Just remembered one thing that came up in conversation with taijibum last night…. We were talking about body rotation in the bagua dragon/millstone stance. He mentioned that traditionally, in Cheng style, your torso should be twisted around so that you can look down onto your back foot. In his view, this is hardly ever taught these days and, even when it is taught, it takes a long time to be able to do.

In fact, I was taught this by my first bagua teacher, Zhang Sheng Li. It didn’t take long for me to be able to do it, either - I know for sure that it was only a couple of months. He’s right, though, that no-one else has ever taught this; one of my teachers actively told me that I should not be doing it. Still, I remember how, when I was training with Zhang, I really felt power developing in the waist and dantian. I’ve never had that feeling since then.

Hmmm. Maybe I should try training with Zhang again. I forget whether I mentioned, but I ran into his senior student by chance in Ritan Park a couple of weeks ago. I was going to meet Dragoncache for a beer, and apparently Zhang was teaching someone in a private lesson. I went to find him, but he must have left by another way in the meantime.

Anyway, what do you think about this? Should we train bagua by twisting around until we can look down on the back foot?

The Great Firewall of China has blocked access to Yahoo! servers again, bah! Since that’s where I host this blog, I can only reach it to post new material by going through a proxy service, which is slow and a real PITA. I’ve got an account on another hosting service, so I may have to try migrating everything there…

What’s been up since I last posted? I had my first small-class yiquan classes last weekend with Master Yao Chengrong. Thoroughly enjoyed them. There was another foreigner there on Saturday; a Belgian guy who was there for the first time. He has a background in Sanda, and is a big guy - but he was totally blown away by yiquan. Both of us were astonished by Helena, one of the Chinese women in the class. She’s an English major, still at university, I think, and tiny - the top of her head only reaches my chest, and I’m not a tall guy. Still, from a static standing position, she was uprooting one of the Chinese students, and throwing him forcefully into the wall. To look at her, you’d never guess how tough she is!

I have a rotten head cold, and my knee still hurts, but I think I’ll still go this afternoon. I want to buy Master Yao’s DVDs - 330RMB total for the set of 6.

Last night, I caught up with Dragoncache and, for the first time, another YouTube contact - taijibum, who’s also a bagua practitioner. He trains with a teacher at Beijing Language and Culture University; this is on the next block from the University where I teach, so I’ll definitely drop by at some point. The three of us had a long chat; a friend of taijibum’s is apparently currently training with Alex Kozma in Wales - I’d been wondering what had happened to Alex. Seems like his plan to move to South-East Asia hasn’t happened. As I happened to have my laptop and external hard drive with me (I’d met them straight from work) I was able to show them some clips of the video from the workshop I attended with Alex, and they were impressed!

Taijibum recommended this clip, which I’d never seen before:

In fact, I hadn’t heard of Jerry Alan Johnson. Comments?

OK, I thought it over, and I’m switching to the small-group classes. This is the ‘individual’ group on Saturday and Sunday afternoons; it’ll cost a little more but it’ll be worth it to be able to stop and go over things, ask questions, etc. I dropped in at the school this evening to confirm this with Master Yao; he’s ok with it, so I’ll start tomorrow.

My shoulders are much improved after the Tiger Balm, and I was able to eat unaided at the restaurant last night! Afterwards we went to the Drum & Bell bar and, from the yard in between the towers, we could see the stars clearly, with Orion’s Belt standing out clearly. The air is so clear and fresh in Beijing now. The leaves are all starting to turn a wonderful gold as well; soon it’ll be time to head out to the Xiang Shan hills west of the city to see the forests there changing colour…

I headed out for dumplings again last night, at my favourite little restaurant opposite Guloudajie station. I stayed quite late, then walked home along the lakes. Round about 11:30pm, I walked through the small exercise park where, on a previous ocasion, I saw someone practising baguazhang - see the video I posted for a view of the park.

Last night, there was someone practising yiquan; he was very good, doing a straight-line, back-and-forth, version of the jianwu ‘dance’ of improvised blocks, punches, and strikes. He was facing two metal poles that were one end of the support for a swing, and from time to time would lay into them with palm strikes - and he hit them hard! The whole structure would ring when he did that. Very impressive. The way he was doing the jianwu also seemed to tie yiquan back to its xingyiquan roots, it seemed to me, and highlighted power from small movements.

There were a couple of teenage Chinese lads watching as well; they were messing around trying to do kicks. There’s another bit of exercise apparatus that has wooden handles dangling at head height (for me) from chains, and they were trying to kick those. After they’d moved on, I gave it a go myself. I managed it with difficulty. At that height, I should be able to kick them fairly easily with a roundhouse kick, but I haven’t been stretching…. Oops.

I watched the yiquan guy practice for a little while longer, and had a quick chat with him before I went on home. He seemed surprised but pleased that a foreigner would know about yiquan, which I guess is natural - it’s not one of the better-known styles, after all. I asked who his teacher was, but I didn’t recognize the name.

All this is really making me look forward to starting yiquan classes next week….

I went for a stroll last weekend, down the quieter side of the Shichahai lakes - not an area I’d explored until I moved to Jishuitan. And what a discovery! It’s an area teeming with life and activity - not the Houhai tourists and bar-hoppers, but the true Beijing working class living life in the open.

And look what I saw! Very interesting. This is in a public exercise park; the ‘bricks’ this guy is stepping on and around are metal discs, embedded in the concrete.

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