Red Phoenix
A Jeet Kune Do kwoon on the Rock: plain black, no belts, and the Way of the Intercepting Fist.
- Martial art
- Jeet Kune Do
- In Chinese
- 截拳道
- Meaning
- The Way of the Intercepting Fist
- Kwoon
- Cantonese for a training hall
- Sifu, senior class
- Rafael Carter
- Kit
- Plain black. No belts.
The senior class
Rafael Carter teaches the senior class: students who have trained for years, men and women of every age. He walks the rows in silence, correcting a stance here and a guard there, and he rarely raises his voice. He doesn't need to.
The class meets three evenings a week, as the sun drops behind the windows and turns the floor gold. Every lesson opens and closes with a salute to the room. In between come footwork, the wooden dummy, the heavy bags and sparring, round after round, until nobody has anything left.
Most of them came to get fit and stayed for him. They're a mixed lot: a fitter from the ship repair yard, two nurses, a schoolteacher, a taxi driver and a couple of shopkeepers from Main Street. In the hall none of that matters. They're all just the senior class.
By the door hangs a card in Rafael's handwriting with the kwoon's three rules: arrive early, leave your temper outside, and never use what you learn here to start a fight. Break the third and you don't come back.
Once a year, at the last class before the summer break, Rafael lines them up under the badge for the class photograph: two rows, hands clasped behind their backs, and the sifu in the middle with his arms folded. The students say it's the only time they ever see him stand still.
The Way of the Intercepting Fist
Jeet means to intercept: to stop an attack before it lands. Kune is the fist. Do is the way. The art was named in 1967 and kept only what works: no wasted movement, nothing done just because it's tradition, and every move ready to change with whoever is in front of you.
No belts
Nobody at Red Phoenix wears a white uniform or a coloured belt. Everyone trains in plain black, beginners and senior class alike, and the only way to tell them apart is to watch them move. Rafael likes to say a belt is only good for holding your trousers up.
The badge
Every training top carries the badge: a pair of nunchaku across a red sun, 截拳道 on either side, and the name underneath. The phoenix in the name stands for rebirth. Whatever knocks you down, you get up stronger.