There was the scent of Chinese herbal medicine distilling slowly inside a giant jar in one corner of the miniscule room. A row of books on Martial Arts pressed against a wall - Tohei' Aikido, Nakayama's Shotokan Karate, a thick volume by Oyama, one of Ta'i Chi Chuan (Yang style I was told later), a few Chinese paperback manuals, a couple of texts and a graph on acupuncture and sundry combat magazines from Hongkong and America. A 9-sectional steel whip, rusting and ancient, was hanging from nail.
On on side of the spartan affair was a single bed, unmade and apparently just slept on. In one corner were a table and chair. One immediately noticed the carefully balanced pictures under the clean glass top. Shots of martial artists in varied poses. One showed a stocky old man, silver-haired, a master of the White Crane style of Chinese Kung-fu, in a horse stance, his hands frozen into a pair of beaks. Another showed an even older man, bald and lean, almost asceptic, the famous Sifu Lao Kim, in a typical dragon tail hand, his eyes penetrating and intense. There was of course, the resident master himself, Johnny F. Chiuten, Jr., with a few of his disciples in the Beta Sigma Kung-fu Karate Clan of the University of the Philippines. I recognized Noli Nolasco, a tournament champion and the fraternity's senior instructor, and Jopet Laraya who was to become a close friend and classmate under Master Lao's tutelage.
A tiger stared from the scroll on the farthest wall. A crouched beast amid tall grass. A second look at the picture showed the feline grace and the steady and deep black eyes. A hunter ready to spring at its quarry.
As I tried to decipher the calligraphy on the right side of the painting, I felt somebody behind me. It was Johnny who had walked quietly into the room.
Outside, a handful of students were skirmishing in the yard, oblivious of the April sun that was shinning hotly from a cloudless sky. Johnny looked out to see the proceedings that had gone hysterical and lively, and barked an order in Tagalog. Shaking his head and suppressing a smile, he began putting on his karate gi, a well-pressed, white kimono, and his black belt. Presently, he was showing the finer points of a kata from the Hongkong style of Chinese Kung-fu Wushu.
CONSUMATE TACTICIAN AND FIGHTER
Johnny is a consummate tactician and fighter. His style is without flourishes, shorn of fancy gestures and posturings. Through the year I had studied with him I had grown to respect his sense of distance and authority. He never overwhelms his students: he is only a step or two ahead of them. Heknows the vulnerable point of his opponent even before the actual attack, and he is always there to expose it.
He gave me a different time whnever we sparred. Many times I was hurt, but I never experienced fear at the moment of danger. There was probably only one time I felt terror. It was a frightening experience that skirmish we had done one Ash Wednesday. Johnny had sparred with every one of my classmates and, as usual, he had made me wait until the last. When it was my turn, he attacked like a whirling dervish. His kicks came in quick succession. I tried to return his techniques as best as I could, but Johnny seemed to position himself beyond my range. Always as I pursued his exposed side, he shifted to protect it and simulataneously mounted an attack of his own that left me baffled and helpless.
Sparring with Johnny was an earnest encounter. There were no moments of rest because he pursued without letup. Finally, as I attacked him with a sequence of foot and hand combination he employed a technique that he had so often during conversations demonstrated. It was a quick stab with his index finger to a vulnerable meridian of the leg. In the hot sun, with my blood surging strongly and my lungs fast getting short of breath, I fell on the pavement. Pain as intense as cramp shot up from the target. Johnny knelt down and inspected the damage.
In typical fashion, he said "It's alright". He massaged the spot firmly, explaining how the finger was moved until the broken vessel was restored. I felt a mixture of pain and fear and relief.
Pictures taken of that encounter revealed a great deal about Johnny's prowess. His sense of control and mastery, the vast array of techniques at his command, his knowledge of the human body. On my part, I learned a few lessons, albeit painfully. Further, there are profound principles behind the martial arts enunciated in Sun-tzu and Tao Te Ching and Analects, even in Chu-te and Mao. That the internal arts, so soft and yielding as water, are probably the most sophisticated distillation of the empty-hand disciplines to have emerged out of China.
It was of course Johnny himself who like one classic Chinese painting of an old man pointed the way. But in the beginning, it was an effort chipping away at the encrustation of conventional ideas, the westernization, the obvious and mundane. While I had some background in the mysticism of Tagore, the poetics of Li-Po (discovered, ironically enough, through Gustav Mahlers Song of the Earth and the annotations of Lin-Yu Tang, I was much too influenced by materialism to appreciate the abstruse truths and paradoxes of the Orient. It was a long period of emptying my cup, to shift my metaphors, before I could begin to receive the essence of eastern discipline. A generation that has seen Hiroshima and Vietnam must find it difficult to acquire the finer consciousness of the Tao in life and art. Between Hollywood and the Play is a road that's hard to travel.
Now, in this milieu of hamburger stands, grafitti, bigness, speed, competition, and profit, one contemplates what one has lost the profound disciplines and philosophies, the enduring values, the "vital minimum" Simone de Beauvoir yearned for. It is ironic that this culture that decimated the civilization of the East has suddenly taken an interest in eastern art and culture. In every other corner or block, there I a dojo or a temple with the mandatory calligraphy. Even in the helping professions (therapy, consciousness raising, psychiatry), there is a widespread adaptation of zen techniques and methods and meditative exercises. We who are considered "mongrels" and "barbarians", fit for the "civilizing influence" of the West are now suddenly the fountainhead of culture and wisdom.
