One of the world’s best and highest ranked martial artists, Henry Sue

One of the world’s best and highest ranked martial artists has spent his life breaking down barriers and fighting for a better Australia.

This is the original boy named Sue.

Just like the legendary Johnny Cash song, this Sue was renowned as a tough street fighter before he transformed his life to become the king of kung fu.

Along the way, he became a force in Queensland politics, won a landmark Constitutional case to recognise Australian independence, and now at age 81 he’s still practicing kung fu almost every night.

Considered one of the world’s best and highest ranked martial artists, Henry Sue is a 9th Degree Grand Master and founder of Chinese Kung Fu Academy, Australia’s oldest kung fu school whose first international headquarters was on the Gold Coast, but he started life as Siu Nai Leung and grew up fighting for survival.

Born in China, his family was forced to flee by foot to Hong Kong once the Communist Party took over.

During that traumatic journey, five-year-old Henry was almost left behind when his little legs couldn’t keep up.

Life was no easier in Hong Kong.

Considered one of the world’s best and highest ranked martial artists, Henry Sue is a 9th Degree Grand Master and founder of Chinese Kung Fu Academy.

“We left in the middle of the night. It was almost like the Sound of Music but not so glamorous. Some of my siblings were on bicycles or tricycles but I was on foot and I started being left behind,” said Mr Sue.

“Luckily my sister noticed me but it left me with nightmares for years of being separated from my family. We all made it to Hong Kong but we lived in a slum and had no money and little food.

“My father wanted to sell me so that I could survive and he could use the money to feed our family, but my mother would not let him.

“Then he got a letter from his brother in Australia and he was able to go over on a working visa, but he couldn’t bring us.

“At that time, under the White Australia Policy, it took 15 years for an Asian person to be naturalised, so we had little hope.”

Seven years after his father left, Henry and his brother were able to join him in Australia on a student visa.

While the family could afford to eat, Henry found that he was fighting for survival once again – this time against Australians who didn’t want Asians in their schools or neighbourhoods.

When his father bought his own shop, dubbed Sue’s Snack Bar, that fight only intensified as the family had unwittingly purchased a business favoured by bikies and bodgies.

“I knew that Australia was a rich country but at that time I would have rather been with my mother and siblings,” he said.

“We worked all the time at my uncle’s shop when we weren’t at school so we were exhausted, but that was nothing compared to when my father bought the snack bar.

“Already we had to deal with all the racial tension at school, but it was even worse there – they would yell at us to go back where we came from, that we had taken jobs, and we couldn’t sell the business because no one wanted bikies as customers.

Considered one of the world’s best and highest ranked martial artists, Henry Sue is a 9th Degree Grand Master and founder of Chinese Kung Fu Academy.

“They would eat our food then refuse to pay and threaten to beat us up, so one day I decided we had to fight back. I had been learning kung fu and we ended up fighting every weekend, training ourselves, fighting each other.

“We felt it was necessary to learn fighting to protect ourselves and to protect the business. At school I was fighting too. It was just school, work, fight for 11 years straight. I hated my life.”

Life started to change for Mr Sue when he started to concentrate more on his martial arts.

He also took his first holiday at the age of 21 and was reunited with his mother and siblings in Hong Kong.

“It was wonderful to see them again. Eventually they all moved here and became naturalised citizens,” he said.

“We also renovated and renamed Sue’s Snack Bar to Sue’s Cafe and it brought in a better clientele.

“I was teaching kung fu as well but at that stage I was still using fighting as a kind of revenge. I didn’t have the right mindset.

“But by working with the students and seeing their gratitude and trust, I started to change as well. When Bruce Lee became famous our school really opened up and so many Australians were interested. Everything changed when my attitude changed.

“I started using kung fu as a way to reach out and help people. I started loving life. Kung fu should teach you not just how to fight but how to live.”

Mr Sue went on to become one of the most respected martial artists in the world and only the sixth southern Praying Mantis Grand Master in a 300-year lineage.

He was appointed Chairman of the Queensland AKWF (Australian Kung Fu Wushu Federation) before resigning to focus on developing his own new style of Kung Fu – Henry Sue Circular Tong Long (Yuen Mo Pai Tong Long), which incorporated the ‘yin and yang’ principles of Tai Chi.

In 1988, Mr Sue decided to fully immerse himself into kung fu and bought a property in Ashmore to set up full-time teaching of his art. The Gold Coast became his Australian headquarters.

Considered one of the world’s best and highest ranked martial artists, Henry Sue is a 9th Degree Grand Master and founder of Chinese Kung Fu Academy.

The city remains a major base for the Chinese Kung Fu Academy, with schools at Southport and Nerang, as well as affiliate schools in Benowa, Surfers Paradise, Mudgeeraba and Robina

But even as he accomplished all that, he also set his mind to making a contribution to his adopted country of Australia.

Now a Life Member of the National Party Australia, Queensland Branch, he was also deputy chairman and founder of the Asian Branch of the National Party, has assisted both federal and state governments with business delegations from China, including working with Deputy Prime Minister of Australia John Anderson.

Mr Sue was also the Petitioner of the 1998 High Court Challenge against UK-born One Nation senator Heather Hill, who was disqualified from sitting in a landmark case. The ruling extended the definition of “foreign power” to include Britain and provided clear recognition that Australia had finally and completely ended all legal ties with the United Kingdom and was a fully independent and sovereign nation in its own right.

“In the 1950s and 1960s, the White Australia Policy caused a lot of problems for me and my family, but we were also in a particularly tough area,” he said.

“Not everyone was a racist, but that neighbourhood and the bikie gangs were full of them. As I got out of that, I realised that most Australians are really nice people.

“I ended up joining the Country Party, now the National Party, in 1981 and I’ve loved building bridges between Australia and Asia.

“Instead of creating and responding to anger, I joined a political party to help Chinese and other migrants integrate into Australia. Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen asked to start the first Asian Branch at the time, it was incredibly rewarding.

“Everyone can learn from everyone else, we can take a bit from all cultures. The world is so much more colourful if we accept other cultures and other ways of thinking.”

Mr Sue’s diplomatic attitude has extended not just to his life outside kung fu, but within the martial arts world as well.

He said kung fu’s greatest focus was to teach respect, and parents were thrilled as they saw the results with their own children.

“Over my life I have learned that we have to have better understanding and respect of each other, every country has their good and bad,” he said.

“In kung fu, we reach respect – respect for elders and for values. You cannot raise a child without respect and gratitude, otherwise they will have entitlement.

“Kung fu is not a religious organisation but we teach that it’s not about what you have but what you can share.

“Our parents can’t believe the difference in their children. They come to learn to fight, but they get something far greater.

“The most important thing we teach is the philosophy, the fighting comes last.”

And that’s the ultimate lesson from this man named Sue.

Originally published as One of the world’s best and highest ranked martial artists, Henry Sue