San Soo » Jimmy H. Woo
Chan Siu Dek, aka “Jimmy H. Woo”
There’s no question that the art of Kung Fu San Soo wouldn't be alive in America today if it was not for the legendary and mysterious fighter known as Jimmy H. Woo. And while most knew him as Jimmy, in Cantonese his real name was Chan Siu Dek, (Chen Shou Jue in Mandarin, Zhen She De in Pinyin, Chin Siu Dek in Hoisanese). We discuss the history of his art, Kung Fu San Soo, and his lineage, in depth in the history and lineage sections of this web site.
And we have to preface this section with our own disclosure. In the Kung Fu San Soo world, there is a great deal of confusion and personal divide about the memory of Chan Siu dek. We simply cannot pretend to speak for everyone or by absolute authority. Some of what we say here we actually remember ourselves from our time with him, although even those among us who were first generation students do not claim to have known him as well as the first generation masters who spent decades with him. Some things we attempt to document through outside sources. And some we simply hold to be 'accounts', and disclose them accordingly. We do our best to come as close as we can to the truth as we see it, although as with all of Kung Fu San Soo, it's a study in flux.
Family accounts now hold that Chan Siu Dek was born in Sanba Town, Taishan City, Guandong Province, China, in the early 1900’s. He began training as a child, but we're unsure exactly how old he was. Various assertions range from four years old to seven years old, but he told one of us his father started teaching him at six. As with many of the confusing accounts, the disparity could be something as simple as this: he may have begun form practice on his own at four, began to learn technique from his father at six, and began formal training at seven. That would be a perfectly logical explanation for the kind of variation we have with respect to all memorable accounts about the art. We simply don't know.
But we have heard that according to an interview with his cousin, Chan Sai Mo, son of Chan Siu Dek's great uncle, Chan Siu Hung, conducted in China on October 28, 2003, his formal training was exclusively in the art of Choy Li Fut. Chan Sai Mo said he did not know if Chan Siu Dek studied any other family of Chinese martial art after leaving China. Chan Sai Mo also said Chan Siu Dek's first trainer was a distant cousin, Wing Cheung, a student of Chan Siu Dek's great uncle, Chan Siu Hung. When Wing Cheung sustained a leg injury, Chan Siu Hung took over his training. Some recent accounts through Chan Sai Mo also suggest that in addition to Chan Siu Hung's Hero's Victory, Hung Sing Choy Li Fut training, Chan Siu Hung studied Hung Gar and Eagle Claw, suggesting that Chan Siu Dek may possibly have known at least something of those art families as well. We know nothing more about Wing Cheung, but Chan Siu Dek's own accounts hold his great uncle largely responsible for both his martial training and the development of his fighting character.
Everyone who knew him seem to remember him as a person so confident, so colorful, that almost no one ever forgot him. Smug as we are in an age of Caged Fights, "No Hold’s Barred" Mixed Martial Arts competitions, and video tapes of desperately brutal underground fights, few today can even remotely envision the kind of person who would stand up at a Kung Fu San Soo demonstration before hundreds in a venue like the Los Angeles County Fair — a county of millions, and not a place known to be particularly tame — and invite anyone who thought he might be tough enough to come up and fight him, on the spot, and with a conviction that was downright chilling.
“You might speak more better English”, he would calmly say with a confident smile, pointing his finger right at various individuals in the crowd. “You might play more better music. But I doubt very much if you a better fighter! But if you think you are," he'd say, his demeanor hardening and eyes narrowing, "I invite you to come up and prove it, right now! You life or mine!”
This could be in front of virtually anyone, of any size, and of any fighting background. When he demonstrated before representatives of the other Chinese martial arts schools, we remember him calling out, "You all know who I am. You know what I can do. If you think your Kung Fu is better than mine, come and prove it now." To our knowledge, no one ever successfully did, although many probably wanted to with great desperation, and there are stories of a few who tried.
His was always a full public challenge. He fought so many times only the visible scars might hint at his true inner experience. Several reports hold that by the age of 20, he had lost so many teeth by fighting that he had to be fitted with dentures. He possessed an astounding range of martial skills, so large in fact that first generation masters are still having difficulty placing all his skills into known Chinese martial 'styles'. And in the end, he died of old age. This is without a doubt, the right stuff, the stuff from which legends are made.
