Martial Arts

My name is Harry Lee Chow. I was born in 1950 in Washington, dc You know, growing up in the area, I grew up in an all black neighborhood. And I, from what I understand, that’s why some people say I have a Southern accent because I grew up with with black folks that all came from the South, and they come from Georgia, Alabama Mississippi, all around that area. But I gotta say, being Chinese, living in an all black neighborhood was not always a good experience. I had plenty of good black friends. I mean, I really had really good black friends, but there’s quite a few black folks that always remind me that I was different. And it got to the point where my mom and dad, we, we’d be walking down the street or, you know, around the neighborhood and I’d tell ’em, don’t speak Chinese gonna’ ever make fun of us.

You know, and, and so at, at that time period, I was not proud to be Chinese. I, I, I just felt outta place because I was always reminded that I was different. People call me, I got in a fight a few times. I didn’t know how to fight. I would just swing, you know, I didn’t, I got in a fight a few times and I got jumped by like four guys at one time, . And I didn’t know how to fight, but I got beat up. Well, my Sunday school teacher handed me this book. ’cause You know, I, I, I think I was talking to him about being bullied on you know, and he gave me this book on karate, and he said, just check it out. You know, he gave me this book. He said, these are, you know, a, a, a fighting takings from Asia.

You know, it’s Japanese, but it, it’s a, you know, it’s a good, good to learn. I, I looked at it and I, I, I didn’t study it in depth, but I looked at it and, and to understand the movements. And I didn’t quite understand it ’cause nobody taught me. And, and, and I, I think through my father and, and him, I think I heard the term fu ’cause the Cantonese and ese call it kung fu, the Mandarin call it Kung fu, but kung fu is what most people know it. And actually kung fu and kung fu means working man, working man to the point where you hone a skill. That’s what it really means. And it, it just sort of referred to the martial arts indirectly, because that’s what you gotta do in order to you know, for your skills to mature to a higher level. And so it wasn’t until I, when I was in high school, when I went to McKinley Tech, it, it was by happenstance. I was walking in the hallway going towards the gym, and I saw a crowd in the hallway looking at this guy, and I was looking at him and he was doing martial art movements.

And I looked at him and he looked at me, he noticed I was Asian . And he started talking to me, and I told him I was Chinese and said, oh yeah, I practiced Kung fu. I said, what? I said, yeah, so, you know, I, I, my eyes lit up and we started conversing. He invited me to to practice with him and, and I got to know Josephus Covin, and I called him, his nickname is Kung Fu Joe. And so I, I started practicing with him at Banneker. It was a group, a loose group of us, Spanish Joe, Jimmy Kung Fu Joe and William Brooks. We used to all hang out together and work out whenever we can. Rock Creek Park Meridian Hill Park or Malcolm X Park or some other park. I went, I work out with friends at, at Turkey Thicket and, and other places.

So we, we had a lot of informal workout in, in, in, in a somebody’s backyard or, or a parking lot. And through William Brooks, we started working out with Robert W. Smith. he was he taught Tai Chi. He was a, a marine guy that worked at the I think it was either the CIA or FBI, but I think it was CIA And he lived in Bethesda, Maryland. And he worked out every Saturday morning at the YMCA. And he also taught us a basic child form, the basic, the basic ying y ory and, and bagis form. So we just pr practiced whatever we could. We worked out at various areas in Rock Creek Park, you know, Kung Fu Joe and I, and what happened was, he was talking to me about Bondo Bondo is Burmese karate. And, and he mentioned that Maida was the sensei or the teacher, and Ho q Lee was his assistant.

My friend Lester Lee went to school with Ho Q and he said, ho Q would get into a lot of fights at school. And, and when I talked to Ho Hug about it, he said, yeah, we need learn, you know, if what I understand what he says, that, that when he learned a technique, you wanna try it out, , he pick a fight with somebody. And, and I went to a lot of terms, ho Q when, when we were in Bondo, and that guy can fight, and he was a good fighter. And, and even Kung fu Joe said, you gotta look at that guy. Watch him fight, you know? And when he sparred in class, in Bondo class, I watch him fight. I watch him, you know, watch his technique and go to tournaments. I remember he had this really fast sidekick when everybody tried to charge in at him. His sidekick would shoot right out and stop him. I mean, really fast sidekick. But anyway Hoy Hugh could fight. He opened up a school on I street

I forgot, forgot the address, but it was I street near Chinatown, a block away from Chinatown. But yeah so we worked out there and, and, and it was Hoku that taught there. He taught there for one year maybe a year or beyond a year, because when I was there, I learned little tiger flowery fizz, goon lick. I learned a a broad sort form. And I started on a stick form and I learned a little bit more than half of it. And then it’s like a year or so later, Dean Chin came aboard and he started, he took over and ho he left. And so that was my form in, in terms of, you know, working out with, with the, all the people, Kung fu karate people at that time period. It’s amazing to me that this, the culture, the Chinese culture created such a, a unique and interesting fighting style.

And I like doing it not be, I don’t want to be a killer. I don’t want to fight anybody. I don’t, you know, I like it for self-defense, but mainly because it’s a beautiful art. It’s intricate. The movements are beautiful. I, I like the, the, the hand movements the kicks, the, you know, tornado kicks, the swallow tail kicks, and it’s unique and every, every style is unique. I like looking at the Southern style. I learned a little about, a little, about a little bit about the southern style, the southern hand techniques, like in Wing Chun. And they’re unique and practical and, and the theories behind it. Each style has a different theory of how to do things. You know, like the Wing Chun style, they have the center line. You fight from the center line and certain angles, and you look at the Hong Guard style, you know, they, they use animal techniques and it’s hard to use.

It’s more muscular. And then you look at the, the northern style, they have more sweeps, jumps kicks wide sweeping movements beautiful movements that, that, you know, very acrobatic. And that’s why you, you see a lot of it in, in Chinese opera. Some style uses emphasize, emphasize mostly hands and other combination of both. And some styles just emphasize low kicks, you know, to middle to the hip area to, to the lower legs and others high above, you know, to the head. A lot of styles have over around 20 forms. That’s a lot of freaking forms. But no style is the end all and be all, no style has all the answers. Every style is unique. And also I found out through throughout the years that no style is pure,

Every style evolved. I, I don’t think Wing Chun looked like it does in modern time, when it did like, what, a few hundred years ago or some other style like Tiger and Crane and, and so no style is pure. They always seem to be evolving. So you know, I, I like doing that because it keeps me, you know, in touch with my culture, I guess it makes me feel Chinese, I guess, . And, and so what I found was that it, since Kungfu became so popular, you know, especially when the advent of the appearance of Bruce Lee and, and a lot of kids, a lot of people, especially young kids, they respect Kung fu and that, and that I found that I, I, I had a lot more black friends that understand Kung fu because they appreciate the Chinese culture because of it.