I had lunch today with Kong Cheng, Liu Jin Ru‘s disciple, and caught up on what’s happened over the summer. When we last met, we had arranged that round about now I would have started training bagua with him, although obviously circumstances have prevented that. He was of the opinion it’s a pity that the hospital put my wrist in a cast, where it’s fixed for a couple of months; apparently the TCM way (he’s a TCM doctor) would have been to splint it for a few days at a time, with massage and the application of herbs at intervals to help heal the soft tissue as well as the bone. To be honest, I totally agree – after the mess western-trained doctors made of dealing with my achilles tendon, I swore to avoid them whenever possible, and it was TCM massage that helped get that on the road to recovery (and taijiquan that took it to the end of the road!).

Kong Cheng is off to Europe again for a couple of months where he’ll be teaching baguazhang and TCM. He’s leaving after the National Day/mid-autumn festival, so we’ll meet before then so he can take a look at my x-rays, and then maybe introduce me to a doctor at a TCM hospital, so that I can get traditional treatment for my wrist after the cast comes off. Not sure if my insurance will cover that…

He’s also Vice-President of the Beijing Baguazhang Association. I mentioned that I wouldn’t mind interviewing him about that sometime for publication here, and he was quite happy with that idea. If you’ve got any questions, leave them in the comments…

He also had news of my old bagua teacher, Sun Ru Xian. Sun Lao Shi is apparently very well now that he’s retired. He’s also on a European teaching tour at the moment!

His name came up again later in the day. One of my colleagues, who’s just joined us this semester, knows some xingyi and is looking for a teacher; Sun Lao Shi is primarily a xingyi man, and co-authored a book on the subject with Liu Jing Ru. My students – until I learned to speak slower and enunciate more carefully – used to have terrible trouble with my Welsh accent, but this new guy is a true Dubliner, and has an accent so dense he could probably beat someone over the head with it…

Oh, I took a video of some xingyi on a bus the other day, but you’ll have to wait till I’ve got it on YouTube to learn more….

3 Comments »

1. 

   Happy teachers’ day!
   Did you get any gifts, cards or other tokkens of respect?
   We had lots of rites for Kongzi at the many temples for him, but noh holidays!

   Comment by Bai Yiming — September 30, 2009 @ 12:44 pm

2. 

   Ha! Thanks, and the same to you! Here in the PRC, Teachers’ Day is September 10 That was before our semester started, but I did get emails from old students now in the UK!

   Comment by Emlyn — September 30, 2009 @ 6:44 pm

3. 

   ola, gostaria de saber se a associacao jing hu, ainda existe e se tem alguma filial aqui em sao paulo.e se tem algum familiar do mestre huo yuen jia ainda vivo.

   Comment by sergio dos santos — November 16, 2009 @ 6:02 am

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