Individuals who never witnessed these challenges have a great deal of difficulty imagining them to be true. What they fail to take into account is the rare set of circumstances that occassionally come together to make a person great in any given field. Chan Siu Dek was first a fighter by nature. His great uncle not only taught him technique, but constantly urged him to fight with others around him in the streets of China from his early childhood to test and employ those techniques. He also learned the uncommon skill of almost completely dissassociating himself from consequences.
He would rather kill than loose a fight. He would rather die. So any opponent had to face a tough fighter, trained and practiced at techniques designed to injure, maim, or kill, and was perfectly willing to go to the extreme in an escalation. And that extreme was not unlike the 100 pound woman who goes mad, requiring five strong men to place her in a straight jacket, or the teen ager who lifts an automobile off of his injured brother with his bare hands. These traits did not make Chan Siu Dek unbeatable, but they definitely made him formidable. While Kung Fu San Soo is a remarkable fighting art — admittedly among many notable fighting arts — perhaps the art did not so much make Chan Siu Dek a great fighter, as his instructional efforts, real world examples, and training methods made Kung Fu San Soo a great art for true fighters.
In the center of all this, unable to take him on face to face, there were those who made attacks on his character, sometimes attempting to connect him with Chinese organized crime. But anyone purchasing into these attacks know almost nothing about Chinese American history. To understand anything about the man, one must put this all into context.
Chinese in America
The Guandong province of China, where Chan Siu Dek was born and raised, where his fighting ancestors opposed the inequities imposed on them by the Qing Dynasty, was the principal source for Chinese labor immigrating to America. Suffering under great conflicts like the Taiping Rebellion, the Punti-Hakka Clan Wars, and the Boxer Rebellion, Chinese refugees immigrated into various parts of the Western world, including British Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
In America they were used to mine gold in California on the Gum Shan, or Gold Mountain, to build railways, levies, waterways, dams, and roads, to harvest crops, build the citrus industry and Southern Pacific rail system in Southern California, and to construct the Transcontinental Railroad. They were even cheaper labor than mules. Before the advent of dynamite, they were lowered down in baskets to insert raw nitroglycerine into drilled out rock walls on Donner Summit in the Sierra Nevada, a job with such high mortality it produced the slur, "He doesn't have a Chinaman's chance," used long afterward in reference to a person in a position with long odds against him. When a job was done, the laboring Chinese individuals were discarded. In 1854 the California State Supreme Court included the Chinese with Blacks and Indians, and denied the group the right to testify against white men in courts of law.
With the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which extended until 1943, further immigration was prohibited, and those individuals that were here were prevented bringing in wives or family into the country. Associating with anglo women was violently opposed. Isolated from wives, and alienated by severe prejudice, the demand for Chinese brothels was even greater than it was in the rest of the non-Chinese West, where it's historically known to have been a flourishing trade.
The Chinese were often prevented from owning land and forcibly segregated into their own China Towns. But their towns were burned, again, and again, and again. In Los Angeles, in 1871, 500 whites went on an arson spree leaving 19 Chinese dead. The Chinese were left without policing or protection for their homes, their merchants, and their brothel and gambling establishments, establishments no different than those throughout the rest of Western America at that time, except that they were Chinese.
So it’s perfectly logical that they would extend the allegiances of their historic secret organizations into America to secure their own internal order, organizations that were probably at the very historic core of fighting arts like Kung Fu San Soo. These organizations formed into "benevolent societies" called Tongs, meaning a hall, or "place to gather". Along with clan organizations based on family surname, tong associations played a very important role for Chinese American immigrants.
In China, benevolent tong associations are very old. In recent history, the Tong Ming Hui supported Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, and were later reorganized into the Quo Min Tong, more commonly known as the Kuomintang, representing the Nationalist Party of China. The political platform of Tong Ming Hui was, "to overthrow the Manchu barbarians", which any Kung Fu San Soo history buff should find quite interesting.
In America, the various Tongs were known to occasionally fight among each other. As an aside, the Sonora School is very near the site of Chinese Camp in California, the site of the first and largest tong war in Chinese American history. But most of their effort went into welcoming new immigrants, helping them with the language barrier, communicating with family in China, and sometimes providing the common civil protection the rest of America took for granted.
