Monkey Kung Fu Michael Matsuda

The History of Tai Shing Pek Kwar
Certified by the U.S. Tai Shing Pek Kwar Association. Presented by 6th Generation Master Michael Matsuda

The history of Tai Shing Men, or Monkey kung fu begins at the turn of the century, near the end of the Ching Dynasty (1644-1911), when a short-tempered fighter from Northern China named Kou Sze was arrested for killing a fellow villager. The punishment for the crime of taking someone's life was either death or life imprisonment. To save Kou Sze from either penalty, a close and influential friend managed to bribe the presiding judge to reduce Kou Sze's sentence to only eight year in prison, in solitary confinement.

For Kou Sze, the sentence became a blessing in disguise. Little did he realize he would soon be creating what many consider to be one of the most unusual and effective kung fu systems ever devised.

The prison was located in a forest on the outskirts of town. By a strange fate the cell window faced a woodland of tall trees which harbored a colony of chattering monkeys frolicking and swinging from tree to tree. Fascinated by the monkeys' playful antics among the tree, Kou Sze spent hours everyday observing them in their natural habitat. He carefully studied their behavior in different situations and, after a couple of years, was able to distinguish the different characteristics of individual monkeys.

After categorizing each of the monkey's fighting techniques, mobility, and footwork, Kou Sze realized that these actions were compatible with the Tei Tong style of kung fu he had learned from childhood. Kou Sze then decided to combine these the Tei Tong with the monkey movements.

The end of his prison term marked the true beginning of the art of Tai Shing (the Great Sage). Kou Sze named this special monkey fighting in honor of Sun Wu Kung, the legendary Monkey King in the Chinese folklore "Journey to the West."

Kou Sze based the art of Tai Shing on a number of maneuvering principles which include agility, grabbing, falling, lunging, and light art jumping and tumbling. It's mental characteristics include sneakiness, unpredictability, deviousness, elusiveness, and destructiveness.

Through careful study of the monkey and combining the monkey's maneuvering principles, Kou Sze was able to break down all of the monkeys' reactions and categorize them into five different personality types, thereby creating the five forms of the monkey:
   The Tall Monkey
   The Wooden Monkey
   The Lost Monkey
   The Stone Monkey
   The Drunken Monkey

Monkey style kung fu was never devised as a performance art, nor does it include any extreme flexibility or Indian yoga movements, it is a very brutal and hard hitting art to render great pain to
its opponent.

Why Pek Kwar is listed with Tai Shing
First, Pek Kwar kung fu is a separate Chinese art form. It is an axe-fist art that has nothing whatsoever
to do with Tai Shing. Grandmaster Kou Sze never learned or taught Pek Kwar. The only reason the
name Pek Kwar is attached to Tai Shing is that the 2nd Generation Monkey Grandmaster, named Ken Tak Hoi, was a master of both Pek Kwar and Monkey. Therefore, he called the school by both kung fu names, Tai Shing and Pek Kwar. Pek Kwar is not a foundation for Monkey, their fighting methods are completely different. It would be wiser to learn just Monkey and not Pek Kwar because they have nothing in common.

To learn about the other monkey styles, click here.

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