Chop Socky Fencing: The Amateur Fencer Goes Abroad!

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We'd like to welcome you to Hong Kong...."

After two months of lunging, parrying and sustaining numerous bruises to my chest, it was time for a holiday! And what better excuse for a vacation than my cousin's wedding reception in Hong Kong? So, after a turbulent, 15-hour flight and a 12-hour time change, I found myself in the Far East for a week of family, fun and a chance to give my poor thighs a break from all the lunging. And what a week it was!

After hiking all over the electrifying city of Hong Kong, I hopped onto a high-speed catamaran with my other youngest cousin, propelling ourselves across the South China Sea to the island of Macau (which also happens to be where my parents grew up). There I experienced a mish-mash of Portuguese and Chinese cultures fused into a day filled with beautiful architecture, ancient ruins, glittering casinos and breathtaking mountains. The next day, I hopped onto another catamaran and shot out to Discovery Bay at Lantau Island, where I experienced its lush, tropical gardens, fresh sea air, exotic delicacies and a crystal-clear ocean that seemed to stretch far beyond anyone's wildest imagination.

So. What does all of this have to do with fencing?

Even on the other side of the world, the art of fencing still found me. One sunny, humid morning, I ventured out of my hotel in the heart of downtown Kowloon in search of a coffee shop. As I strolled across the walkway by Victoria Harbour, gawking at the immense glass towers glinting in the early morning sunlight and the mountains behind them, I stumbled across a group of martial arts students putting on a demonstration of wu shu. About 10 young boys and girls had taken up a portion of the walkway, and with the ocean water and city skyline as their backdrop, they whirled, kicked and punched their way through the morning with supernatural grace and agility, seemingly unaffected by the stifling summer humidity. A crowd of European and American tourists surrounded them, oooo-ing and ahhhh-ing at the dizzying display of backflips, jump kicks and whirling fists. Being a martial artist myself, I found a great appreciation for the amount of energy and rehearsal that must have gone into this jaw-dropping routine.

At one point, all of the students formed a circle, in the center of which stood their sifu, or master, a slim, striking Asian woman in her late thirties dressed in the traditional, black kung fu uniform. As all of the spectators settled their attention on her, she took a deep breath as one of her students knotted a blindfold over her eyes, after which she suddenly whipped out a 9-ring broadsword from behind her back. The sword carried a heavy, wide blade, the blunt edge of which was lined with 9 large decorative rings that swished and jingled as she crouched down into a tiger-like stance and began tracing the sword in a circle on the ground. Then, faster than I could blink, she suddenly leapt into the air, stretched her limbs out and whirled the sword like a human hurricane. As she landed on the ground without a sound, she then began to stab, swipe and kick at myriad imaginary opponents around her as the crowd of tourists went dead silent in utter fascination.

While watching her routine, I began to notice various subtle similarities and differences between the art of Chinese wu shu sword-fighting and fencing. The sifu's stances bore a strong similarity to the en garde position used by fencers, with her front foot perpendicular to her rear; and her sword hand leading and poised as if holding a pistol. Whenever she would split the air with a forward strike of her blade, its rings jingling in the wind, her body elongated into another stance that resembled a fencing lunge. However, unlike fencing, which is a linear, one-on-one duelling style, the art of wu shu sword-fighting is more fluid and circular, meant to engage multiple opponents.

As her routine ended to the thunderous applause of the tourists, I had the opportunity to shake hands with both the students and the sifu. "Lai-goh gung fu ho lang," I stammered to the sifu in my broken, infantile Cantonese. Your kung fu is very good.

Cue the Lalo Schifrin chop socky music and poorly translated kung fu movie sub-titles.

"Thank you, sir," the sifu laughed in perfect (albeit accented) English. I mentioned to her my background in martial arts, that I was a budding amateur fencer and that I couldn't help but notice certain similarities between the two fighting styles. "It's funny you say that," the sifu responded, pointing to one of the young students who was posing for a photo with a couple of overly enthusiastic German tourists. "That boy over there has actually studied fencing before," she said to my surprise. "He is one of our finest students."

She called to the diminutive boy, who shuffled over and shook hands with me, smiling brightly. He couldn't have been older than sixteen, yet I had just seen him whirl through the air like a one-man army just a few minutes ago. The sifu chattered with him for a minute in Cantonese, after which his eyes lit up as he turned back to me. "I told him that you are a fencer," the sifu said.

"Hi," I responded to the student in more of my horrible Cantonese. Yes. "Lai giu man mang," I continued to stumble. What is your name?

