Cameron and I were taught to do it a decade later. It seems that in the old days many techniques more closely followed those to be found in Wu Tu-nan's book "Tai Chi Xuan Xuan Dao" (Tai Chi Mysterious Sabre "Xuan Xuan" being a Taoist name for Chang San-feng) and the sabre form in this book is about 80% the same as that taught by Cheng Tin-hung. However, as both methods are equally efficacious in application, and other techniques in all the forms permit of variation, I don't feel there is any conflict here.
Sifu Leong said that he always had been interested in reading Tai Chi books, especially those dealing with theory and history, but too many books just repeat the same details or don't give enough details while some hardly give any information but only show how to do the form, also stories and fables about previous masters are diminishing with time and so, feeling that this kind of information is disappearing, he wanted to write a book which contained most of the theory and stories, with a few which came from or were about Cheng Tin-hung.
Sifu Leong believes that North Americans don't really understand Tai Chi Chuan and many are aware of it only as a health exercise. Of course in various books there are contradictory statements about people like Jiang Fa. Sifu Leong was trying to set out the contribution of famous masters of the past, inevitably many people are missed out. Cheng Tin-hung in his 50 year teaching career must have produced hundreds of talented disciples, but it's impossible to list them all, the same must be true of masters of the past.
There is a fairly active Tai Chi Chuan scene in Canada and people are well aware of one another, but Sifu Leong's group don't have so much contact with other groups. There have been competitions in Toronto and Vancouver, but not Montreal as yet.
His philosophy is that you learn the art from your sifu, but through your own practice and teaching you can make your personal contribution or development for example in the relatively new field of competition pushing hands, so that you give back more than just what you learned and Sifu Leong hopes this process will continue with his students.
On a personal note, prior to meeting Sifu Leong, I hadn't visited Canada since 1978, I hope not to have to wait another 23 years before again crossing the great stream.