Getting back into the bagua… Spent some time circle-walking this morning, reviewing the ba mu zhang, and working on getting my transitions right from one palm to another… I’ll have to spend a few days on this - I’m rusty after my long break - and then it’ll be on to the ba da zhang… It feels good though, after not working on my bagua for a few months; I’m noticing that my abdomen, spine and lungs feel really energized…

Run, don’t walk over to YouTube, and to an absolutely amazing archive of martial arts interviews recently uploaded by MartialArtsTV MartialArchiveTV!

Just as a sample, here’s an interview with Bruce Frantzis from 1987, split into four segments. Incredible stuff.

I love the “Take it easy” pleas from his sparring partner in the 4th segment

In yesterday’s yiquan class, I was talking to Karula, the German girl who’s been staying in Beijing for a month. She studied taijiquan in Germany, and came to China specifically to study yiquan. She’s been training every day, and has the bruises on her forearm to prove it. She speaks better Mandarin that I do, and mentioned that I’d misunderstood what Master Yao said last week: it seems he said I can use his brother’s book to help me understand what is going on, I just need to be careful of some differences. That’ll be useful.

We practised a couple of the more unusual yiquan postures: ban fu shi chengbao zhuang (bending over expanding-embracing post) and xiang long zhuang (landing dragon combat post). The first is standing, but bent forward with the arms and forehead resting on a support, and is apparently good for the intestines. The second is a long stance, with 70% of the weight on the forward leg (it’s usually 70% on the back), arms raised, and the torso twisted so that you’re looking backwards… It needs reasonably good balance, and is developing waist power, I think!

Karula and I tried some tui shou, as the the German guy who’s usually with her wasn’t at class. I thought they’d come together from Germany, but it seems he actually lives in Beijing, is a long-term student of Master Yao’s, and was just helping to translate. Anyway, something interesting occurred, as I was pretty tired: as Karula tried to press me, I deflected her force and - in that slightly dreamy state you get when you’re tired - I found my hands “sticking” to her arm and going almost automatically into taiji’s “cloud hands”, which demonstrated that it is an effective joint-breaker. Hmm. Of course, I didn’t break her elbow, but it became clear that it could be done! It made me think about my views that sparring practice is necessary in training: yesterday, that application of cloud hands emerged spontaneously - but I’m not sure it would have been so clear, or at all useful, if that had been a real fight rather than a training session….

Speaking of training and sparring, a Serbian girl lives downstairs from me. She started attending wushu classes for the first time shortly after I moved into my apartment, and showed me some of what she’s learned. Even though she and her fellow-students are all novices, her teacher has already got them started on the short staff (bian gan), similar to what I studied for a short while with Sun Lao Shi. She’s already way better than me! There’s many possible reasons for that of course but one is certainly that they train the form in class, but then also do free-form sparring, learning to apply what they’ve just studied - so learning to improvise, improve reflexes, and so on! Of course, it helps that she’s fluent in Mandarin!

I was planning to go out with friends to have dinner last night, but it got cancelled at the last minute. That left me at an unexpected loose end, so I headed down to Houhai to see what was up. I’ve noticed that since the Olympics there are many more touts - in some sections, almost every bar has a young guy or two outside trying to lure in passers-by, plus lots of “lady bar” pimps. They’re getting a lot more aggressive as well; I think a lot of people invested heavily in bars for the Olympics and, when the visitors didn’t arrive in the numbers that were expected, found that they are not recouping their money. That’s just my theory, but it’s a fact that these guys are barely stopping short of physically dragging people off the road and into their bar! One of these lads got particularly in my face last night, well beyond what I thought was acceptable, and it led to a bit of a scuffle and name-calling. Nothing more serious! I should, of course, have let it pass but I notice that since I started training yiquan I’ve got a bit more of a temper. I expected this - those of you who knew me in Singapore may recall that I said for quite some time that I didn’t want to study xingyi, because I was worried that xingyi is by nature pretty brutal, and I was concerned about the effect it would have on my temperament. Well, yiquan is derived from xingyi and, yes, I’m finding that its directness and ferocity are having an effect. I’m going to need to start balancing my training with meditation - which would be a good thing to do anyway.

Heh, on the topic of aggression on the streets, this is of course one reason why I want to develop my ability to protect myself if need be! Dragoncache thinks I’m being over-stressed about this, and he’s probably right but… on the other hand…. there’s a recession coming, and hard times with it. China’s a pretty safe place, of course, but on the other hand, you know, there are a lot of people here who have got used to an ever-improving economy, and may not be prepared for the money drying up. At the back of my mind, I recall the TV scenes of the riots in Indonesia in ‘97….

