Su’s father, Su Cheng-sheng, was one of the members of the legendary Taiwanese Kano baseball team. Su started his studies of Kung Fu at the age of eight under Praying Mantis Master Chang Tekuei, who came to work as a foreigner from mainland China and taught him Mizong Quan and Pimen Tanglang Quan. After studying with other famous masters, he became since 1963 a notable disciple of Liu Yunqiao, founder of the Wutan Center for the Promotion of Chinese Wushu, an institution to which he gave international continuity in the form of the Pachi Tanglang Martial Arts Institute, with branches worldwide. In 1976, Su travelled to Venezuela, where he settled in Caracas. He started a practice of Chinese traditional medicine and started teaching several styles of kung fu. Initially he taught jointly with fellow expatriate Dai Shizhe at La danza del dragón school, and some time after he founded the Instituto Pachimen. During this period, he served as vice-president of the SouthAmerican Martial Arts Federation. In 1989 he travelled to Mallorca, where he founded the first European branch of his institute, now rebranded Pachi Tanglang Martial Arts Institute. Shortly thereafter a Barcelona branch opened, and in 1992 Master Su was hired to train special security teams for the Olympic Games in Barcelona. In the following years, new branches of the school were opened in Tokyo, New York, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK. Master Su would spend the year doing the rounds of the Institutearound the world, securing the transmission for posterity of the wealth of knowledge he had accumulated. In later years, Su returned to his native Taiwan, where he strengthened the Taipei and Kaohsiung branches of the school, and from where he would continue to travel extensively. He died in La Palma, Canary Islands, in April 2019.
Works
Master Su published a number of well received books on martial arts, mostly compiled from his lessons in Spanish, Japanese and English, as well as several video recordings on teachings of Bagua Quan, Baji Quan and several Praying Mantis substyles.
