So, another semester has come to an end.

I spent most of last weekend and Monday marking reports, and on Tuesday the exams started… Since then, I’ve done practically nothing except grade those…. and finally finished about half an hour ago.

With all that happening, I haven’t made it to yiquan classes for a while; I had hoped to get there, but it just didn’t work. During the pause on Monday evening, though, I made it to an applications class at Small Steps Neijia for the first time.

We worked on some tang ni bu stepping and bai bu/kou bu, and then some drills; these were xingyi rather than bagua (Liu Lao Shi’s lineage is xingyi-bagua, mixing the two together). It was really interesting; I’ve trained in the basic xingyi forms briefly, but I’ve never done any tui shou. It was interesting to see the drilling movements of the forearm in xingyi, and compare to its yiquan equivalent.

A large part of that class was then given over to freeform tui shou, which was extremely interesting. First of all, I partnered up with Liu Lao Shi himself; I don’t doubt that he was curious to see what I’d got, and I think I made a fairly good showing. My posture and energy flow were obviously off, though, as my right knee hurt afterwards, and is still sore.

There was only one other student there, a western guy who has no real background in martial arts other than a bit of taiji. We partnered up in the second half of the class, and I was amazed to discover that I was able to completely control him, even as he tried hard to push me around. I guess I’ve become used to training at the Zhong Yi Yiquan Wuguan with fairly experienced people, and forgotten what it’s like to work with ‘civilians’…

The very final part of the class was free-form pad work; each of us took a turn, with the other two holding pads and randomly presenting them to be attacked. Not at that point being tied to practising any particular move, it was interesting to see what came up. I found myself using several different yiquan moves but also launching into taiji’s Golden Cockerel at one point, plus bagua’s single palm change, as well as some ballistic punching that almost certainly came from watching systema material….

I also found that in terms of mindset I quickly fell into a fairly brutal “take him down NOW” mindset that I associate with my time training with Zhou Yue Wen in Singapore.

Hmmmm.

After I left the class, I thought back to when I first arrived in Singapore in 2002; the days when the martial application of taiji was only an unconfirmed legend for me, and I’d never seen bagua or xingyi…… Jeez…. I really have come a long way….

Anyhow: that session of just letting rip was rather a high point. And tomorrow…. I’m outta here, flying back to Wales for a couple of weeks. I will have my MacBook, but I don’t honestly expect to be posting much. So: see you all again in August….

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….

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

I’ve just come back from a short trip to Pingyao in Shanxi province. Pingyao used to be a centre of private banking in Qing-era China, and was a very wealthy place. However, as the country developed, the growth of a national postal system and national-scale banks rendered Pingyao’s pre-industrial system irrelevant. The city declined into poverty; in fact, it became so poor that the inhabitants could not afford any of the products of the 20th century, or to do anything than patch up their buildings and just get by. As a result, it’s hardly changed since the early 20th century, and its Ming- and Qing-style architecture is almost entirely untouched.

The poverty of the last century is evident, with many derelict and semi-collapsed buildings. However, its UNESCO status is gradually bringing tourism, along with the money – and social problems – that accompany it. We stayed in a hostel close to the old government building, which was OK, but not necessarily somewhere I would recommend or want to stay again. We took an overnight train from Beijing, which was noisy and uncomfortable. There weren’t any available tickets for the return trip, though, so we ended up hiring a car and driver to take us to the provincial capital, Taiyuan, from where we caught a coach back to Beijing. The less said about that trip, the better!

Don’t think I didn’t enjoy it, though! It was an adventure, with good company. As for Pingyao, I love it. In the early morning, it’s beautiful; the streets are empty except for locals going about their business, and it looks exactly as it must have done in centuries gone by; it’s surely the closest I will ever get to time travel

From about 8am, the fleets of coaches started arriving, and the main streets were crowded with throngs of tourists, almost all of them Chinese. There were a couple of local performers dressed up in Republic-era clothes (a mixture of traditional Chinese and western), who specialised in posing as rickshaw men, with tourists sitting in the rickshaw dressed in period costume. It was interesting to see Chinese tourists flocking to have their photo taken, where Westerners would surely be too afflicted by post-colonial guilt!

