Ji Shou Hu Background
On hearing that a young Sin The` (before he was Grandmaster) was going to leave on a school field trip to Bali (another island of Indonesia), Great-Grandmaster Ie requested that young Sin look up an old colleague of his by the name of Ji Shou Hu. Great-Grandmaster Ie said that Ji Shou Hu's martial art skill was very famous when he lived in China and that Grandmaster Sin would be well advised to observe him if possible. Upon arrival in Bali, Grandmaster Sin was happy to find that Ji Shou Hu was giving a public demonstration.
It is well known that the chain whip is one of the most difficult Shaolin weapons to master. Ji Shou Hu's demonstration went a step further than most. He performed the chain whip swings while riding a bicycle. The crowd was amazed as he showed his complete mastery of the chain whip. This included "hopping" the bike up and spinning the whip underneath. For the finale he approached seven women holding Chinese coins between their thumb and forefinger. Remember that Chinese coins (yuan) have a hole in the center. Ji Shou Hu began snapping the whip toward the women with incredible speed. When he finally stopped, he held the whip up for the audience to see seven coins pierced and stuck on the pointed tip of his chain whip. At this point the crowd went wild.
The crowd then quieted as Ji Shou Hu raised the whip handle and extended his Chi power into the weapon. The whip began to straighten out horizontally, one link at a time until finally the entire chain whip stood straight from his hand. At his command the whip fell limp again at his side. In describing this Grandmaster Sin compared this to spiking the football after a touchdown. The crowd went absolutely crazy. This was the extent and depth of Ji Shou Hu's training in Shaolin.
The Challenge and Exchange
To understand how Ji Shou Hu attained such a high level of proficiency in martial arts, we have to go back many years ago to mainland China. In China the challenging of another martial artist was quite common. This was the way that you established a reputation as well as to test your fighting skills against other highly skilled people. Ji Shou Hu had a martial art school and was himself quite use to the procedure of accepting challenges.
One day a man approached his school and issued such a challenge. As was the practice, Ji Shou Hu instructed one of his lower rank students to fight the man first. By doing so Ji Shou Hu would insure that he didn't humiliate himself by defeating someone to far below himself. If the student easily defeated the challenger then Ji Shou Hu would know that the challenger was unworthy to stand across from him.In this instance, the challenger literally wiped the ground with Ji Shou Hu's student. One by one Ji Shou Hu deemed the stranger worthy and agreed to accept the challenge himself. As was the tradition, they scheduled the fight to begin the following day at sunrise. The first day they fought from sun-up to sun-down without a resolution to the fight.
Again tradition dictated that fighting stopped at dark, and then the partying began. Along with his students Ji Shou Hu and the challenger ate and drank late into the night. The following day they fought again at daybreak.
This lasted for three days, and according to custom, at the finish of the third day a draw was called. The two were very evenly matched men had found a great amount of respect for each other and confessed that they had much to learn from each other.
Ji Shou Hu had by now learned that his new friend was none other than the Ground Dragon Master. In order to share their knowledge, he suggested the Ground Dragon Master stay at his house for six months. During that time he would teach Ji Shou Hu the Ground Dragon style for three months and the would learn Ji Shou Hu's art for three months. The Dragon Master commented that during all his years he had never encountered anyone faster and more powerful than Ji Shou Hu. His every punch exploded with speed and incredible killing force.
It will then interest you to know that when it came Ji Shou Hu's turn to teach his art, he instructed the Dragon Master to practice the BOW stance only for the first month. The second month he made him stand in the HORSE stance constantly. In the third month he taught the Dragon master the Short Katas (the EXACT ones YOU start learning at White Belt). This was Ji Shou Hu's secret technique! The deep stance training combined with the explosive and direct nature of the Short Katas enabled him to strike fast and with devastating power.
Grandmaster Sin told us this story to motivate us and raise our spirits about the Short Katas. We must never put them aside as "lower" belt material to be learned and forgotten. We shouldn't do that with any of our techniques for that matter. Most importantly this story teaches us that virtually everything we learn has the ability to transform us and unlock doors to a whole new level of mastery. What is required of us is only a respect for the ability of Shaolin-Do to do this and the diligent practice to make it happen.