"My name is Ho Sum," the boy responded in measured English, to which I breathed a small sigh of relief.

I asked the exceedingly polite Ho Sum how he came to study fencing. Apparently, he traveled to France early on in life, where his parents made him study fencing. What an honor it must be to have studied in the very country that birthed the sport, I thought. I told him that I also lived in Paris for a time, to which his smile grew even wider as we established a rapport with one another. I asked him about the influences he drew from the two fighting forms.

"Fencing helps a lot with flexibility in wu shu," Ho Sum said. "My sifu is teaching me the Chinese broadsword, so the, uhhhhh...." he hesitated, searching for the rest of his words, but shook his head when he could not find them. "Ying mun hi leggoh," he asked in Cantonese, as he suddenly shot his body into a perfect, low lunge in front of me. What do you call this in English?

I marvelled at Ho Sum's incredible agility. "Ying mun hi 'lunge.'" In English, it's called a "lunge." Ho Sum nodded excitedly.

"Hi...lunge," he exclaimed. He explained how the lunge helped to make his stances in wu shu more flexible and fluid. Ho Sum again demonstrated the move in front of me. I noted how smoothly his sword hand glided into position. He didn't really aim at his target. Rather, he seemed to simply....point. Just as fencing aided him in kicking butt in wu shu, I asked him whether the opposite was equally true. Ho Sum nodded furiously. "The stances in wu shu help with speed and agility in fencing."

Again, he eagerly demonstrated his prowess, dropping down into the en garde position. I noticed that, unlike most of the fencers I've seen at the Academy, Ho Sum's stance was a little lower and a little looser. Then, he demonstrated how wu shu had made his footwork faster. With blazing speed, he shuffled back and forth a few paces in the en garde position. In the blink of an eye, he went from being ten feet away from me to being close enough to poke my eye out with a fencing foil if he had one. This kid was fast...maybe even faster than Monty, our local Westchester fencing god and arguably the best fighter in the Academy.

But what I noticed most was Ho Sum's expression. Fierce. Focused. Like nothing could stop him. It reminded me of the small girl that my instructor had previously pointed out at the Academy: the one who went from a whimpering willow to an unstoppable woman warrior and taught me to say, Why the hell not? Let's see where this takes me. Even the mental aspects between martial arts and fencing were strikingly similar.

"Maybe you can try it at your school," Ho Sum suggested. At that moment, the dimly-lit lightbulb of my mind suddenly flared. I began to see the endless benefits that my martial arts background could have on my (very) slowly emerging fencing technique. As I watched Ho Sum demonstrate a couple more quick lunges and parries in front of me with seemingly boundless energy, I noticed how he elongated his stance by a couple of centimeters, making them ever so slightly resemble a wu shu stance and consequently giving him additional reach and speed. His sword hand flowed more smoothly, with small circular flicks led by his fingers rather than his wrist, lending his disengage additional accuracy. By transferring some of the influence of wu shu to the art of fencing, Ho Sum was a fencer that could probably rival Monty any day of the week.

And that's when my next fateful thought occurred to me....

I wanted a re-match with Monty.

The Monty Two-Step: Learning the Fine Art of Timing, Feigning and Showing Off

"Lunge, damn you, boy!"

This was the third time I heard Monty yell that same line during our first bout together. Each time, his voice got louder and more exuberant as he fenced circles around me. I got the distinct impression that this crazy old man enjoyed teaching the younger fencers like myself some humility. And with each of my Herculean lunges, he let out a hearty, South African laugh as his foil swooped down and clashed with mine. After my last lunge, he playfully glided around me, aiming his foil for my ribs, laughing all the way while doing it.

Show off.

I whirled around in a panic, parrying against his blade and opening up his torso, just as I had learned. With a flick of my wrist, I circled my foil under his and aimed straight for his heart in my best attempt at a disengage. This was truly a battle between Zorro the Astronaut and...well...just plain Zorro. My God, I thought. This stuff really works!

As usual, I spoke too soon. Monty lithely feigned back, smoothly parrying my blade to the side. In a fit of frustration, I disengaged again around the other side of his blade and angrily forced my foil through, but before I could even blink, I found the tip of his foil planted squarely in my chest, just below my neck, as he gently pushed me back out of range.

Crap, I thought. At least the teenagers aren't here watching me get my ass kicked.

I've been sparring with Monty for only half an hour on this sunny Saturday morning. I've always considered myself to be a fairly good athlete, having grown up around martial arts, a regular weightlifting routine and a healthy diet. But today, I was drenched and exhausted while Monty, who was easily twenty years older than me, was hardly breaking a sweat. Indeed, fencing was introducing me to a whole new level of fitness (and fatigue).

