I had the unexpected privellege of finally meeting Kye, the person responsible for this blog at the Chinatown Resident’s association banquet. Surprisingly this is one of the smaller banquets we do even though the name would suggest the largest inclusion of locals.
Most of the locals at the banquet were elderly. Someone we didn’t see this year or last year was the cousin of Chan Hak Fu. If you don’t know who Chan Hak Fu is go You Tube Tai Chi vs. White Crane and several videos of the famous fight in the 1950s will pop up. Before you read all the comments about would be MMA folks behind a computer, know that the Tai Chi Master was a fighting champion over several provinces (6 or 7). Those are old school rules. Meaning, rules are more like “guidelines.” For the 1950’s fight death contracts were signed and the rules broke down, the fight was stopped with no lose, no win, no draw, A dissapointment to anyone who placed bets, since they all lossed their money. Both Masters became even more famous in Hong Kong and Macau (where the fight was held) and benefitted from having participated in the event, which helped raise money for the fire which had displaced many people that used to live in a sort of shanty town that was on the Kowloon side. Now government housing that look like prisons are there instead. (That’s where the Young and Dangerous movies start off. Was it Wan Chai? not sure. Please correct me on comments.)
Anyway, Chan Hak Fu’s cousin would come to the CRA banquets and would also do his laundry at Tai Tung. When Our Kung Fu School was in Tai Tung he would come in while his laundry was going and talk to us. Our sign read “White Crane” and Sifu does have a connection to Chan Hak Fu through a classmate. In fact at one point Chan Hak Fu had offered Sifu to watch over the New York Branch, but Sifu declined, knowing that there was a bit of inner politics that wouldn’t help him at that school. (Every School and organization of any type goes through this type of thing I’m sure.)
Chan Hak Fu’s cousin never really got the chance to “master” Kung Fu but he learned some, and often helped with the business side of things.

when you see an elderly person in Chinatown, you never really know what their history and back story is. There are a lot of stories in these people who are just walking around, doing there laundry, or playing chess by the gate.

Anyway, after waiting around for quite a while to do the lion dance, we were in and out of the banquet having done our job well enough. I actually ended up missing the Tai Tung Resident’s banquet because of an incident in which I thought the best course of action was for me to go home with my son. Having a child definately complicates what you are able to do.