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LEGENDS OF KUNG-FU #29

The Family Lineage

A lot of people in the Chinese martial arts world talk about "family secrets" and the "family environment" in which our arts are taught. So it's natural for the conversation to digress into a discussion about how masters teach their children and how the eldest son gets all of the family secrets from his venerated father. There's an air of mystique about that. And there's no denying that the general public likes stories about how the favorite son learned things that even the closest, most loyal disciples never came close to. In reality, this isn't always the case. Before you get up in arms about what you think I'm going to say, pay attention. I'm going to present both sides of the coin here.

The side of the coin you may not be all that aware of is the negative side. Throughout China's long history, there have been many men who distinguished themselves in martial arts. Yet, many of their sons did not follow in their footsteps of their famous fathers during their formative years. Interestingly and unfortunately, some of these famous scion start to claim that they learned the entirety of their predecessor's system, even when they may have only spent at most a couple of years in training while their parent or progenitor was alive. There are more than a few "grandmasters" doing this now.

The reality of the situation is complicated, and there are more than a few reasons why some people are doing this. In the martial arts world, prestige is important for gaining recognition of peers and drawing in students. Unfortunately, many adults are no different from children in the ways that they reach out for attention, often acting out in negative ways just to have the spotlight on them. That negativity may come in the form of making false claims about their skills and the source of those skills.

To illustrate that with a few real life examples, I'm going to talk in broad strokes and omit names, so as not to offend anyone in particular, but still maintain a sense of tangible reality.

In mainland China's Tai-Chi community, there was a well-known figure who passed away a while back. He claimed to have learned the entire system from his uncle, who was quite the proven fighter, and later went to popularize his system all over the country. Yet when you look at the dates during which those two men lived, you realize that there was a very short overlap in years. So unless the uncle was teaching his nephew advanced principles around the age of 6, there's really little chance that the youth could have learned the system in its entirety from his renowned uncle, even though he may have become a formidable Tai-Chi stylist of his own merit and efforts.

In Taiwan, there's another person who's currently teaching martial arts. His grandfather was among China's most feared fighters, yet for those who were around the family when this man was a boy, they know that he never trained with his esteemed grandfather. Now that the grandfather is dead and gone, the grandson is now proclaiming mastery of his grandfather's secret teachings, most of which seem to have nothing to do with the system that his grandfather taught during his lifetime.

On the east coast of the US, there's a kung-fu teacher who learned a little from his well-respected brother in Hong Kong. Upon his emigration to the US, he began putting on airs and acted like he'd learned everything directly from his brother. Those who were in the know said that he'd actually been learning the forms from videos and never really took the time to learn from his brother while they were together in Hong Kong.

So you might ask why family members don't take advantage of their relationship to such an esteemed person and learn directly from them during their lifetime and then tell the truth in later years. There are a few reasons, as explained to me by my teachers and kung-fu brothers. It's hard to teach and enforce martial discipline with family members, but especially so with your own children. Asian children will get their share of discipline to begin with, but not that many will express the same interest or passion for martial arts and martial training as their parents do. Pushing a child to do something as serious as martial arts when the child has no passion for it is a waste of time. And most parents do not want to create an atmosphere of resentment or enmity with their children over such things. When a child has to be disciplined at home, and then disciplined more at the training hall, it makes for a tough situation where most children (and most parents) won't have the staying power to push through the rough times and continue the effort to pass the system on within the bounds of the family. As a result, when sons of masters do end up training, they are usually placed under the tutelage of either the father's classmate or his top student. That setup alleviates the child's sense of direct, unremitting pressure from the parent, while still keeping the knowledge fairly pure. Later on, when the son has been properly initiated into the framework of the system and developed an appreciation and respect for the father's knowledge, then direct instruction between a father and son can occur.

Keep in mind that I'm NOT saying that there aren't plenty of instances where a father teaches his son to inherit a school or a system by his own hand. One of the most notable instances of this is my Sil Lum Fut Ga kung-fu teacher, Arthur Lee. He taught his son, Harlan, since his boyhood, training him constantly for years. While Harlan has also trained with some of his father's peers and other noted authorities, the vast majority of his knowledge comes directly from his countless hours in his father's classes and living under his father's roof. Today, Harlan Lee is poised as the successor of the Gee Yung Sil Lum Fut Ga lineage and is recognized as such by his father's students and the Chinese martial arts public.