Even today the Tong groups are highly secretive, and they very likely mirrored the fraternal trust built up by groups in China like the Red Flower Society, or Hung Fa Wui, and the Tian Di Hui, groups historically involved in the very creation of the Nánquán fighting arts, including the one known today as Kung Fu San Soo, to overthrow the Manchurian Qing Dynasty. Throughout the United States, many of these organizations often disguised themselves as Chinese Freemasons, blending into the Eurocentric secret society traditions common on the American frontier. In Los Angeles, the most notable of these organizations was the Hop Sing Tong, which was established there before 1877.
About the time the Japanese invaded Southern China in the mid 1930’s, or perhaps in anticipation a little earlier, family sources tell us that they arranged a passport for Chan Siu Dek under the assumed name, “Kun Haw Woo”, so he could travel to meet his father, who according to some important sources, had immigrated to America through Mexico 12 years earlier. We are told he later changed it to "Jimmy Haw Woo" at the suggestion of an American teacher.
Although some sources insist he arrived at the Port of Los Angles directly by steamship, given the immigration situation for Chinese in the early 1930's, we find it highly unlikely. We imagine that like his father before him, he most likely came into America illegally from Mexico.
On their respective arrivals, they very likely found food, shelter, and support from the benevolent society in Los Angeles China Town, the Hop Sing Tong. Probably because of the Exclusion Act, his mother remained behind. Although he is said to have sent her money while she was alive, he never saw her again. Given the mistrust by the Chinese after decades of American persecution, concerns about the Immigration Service, and fear about how his mother might be treated by the Communists in China, Chan Siu Dek apparently tried to keep an intelligent profile.
He insisted that he was born in Hawaii until the end of his life, thereby implying that he was an American citizen by birth under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, and always went by his assumed legal name, Jimmy H. Woo. This is particularly poignant because he was in fact a member of the very famous Choy Li Fut Chan clan with roots going all the way back to Chan Heung, the founder of Choy Li Fut, and while he did often assert it, he really freely couldn't use it to publicly support his art.
At the peak of Chinese labor, there were more than 500,000 Chinese working in America. By the time Chan Siu Dek arrived in the early 1930’s, repatriation, discouragement, and death had reduced that number to less than 25,000. The Great Depression was raging with 25% unemployment. No one was interested in more Chinese laborers, and the Chinese, especially those from the Southern provinces who were trained in the street fighting aspect of the Nánquán art of Wushu, were not interested in sharing their secret fighting art with Caucasians.
A Legendary Fighter
For decades he worked at various jobs, mostly around the Chinese restaurant and produce industry. There are also stories about him providing security for Chinese merchants in Los Angeles, following the historic necessitation and tradition for the Chinese to protect their own. People still tell stories about his martial skills. When local hoodlums began to prey on tourists, Chinese merchants complained, and there are claims that he walked the streets of Los Angeles China Town at night, intentionally attracting muggers, and dispatching them so effectively, that the trouble ended. Some say he bounced all of Los Angeles China Town during World War II. For those that knew him, these stories are all easy to believe.
It’s interesting to note that he was not the first Taishanese Tsoi Li Fut fighter to historically appear in Los Angeles. Lau Bun immigrated through Mexico in 1924. Stories about him indicate that after a serious confrontation with both Los Angeles Police and Immigration Officers, one where he fought them off and evaded them by jumping off a two story building, the Los Angeles benevolent organization, Hop Sing Tong, employed him as their head fighting instructor, and probably the chief of Chinese security. He left Los Angeles for San Francisco just about the time Chan Siu Dek arrived. Some accounts have Chan Siu Dek replacing Lau Bun as security consultant for the Hop Sing Tong. Similar accounts claim Chan Siu Dek sometimes visited Lau Bun at his Tsoi Li Fut school in San Francisco. Whether this is true or not, it's very interesting that this school lineage is one of the few places beyond the world of Kung Fu San Soo where we find the calligraphic word Chan Siu Dek used for ‘Ho’ replacing the traditional 'Mok' in the five family name, Tsoi Li Ho Fut Hung.
