Remembering Big Mike, well known guy in the Chinatown kung-fu scene

Adam Cheung says farewell to Mike Lowney

[T]o me, Big Mike was mostly a person who came by the school to visit my Sifu [teacher], a white guy who spoke Cantonese and Taishanese and had studied countless types of Kung Fu both in Chinatown, Hong Kong, and China. He was well known for his loyalty to his Sifu, which many Chinese saw as uncharacteristic for most American students. He had embraced the Chinese culture full on and even become somewhat of a legend to a generation between mine and his of young Chinese men who took it upon themselves to recount his great exploits to me. ...

"He would break those big rocks and bricks and walk around carrying a sword like one of those 'dai hup'" a Wuxia Hero. The closest thing to that image in American culture would be a cowboy... and more recently Kung Fu Panda (the first one) makes fun of this image with Po imagining himself to be the wandering hero. But to many in Chinatown, including Chinese, Big Mike was the real deal.