Win Ho Academy for Martial Arts, Hong Kong
‘CHI SAU EXERCISES,’ announced Mr Lim as he took up a stance facing Luke square on, ‘are designed to increase our sensitivity to an opponent’s strike.’ Mr Lim didn’t look like an especially sensitive individual. In fact, he looked to Luke like someone who could take a serious battering and keep going.
‘So now hit me,’ said Mr Lim, calmly, nodding in encouragement. ‘Aim for my face. Please. Go ahead.’
Luke shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then threw a straight karate punch at the centre of Mr Lim’s face, rotating his right fist at the last minute, but holding back from using his full force. His opponent’s left arm shot out and twisted, snake-like, rolling Luke’s arm away and deflecting it with ease.
Mr Lim sighed and frowned. ‘Don’t play games with me, Mr Blanford. I am sure you are better than this. I must ask you to try harder. Again now.’
Luke took a deep breath. He had a sudden flashback to the martial-arts scene in The Matrix where Keanu Reeves’s character had to fight a black-belt master who keeps beckoning him on to fight harder. But this wasn’t cinema fantasy, this was real and he worried that, compared to this human ball of muscle and sinew, he simply wasn’t going to measure up. How long had it been since his last sparring session, back in the gym in London? Two months? Three? Too long, anyway. He threw another punch at Mr Lim’s face, faster this time, but again the tattooed arm shot out and deflected it.
‘Better,’ Mr Lim said. ‘This is what we call a bong sau. In English I think they call this a “wing arm”. You see how I move your strike off the line of attack?’
Luke nodded. So, now he was being given an impromptu lesson in Wing Chun by this tattooed hard man. Not exactly how he had envisaged spending his first evening in Hong Kong. Could we not just move straight to the part where you tell me where we should be looking for Hannah Slade?
‘So now we speed it up a little,’ Mr Lim said, moving his body into a curious concave posture as if his hips were trying to back their way out of the room all by themselves. He parried each of Luke’s fist strikes by snaking his arms out and around Luke’s extended forearms. It struck Luke as an extraordinarily graceful martial art, almost like a dance performance, but then he asked himself what the point of all this was. Where was this going? He was about to get his answer.
Mr Lim stepped back, dropped his arms, and lowered his head in an exaggerated formal bow. The session was over. ‘You fight well, Mr Blanford,’ he said. ‘Not well enough to ever be a shifu, a master.’ He smiled for the first time. ‘But, still, you show courage. Come, let’s drink tea in my office. Your visit will not be wasted.’