It was, strangely enough, Kung-fu Wushu that led to my interest in Asian culture. Johnny demonstrated a technique and followed it with an elaborate explanation which it turned out, came from Chinese philosophy. Indeed he did not just teach Chinese philosophy: he lived it.
HUNG STYLIST
Johnny's forte was the Hung style, learned assiduously from Master Lao Kim himself. He also studied Japanese karate and aikido, which he integrated into his system. Johnny wasn't the type who hopped from one style to another aimlessly. He learned a school to know its strengths and weaknesses. He did not boast of having a lot of katas or having studied with many teachers. He did not travel to Taiwan or Hongkong or China to further his studies. The Philippine Chinatown, crossroads of Asian martial artists, was his turf.
Hung is one of the oldest styles of Kung-fu wushu. Perhaps, it is not surprising that, like many other styles, it is based on the movement of animals. For in the dawn of man, the beast was god. The ancient priest aped the tiger or the snake in his rites to compole obedience from the tribe. Man wasn't much of a fighting weapon; he did not have the speed of the deer, the ferocity of the tiger and the leopard, the cunning of the monkey, the grace of the flamingo, the striking speed of the snake. The second best thing, then, was to imitate these denizens of the jungle.
AUSTERE FORM
Each master has left his imprint on the original Hung style. Master Lao Kim's different from Master Bucksam Kong or Master Y.C. Wong, though basically they are still patterned after the Five Animal Form devised in the Shaolin Temple. Master Lao Kim is probably the most austere of all the Hung styles I have seen, more austere in fact than Master Lao Ke Tong's of Hongkong.
It was this style that Johnny had religiously studied. He and Master Lao used to meet in private in the most unlikely places abandoned buildings, backyards, empty rooms in Chinatown. The lessons were not a two-hour classroom exercise, but a grueling encounter, very punishing and painful. There were no courteous bows during sparring, no warning. Master Lao attacked unexpectedly, even while they were in conversation. One time Johnny had to dodge a sword thrown at him as he entered the temple.
In time Johnny became so proficient, Master Lao let him face the visiting masters from Hongkong and Taiwan who came to Ongpin to challegne the legendary sifu. The foreign masters were a colorful lot: experts in different styles, with specialized weapons (vibrating palm, dim mak, etc.). Johnny learned from his exposure to the masters of different schools. He synthesized and experimented.
TAI-CHI-CHUAN AND PAKUA
Around 1967 Johnny and I began studying ta'i chi chuan in Binondo. It was then I was really convinced that Johnny had that rare gift, that genius for the martial arts. For he learned in a couple of lessons what I had tried to study in two months. He saw certain techniques where I saw only a pattern of motion. At the same time, he learned P-Kua too. But what was truly amazing was the phenomenal development of Johnny within that short period of training in the internal arts. In perhaps an access of enthusiasm, he declared that many of the techniques of just a year back had become obsolete. Indeed, to me, that's how it looked. Striking and blocking, even weaving, techniques had significantly altered. Johnny, for instance, no longer blocked or dodged a punch; he yielded to it and, more, used it to his advantage. His new techniques were even more efficient and frightening than the hard techniques he had learned and taught. Fingers pressured points, forearms pushed and probed, legs jammed and trapped techniques. Johnny also learned to bounce me off on contact, to propel energy as if there was force-field enveloping his arms. He seemed to be mastering air from somehwere, perhaps, from an internal source. At the same time, he managed to keep his breathing down, a discipline of utmost importance to those who is aware of the finer points of the art.
It's a long way from the time Johnny used to demonstrated Karate with his fraternity brods at the Lantern Parade in Diliman, in the early 60's. A long distance from the notoriety of campus rumbles when Johnny gained the reputation of being street tough. I used to see him then as he huddled with his disciples at the Vinzons Hall, then as now, the university watering hole for students thirsting for camaraderie and drink. Johnny was an awesome figure many feared. It was whispered that he could kill with a single stab at the right time and place.
There were occasions when I saw him limping or with his arm in a sling. A friend told me that Johnny was studying in Chinatown with a mysterious old man, who turned out to be Master Lao Kim. When I did get to meet Johnny (I don't remember how) he told me about his training, the different styles and masters in Chinatown and an intriguing figure named Shakespeare Chan. "He is very fast", Johnny used to say. "He gave me a lot of problem," he added, but wouldn't elaborate. I heard that Master Chan had gone to Hongkong and was studying with several Kung-fu masters. At this time, Johnny was honing his knowledge of Hung style with Master Lao.
It ws a time when Kung-fu wushu was still an obscure fighting art propagated almost exclusively in Chinatown. Today, about 15 years later, Johnny is getting the recognition he deserves and what Erwin Castillo called the Kung-fu underground has come to the surface into the limelight.
Johnny F. Chiuten has mellowed in temper and style. I understand that he has become reclusive, is spending more time cultivating his chi and is engaged in the propagation of arnis de mano in the South.
I haven't seen Johnny for more than 7 yers. But from the tenor of his correspondence and our conversation over the telephone when he was in Canada, I sensed that the Tiger had not lost his ferocity and brilliance. He sounded like he had developed deadlier techniques, which he wanted me to "see" meaning, in the context of our relationship and experience, a secret free-sparring session in the wee hours of the morning.
Viewing the prospect of "seeing" Johnny's new techniques, I can only feel apprehensive. For I am not sure if I can take any more punishment at my age. I can no longer take the humiliation of being pushed around and lectured at the same time. I can almost see him stalking me, a half-smile playing on his face, and then suddenly, moving in without warning, like a tiger descending on its prey.
