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1980 (15 YEARS OLD)
Barely Anybody Was Kung Fu Fighting

Barely Anybody Was Kung Fu Fighting

1980 (15 YEARS OLD)1 month ago

1980 - 15 Years Old

If you were a boy growing up in the 1970s, you had to have a Bruce Lee poster. It was the rule. Even Tony Manero had one:

But I couldn’t leave it at that. I had to sign up at the local Lau Gar Kung Fu wuguan (training hall). It was at the top of Bretch Hill, Banbury’s worst, roughest, and most violent street.

Maybe having the training hall there was a way of toughening us up, or maybe it was some sort of Eastern mystical philosophical point, like if you can float amongst your enemies without fear…

But more likely, it was because the rent was cheap.

I wanted to do it right, so I decided to buy a pair of nunchucks from the back pages of some American comics I still had.

But I was skeptical, having been buggered two times several years earlier when I had purchased something from comics.

The first time was with Sea Monkeys:

I didn’t get an anthropomorphic kingdom of smiling families living in their castles; I got a fishbowl full of cloudy water that was only missing a lifeless goldfish floating on the top.

I flushed it down the toilet along with the $1 plus shipping I’d paid for it.

Next up were the X-ray specs:

While I waited for them to arrive, I devised a complex plan of who I was going to look at, while at the same time figuring out how to avoid accidentally looking at people like Granny Bate’s dad (or his mum, for that matter).

It turned out to waste of a damn good plan and another $1 plus shipping. The only thing it helped me see through was the scheme to manipulate and rip off kids.

So with skepticism, I bought a pair of nunchucks. Ones that were exactly the same (the ad promised) as Bruce Lee used in Enter The Dragon.

And they mostly were.

I ended up being quite good with them.

Although, during the learning process, I once hit the back of my head so hard, I forgot my name for a few hours.

So, twice a week, I would walk to my Kung Fu lessons (an hour each way). Often, in the dark. And when I reached the bottom of Bretch Hill, I would unzip my bag, so I had easy access to my nunchuks.

But (fortunately) the reputation of Bretch Hill (like most things) was grossly overstated.

Our club had two stars: black-belted Mark Aston, a national champion, who could gently and effortlessly tap the head of an opponent with the heel of his foot during a spar. He was in a different league and never interacted with anyone except for the instructors and a couple of other black belts.

The other one was Bruce Lie.

That wasn’t his real name, of course.

After Bruce Lee’s death, a host of lower-grade copy-cat versions of him appeared. It was sort of like an early prototype of TEMU, with its Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Bruce Lei, etc.

Anyway, Bruce Lie was about 5’5″. He had a similar body shape to his idol (he let everyone know by never having his shirt on) and the same haircut. He, too, could have been in Enter The Clones Of Bruce.

If it weren’t for his pasty white skin, red hair, and a body covered in freckles.

But he could kick the punching bag off of its attachment. So nobody ever brought it up.

We also made sure he never heard us referring to him as Bruce Lie.

So before our lessons, my motley group of white belts would be in the changing area, dossing around.

And it would inevitably lead to clumsy mock fighting, some of them with cigarettes hanging out of their mouthes, singing,

To be honest, Carl Douglas’ backup dancers would have received a damn-good leathering as soon as they set foot on Bretch Hill.

And the song is incredibly shit. But, in this case, it did have context.

Bruce Lie would always come into the area to make us stop. Usually it was just a stare. Sometimes he would say something he thought sounded confucius-like.

But it never did. He was a bit of a thicko. And it was made worse by his strong Banbury accent (the one our school tried to beat out of us). Still, it did the trick.

About 10 months after starting, most of us in our group had a green belt, which was the colour that started to sound ominous to non kung-fuers. And with our green belts, we now had to spar with Bruce Lie (and some of the others at his level).

Reggie, the best in our group, had the honour of the first spar. He was excited.

But 20 seconds after the call for the start of the spar, Reggie was sitting on a bench, the ref trying to stop the blood gushing out of his nose.

The rest of us were searching under the benches for his two front teeth.

他妈的这个狗屎

Which, unless Google Translate is having me on, means Fuck that shit.

Most of us never went back.