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Thu, September 09, 2010
My Life on FIGHT SCIENCE 2010
by Dr. Craig Reid
How close is 10 feet away from a 600-pound tiger? Close enough to see your reflection in her eyes. She's tethered by a single, comfortable thin leash giving her good freedom to roam, and I'm thinking that she's thinking supper is but a minor leap away. But then again, I am English-American, raised on bland food with the great possibility that I would also taste bland. Standing next to me is fellow FIGHT SCIENCE commentator and colleague James Lew. When veteran animal wrangler/trainer Hayden Rosenaur quips, "If she gets loose, it is important not to run away, because she'll think you're playing and will go after you," I casually joke to Lew that - me being English and he being Chinese - if you were a tiger, which food is better, Chinese or English food? I suddenly feel safer, until we measure the strength of its playful paw swat against a pathetic ball that dangles in front of her eyes like John Stossel's head in front of professional wrestler David Schultz.
James Lew and Dr. Craig Reid
In case you might not know, Stossel is reportedly partially deaf in one ear after Schultz slapped him on the face when Stossel snidely told the wrestler during a 20/20 report that wrestling is fake. Stossel skulked away in pain eating his words. Although most know that wrestling is not completely real (I've choreographed for the EEW), there is nothing fake about this tiger on the FIGHT SCIENCE episode of FIGHT LIKE AN ANIMAL, to be aired Feb 4th at 6:00 pm and 9:00 pm on the National Geographic Channel. In this episode of FIGHT SCIENCE, we were comparing the fighting assets and abilities of five animals (white crane, praying mantis, monkey, snake and tiger) that humans have emulated in establishing kung fu styles, and how our human assets (hands, feet, head, elbow, etc.) and abilities (speed, power, balance, agility, etc.) truly matched up against our animal martial arts brothers.
I was honored to appear on the show as the animal-fighting expert, not just as a martial artist with 38 years of experience but also as a scientist who has studied the fighting behavior and movements of the animals themselves. Some of you may recall in an article I wrote for Kung Fu/Tai Chi magazine many years ago that when I was at Cornell University, my undergraduate thesis project in 1978 was to scientifically recreate Chinese kung fu history by proving one could learn martial arts from an animal, in my case the praying mantis. After hundreds of hours of filming the mantis, I came up with many stereotypical fighting movements that a mantis uses while fighting and defending itself. When I was in Taiwan a year later and showed a praying mantis kung fu master what I had learned from the insect, he said I was spot on in recreating 10 of the original 13 movements created by the founder of praying mantis kung fu, Shaolin monk Wang Lung.
When our resident human kung fu cat Bren Foster strains his sinews and prepares his gnarled tiger-claw fingers to demonstrate his tiger swat to the Fight Science panel of scientists and experts, Dr. Cynthia Bir, James Lew, David Sandler and yours truly, we are wondering if his strike will have the power of a wimpy whap or something that can make us scream me-OW.
Apart from the tiger, other special guests include a huge albino rattlesnake, Ripley the monkey (like the one in the film Pirates of the Caribbean) and a gazillion flies that zip around the set like kids on too much candy. The amazing animal wranglers understand how to read the moods and intents of the "normal" animal behaviors, but we wanted to know more about their fighting behaviors, thus the show, our martial artists, and our scientific panel to fill in those missing blanks.
I arrive on set around 6:00 am and one of the first things the scientific panel does is get mic'ed up. Then for the next 12 hours or so everything we say on and off camera is being heard and recorded. Furthermore, hand-held camera operators move around set trying to capture honest pieces of extemporaneous wisdom, as compared to when one is cognizant in front of the main cameras while filming on the various sound stages. One can imagine that, after 3-4 days of shooting, the various producers and editors must have a truly tough time whittling down 72 hours of video and much more audio (as many as five of us are mic'ed up at the same time) into a 47-minute show.
But when it comes to the animals themselves, everything is pretty much extemporaneous - especially evident with that 10-foot albino rattlesnake coiled like a spring in front of its unsuspecting victim: a water-filled balloon. For about 15 minutes, the wrangler had to gently bop the balloon on the snake's head to antagonize it into striking. Based on movies and TV shows that always show the strike, we just assume that these beautiful creatures are eternally primed to lunge, bite and poison. Then again, around such danger, making assumptions isn't a good idea, because just as you relax…WISSSS. A fast venomous strike at a water-filled balloon teaches us speed and accuracy, and the wrangler gets a face full of snake venom, something that happens to him a lot apparently. The dainty yet deadly snake kung fu specialist Li Jing slithers onto the set and rapidly strikes at the eyes of a dummy to measure her accuracy as other equipment measures the speed of her strikes. Which is faster and more accurate - a 10-foot deadly rattlesnake or a 5-foot human Chinese female cobra impersonator? When someone asks how we can stop such a snake attack, I grin and blurt, "With an anti-hissss-tamine."
