Once again, I was up early yesterday, and met Master Sun Ru Xian for a 6:30 class. We worked on a couple of the bagua mother palms, using bricks this time to start developing palm and forearm strength. Next, we continued to work on the first three of the 64-palm sequences. I’m enjoying these - which is not to say that I’m remembering them… They’re gradually sinking in, though. Finally, we worked on the Shanxi whipstaff some more. This is getting more interesting - Sun Lao Shi was pointing out that this is a move derived from broadsword sets, this one is derived from a jian action, this one comes from a spear attack, and so on. The whipstaff is a chest-height staff; it’s what you would use as a walking-stick in the hills, etc. It made me think that this in many ways suggests so much of China’s history - a martial arts set using a day-to-day tool, incorporating the knowledge acquired by peasant-soldiers with all kinds of different weapons…

As with the bagua, etc, Sun Lao Shi teaches the staff to be used. His demonstrations of strikes are always precisely targetted at knee joints, etc - it’s not a ‘performance’ style by any means. Has he ever had to use this stuff for real? I don’t intend to ask him - not for a long time, if ever. Master Zhou Yue Wen, when I interviewed him, was really open about his past in the Red Guards,etc, but he was unusual - most people over a certain age in China have bad memories from a couple of decades ago, I guess. Most probably will never talk about them.

On the other hand, there are sides to the martial arts scene in China that I still have much to learn about. Last weekend, Dragoncache and I were chatting about a certain martial arts teacher, and how he is also extremely practical in his applications. Dragoncache said something like “Of course, he was really active in the underground fight scene”, just before the conversation took a different turn. Wait, though, what? China has, or had, an underground fight scene? Given who we were talking about, this must have been at least twenty or thirty years ago, I would have thought - surely not a period when I would have expected that kind of thing to have been tolerated by the authorities! Now I’m really curious. Not sure how to find out more, though.

After class with Sun Lao Shi, I went down to Jiushuitan to pay my rent. It turns out that the apartment complex I’ll be living in was built for long-time Shichihai residents when all of their ancient Siheyuan were demolished. Sure, the apartments are modern, with indoor plumbing etc… but my landlady is still sad at the destruction of her hutong, and all of the beauty, history, and community that went with it…

I’m counting yesterday as day 11, even though I didn’t go….

I was up at 5:30am; yesterday Sun Lao Shi and I agreed to meet a little later today, so I was there at 6:30. We worked on the 8 basic palms and their applications, and then reviewed the first set of the 4 palms in more detail.

After that, we went into the Shanxi whipstaff, and the time just flew by! Before I knew it, it was time to move on. He gave me a spare staff, but in the current pre-Olympics security climate there’s no way I could take it downtown, so I had to cycle back to my university, leave it at home, then cycle back to Wudaokou. I grabbed my usual breakfast at Lush, and then headed down to the Yiquan Academy.

I forgot my copy of the curriculum again, so I can’t tell you then name of what we did; essentially, it was uppercut punches - first of all singly, and then in combinations, all in a static position.

That was all I did until lunchtime, at which point I headed down to Jianguomen, grabbed lunch at Subway, and spent the afternoon in Starbucks at the Friendship Store. It turns out that if you buy Earl Grey you get two-for-one (don’t know if the other teas are the same) which was cool. I finished off Kerouac’s Dharma Bums, which struck a number of chords - I really can identify with the protagonist in many ways! I’d seen it in Singapore but never bought it, which was the right decision - I think I needed to read it now, and not while I was still in Singapore…

When I got back to the Academy at 5, there was another westerner there, an Israeli called something like Gil. I’m not sure how long he’d been there, but he waited until 5:45, and as Master Yao still hadn’t arrived he gave up and left. He’s apparently here as an Olympic volunteer, has studied some yiquan and Shaolin styles before, and found the Academy via its website. I gave him Master Yao’s phone number, so he may be back.

After trying the Shanxi whipstaff in the morning, I was curious about Yiquan’s staff techniques, so I asked if I could do some work on that - so that was what I learned this afternoon. Nothing very exciting, just one static pose, but it did actually give me some insight into posture.

Master Yao arrived with the Japanese student about 6:15, and corrected me a few times. Apparently he’ll be there tomorrow morning.

I was chatting to Carlos last night, and he’d got the impression I’m fed up with the Academy; I can see why my recent posts may have given that idea, but it’s actually not the case! Wait for my final roundup at the end of the week!