Introduction

I sat on the couch of the Kung Fu school. Having moved into this building, we gained a nicer space and a lower rent fee. However, it was different than the old building in that we could not light the incense and was less ours. It was in fact simply a classroom in a building that had once been an elementary school. It went through sevral stages, at one point being Kwong Kow Chinese School, an extracurricular education I had participated in, and finally renting out the classrooms.

August and Kelly, Sifu's grandchildren, my students, were having a battle with pbc pipes. I told the children to quiet down and finally gathered the courage to take two steps over to Sifu and bring up and start a conversation. "Sifu how are you feeling? Do you feel like talking?"
"What is it?" he asked.
I brought a chair over and asked in halting speech that I would like to write a book about him.
He stared out thinking. "Okay... Good."
"So.. to do this, I wanted to interview you. I didn't bring a recorder today. Tomorrow I will bring one. But we can start now."
He paused for a while.
"Is that okay?" I asked.
"I'm thinking. I'm thinking where we should start. You want to write about the Kung Fu?"
"Your history, everything from the start." I said.
He paused for another long time. Then he turned to me. "Because I am different then other people. The times I was born into are not normal."
"If I was to begin talking about my life I would have to talk about certain things. For instance, I didn't have rice to eat. People will wonder why that is. Was it that everyone had rice to eat but only we didn't?' I didn't go to school. People will wonder if it was because I was lazy?'
Of Course not, " he said his voice growing louder,"The truth is that we had nothing because the Communists took everything away from us!
But if I write this, then there will be many people reading this book , " he said pantomiming this potential reader looking as if inspecting the book with pointed finger, " that will read this cursing us, 'Mother fuckers, you talk rot about our party!' But not to write it... the whole reason why most of my existence was the way it was, stems from the party ruining the country, it is somthing difficult to edit out. Edited out, the story would be an untruth, and useless.
Inevitably to tell the whole story, the book would not reflect well on the Communists. Then if we put this out there, people will curse us saying we are speaking badly of them"

"And you don't want to write something bad about the Communists."
He paused again.
"I'm thinking about if there could be any repucussions now. Whether we should do this." he said.
I said that perhaps we could just write it first then censor things for now or perhaps have them put out later.
"That's too difficult." He said, "and to not say these things, would be a fake story. After all the truth is that these things happened this way."

"There shouldn't be a problem," I said, "Many people have already written things about those times and how bad they were already anyway. These people can still go back to China. After all we could just release these things in the U.S. only"

"You will write it in English?"he asked.

"Of course I'll write in English. I can't write Chinese anyway." I said.

"Ohhh, if in English then you'll bang, bang, bang it out no problem. We are just writing it for the people outside of China anyway." he laughed.
Tension eased some. I felt we mighth be able to do this. Maybe I could interview him and he'd be willing to have this happen.
"Right," I said, "Then if we ever wanted to put it out in China then we could just let them censor whatever they wanted to censor first. But we should have a true version even if it is only for ourselves and our descendants to read."

He nodded. A short time passed and he said, "In China someone has already written the good accomplishments down for me. For instance the things I created and invented and what not. Wei Min (A student still in China) is also friends with this man ( A Principle) and there is a copy of it in my house in China. Perhaps I can get this or a copy sent to us and we can work from there. That would be better."

"Okay," I said.
He stared deep in thought again, lost in the past, and his many experiences. I was somewhat worried, because I knew bits and pieces of what he had been through because of the decade I have spent with him, living with him for a few years as well. I was worried about wherever reliving this stuff was good for him. After all his health was deteriorating. I was very cautious.
At that point. My girlfriend called me and I would now leave. I thought too maybe it is not so good to jerk around the thoughts an then just leave. But after all it was good to let him calmly reflect about this first. I bowed to him, Jing and the kids, the altars and headed home. I thought upon arriving home that I could also conduct interviews by phone. That way they could be at his convenience as well as mine. This ended up not working out as we had to wait almost a month before this photo of a list of accomplishments reached us. Even though it was by e-mail. It had to pass through too many hands who though were not necessarily adverse to my writing a book,
were also not very interested.
This attempt seemed like it would be different thatn my others when I was in highschool. But it would again be similarly difficult. Perhaps I would just ave to write it first and add new information later. Or perhaps my book should simply be about trying to write this book.