Tibetan Tai Chi master Liu Siong learned the secret of youth in the mountaintop Shao-Lin Temple outside Peking more than half a century ago. Today the temple is a museum and the discipline is no longer taught - except in Liu Siong's Albuquerque studio.

The one-time consultant for the Kung Fu TV series - his blind great uncle was the model for the old priest in the show's flashbacks - moved to Albuquerque to relieve a chronic sinus condition.

The attachment of martial arts expertise didn't come easily. The 69 year old half Chinese, half Dutch teacher - whose Dutch name is Willem Reeders - remembers life in the temple as vigorous. "We were underfed, under-slept, and overtrained," he says, arching his eyebrows.

Rigorous as it was, today his youthful appearance, strength, and flexibility reveal the benefits of his continued training. He and his wife, Marilyn, pause between classes to talk about some of their students who have overcome some daunting physical problems with the help of Tibetan Tai Chi. One student lost the use of his legs after being run over by a truck. A year after the accident, he began training with Liu Siong, and now, after three months of training, he walks to work every day.

A woman survived a diabetic coma because her lungs were stronger as a result of her training. Before her five months of training, she was always short of breath.

In Tibetan Tai Chi, practitioners perform various graceful, rhythmic movements to draw cosmic energy fro cleansing and invigorating - rendering the body constantly youthful.

"The arms," says Liu Siong, "act as antennae. You are in a kind of meditation as you work out. (After a while) you don't feel the floor."

"Tai means exercise, Chi means life force or power." adds Mrs. Reeders, "so they're power exercises."

As a boy of 12, Liu Siong journeyed annually from his native Indonesia to the temple for 100 day intensive training sessions in martial arts and philosophy. He then became one of six children chosen every 12 years to learn the ancient art of Tibetan Tai Chi. Liu Siong's temple experiences are the basis for the television series Kung Fu, for which he was a consultant. In Kung Fu, a young Oriental traveling through the American West frequently remembers life as a child trainee in a Chinese Temple.

He moved to Albuquerque in 1972. He taught tai chi in his home until a year ago, when he opened the Garoda Tibetan Tai Chi studio.

As far as Liu Siong knows, no Tibetan Tai Chi masters remain in China because when the Communists took over in 1949, the priests and students scattered. The Communists turned the temple into a museum and renamed it the People's Temple.

Liu Siong knows of only two students of Tibetan Tai Chi in North America, and they don't teach, because they never finished the training. "Even the Tibetans aren't doing Tibetan anymore," he says of the oldest form of tai chi.

Liu Siong began his training at age 4. His great uncle, Liu Siong, Sr., was 80 years old when he began teaching his nephew. Himself a former student of the Shao-Lin Temple, the elder Liu Siong saw to it that his nephew, as the eldest son of the family, received training there. So at age 12, in the early 1930's, Liu Siong began his yearly trips to Peking.

There, he learned martial arts, anatomy, philosophy, meditation, mind control, use of the elements (fire, water, wind, earth), acupuncture, Buddhism, and Tibetan Tai Chi.

Because the temple priests observed the strictest silence at all times, Liu Siong to this day cannot say why certain things were done. He doesn't know why metals weren't allowed in the temple, but he knows students' head were shaved bald with pieces of glass. He can't say why he and five other students were chosen to train in Tibetan Tai Chi. He knows that at the end of the 12 year training period, only two students, including himself, were still training.

In the early 1940's, he was swept up in the war with Japan and then the Indonesian Revolution. He fought on two fronts until 1955. Had it not been for his knowledge of martial arts, he doubts he would have survived the hand-to-hand combat he frequently encountered "in the jungle, in the houses, in the city - everywhere!"

When the Dutch quit Indonesia after losing the revolution, Liu Siong, who was born in East Java, Indonesia, was surprised to find himself "repatriated" to Holland because his father was Dutch. Three days after arriving there, he applied for a visa to the United States and eventually settled in New York. He supported himself teaching Kung Fu.

While in New York, Liu Siong's memories of his temple training proved invaluable to the writers of the television series Kung Fu. The program, which ran on ABC from 1972 to 1975, included frequent temple scenes in which the young boy trained in the ancient wisdom and martial arts of China.

Liu Siong told the writers of walking on rice paper to perfect one's balance. "If you put too much pressure, it rips, or if you put your foot down wrong, it rips." He told them of picking up a large hot cauldron of burning coals with the forearms, leaving a long burn on the inside of the arms. The network's writers elaborated on this practice by showing the actor's arms branded with an outline of a dragon on one arm and a snake on the other.

"That's baloney," says Liu Siong. "You don't get dragon there and snake there, you get burn."

The blind temple teacher in Kung Fu was based on Liu Siong, SR., who was also blind. And the young boy? "That would have been me," Liu Siong says, smiling.

He admits that he did not tell the network writers everything he knew about the philosophy and cosmology learned at the temple, things he refers to mysteriously as "the known and the unknown."

