Woo Ching- Chapter One "Taishan"

He was born Woo Chung Ching, the third son of (Father) and (Mother)In China, Guangdong,Taishan, Hometown of Doushan, Village of Nam on. This area at that time was actually more prosperous than Hong Kong. The reason for this was not only did this area have a port, it also had a railroad, built through private investment. All Chinese and not a cent from foreign companies. It was built mainly from an Engineer who had traveled to America and got deals on old tracks, shipping them back to his hometown. In fact people from this area have been coming back and forth between China and the U.S. since the Qing Dynasty.
Chinese men would travel to the U.S. to work either on the railroad, to seek fortune from the Gold Rush, or simply some other form of labor. Many did stay in Canada or America, but as there were laws attempting to exclude Chinese from becoming citizens, bringing wives, etc. Many Chinese returned home. The money they had saved up working for a lifetime abroad was quite a bit. They would build a house in the style of French or Venetian architecture. There remains are still in that hometown area.
Volleyball as well as many colloquial language was also brought back. Thus at this time in the past, this part of China was full of exchange with the west. People who spoke Chinese slang already had English in their vocabulary. Coming back to say they had enough money to Mai sai seng go "bullock". (Buy the whole "block")
Or calling "Ouside!" to say outside when playing volleyball. Things would only close up to the West later under Communism.

There was money to be made from trade, working overseas, or at the least being a laborer for some company. But of course there were a lot of poor people. However, in Sifu's village in that time in the past one could still find food to eat. You could grow your own rice, and potatoes and tomatoes grew easily. In fact even until Sifu's son was a child in the 1970's tomatoes grew like weeds and children picked them not to eat, but to throw at each other. In the time before Sifu, there was enough wildlife that one could catch snakes, hunt birds, and other wildlife for food quite easily. In fact, if one stepped outside the village and stuck stick in the grass by the waters making a circle with it, upon bringing it up there would be a few shrimp on it. Do this enough times and with rice one could easily make a meal, but the question was whether you would get tired of eating the same thing all the time. Cocunuts grew all around, and fish were easy to catch. When it rained and there was a slight flood, there would be fish flopping all over the road.

In other words, back then, the economy may have been bad and you might not have a career, but you wouldn't starve. People spent their time instead, fighting each other. It could be a political war where people were rebelling against the Qing. Later there was ethnic warfare between the Hakka and the people who had moved in on their land and eventually pushed them out,(That is to say Sifu's people. HE had often mentioned that looking at the history the Hakka were rightful owners of the land, but whoever has more people and more fighting power will in the end be the ones to make the decisions.) Hakka people now more or less coexist and are absorbed into one big Han ethnic group.
All this time there was also tension among different villages and family Clans. However, these clashes would take a back seat to more all out wars. In times of peace, these villages would then begin to brawl with each other. Depending on the time period, they would use sticks and knives, guns, dynamite, build forts, or simply fight hand to hand or with glass bottles in more recent clashes.

Needless to say, Kung Fu used specifically for combat, was a much practiced hobby and considered essential right with education and business.




At some point in his Childhood The Japanese invaded and were going to go into the
area he lived. Perhaps only a toddler at this point the whole family went into the mountains. He recalled that it was like they were playing a fun game where they had to hide. Interestingly, the villages that fought each other with such tenacity sparing nothing and sacrificing their lives in the blink of an eye, old men women and children joining in the fight, fled immediately from the Japanese without putting up much of a fight at all. Perhaps this was due to lack of organization and opportunities to join an army. The exact reasons for this are unclear. Many of the soldiers that fought the Japanese at this point seem to have been from the north.

Of course, many did find there way to the army and in fact, one White Crane Master from Taishan gained his name by teaching the infantry.
His name was Chan Hak Fu. One of the most famous operations where participants recieved very little casualties and they killed the most Japanese was when they trained assasins to sneak into Japanese stations in the middle of the night with large knives "doh" or small sabers. using close body techniques and lightning speed they killed Japanese while they were unaware fully of the attack. They had a secret way of feeling for each other in the dark and knowing immediatly whether the person they had just bumped into was one of their own or a target for assasination (i.e. anyone else) I won't mention this secret here as it is our tradition to share it with students who learn the sword techniques employed in these operations.
Of course in modern warfare, these methods would most likely be obsolete against soldiers with night vision.

At some point the Japanese bombed the railroad tracks that made the economy of the area so booming. The tracks were never rebuilt.