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….

As I mentioned, the Small Steps school train in a different Beijing park every Sunday. Yesterday, it was the Temple of Heaven, right down in the south of the city. There’s now a subway stop outside the East Gate, so that’s how I went – but it seemed to take a loooooong time, and I joined the class about an hour and a half late. Next time we train there, I’ll go on my bike – I think it would be quicker!

The east side of the park is where the crowds are; loads of elderly Beijingers practicing ballroom dancing, Beijing Opera, that weird taiji badminton, kicking feathered weights and so on and so on… There was a new one I hadn’t seen before, of tossing large rubber quoits at one another, and trying to get your head through the centre so that you build up a set of them around your neck like some strange African tribe…. Past all these, and the tourists (both Chinese and foreign), past the vendors of chilled water bottles (yi kuai wu! yi kuai wu! Harlo! Two yuan!) Hehehehe, past the surreal flying saucers of the temple itself, and over the the quieter west side – more open and forest-like. Here, every grove seemed to have its own group of martial artists… One group, near where we were headed, were practising xingyi and bagua; young, heavily muscled, standing motionless in santi, or gliding in circles….

Then I joined Liu Lao Shi, Dalida, and a group of others, who had been there for a long time before I arrived! I was set to working on some of the qigong postures, including a long stretch of zhan zhuang. By the end of all this, my shoulders were really aching! After that, a session of the bagua ‘tea cups’ exercise, which I haven’t done in a long, long time! It was fun, though. All too soon, it seemed, the session was over, and we all went our separate ways.

One of the other students, the Canadian I mentioned, knows something about systema, and we’ve chatted about it before. We agreed yesterday to catch up some time to try training together; I think we could work on some of the exercises from Scott Sonnon’s Softwork DVD….

I went pretty much straight on to my afternoon yiquan class, pausing only for a plate of baozi. Mmmmmm, there’s a branch of the Qing Feng Steamed Baozi chain just around the corner from Yao Lao Shi’s school, and I often eat there on my way to class.

There were four of us there; two foreign, two Chinese. It was a good session, pretty strenuous towards the end. I managed to get in a tui shou session with all three of the other guys, and was feeling pretty strained afterwards; one of them is a lot taller than me, so I had to work pretty hard. Luckily for me, he has a habit of locking himself into a position and then pushing, so he’s pretty much unshiftable if you push against him – but with a swift change of angle, he can’t defend himself. He’s going to be tough to beat once he figures that out…

Then, on to Zhongshan Park. I worked on the ZMQ-37 as usual, giving it a few rounds. Next, the wuji long xing bagua form of Master Zhou – which I haven’t done for a good long while, and needs a bit of refreshing. That’s got a move very similar to one in the ROSS systema ‘wave’ DVD, of stretching out the arms and sending a wave rolling from hand to hand; something got a bit crunchy in my left shoulder when I tried that….

After that, a bit of xuan xuan taiji dao. Mentioning that, I should note that on my way to the park, I’d noticed that my bike was shaking unusually when I braked, so I stopped at the Drum Tower to get it fixed by the bike repair man there. It turned out that the rim of the front wheel was a bit buckled, so that needed changing. While he was building the new wheel, one of his friends noticed the sword bag slung over my back and wanted to know what was in it, so I told him it was a taiji dao. Oh, he said, a taiji jian. No, a taiji dao. Is it long? he asked. Yes. Ahhh, it’s a bagua dao. Sigh. I got it out of the bag to show him. Hahaha, it’s a Japanese sword, not a Chinese sword, he told me. Sigh. I gave up.

In the bag, I also had my shashkas, of course, and I ended my training session in the park with a spell using those.That, and trying a few simple Cossack dance moves…. I’m getting faster and more accurate with one, and a bit more coordinated with two. I don’t think I’m being too forward if I say that I can already do a lot of what this guy is doing (not as well; not as smoothly; but getting there, bit by bit); what I can’t, I should be able to do soon….

My left wrist is going to take a while to train up to be as strong and flexible as it needs to be, though, and my shoulders definitely felt the strain. The left, in particular, is still too tight; it’s difficult to let the sword in my left hand swing naturally. Hehehehe, and one day I must get someone to take a picture of me doing that while a platoon of PLA soldiers marches past, staring at me in curiosity whilst keeping perfect step….

Oh yes, and I mentioned recently that I was still working on finding the correct way to grip the shashkas. Well, since I bought my new MacBook I’ve switched my default browser from Firefox to Chrome, and discovered with great pleasure that it’s got an auto-translate feature by default – which has seamlessly made a whole lot of YouTube comprehensible… Thus, I found myself looking at this, which kind of answered my immediate questions:

The air quality was bad yesterday, so I didn’t try to get to the hills in the end… Pity, the day before was beautiful, sunny with blue, blue skies and a cool wind; I’d got quite excited about getting away from the city…

Anyhow, I went on to the yiquan class, and was really glad I went.

I’ve been working for a while on the mo ca bu stepping; trying to engage the kua as I step.. I think I’ve got it working fairly well now, at least in the slow shi li stages. I notice that when I get it right, I’m really rooted on the back leg, so the forward foot is both weightless, and slides naturally along the curve that Yao Lao Shi shows us.

There are a couple of German lads visiting; they train with Yao Lao Shi’s student who’s set up a school in Austria. There were also a few young Chinese lads, whom I’ve seen before but not for quite a long time.

