Grandmaster
San Kim Sean closes his soft brown eyes and pauses. He takes a sharp
breath and forces a smile before recalling how he survived the hell that
Cambodia was plunged into during the Pol Pot-led Khmer Rouge regime
from 1975 to 1979. During that time, almost a quarter of the country’s
population perished.
“You
don’t say you do martial arts, you don’t say you went to school, you
don’t say you wear glasses.
You’ll get killed within one minute,” he
says. “You have to keep quiet, do what they want, follow their rules and
just say yes. Never say no. They will kill you. It was a very terrible
time.”
The
grandmaster sits on a stool in the centre of his bokator academy in
Siem Reap, a basic set-up with a tin roof, whirling ceiling fans,
training mats, some battered wooden benches and a stash of ageing wooden
weapons propped up in a corner. He becomes animated as he talks about
his lifelong passion for the traditional Cambodian martial art, whose
name translates as “pounding of the lion”.
“Bokator
belongs to our great-great-grandfathers, masters and kings,” says the
73-year-old, who started learning the martial art at the age of 13.
Steeped
in history, bokator is believed to have been developed about 2,000
years ago.
Evidence of its widespread use can be found in etchings on
the walls and other religious monuments of Cambodia’s 12th-century
Angkor Wat temple complex.
“Angkor
Wat was created to protect the country and the Khmer empire,” San Kim
Sean says. “They built up a strong army that used bokator.”
He
says that while regional sports such as Muay Thai (Thai boxing) are
famous throughout the world, their origins come from bokator. This is
because the Khmer empire covered vast swathes of Southeast Asia,
including large parts of Thailand, during its peak in the 12th and 13th
centuries.
“Bokator is the original,” he says with pride.
No comments:
Post a Comment