"The showcase was held to display the skills of Taiwan's covert operatives," Lee Da-chiu, the retired captain of the 91 Action Team, said May 19. The group no longer exists, but several of its members have kept its spirit alive by teaching the kung fu they had learned from their training.
In the 1960s, a strike force of young people was assembled and trained to help achieve the Kuomintang government's ultimate goal of recovering China, Lee said. After three years of intensive training, the new recruits would be sent into the field to execute covert operations in places such as the Golden Triangle, where the borders of Thailand, Myanmar and China meet.
The squad was named the 91 Action Team because the bureau believed that nine out of 10 members dispatched overseas would be killed and only one would survive. They had already been presumed dead from the day they joined the bureau. "When we finished our training, we were asked to have two photos of ourselves taken," Lee said. "The 20-inch one was meant to be used in our funeral services and the 2-inch one would be used for our name tablet at the martyr shrine within the bureau."
Chang Long-tan, a former member of the team, explained May 20 that the first recruits were actually from juvenile detention centers around Taiwan, and many were only 16 to 18 years old. "Every one of them had some kind of criminal record and most of them grew up in the military community," said Chang. "The bureau thought that it was an opportunity for them to be reborn."
The training program was unimaginably Spartan, according to Chang. Recruits were schooled in demolitions, weaponry and clandestine communications. They learned how to conduct amphibious warfare as frogmen and were conditioned to survive in high mountains and jungles. Trainees had to take courses in Chinese literature and English as well, because the bureau was equipping them with a junior-college education, Chang explained.
Lee Ker-lien, the head trainer in martial arts, conducted the toughest courses for these young recruits, Lee Da-chiu said. Nicknamed Devil Lee by his students because of his stern attitude, "his mission was to teach us everything he had mastered," Lee Da-chiu added, "so we had to learn all of it."
Devil Lee's unarmed combat training covered the entire spectrum of kung fu, he said. The master incorporated different styles together, such as Shaolin, Wudang and Qigong. Lee taught moves that fighters from different regions in China specialized in, like kicking from the north and boxing from the south. His cadets also learned how to use traditional weapons, including knives, swords, clubs and spears.
Throughout their training, cadets had to wear a vest weighed down with 30 kilograms of shredded iron and leg pads that weighed another 30 kilograms. They had to stand, sit and even sleep wearing the vest and the pads. At six in the early morning, Lee would have cadets climb Yangmingshan with the vest on. "That was just to warm up," said Chang.
The real test was to climb to the top of a three-story building without any mountaineering equipment. To prepare them to get to the top, Devil Lee would have the cadets hold two bricks between their forearms and palms in order to build up their strength. More bricks kept being added, as they got stronger. By the time a recruit could hold eight or more bricks, he would be ordered to climb a building by pinning both arms around the corner of the structure, Chang explained.
The tight schedule, rigorous training and strict demands of Devil Lee might have been too strenuous, as the young recruits did not always follow his instructions precisely. One time, Lee Da-chiu recalled, cadets were tested in qigong at the training center located in Taipei's Beitou District. Seeing that their attention was drifting, Devil Lee asked each trainee to perform qigong and call out which part of the body he was concentrating on. "The first guy said, 'Belly!' Then Devil Lee hit him with an iron bar," he said. "The next thing we knew, the guy was sent to the bureau's hospital and he stayed there until we graduated."
Lee Feng-san, another ex-cadet, said May 12 that the most unique course was qigong training. Qigong is a form of traditional Chinese martial arts believed to be helpful in protecting the body from blows and strengthening blood circulation. Developing such a high threshold to pain was helpful for the operatives when they landed in close quarters combat situations.
Two years after retiring from active service in 1987, Lee founded the Meimen Qigong and Culture Center in Taipei, which offers qigong and martial-arts courses. He moved away from the fighting-oriented style of qigong he had learned and revamped it into an exercise for people to improve their health.
Lee admitted that much of his qigong knowledge came from the teachings of Lee Ker-lien. "One night, I was asked to transcribe a book of qigong under Devil Lee's instruction, from which I learned a lot," he said. There were no copy machines in those days, Lee explained, so that when a book became old and started to crumble, it had to be copied into another book by hand.
The Meimen center has seven branches located in Yilan, Taoyuan, Jhongli, Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung to educate adults and children about kung fu. Lee said he was asked by the Government Information Office--the agency that publishes this newspaper--to participate in a documentary titled "Taichi," which won the Gold Medal at the Houston International Film Festival in October 2002. In the same year, Lee also founded Meimen Kung Fu Art House, where he combined kung fu, drama and dance together into stage performances. In 2006, he asked Chang, his former teammate, to join Meimen and teach children what Devil Lee had taught them, only without such a harsh regimen.
Today, most of the 91 Action Team members have retired from the bureau, Lee Da-chiu said. He claimed he trained the bodyguards of Ferdinand Marcos, late president of the Philippines, and in October 2006, Lee went back to his hometown in Guangxi Province, China, where he was well received by the martial artists there.
Lee Da-chiu said that he has also taught self-defense techniques to followers of Zen master Miao-tien several years ago. The disciples he trained have since become masters themselves and began teaching martial-arts classes at Taiwan Zen Buddhist Association in early 2007.
"I know that if the master were still alive today, he would have been proud of Lee Fen-san and Lee Da-chiu," Chang said. He added they have taught their young students only about one-tenth of what they had learned from Devil Lee during their training.
As for Chang himself, he also decided to continue practicing the kung fu he inherited from Devil Lee and pass it on to the next generation. In doing so, the three of them would jointly accomplish Devil Lee's final mission.
Write to Alexander Chou at alexchou@mail.gio.gov.tw