Teaching Kung Fu San Soo to Americans
For years, Chan Siu Dek taught through the Los Angeles Sing Kang or "cousin's club". But somehow the lineage never caught on and no one seems to know of a descendent school from the Sing Kang. And as we’ve discussed, teaching the true fighting aspect of the art in the quick fashion employed by Kung Fu San Soo to those outside one’s own family, culture, or sworn fraternal society, was severely discouraged by the Chinese.
This was an art steeped at its very core with mystery, blood oath honor, and intense loyalty. Unlike today, where we find dozens of arts taught in every part of every city, where we can take them or leave them, look them over with a smug contempt, the historic lineage of the art we call Kung Fu San Soo was not freely given away. It was prized, like the daughter of a king. A person had to earn the right to learn it, and the cost was not always cheap. Unlike most of us today, a person like Chan Siu Dek did not have the luxury of marching around displaying his belt ranking or a sport trophy — as much as we respect all those modern institutions and the tough individuals dedicated to them — but had to earn his 'rank' by consistently fighting in mortally serious combat, your life or mine, and survive. So for those of us who are lucky enough to study his art, the debt of gratitude we should hold is not possible to further describe in words.
But Chan Siu Dek allegedly won a large amount of money on a horse race, and somewhere around 1960-1962 he created a studio in the Midway Shopping Center in El Monte California, opening his doors to anyone willing to learn. He posted a motto over his desk. It read, “You can take my life, but not my confidence”. It's probably safe to say that everyone who met him, from the first look in his eyes, firmly believed it was true.
Those very few that didn't believe uniformly found out the hard way. The stories are always inspirational. One moment a "tough guy" would be mouthing off or make a move toward him, and the next instant that person would be lying on the floor, always stunned, sometimes quivering. One account holds that a very large kick boxer pushed his way into the El Monte studio one day, only to find himself humbled like this. This account holds that Chan Siu Dek stood over him proclaiming, "You come in like a lion...but you go out like a little pussy cat!"
We are told that Chan Siu Dek did not have a belt ranking system when he first started, as belt ranking was not common in China. In 1962, few had heard of Kung Fu, much less Tsoi Li Ho Fut Hung. So he first called his school, Chinese Karate Kung Fu, and later adopted a belt ranking system much like that popularly used at that time in the world of Karate, producing considerable confusion about the nature of the art, its origins, and the ranking. But it was a time when martial arts uniforms and belt rankings were commonly understood under the 'Karate' symbolism and lexicon by Westerners. It was before Bruce Lee, and well before the Kung Fu Television Series made the phrase a household name, even before Jackie Chan or Jet Li, and long before Kung Fu Hustle or Fearless.
Ed Parker was also busy at that time in Southern California popularizing American Kenpo as "American Karate Kung Fu". At about the same time, Al Moore Sr., trained in a Chinese Combat Lineage he referred to as Shou Shu, opened a series of schools in Northern California. Often referred to as "Moores Karate", this Chinese/Anglo lineage paralelled the growth of Kung Fu San Soo, had a similar Chinese background, and embraced the Karate styled uniforms and belt system. Even other ethnically true Chinese martial practitioners tried to describe their arts as "Karate Kung Fu". In in 1961, T. Y. Wong and K. H. Lee, wrote a book titled, "Chinese Karate Kung Fu: Original Sil Lum System for Health and Self Defense", right at the time Chan Siu Dek was opening his own school.
Some recent testimony suggest that later in life Chan Siu Dek admitted he regretted taking on the Karate-like belt ranking system and, given the opportunity, would have stayed with a more traditional Chinese ranking. For most Asian martial arts in America, emulating the Karate belt system was almost universally embraced during this time period, almost out of perceived necessity. But while many of the other systems emerging at that time really did become hybrids, Chan Siu Dek's teachings remained very close to his core lineage. From this and his fighting prowess, we know he and his art were the "real deal".
His method of teaching was quick and tough. He used to tell prospective students, "You give me 90 days, I make you a better fighter." And he often did. That’s a very different formality than most of the schools teaching Chinese martial arts, schools where many years of forms and fundamental training were required before even beginning to teach a student to actually fight. But the core art of Chan Siu Dek’s clan was based on the rapid teaching, intuitive spatial mapping, and fight response training refined in the Shaolin Temple in Fujian. And his method of teaching was the ancient, spontaneous two man fight training system called "san soo" in Cantonese.
