Keohi, Kang Rhee, Martial Arts and Me

Keohi took his second Pa Sa Ryu (a style of Korean martial arts similar to Karate/Tae Kwan Do/Tang Soo Do) class yesterday. He's in the Little Dragons class. He went to my dad's maternal cousin's dojang Kang Rhee. Kang Rhee (www.kangrhee.com) is my one claim to pop star fame as he was the guy that taught Elvis Presley karate--and to that end, received a Cadillac, guitar, a weekend in Las Vegas, from the King, and even now, his studio is visited from Elvis fans from around the world. I remember Tetsuo actually came to Memphis from Japan to study with him. Tetsuo also worked as an Elvis impersonator on the weekends in the Mississippi casinos. He sang at my Dad’s birthday one year. He was a pretty good Elvis.

Elvis Presley had a profound effect on Memphis and like many small cities or towns, it’s people’s proximity to certain celebs that govern perceptions that others have. In Memphis there are probably different ways to calibrate your social register rankings, but Elvis is probably one of them. But it’s not easy. My now retired dentist was once asked to be the Graceland dentist. He declined the offer. Apparently, you had to be on call all the time. Who wanted to get called to do a teethcleaning in the middle of the night? Even if it was Elvis’ teeth?

Anyway, Kang Rhee made a big impact on my own life. I studied with him rather seriously in 1994 and would best describe my existence then as about 75% karate. I was obsessed, and then later taught it when I was back in college. Now I’d probably kill myself doing a kick, but back then it was way of thinking and not a bad one at that. I learned a great deal from him, and from people who studied under him. I consider it an honor that I had the privilege to be in his dojang for the brief time that I was there. I had many good martial arts instructors, but he was one of my best and most influential.

Kang Rhee has his own myths here in Memphis. Legend has it that when he first arrived in Memphis in the early 1960s, all he knew were the words “Follow me” and that people did. He built a big school here and was one of the first to bring martial arts to the U.S.—he did demonstrations in Madison Square Garden and was on the karate circuit with Bruce Lee and counts among his comrades the real old-timers, the first of those to bring their art form from Asia to the States.

Frankly, I’m not a sports fan, but the one sport I would be pleased to have Keohi learn, if not love, would be the martial arts, so I was happy to see him run and kick and punch. To do it well requires grace and coordination and an execution of movement that is like dance. It has been years since I was in a studio and watched anyone and there was Kang Rhee, at age 70, still demonstrating with strength and agility the technique of a man decades younger. Amazing. You can have all of the science and stem cells and research, but the truth is a life based around movement, repetition of physical motion, a sensible diet and routine patterns is the key to longevity, and probably piece of mind. I’d say that’s how Kang Rhee lives and I would also say that I have met only a handful of other people who live the same way. But truly, a master can only be judged by his students and there was too, a young man who did a great demonstration of a form. Kang Rhee is a good teacher.

My own off and on journey with martial arts began at the age of 10 when my mother dragged me to a judo class after neighborhood chicken fights left me crying. I was rather small, and this was Iowa, and guess what, kids picked on other kids and at the time, I was not always, but sometimes a victim of this in the neighborhood. Mom being from the ole pineapple plantation in Waihawa was probably not keen on seeing me be a wimp.

A few days later I found myself in the presence of Dr. Hahn and Paul, his son, and his son’s friend, David. Two little 10 year old boys and myself. For about a month I went once or twice a week and learned to flip and fall correctly (actually, I still knoll the roll and a few good blocks from that time—not necessarily the same ones used for Pa Say Ryu) and it completely changed my sense of self-worth.

When the school bully decided to pick a fight on a kid in front of the drinking fountain, shrimpy yours truly stepped in gallantly to defend the honor and socked the bully right back. I was a head shorter. Kids were yelling. We had to have the fight broken up by the school librarian and my 5th grade teacher. Hauled into the office, ole Robby the bully started to cry that I was beating him up. I was just freaked out that my mom would be called so said nothing, just sat there watching Robby cry and cry. In retrospect, it must have looked pretty funny to the teachers. Here I am this dinky tiny Asian girl with glasses who sits in the front row and never gets chosen for sports teams and has her head buried in a book so much that they once asked my mother to test my hearing because I blotted out the entire classroom when my nose was in the book. And there, accusing me, the guy that was briefly, a friend in school that played in the younger grades kickball with everyone, but who was slowly turning into the Alpha A boy on the football field, kickball field and every other outdoor arena of that elementary school. A boy ruling with all of the power that young boys can muster. He led teasing and pushing. He was tough and mean, goodlooking and not so bright to be threatening, and not so dumb to be dismissed. The All American Boy. My guess is that the teachers probably had a lot more fondness for Robby than they did me, given where I was in school (rural Iowa) and what Robby represented (American boyhood!) and what I did (Weird immigrant!). But there are always surprises in life. Needless to say, I wasn’t picked on in school after that point at all. I had changed my way of being. It wasn’t about being able to punch someone, it was just feeling a little more confident. But as a result of knowing the life of a victim, I am extremely weary of the dynamics that surround children’s behavior. Punching Robby was a serious turning point in my life. A difficult, but important lesson. And probably for him, too.

Children are the products of their environment. And as such, are perfectly capable of being cruel, merciless, and ruthless. This may be a result of abuse that they themselves experience, but those kids on the receiving end don’t know this and ultimately, it’s something to watch out for. I’ve always hated people who blather on about how innocent children are. What that tells me is that they’ve never experienced life on the receiving end of a bully. Those Lord of the Flies moments in life forever change your ideas of humanity. It doesn’t mean that you can’t forgive or understand, but what you also realize is the level of inhumanity that a child can inflict on another can be quite extraordinary. Some people who are bullied in turn bully others, but hopefully, some turn out quite the opposite.

Keohi may or may not face such challenges as a biracial boy, at least in Hong Kong. But I know that the culture of boys is difficult and based a lot on physicality – strength and dexterity, and to a lesser degree, potentially beauty (unlike girls, but that can be a whole other source of misery in and of itself I know). Hopefully the martial arts will help him along in life. It helped me.