Traditional Chinese Martial Arts.
What exactly does that mean? Does it mean that you are learning the techniques the way they were taught to your teacher, the way they were taught to him by his teacher, that were taught to him by his teacher and so on and so on and so on?
Or, is traditional Chinese Martial Arts paying homage to customs and ceremonies, following a bunch of rules: not looking your teacher in the eye, bowing before you come on to the training floor and that sort of thing.?
What if I said traditional Chinese Martial Arts is none of that?
In America, the first people to learn the Asian fighting arts were people in the military. When they brought the martial arts back to America, they brought with it their military discipline: lining up and doing things in unison, barking orders, rank, hierarchy, etc.
But that's not the way it was handed down in old China. When you learned martial arts in China, more often than not, it was taught in family systems. You learned from you dad, your uncles, your brothers. It was a place where you felt safe, hanging out with family and close friends, people you enjoyed being around.
Sure there was discipline and respect, but it came from sharing a common goal and knowing you were all in this together, sharing the camaraderie of hard training and overcoming hardship.
Your teacher, your mentor, or as they say in Cantonese, your Si-Fu, was not there to be awed or kowtowed to, he was there to guide you, to be the rudder of the boat, to be the one to pass along what he knew for the benefit of the people he cared about, and they in turn helped each other out along the way...you know, like family.
That's traditional Chinese Martial Arts.