So on that note, a couple of links:

• China Briefing: Public aggression on the rise across China
• Shanghai Daily: Beijing Police crack down on knives in schools.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not walking the streets in fear! China is very safe

And as for that scuffle with the tout… I felt bad afterwards that I’d let myself be provoked. When I sat down later, though, I started reading my copy of The Compass of Zen, which I had in my bag, and it opened to the page about the Avatamsaka Sutra, and I read:

The Avatamsaka Sutra teaches that everything is truth. In Hinayana Buddhism, for example, getting angry and then acting on that anger is not such a good state. But the Avatamsaka Sutra displays Mahayana Buddhism’s extremely wide view: like everything else in this universe, anger is also truth. For example, a child misbehaves and plays in a dangerous street. The parent sees this and becomes very angry. The parent scolds or even spanks the child. “How many times have I told you not to do that?”. The child’s behaviour is the truth: it is not good or bad. The spanking and the scolding are also neither good nor bad, and they are also the truth. Whereas the Hinayana view is to try not to act on anger, in this view - the view of the Avatamsaka - the anger and the scolding and the spanking are meant to prevent the child from causing harm to himself and others. They are simply truth.

I’m going to think about this.

I was on MSN last night chatting to Carlos, who commented that I’ve been quiet for a while. Very true. It’s not that things haven’t been happening, more that I’ve been trying to absorb and process it all.

The yiquan is going very well indeed; I’m loving it. The weekend before last saw quite large classes on both Saturday and Sunday, with the foreigners (German & Russian) that I mentioned before, plus more Chinese than usual. On the Sunday, we practiced with the staff, which was cool; it’s not a weapon I’ve used much before.

Last weekend saw a big change. It turns out that many of the Chinese who have been coming for the last few weeks are not actually from Beijing; they’ve been staying for short periods to train, but have now gone home. The Russians have also left, and the Germans depart next week - which means that before long, it could be just me and Master Yao at the weekend small classes! That’s a rather scary thought, given the language barrier… Of course, I’ve been having 1-1 lessons with non-English-speaking teachers for the last year or so - Master Zhou in Singapore, Master Sun Zhijun, Mi Lao Shi and Sun Lao Shi here in Beijing - but that was bagua… I don’t mean to say that bagua is any less profound that yiquan (much more, in many ways) but if nothing else it’s much easier to actually see what the teacher is doing in bagua! Yiquan is much more subtle… Still, I’m looking forward to it.

I did politely ask Yao Lao Shi whether it would be ok to use the books I’d bought from his brother, Yao Chengguang, earlier this summer. He suggested it would be better not to, as they don’t do things the same way (I couldn’t follow what the differences are, but the point was clear). So, right now, I’m trying to use VLC to rip Yao Lao Shi’s DVD (Yao Chengrong, that is) so that I can put clips onto my iPod. So far it’s not working - the picture is badly distorted

Even with the communication issues, I am learning huge amounts very quickly in the yiquan lessons. My ‘kua’ and shoulders are stretching and relaxing. My weight is sinking more naturally right down to the soles of my feet and is better distributed when it gets there. Although yiquan doesn’t talk about qi, I’m feeling some kind of sensation at my lower and middle dantians while I’m in zhan zhuang (post-holding standing posture). I’m even having new insights into (Cheng) bagua’s palm use and mud-stepping!

And so, speaking of the bagua… I have no idea where Sun Lao Shi is. I called a couple of times in October but his wife said that he was travelling, and that he would contact me when he got back. I haven’t heard anything but so far it’s not really a bad thing… As I’ve mentioned here, I kind of lost my direction for a while, and stopped training solo. However, I began to use VLC to put clips from VCDs of Liu Jing Ru onto my iPod (it works fine with VCDs; the problem is with DVDs) and that finally relit the flame, so I’ve started training again. I’ll spend a while refreshing my memory on the details of the ba mu zhang and ba da zhang at first, and then move on to doing it faster and longer (for aerobic fitness) and with steel rings/wrist & ankle weights (for endurance and strength). A friend of mine says that he often goes to Ditan Park in the morning to work on his Chen taiji, so I may try to join him - it’s only a couple of subway stops away.

So that’s the news up until now….

Learning: we start knowing nothing. we learn something, and try to apply it. We learn more. Sometimes we discover that our earlier attempts at understanding were correct. Sometimes we discover that they were incorrect. I guess that this is the Scientific Method.

I am not, by nature, a passive person. Meditation, and the TCIMA, have been extremely beneficial for me in terms of my general tendency to Not Take Things Lying Down.

So: in Traditional Chinese Internal Martial Arts, there’s this principle about pressing the tongue against the palate. I’ve speculated about it on previous occasions, based upon my experience of living in the region where some of these arts originated, or were developed.

Something else just struck me, and perhaps you could let me know what you think. Let’s consider three different ideas:

1. An ingrained habit of breathing with the tip of the tongue pressed against the palate.
2. High-stress, high-risk situations.
3. Hyperventilation.

Comments are welcomed…

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