H’si T'ang

H’si T’ang is a former Master of Sinanju in The Destroyer. He teaches both Chiun the Elder and the younger Chiun, whose pupil Remo Williams becomes the central American practitioner of the Korean martial discipline. He is associated with the Sight, an ability to perceive future events, and protects Chiun and Remo during the Master’s Trial.

In The End of the Beginning, H’si T’ang identifies himself as Chiun’s grandfather. He explains that he was known as Hwa and Yui as Master and grandfather, and took the teacher-name H’si T’ang when he returned to complete Chiun’s training after his son’s death. An earlier narrative names the grandfather Yui and attributes the discovery of a North American land to him in the year before Alaska’s sale. The later explanation assigns the different names to roles held by the same man.

H’si T’ang retires to a cave above Sinanju. During Chiun’s departure for America, he explains that a Master withdraws to purify his spirit when his successor takes a pupil, but says he has had to reenter the world three times. His sight is then failing, and Chiun worries about him. He asks to look once more at Chiun’s face before blindness takes it from him. He also rejects Chiun’s guilt over Song’s death and over the failure of Nuihc, the pupil whose skill he judges to be an imitation of Sinanju’s deeper essence.

In Master’s Challenge, the challengers and their teachers face the Dutchman, a dangerous assassin. H’si T’ang steps between the attacker and Chiun and Remo, taking the force of the attack himself. Chiun tries to stop him, but the old Master holds him back. Remo later thanks H’si T’ang for saving both of them; the intervention is followed by the old Master’s death.

Chiun lays a robe beneath his dying teacher while Griffith, the son of the Welsh challenger Emrys ap Llewellyn, kneels beside him. H’si T’ang says he no longer has the power to heal Remo and is ready to enter the Void. He dies after trying to speak to Chiun, who gives a benediction placing the death in the spring of the Year of the Tiger. The story supplies that traditional calendar description, rather than an explicit Gregorian date.

After the death, a voice speaking through Griffith identifies itself as H’si T’ang’s surviving spirit. It says the boy’s soul and mind remain his own: only the old Master’s knowledge has been added. H’si T’ang explains that Griffith already has a measure of the Sight and asks that he be taught properly, so he does not become fearful and isolated like the Dutchman. This passage presents a transfer of knowledge through the spirit, not the replacement of Griffith’s identity.

H’si T’ang later appears to Remo during the dream-filled Rite of Attainment in Last Rites. He identifies himself as the Master who trained Remo’s Master, tells Remo that the Rite is nearing its end, and directs him to Chiun for the name of his father. The encounter belongs to the Rite’s meetings with past Masters.