Monkey Kung Fu 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 villainous villager. The punishment for the crime to 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.

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 system 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, flexibility, and foot- work, 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 Ta Sheng 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

Years later, Grandmaster Kou Sze handed down his new style of fighting to his best friend's son, Master Ken Tak Hoi. Ken Tak Hoi was already a master of of the art of Pek Kwar kung fu. Since Master Ken Tak Hoi was the successor of the art, he is considered the Second Generation Master. At the time Master Ken Tak Hoi decided to combine both the arts of Tai Shing and Pekwar.

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