Monkey Kung Fu
The History
Introduction by Paulie Zink and Michael Matsuda

The history of Tai Shing, 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 village.  The punishment for the crime of 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 years in prison.

For Kou Sze, the sentence became a blessing in disguise.  Little did he realize he would soon be creating what many considered to be 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 trees, Kou Sze spent hours observing these monkeys 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, postures and footwork, Kou Sze realized that these actions were compatible with the Tei Tong style he had learned from childhood.  Kou then decided to combine these two styles of kung fu.

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 Tai Shing on a number of maneuvering principles which include agility, grabbing, falling, lunging and light art jumping and turning.  Its mental characteristics include sneakiness, unpredictability, deviousness, elusiveness and destructiveness.

Through careful study of the monkeys and combining the monkeys' maneuvering principles, Kou Sze was able to break down all of the monkeys' reactions and categorize them into five different personality types, thereby creating five different forms:

     The Tall Monkey

     The Lost Monkey

     The Drunken Monkey

     The Wooden Monkey

     The Stone Monkey

Years later, Kou Sze handed down his new style of fighting to his best friend's son, Ken Tak Hoi.  Ken Tak Hoi was already a master of the art of Pekwar.  After mastering both arts, Ken Tak Hoi opened a school in China where he combined the monkey art with his Pekwar style and called it "Tai Shing Pekwar."