As students progressed, he taught both traditional empty hand forms and weapons forms with traditional Chinese weapons. Both practices remain in the better Kung Fu San Soo schools today. But few students apparently showed any interest in other traditions associated with Chinese martial arts like Lion Dancing and he did not teach them, although many say he loved those arts. And although he apparently knew a great deal about the internal arts, reports suggest he only taught internal practices like Qigong or Push Hands to those few that expressed a specific interest. This is true even though Push Hands is a Taijiquan two-man exercise that although not so much in technique, but in historical origins, shares the same background as Kung Fu San Soo work out sparring. We are aware of no one who claims that he regularly taught formal Chinese internal exercises.
But while most view Kung Fu San Soo as an external art, Chan Siu Dek always stressed the use of the mind to manage, or 'operate', the body, a notion very much associated with the Chinese concept of Yi in the internal practices. This would be at least one aspect of the Fo Jia (Mandarin), or psychological element, of the Five Families of Kung Fu San Soo.
In the early days, men's classes were conducted separately from women's classes. Chan Siu Dek's daughter, Evelyn, taught the women's classes. In later years, the classes became coeducational. Today, most Kung Fu San Soo schools conduct coeducational classes.
Most great Chinese masters of the caliber of Chan Siu Dek knew a great deal about traditional Chinese medicinal practices, and many were "bone setters". In an age where modern medicine was nonexistent and in an art where serious fighting was highly likely to produce such injuries, masters often knew how to set broken bones, or realign displaced bones. We don't know for sure how much Chan Siu Dek knew about traditional medicine. But we do know of one particular incident for a fact, as it happened in El Monte to one of us from the Sonora School. When the student dislocated his fibula at the outside of his knee, Chan Siu Dek looked it over, and with a quick move, relocated the bone. When the student let out a howl, Chan Siu Dek helped him to his feet, and simply laughed out loud at his cry of pain and sent him limping back to practice.
It's probably safe to say that most of those that stayed with him for years often became pretty good fighters, and were truly capable of awesome demonstrations. One account holds that when the Beijing Wushu School Team did their first tour of the United States in 1974, a tour that included the famous Jet Li, Chan Siu Dek took some of his best students to do a demonstration of his art for them when they were in Southern California. The entire Wushu team is held to have given the Kung Fu San Soo group a standing ovation. We do not know if this is accurate or not, but we do find it believable.
While he never encouraged individuals to misuse the art, neither was he opposed to students defending themselves. It was not unusual for people to occasionally come to class with a black eye or a chipped tooth. All he ever said was, “Did you fight like I teach you”? If they said yes, he’d just nod and walk away. Accounts hold that Frank, Woolsey, one of his early black belts, accrued more than 300 street fights in those early days, with the Los Angeles County District Attorney, Ira Riner, one step behind him all the way. We fully realize the controversy Frank Woolsey caused with respect to the art, but his San Soo trained street fighting ability, along with fighters like Bill Lasiter, Raul Ries, and many others, did not go unnoticed. The reputation of Kung Fu San Soo spread around the Southern California area very quickly.
Chan Siu Dek used to tell stories about his great uncle, Chan Siu Hung, how they went from village to village selling Traditional Chinese Medicines and Dit Da Jow, and how they put on demonstrations not unlike those employed by Kung Fu San Schools today, although sometimes with very serious challenges and even mortal confrontations. He confided that on Chinese New Year, fighters sometimes used Opium to build a tolerance to pain before fighting, and that some of them were very, very dangerous at those events. The stories of selling traditional medicines is fully in keeping with the Chan family story placing Chan Siu Hung in the Choy Li Fut lineage, noting that Chan Koon Pak urged Chan Siu Hung to sell herbs and medicines for a living.