When Liu Siong started teaching in Albuquerque, he did not advertise, took few students, and was difficult to find, says Marilyn Reeders, who had to search him out. She had learned of him from three different sources, and finally figured out everyone was talking about the same teacher.

Liu Siong is adept at aikido, ju jitsu, judo, kendo, shotokan karate (6th degree black belt), and a variety of kung fu styles. He has a sorking knowledge of 81 weapons. He is a 7th degree black belt in budozn soundje kempo, the fight system of the Buddhists. He was recently named Grand Master - and indication of the highest level of expertise possible - by the Chunghwa Kung Fu Hui, an international federation of kung fu practicioners.

Even though she has studied with him for 10 years, Marilyn Reeders holds her index finger and thumb an inch apart and says, "I have this much knowledge. I'm trying to at least, of what I know, know well, but out of all the things he learned (in China), I know this much. Everything else is gone."

Is Liu Siong concerned that the art will pass away?

"What can you do about it? That's the way it is. It's something you cannot change. You can't feel bad."

In the meantime, he will continue to teach his unique art in Albuquerque.

I'd like to address the topic of kuntao silat, as it applies to the Philippines. I never studied any form of kuntao silat in the US. I've been living in Asia since 1989, and have trained in a form of martial arts on the island of Negros, in the Philippines. My teacher was a 4th generation Chinese-Filipino whose family system had originally been bagua. Over the years, the bagua had been combined with the local styles of empty hand fighting, until when I started learning with this man, there was very little of the art of bagua left. Only fighting techniques were still recognisable. There was a very effective fighting art still there.

The qi generation, the breathing exercises, the circle walking had all been removed or forgotten. Techinques from Filipino boxing and from local dumog and silat forms had been added. The end result is something I call kuntao silat.

This style is completely different from the styles that Roberto Torres, Willem de Thours or any other well-known kuntao silat stylist in the West has shown. My teacher didn't call his style anything, as it was something his father and uncle had taught to him. I use the term kuntao silat because of the combination of the Chinese and Indonesian-Filipino influences, and because I have no other name to call it.

The Philippines has had a very large Chinese presence over the years, and while the Chinese arts exist, they are well-hidden there. In the Philippines, as in Malaysia and in Indonesia, the Chinese community has kept itself separate from the local Filipino community. This art resulted from my teacher's family marrying local girls. By the time I met my teacher, he could no longer speak Chinese, and he had gained his reputation by accepting challenges from eskrimadors to fight- they with sticks and he empty handed. He nearly always won, including one match against someone well-known in the US, Modern Arnis Grandmaster Remy Presas.

Unfortunately, I was my teacher's last student, and most of the other people he taught are Filipino white-collar types who have no plans to teach. It is very likely that this formidable family style will die out. I am a player, not a teacher. If I were to ever teach this art, it would probably only be on a one-to-one basis, and maybe not even then.

I write this only to let everyone know that kuntao (as in the fist way of the Chinese arts) existed in every place that the Chinese traders went. It also adapted to every place it went, so we should never think that kuntao silat exists only among the Dutch-Indonesians. It exists all over S.E. Asia, if you can gain enough trust to be exposed to it.

Daghan Salamat

Steven Drape

Master Arthur Sikes conducted a very good seminar which consisted of the five elements, proper breathing, and of course the physical aspects of the kun-tao system. He explained every aspect so that anyone present could relate to what he was teaching.

He also brought Master Salomone and Master Jackson, who were very knowledgable. Joe Salomne has some tapes available and welcomes callers - his phone number is 1-888-7-tai-chi. We are going to have a seminar in September - the location will be the Excaliber Hotel in Las Vegas. We wish to extend an invitation to all martial artist regardless of experience. The cost will be $125.00 for a two day seminar plus room rates which I don`t have at this time. I will send more information as soon as we confirm the date and time. I`ll be in Jamestown, NY on or about June 15th or 16th. You can reach me at 716-664-5139. I`m also planning a trip to Canada. I`m very happy about finding Kuntaoers that trained with Willem Reeders. He was the best I`ve ever seen.

I`d like to thank you again for your help.

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An Escrima Summer Camp. Long time Fighting Arts Homepage friend Dr. Jerome Barber once again hosting this popular training event. It will be held on Saturday, July 12 & Sunday July 13 at the Erie Community College - South Campus in Orchard Park, NY. Grand Master Bobby Taboada will be teaching Balintawak Escrima Cuentada System and Punong Guro Tom Bolden will be teaching Pancipannci Eskrima and American Modern Arnis. The Summer Camp Fee Schedule is $99 Advanced Payment for both days - before June 30, $125 Payable at the Door, and $75 per Single session, Payable at the Door. Advanced paayments should be mailed to:

• Dr. Jerome Barber, IEAA
• Suite 230, 5999 South Park Avenue
• Hamburg, NY 14127

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