A little while ago I bought some DVDs at the Xidan Bookstore. One of them was “Stance Training”, apparently one of four by Zhang GuangYu. The DVD drive on my laptop is playing up a bit, so the video and sound are pretty choppy, but the DVD actually appears to be really, really good - just what I imagined yiquan to be like… I’m just wondering if anyone out there knows anything about Zhang Guang Yu, because Google turns up nothing apart from the DVDs, as far as I can tell…

Phew, something’s going on, that’s for sure - I had vivid dreams last night that woke me up every hour or so, drenched in perspiration even though I had the aircon on low at 23C….What were those dreams? Of course I don’t remember them, but I DO remember that they seemed to me about my past lives… Not in the reincarnation sense, but the people I’ve been in this life - the country boy on a scholarship to a school where everyone else seemed more talented and cosmpolitan… the techie… the politician…. the consultant…

And now here I am lecturing in Beijing. Time to count my blessings, I guess, and to take stock of the path that’s led me here. I’ve been stressing out about this for a while, particularly since the trip to Pingyao. Two of my companions on that trip were fellow-students on my MBA; one now works for one of the biggest-name investment banks, the other for a major global advertising firm. I, on the other hand, went to work for a startup that was going to make me rich… if it hadn’t tanked instead. Unexpected market changes, no blame anywhere; it couldn’t be helped. So I’ve been lecturing… It’s certainly no way to recoup what I spent on the MBA, although it does offer opportunities. Looking at it conventionally, there’s no doubt that my star has fallen far, and sometimes that worries me.

And yet…. here I am in Beijing. I enjoy my job. It gives me daily opportunity to cultivate a compassionate outlook, to develop humility, and to seek to improve myself. It’s interesting. I’ve got the chance to train bagua with one of the big names in the field, Sun Zhijun, and to be honest I think I’ll be one of the last to have that opportunity. I’m developing what seems to be a more traditional relationship with my other bagua teacher, who’s also going to teach me Shanxi short staff and other styles… I’ve got a good Ch’an meditation teacher who speaks English, can put Ch’an into the context of traditional Chinese medicine and Daoist thought, and is well-connected with the monastic community here in China…I’ll soon have the opportunity to start training in Yiquan’s highly regarded methods… I may not be earning much money even in Beijing terms… but it’s enough to live simply and comfortably, while paying for my training…. I’m meeting interesting people…

I have feeling that if I can stay here for a couple of years, that’s all I need to make the breakthrough, to make significant progress on the questions of “Why am I here?”, “What is my true purpose in life?” and on starting to clear my karma… cultivating water-nature and wu-wei… After that - which coincidentally will be around the time I turn 40 - it will be time to start a new chapter, and right now only one option is looking like it will make sense… but a lot could happen before then.

So yeah, it’s a long way from when I was a cutting-edge geek and rising political player with a comfortable amount of cash in the bank - but I’m happier and more content than I’ve ever been. Lao Zi would approve, no doubt!

Master Sun Ru Xian is out of town, so I didn’t have class with him today. I did plan to get up early as normal, and just practice solo, but I woke up feeling lousy and decided to stay in bed. The headache’s lasted all day, I hope I’m not coming down with something.

There’s building work going on just outside the university walls. Typically, no-one warned us that the water supply would be affected. The block where the staff laundry is located has had no water for three days now. My block is OK, so my bathroom still has water, but there are some staff living in the laundry block, and they’re suffering. For me the worst of it is that I’m handwashing all my clothes in my bathroom. It’s not my forte, no matter how much I visualise Once Upon a Time in China II….

I did get out to practice this evening. After 20 minutes of zhan zhuang, the CMC-37 set must have been one of the best I’ve done so far. Today, the standing practice didn’t hurt at all, instead just striking the right balance of resilient softness… I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough on Snake Creeps Down, and have made adjustments so that it doesn’t pressure my knees so much. I followed that with a set of the xuan xuan broadsword, but my mental blank with that is still around. No worries, it will pass eventually - I’m confident it’s all still there in muscle memory, I just need to empty my mind enough to tap into it.

I spent most of the next hour working on Master Zhou’s wuji set, and I think I’m making good progress there; it’s coming back reasonably quickly, although many details remain fuzzy. I finished off with a bit of work on the ba da zhang, topped off with pan guan bi.

I attracted the attention of a moth again. What is it that they want? Do they like the salt in perspiration, or something?

By this time, it was past 9pm, and I was feeling pretty low on energy. My favourite dumpling shop outside the west gate stops taking orders at 9:30, so I hopped on my bike and went straight there - no time to go home and change, as I normally do. My arrival with broadsword slung over my shoulder, then laid on the table, caused a bit of a stir - more than I’d anticipated. The younger waiters all wanted to play with it. I really hadn’t expected it to be so strange for them - perhaps I’ve been spoiled by my experiences in Singapore! No matter what else I might say, it was a wonderful thing to live in a really old-school part of “Old Singapore”, full of wuguans (is that right?), temples, and so on, where the sight of people wandering around with swords and spears didn’t raise an eyebrow. I rather suspect that by the time I get back in August (for a visit only, my plans have changed…) a lot of that will already have gone. Singapore is losing its roots, sigh….

