Don't ask Kid Koala about his style because he won't talk about them when he's describing his DJ work. It's not ironic that Bruce Lee did the same when asked about his fighting technique. The idea instead, is to learn all styles and incorporate them into one deadly art.

At a recent stop of the Ninjatune tour, a medium-short Asian kid got on stage and in just a few minutes of spinning records in front of the colorful, looping videos of skateboarders, computer graphics, and Japanese words, people were asking each other, "Who is this guy?" Unknown to most everyone since he has no vinyl releases to date, he's Eric "Kid Koala" San, a 22-year-old, straight-up Chinese Canadian who hails from Montreal via Vancouver.

In the most recent DMC contest, he took the top prize for all of Montreal, but got ousted once the contest moved to Toronto. But that's no big deal to him since he's out to keep improving his skills.

"Negative energy can be put into speed," says San. While he was developing his skills, he would "tense up and mess up his routine." The speed wasn't there for him. That's when he first started reading martial arts manuals to help him out.

After talking to San for just a few minutes, he convinced me that DJing and martial artists are similar. "There's common elements like discipline, relaxation, and instrumentality. Martial arts relates to scratching," says San. For example, he makes mention of Lee's "economy of motion" to increase his speed in punching.

On his down time, San is currently reading the Tao of Jeet Kun Do by Bruce Lee. "Just change everytime he mentions the word 'punch' into 'scratch' -- a lot of DJs are aware of this." The Technics 1200s are San's punching dummies, and the music is his yell reverberating into everyone's bodies.

San started the tables seven years ago when he bought the first Coldcut records and played the shit out of them. And this proved to be worthwhile, since years later he spun records at an in-store with Coldcut and did a kick-ass job freestyle scratching Ninjatune disks without ever hearing them before.

Regarding his current affiliation with Ninjatune, San keeps it simple: "I was in the right place at the right time." But it wasn't that straight forward. He did a little maneuvering. Although the entire story escapes me, he set it up so that the Ninjatune artists, Porcini and DJ Food, who were visiting Montreal were somehow going to be in a van with him, and he made sure that his mix tape happened to be in the tape deck. "Luckily they asked who was spinning," he says.

When he's not at the tables, he checks out Hong Kong films at the Asian Fantasy Weekly, and is currently into the Wushu and Shaolin styles of Jet Li. And when he's running around town, he chills at home and listens to old jazz, baroque, and Ninjatune records.

With San's massive skills, one would think that he's been frequenting clubs since infancy, but he claims that he's not part of the club culture. San maintains that he spun records at college pubs and has a weird collection of 80s music.

Recently, he graduated from an elementary education program and helped teach kids. He wants to do it fulltime someday, but currently gets the leftover vinyl that they are about to throw away. "Best thing about records is even if they are strached you can still scratch with them," says San.

Another side excursion of San's is his band, Bullfrog, which is an eight-piece group. You can only guess what instrument he plays. They performed in the International Jazz Festival and he lied to some of his family and said he played sax!

Upcoming, he has a Coldcut remix and his own single, although for now he has his magical mix tape tape which got him hooked into one of the most popular DJ record labels today. His future is looking bright, and when asked about his family's understanding about his work, he says, "They don't understand it. Try explaining it in Chinese!"

On a final note, San's theory about why there are so many Asian DJs: "Asians are too short to play basketball or rugby, even though there is occasionally, the odd Asian tall freak, but the rest have to do something else." He also adds, "Many Asian parents forced their kids to play music." So San had a head start in music -- he played the classical piano for ten years.