Many Kung Fu San Soo references occur suggesting Chan Siu Hung was killed in a fight with a Japanese officer during the occupation. Some accounts suggest that Chan Siu Dek may have had several 'uncles', being a term typically used to describe an older Kung Fu teacher, although we have no detailed information about any besides Chan Siu Hung. But according to recent testimony given by Chan Siu Hung's son, Chan Sai Mo, Chan Siu Hung died of old age. Yet according to early Kung Fu San Soo visitors who sought out Chan Siu Dek's mother in China during the mid 1980's, there was indeed a fight to the death with an uncle. But better sources suggest today that this was the person Chan Siu Dek called his "little uncle", and not his great uncle, Chan Siu Hung.
Chan Siu Dek often used to show students the scar that ran down his left forearm, from his wrist to his elbow, where he was attacked by a criminal in a Chinese kitchen with a meat cleaver. It was like a rite of passage for young new students. "Show us the scar, Jimmy!", they'd say. And he would. Not one to be demoralized by the effective loss of use in his left hand in a fight, he’d say, “Blocked the cleaver, knocked him into a vat of burning grease…scarred him for life.” He’d tell them how he spent hours on an operating table while doctors repaired the damage.
Chan Siu Dek taught until the early 1980’s, when he turned the El Monte school over to long time student, master Jack Sera, and went into semi-retirement. He continued to teach part time in private classes until his death in 1991. The only person left alive in China at the time of this writing who actually remembers him is his cousin, Chan Sai Mo, now in his mid nineties. Reports tell us that there are other younger cousins in China surviving Chan Siu Dek, and several cousins living in the United States. He is also survived by a daughter, Evelyn, a son, Warren Woo, two other children, and a grandson, J. P. King.
Depending on the source, he produced about 40 first generation masters and possibly hundreds of black belts. One of those first generation masters was Bill Lasiter, through whom the Sonora School traces its lineage. Hundreds have secured the master's rank in Kung Fu San Soo over the years, including second generation master, Rusty Wallace, founder of the Sonora School, and very likely thousands of black belts ranging in rank from basic black to seventh degree.
Everyone who knew Chan Siu Dek remembers a man so confident that he honestly appeared invincible, but a man so concerned with those around him he sometimes carried students who couldn’t pay. He was remembered both for this powerful American fight challenges, challenges he learned fighting the Lei Tai with his great uncle, Chan Siu Hung, as well as the times he would pause to encourage a child. About his students, he said, “Good boys, bad boys, you all my boys”. Laying a hand on a shoulder, he told one of us personally, "Remember, you one of my studen'. You ALWAY one of my studen'!" It was a comment taken to heart.
He was a great fighter from a historic lineage of legendary fighters, who produced his own modern lineage of many excellent fighters. In a rare 1974 interview televised on early cable, when asked what his art could do for a person, he replied it would make one a "Man among men, a fighter among fighters".
For most of his life he lived by a creed best described in his own word:
"In this art we have no rules or regulations. In a street fight there are no judges or referees.... A fight is a fight. It’s my life or yours! If you win, you might kill me. I fall down and crush my skull on the sidewalk, then I die. You break my nose or put out my eye then I’m ruined for life. I can’t honestly do less than my best and in a fight my best is to win."
Toward the end of his career, with the perspective of a modern, changing world, for the benefit of so many students putting their lives into Kung Fu San Soo in an age very different than the one he grew up in, he moderated his view slightly and added the slogan:
"The art of Kung Fu San Soo lies not in victory and defeat, but in the building of human character".
He was posthumously inducted into the Martial Art's Museum Martial Arts Hall of Fame for the year 2001, along with Helio Gracie and Jackie Chan. About the same time he was noted as one of the four most important people to come from the Taishan City region of China, in company with Gary Locke, the former Governor of the US State of Washington and the first person of Chinese descent to ever become a state governor, and Adrienne Clarkson, appointed by Queen Elizabeth II as the Governor General to the nation of Canada. This is particularly noteworthy as Taishan City is one of the regions where virtually millions immigrated to all parts of the world during the past 150 years. So to say that Chan Siu Dek, aka Jimmy H. Woo, was one in a million, is not at all an exaggeration.
But when we contacted the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, and the Chinese American Historical Society in Los Angeles trying to hunt down more information about him, neither organization knew who he was or that he ever existed. But they undoubtedly should. For all he gave them, it would seem many of his students have not taken the time to fully appreciate his memory.