I spent some time this afternoon revisiting Tabby Cat’s older blog, the one describing his intensive yiquan course last year. This is the same that I hope to take a year after him - August 2008, compared to August 2007 for him. I’ve learned a lot since I originally read this, and have met Master Yao, so I am seeing different things this time round. Like Tabby (or should that be TC? No, then I only see childhood cartoon characters… Top Cat… heh…) I’m a firm believer in soft over hard; the CMC-37 set was the first taiji style I learned, and it’s still my favourite… I’ve seen for myself that the atmosphere in the Yiquan Academy can be pretty macho; not really my preferred environment… and yet I really think there’s something there that I can use to improve my taiji and bagua, as well as the inestimable value of the yiquan itself… I hope it all works out - fingers are crossed…

When I woke up this morning, I could hardly walk, my legs were so stiff! I’ll attribute this partly to being out and about on the bike, but mostly to yesterday’s pan guan bi lesson with Master Sun Zhijun.

We worked for some time on the form, where I’m improving a lot (he says) - though there are still plenty of issues I need to work on! These are less to do with the form itself, though, and more to do with my perennial problems of left shoulder and lower back - which sometimes improve, and sometimes regress, but never seem to go away!

I showed him the video of Shao Zhong Ming performing pan guan bi, which I have on my iPod touch, and asked him how many different forms there are for this weapon - as the one in that clip is very different from what I’m learning. His answer was that because this weapon isn’t traditionally from bagua, but was borrowed from xingyiquan, there are really as many forms as there are with empty hand. The form Shao uses in the video is older, but Shao had had to learn it in something of a hurry prior to the competition. The form he’s teaching me is one that he’s developed more recently - it looks different, but the basic moves and concepts are actually all the same.

We then spent the rest of the lesson working on some applications, which was exceedingly cool. Anyone learning a form for the first time (or at least, someone like me who has no real combat or even sparring experience) will always try to work out what the movements are for - and it’s always funny when my guesses turn out to be completely wrong! Hehe, so anyway, we went through a few demonstrations, which involved strikes to the neck, back, achilles tendon and calf… et cetera, et cetera….

Master Sun reminded me that the forms really only are to train the body in movement; when it comes to fighting, the aim is to act naturally, to seek spontaneous opportunity, and he gave me a few demonstrations of what he meant. All of this, by the way, is increasing my affection -and respect - for the pan guan bi as a weapon. It’s not sharp, but even lightweight strikes like those yesterday show how effective it could be - it can really hurt! I have a book on pressure points that I’ve lent to a friend here (who dismissed it as “rubbish, because no-one who knows this stuff ever teaches it to a foreigner”!) and I’m going to have to get it back and look at it some more. Even if it’s not ‘authentic dian xue’, it’s still a useful compendium of soft spots that would make someone unhappy if you hit them hard there with a steel spike….

My main need now is for a training partner. I don’t think Mi Lao Shi has really trained in the applications - I could be wrong, but Master Sun is doing all the talking now (in fact, yesterday was the most he’s ever spoken in all the classes I’ve attended, and he certainly seems far more cheerful when he’s talking about all this!). However, this may be about to change… As a foreigner in Beijing, you soon realize there’s an insatiable desire amongst the Chinese to improve their English. I got an email this morning from another of Master Sun’s students, Li Ming. I’ve met her a few times at Master Sun’s apartment, and she’s helped translate during some lessons. She used to be a journalist and editor, until she became a professional kung fu coach. She suggests we meet up for some language exchange, and perhaps bagua practice together. Could be very interesting indeed, so I’ll try to set that up…

On the May Day Holiday, I went with some friends to the ancient walled city of Pingyao, which is almost untouched by the 20th Century. I’ll post more pictures as I discover where they are on the various flash drives I carried around… There were quite a few places that would be of interest to readers of this blog.

First up: a sad scene - the Dragon Temple outside the walls on the eastern side of the city. It was marked as an attraction on the official tourist map, and sounded intriguing, so we went along. Our tuk-tuk driver was bemused, and we soon found out why… the place was an empty ruin. It felt completely desolate… and yet, perhaps I imagined it, there still seemed to be some power there. How magnificent this temple must have been in the Imperial era, and how cruelly time has treated it…

It was very odd: the old man was sitting in the courtyard when we arrived. He didn’t acknowledge us, look at us, speak to us, or indeed move, while we were looking around. As we left, he got up, followed us out, and locked the door behind him. Was he waiting for us? How could he have known?

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