When I Was Your Age
by Robert W.Young, Black Belt Magazine web site

Bucksam Kong one of those names that martial artists have heard for ears-even decades As one of he first masters to teach hung gar kung fu in the United States he is recognized as a pioneer in the Chinese martial arts. In 1974 he was inducted into the Black Belt, Hall of Fame as Instructor of the Year. He currently runs the Sil Lum Pai Gung Fu Association, based in Los Angeles.

Bucksam Kong was born and raised in Hong Kong, a city (and former British colony) tacked onto the southern part of the People's Republic of China. "Compared to now, Hong Kong was very different then," he says. Unlike a lot of martial artists who tell stories about street fights and running battles with the police, Kong says that because he was so young, he never really felt threatened.
That's why Kong ended up starting his martial arts training not for badly needed self-defense skills, but for the often overlooked health benefits.

"When I was young, I was sick all the time," he says. "I would catch colds and get fevers. That's why my mother wanted to start me in kung fu." And Kong did start training with his mother as his instructor. "She started teaching me eagle claw kung fu when I was 6," he says. "She had been learning that art for a long time, but she didn't teach anyone-except me."

At first, the young martial artist wasn't really sure if he liked eagle claw or not. If you've ever been forced by your parents to take any kind of lessons, you've probably been in the same boat. "But as I grew older, I started loving it," Kong says. "I kept practicing with my mother for a couple years."

When Kong turned 8, he began training under a hung gar kung fu instructor named Lum Jo. The boy must have liked the new style because he stayed with Lum Jo for more than 17 years.
"The training then was a lot different from the way I train people now," Kong says. "Classes were very strict. The sifu (master) always emphasized very low stances. We had to put a lot of force into every movement."
"We spent long periods of time learning each technique until we became very good at it," Kong continues. "Only then would the sifu teach us something else. If an instructor tries to do that these days, a week later he'll have no students."

Lum Jo ran a clinic in which he set broken bones and administered other medical treatments. So he probably didn't care how many students dropped out because the training was too severe. "He never had a lot of students," Kong says. "Nobody in Hong Kong did because the place was so small that getting 15 or 20 people into any room was hard."
Because it was so crowded in the training hall, Kong and his classmates practiced a lot on their own out of doors. "We learned all the forms first in class because they taught us how to apply the techniques," Kong says. "Then some classmates and I would get together and play around doing the forms and sparring. Sometimes it got pretty rough, but there weren't a lot of injuries because we always used a lot of self-control." Few kung fu instructors used any kind of ranking system back then, Kong says. "The class was more like a family. The instructor was like the father, and the students were like brothers and sisters. Those who started taking lessons at the school first were addressed as 'elder brother' and 'elder sister,' and those who started after you were 'younger brother' and 'younger sister.'''

Toward the end of his days in the colony, Kong decided to sample choy li fut kung fu. "It wasn't too difficult to do another art because all along I had been exposed to different styles through my friends," he says. "I often got together with them to exchange ideas. The problem with this nowadays it that martial artists always like to think they are the best. Everybody wants to be No. 1; there's no No. 2."
Kong believes the martial arts had a good reputation in Hong Kong then-and continue to have a mostly good reputation around the world-because they're not just about learning self-defense. "The main reason is that they teach you the kung fu virtues: honesty, humility and all those things. You also learn a lot of culture."

In an effort to spread kung fu and Chinese culture, Kong moved to Hawaii in 1957 and started teaching hung gar late in 1963. "Back then, karate had just come to Hawaii; there weren't a lot of schools," he says. "When I started teaching kung fu to the public, people in the Chinese society there didn't like it. They said I was teaching locals who would learn kung fu and use it to beat up our own kids. They didn't like it at all."
But Kong didn't back down. He argued that there are good kids and bad kids in every country, and he said he was training only the good kids.
"I said, 'If you train them right, there's nothing wrong with that,"' he says. "So I kept on teaching the public, and gradually the Chinese society gave in."

Kong taught in Hawaii for more than 13 years. He moved to Los Angeles around the end of 1976, where he still teaches and practices hung gar. Although his love for the style has never faded, he advises kids to take up any style that appeals to them. "The health benefits of kung fu can be gotten from virtually any martial art," he says. "They are the most important benefit for the average student."

by Robert W.Young, Black Belt Magazine web site