Passing of the Old Guard

 A friend recently shared the article below about the passing of Master Wu Xi Qing, a White Crane boxer who lived to the venerable age of 90.

Having spent the summer in England, I discovered just a few days ago that my old White Crane boxing friend, Master Wu Xi Qing 吳西卿, passed away earlier this year. He was 90 years old. I would stop off at Master Wu’s tea shop on the way back from my Bagua Zhang classes in Taiwan’s Tainan County where he would often share his views and teachings on Chinese boxing and health cultivation. Sometimes, to illustrate a point, this would involve impromptu sparring in the doorway of his cafe. As he struck simultaneously at my throat and groin, regular customers wandered past entirely unfazed. 

 

More than anything I remember his laughter. He was an old school boxer who would chuckle at the run-ins he had with local mobsters (Master Wu was of a generation of martial artists who would pick fights with street hoods to test their own skills —- until the latter began arming themselves with firearms). His teachers, meanwhile, were fascinating. One had been taught on the Mainland by a priest at a mountain temple where he learnt to circulate qi in harmony with White Crane movements. Other boxers Master Wu learnt from would slip in secretly by boat to teach young Taiwanese in the days of Japanese occupation. The most powerful of these was Ah Feng Shi, a small man from Fujian whom the family paid in opium. Staying for months at a time on the Wu family estate, Ah Feng was sometimes listless until given a pipe, at which point he would leap up and express formidable boxing skills. No local martial artist could beat him. For health cultivation, Master Wu studied with the famed Qigong master Tu Chin Sheng, renowned in Taiwan for pulling a truck with his manhood as a test of his mysterious 99 Shen Gong training.  

Master Wu Xi Qing had in-depth knowledge and practical experience in a rich world of traditional wushu, and I am going to miss his matter-of-fact, practical explanations on everything from the energy of trees to Taiwanese street shenanigans. But what was particularly interesting about him was that although his methods were focused more on practical fighting, his applications were always light to the touch. Master Wu’s White Crane strikes shocked when they hit, yet prior to that moment, he kept his entire body as relaxed as any skilled T’ai Chi practitioner. I can’t claim to be an inheritor of his gongfu, but I did gain a deeper respect for Shaolin boxing and enjoy some good stories and sparring along the way. His hometown of Xinying is now missing a boxer from a remarkable lineage that can never be replaced.