I peeled off my mask, feeling its cushiony edges soaked through with perspiration. I exhaled as I ripped the cap off my bottle of Gatorade and sucked back a huge gulp of blueberry-flavored electrolytes and vitamins. As I plopped myself down on a nearby stool to watch his pal Arnold fencing with another adult in the adjacent lane, my quadriceps and calves cried out in exquisite pain.

"Not bad, rookie," Monty hollered jovially as he slapped me across my back, sending Gatorade shooting up my nostrils. "Thanks," I coughed. I looked up to see Monty waving his foil wildly in the air as he excitedly goaded on a mumbling Arnold. Age is nothing but a number, I thought, recalling my instructor's pearls of wisdom.

"So," Monty smiled, finally sitting still for the first time today and settling onto the stool next to me. "How did I beat you?"

I replayed the final seconds of our match in my head. "You blocked my blade, and I tried to disengage twice around it, but you saw them coming." Monty nodded in acknowledgement. "True," he said. "But what was it about your last disengage that tipped me off?"

I thought about this for a second. "I don't know."

Monty offered me his hand and yanked me off the stool. "Let's go over it again, and I'm going to show you a little trick that I call, 'The Monty Two-Step.' " I mulled this over for a moment. "Okay, but if we're dancing, I lead," I joked. "Ha! You kids are great," Monty yelled, slapping me again across my back and sending another flood of Gatorade shooting up my nose. He was clearly getting a kick out of this. As I wiped blue snot from my face and put down my drink, Monty led me back into the fencing lane next to Arnold, who was engaged in a whirlwind of steel against his own opponent.

"En garde," Monty bellowed. How strange it was to hear these words coming from someone other than my instructor. I assumed my stance as Monty approached and slid into the most elegant fencing pose I had ever seen. While my sword arm was nervously bent at the elbow and my back ramrod straight, Monty's sword arm was fluidly outstretched as he loosely rocked back and forth on his slender legs.

"Okay," he said. "Let's go back to the last move. You had parried my blade...." He suddenly shot his sword hand forward, and I smoothly parried his blade as I had done during our match. "Good form," he observed.

"Now," he continued, "after that, you disengaged." I nodded, circling my blade under his. Just as before, he feigned back and parried. "Here's where it got tricky," I noted.

"Well, here's what happened," Monty said. "You were impatient. If I block your disengage, you don't immediately try to disengage again, as you did before. That will telegraph your moves to me, and I'll see it coming from a mile away."

I replayed this scenario in my head. "But," I pondered, "I can't just stand there and let you strike me."

"That's exactly what you do," Monty instructed. "But, the trick to defeating me is in the timing. Step One: you wait. By waiting for me to counter, you are forcing me to stretch out my arm and open up my torso, but without allowing your foil to get blocked and without giving yourself away. So, instead of trying to be the bull-headed aggressor, time your moves. Use some finesse. Wait for me, and then comes Step Two: at the last second, parry and hit."

I was amazed by how Monty could remember every detail of our bout. For all his bravado in the fencing lane, he was turning out to be a very observant and insightful tactician. Truly, this sport is just as much of an exercise of the mind as it is of the body.

With that, Monty's foil slid out of my first parry and made a beeline for my chest. I waited until the moment just before the tip of his foil reached my chest. At the last second, I feigned back, as Monty had done. Monty's sword arm stretched out even further as he tried to reach me, exposing even more of his torso.

Now I was beginning to see what he meant. With his entire torso exposed, my opening became clear. I parried, stepped to the side of his blade and pushed mine forward into his exposed chest. "HA," he laughed triumphantly as my blade struck him with a satisfying THUD. "Well done! I do believe your instructor owes me a pint."

"What," I exclaimed happily as I straightened myself back up, exhilirated that I landed a hit on the legend of the Fencing Academy that was Monty. "Well," Monty explained, "your beloved instructor and I made a bet. She didn't think that I'd be able to teach you anything. I bet her that, if I could prove her wrong, she would buy me a pint."

For the next twenty minutes, we went over the Monty Two-Step five more times. Despite the burning pain in my legs, the thrill of learning my first strategic pattern encouraged me to continue. Each time, I felt my timing becoming slightly more precise and my disengage being executed more smoothly. And once again, as my forehead broke into a heavy sweat, Monty stood there looking like a million bucks, goading on a mumbling Arnold while teaching me the finer points of timing, feigning and....

Show off.