After about 5pm,the crowds melted away, and the streets became wonderfully quiet again. Pingyao in the summer evening is almost perfect. In the mellow evening air, you’re free to wonder around streets that are lively but not crowded. The only illuminations are from red lanterns hanging on the buildings, and from the shopfronts and restuarants. The old gate towers are also gently illuminated and visible from almost everywhere. I would love to go back just to spend a few more evenings there.

The old walls are still complete (after a little restoration), and we walked around one quarter of their length. It didn’t take long – Pingyao is very small! For the first time, I realised how intimate these old cities were; I wonder what it was like to live your life within a walled city…
On our last morning, we looked at our city map and decided to visit two temples: the Temple of Confucius, and the Dragon Temple. The Confucius Temple was very, very noisy and crowded when we went in, but most of the crowds didn’t go beyond the first couple of courtyards; as we went deeper in, there were more and more gardens and trees, and it became more tranquil. There always seemed to be a barely visible door or gate which, when investigated, led to another hidden courtyard and garden. There were lots of sparrows in the gardens; that reminds me, another lovely feature of Pingyao is the number of swifts (swallows? what’s the difference? Don’t ask me…) which sweep through the streets, darting around just above the heads of the pedestrians. The Dragon Temple, just outside the city walls, was a whole other story. After leaving the Confucius temple, we hired a tuk-tuk to take us there; the driver was astonished – “Why? There’s nothing there?”. He was right – and wrong. The temple was a gutted ruin, with what must have been the main altar open to the wind, the windows empty and broken, and a wholly desolate atmosphere pervading the whole complex. Tucked away in the back of the compound, a few temple buildings had been converted into housing and, though we didn’t linger, the poverty was clear. According to a sign on the outside wall, the compound had once housed an elementary school, but there’s absolutely no sign of that now; the only presence there is decay and collapse. We saw only one sign of life: an aged man sitting in the courtyard as if he’d been in the same spot for the ages; he barely acknowledged our presence, and certainly showed no surprise at the sudden appearance of this noisy group of Westerners. As we left, though, he came after us and locked the door behind him. It was almost as if he’d been waiting for us. I wonder how long he’d been there, and what tales he could tell about this temple’s past. Here, for the first time, I felt the damage and destruction wrought on traditional Chinese beliefs.

Pingyao used to be a centre of banking; banking means money, and money needs protection. There are a couple of museums in the premises of old-style security companies. These were family businesses just like the one Michelle Yeoh ran in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. There’s also a martial arts museum. In the Chinese way of doing things, the English signs in these museums weren’t particularly helpful, but it seems clear from what I read that these companies were specialists in xingyiquan and baguazhang, which I found extremely interesting. I took a lot of pictures, which I’ll try to post here in the hope that someone can give me more information! I knew from Master Zhou, of course, that his own line of bagua descends from convoy guards, but it was fascinating to see it here, in the buildings where these companies’ own headquarters.

OK, plenty more to say, particularly about my fellow travellers, and the train of thought this trip and other recent encounters have started, but I’ll save it for another post.

On Sunday night, I met up with Master Zhou to interview him. One of his Singaporean students helped out as an interpreter, and I’m grateful to her for giving up her time. We talked for about three hours; I think I got it all recorded, although I haven’t had time to review the file yet (crosses fingers).

To his credit, Master Zhou was very open about his himself, his past, and what motivates him. I learned a lot about him, I must say. I don’t want to say too much until I’ve reviewed the ‘tape’ (why is it that I still feel obliged to say that, even though I used a digital recorder?); I’ll probably write something up after that if I get time, but for the details you’ll have to wait until I write my book

So, in brief: Master Zhou grew up in a very poor part of Shanghai. He was born shortly before the Cultural Revolution started. He got into martial arts because that was all there was; in the absence of any other entertainment, everybody in his neighbourhood studied martial arts. At that time, they had to study late at night and early in the morning, to avoid being seen. With his background, and in that time and place, it was natural for him to become a Red Guard. He got involved in the fighting between different factions, and had to fight for his life, heavily outnumbered, on occasion. (At this time, he was in his early teens). After the Cultural Revolution ended, he was still obliged to fight on a regular basis.

Speaking as someone who has fought for his life against armed opponents, he says that his favourite moves are xingyi’s pi quan, and some bagua techniques.

He gave me a lot of information about the styles he knows, and the masters he’s studied with. He confirmed what Edward mentioned in a comment on the last incarnation of this blog.
What else can I say at this point..? There’s so much! OK, that will have to do for now.