Next, enter the white crane, featuring reputable Australian martial artist and ninjitsu expert Glen Levy. Although there is no bird on set, the unflappable Levy perches atop teacup-sized saucers resting on 2" diameter steel pipes at various heights up to eight feet. Adding to Levy's predicament, he is not only standing on one foot but he's trying to avoid deadly ninja stars (shurikens) being thrown at his exposed body. One slip of the foot and it's the emergency room. But that's not all. The lithe Levy will also attempt to emulate the downward powerful swooping wing-strike of a crane by crushing several blocks of ice with a flailing, crane-like elbow swat. It's something he has never done before in his life. He'll either be successful or break his arm. Talk about breaking the ice at a party...ouch man.
Then there's the simian aper, the Liverpudlian Danny Ilabaca who leaps and freaks his way all over an on-set, elaborately built trellis system. With a monkey-see, monkey-do and catch-me-if-you-can mentality, Ripley zips and zaps around the same set of monkey bars, brachiating with the greatest of ease. The strange thing is, when you see the computer-graphic skeleton images of each trellis trekker, they both fly around like daring young creatures on the flying trapeze to the point that you can't tell which is the 24-inch monkey and the 65-inch human. I guess you could say that Dan is a "chimp" off the old block.
Of course, the animal after my own heart is the praying mantis, or, on the show, wushu expert Wei Wang, whose specialty is praying mantis kung fu. This test is particularly harrowing as Wei, dressed in mantis green, enters a large netted cage. The final buzz on set is Wei trying to catch any of the gazillion flies released into the cage, and to catch them like a mantis, not with his hands, but between the forefinger and thumbs, which in mantis morphology would be called its tarsi and tibia. When asked on camera if I think Wei will catch any flies, I am confident in saying, "No." So, that crunching you hear in the background. . . is it me eating my words or Wei missing the flies and hitting the walls of the cage?
On the final day of this episode shoot comes a great surprise. My old pal Robin Shou drops by the set, we talk martial arts and catch up on about two years of conversation.
But wait, there's more. Imagine A-Rod stepping up to the plate and blasting the living daylights out of a baseball with homerun power. Now imagine that he's not hitting a baseball but the gut of a human being. . . eeeek. This is what we do during the qigong (chi gong) section of the STEALTH FIGHTERS episode of FIGHT SCIENCE to be aired Feb 11th at 6:00 pm and 9:00 pm on the National Geographic Channel. I also appear on this episode, but this time not as a martial artist but a 30-year qigong practitioner. The problem is, if we actually hit a homerun and knock the qigong man Wang Xiao-jun out of the ballpark, it would be much more messy. But of course, to drive further home the qigong homerun, Wang will also take a whack on the back with a whopping piece of wood with a spear jammed against his throat at the same time. To say the least, the wrong kind of "spearited" performance will leave a Wang-ka-bob on set.
When we mention stealth in the martial arts, we usually think ninja, assassins or highly trained special forces personnel. But at the end of the day, anyone who practices martial arts relies on stealth - and martial artists who don't boast or talk about their skills have the ultimate stealth weapon.
Wang Xiao Jun's hard qigong
But now imagine if you practice qigong and have the ability to strike with inhuman power and can also absorb powerful strikes all over the body - that is stealth beyond belief. What we set out to do in the qigong section was to show that by the simple act of breathing, a man can develop such an ability to withstand the force of a full-power baseball bat swing and to even bend a spear shaft with the point impaled against one's throat. Although the proper spear position against the upper chest bone is important as well as the hope of resting the spear point on a cartilage ring of the wind pipe, all it takes is for the spear to move 1 mm in any direction from its resting spot and you get instant tracheotomy. Wang has not practiced qigong for long, yet he puts his neck and body on the line for the show. If he's successful, one can only imagine what he could be like after 30 years of training. As he prepares for the events, I notice several people have lost their fingernails (bitten off), others are worried, and I'm hoping we don't need the set medic. Yet on the flip side, since my qigong specialty is medical qigong (my wife and I have been doing qi healing for 21 years), I'm quite confident that if something goes awry, we've dealt with something like this before. It can be messy, but it's quite healable.
Before the demonstration, it is my responsibility to introduce the audience to Wang and his partner Jin Xiao-wei. As it turns out, that is the hardest part. I first point at Wang and say he's Jin, then point at Jin and says he's Wang. We then hear the director say, "Cut. It's the other way around." After he says action, I then first point at Wang and say he's Jin, then point at Jin and say he's Wang. "Cut. You did it again. It's the other way around," grins the director. After my apology, we try again. This time I point at Jin and say he's Wang, then point at Wang and say he's Jin. By this time everyone is laughing their heads off. I am waiting for Wang or Jin to say something like, "Actually, I'm Lee and he's Chin." On the next try I get it, and face as well as film is saved.
Over the week, I make new friends, see old friends, my wife Silvia and I squeeze in a bit of qi healing on some of the crew (the show's film crew is cool, awesome and very open minded), and another season of FIGHT SCIENCE comes to a close. Thanks to the various producers and Base Productions for having me on the show, and may the qi be with you.
Written by Dr. Craig Reid for KUNGFUMAGAZINE.COM
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