The tui shou session was great. First, I trained with one of the Chinese lads, who was very good. He landed a few slaps and punches, but I delivered a lot more, I think. Then, I went straight on to partner one of the Germans, who was a bit better than me, but not by a lot. He managed to turn me and uproot my a couple of times, but on the other hand I was able to slip through his defenses with punches fairly easily and often.

So, in review: both of these guys were much younger than me and train harder than I do, but I think I acquitted myself well enough. My rooting is generally pretty good, and my defenses are strong. The German, as I say, turned me round, but I think I know what I did wrong. My use of my kua is good in the slow testing, but I keep forgetting to do it in the heat of tui shou; once I can remember that, I’ll be better placed to use fa li. I’m getting much better at staying focused on my partner’s centreline, and at redirecting force away from mine. I’m a bit too passive, and tend to just stay on the defensive.

Not a bad position to be in, and I have some clear areas for improvement.

Master Yao asked me to write an article about my experience of being a student at his school; it’ll go on his web site, and also in a magazine that will be published soon (not sure exactly what that is). Yikes! I need to think about what’ll be the right tone and approach to take for that….

After the class, I went to Beihai Park instead of the hills, and mooched around for a while. I hadn’t realized how close it is to my apartment if I cut through the hutongs! I finally saw the famous nine-dragon screen…

I took one of the shashkas and found a quiet spot to practice some more with that, alone except for the impassive gaze of an old man and his caged songbird….

I haven’t written much about the yiquan lately, but I’m still going. In recent lessons, I’ve been concentrating on the kua a great deal.

Master Yao has called me out a few times in the tui shou practice for relying on strength too much, as opposed to technique – and he’s right, of course.

I’m doing quite well in terms of using core muscle strength rather than arms and shoulder – though even there, a stiffness is creeping back in, as I haven’t been doing sufficient solo zhan zhuang practice recently. This isn’t enough: I’m pretty good at sensing my opponent’s force, but not fast or powerful enough to properly use technique to uproot them. I also tend to be too passive, not attacking often enough when a gap opens up in my opponent’s posture.

Speed will have to come through more practice, for which I need to start attending the large-group classes – which is where tui shou is practiced more.

In terms of power – as opposed to strength – I’ve been improving a lot at using my kua as the gates that instigate movement in the whole body. It took me a long time to get the muscle movement right, so that the kua could open and close without straining my knees, but I think I’ve got more or less got it now. In the testing-force exercises and mo ca bu stepping it seems to be effective at getting more power into my moves, but I’m not succeeding in using this in tui shou. Well, as always, more practice is needed…

After class last Saturday, I cycled down to Zhongshan Park again, where I took these pictures. I worked on my ZMQ-37 and taiji xuanxuan dao forms; I’m slowly making progress with the latter! I concentrated on the kua again in these forms and it seemed to help. I attracted the attention of a very short and very sweet Chinese lady, who came over to watch for a while. She wanted to know all about me, and how long I’d been studying taiji. She said she was in her fifties and had been studying taiji for a few years; she found it very good for her health. She was studying the jian, and hadn’t seen a dao form before. Quite rightly, she told me off for forgetting it!

A friend sent me a link to a bagua school I hadn’t heard of before: Small Steps Neijia. They have some clips on YouTube, and I thought it might be worth checking them out as the integrated qigong is relatively unusual and the lineage is uncommon. I called the contact, a Serbian woman, but she turned out to be in Europe – with call-forwarding on, so I reached her but it was 5am there. Ooops!

More on the tuina soon.

Heh, this karma thing works fast, doesn’t it! The day after I accidentally punched someone in the mouth, I received a thumping palm-heel blow to the head that crossed my eyes for a moment or two! Not from the same guy – it was an accident

So yes, it was another great yiquan lesson yesterday. I was reminded of the need for constant attention and awareness of where both I and my partner are moving and directing our energy. Master Yao drew my attention to some errors in the way I was pivoting my arm against my partner’s; I can see that what I was doing was wrong, but can’t quite see how to do it correctly, so I’ll have to work on that. I was thrown when I had a partner on the run because I didn’t stay focused on his centre-line, so he was able to redirect my force and send me into the wall. I can feel it all today, with a sore head, stiff shoulder and a certain soreness around the tendons of elbows and knees.

It’s all good; this is how we learn to be effective martial artists.

In the evening, I revisited J. P. Lau’s Beginner’s Guide to Yiquan, and was even more impressed than before at its quality. On the other hand, I think I must have made a fair bit of progress recently in order to appreciate the meaning of some parts. As an aside, it’s almost convinced me to buy an iPad – to assist my own learning, I would quite like to make a mashup of sections of the guide and his essays, combined with the still pictures and videos from Master Yao Chengrong’s website, plus my own annotations. I rather think that the iPad would do all that rather well, plus the touch-screen combined with a Chinese dictionary (I use DianHua on my iPhone) is the tool I need to kickstart my language studies / learn the Yiquan terminology…. God, I’m such a geek…

Oh, and I’m really appreciating the practicality of yiquan; I haven’t been studying it long – and even that period has been interrupted a lot by travel and injury – but I can see real, significant improvements in my health and posture, and in my ability to protect myself in a fight. I had a conversation recently that involved people who have studied for years in other arts, and learned all their teacher’s forms, but have never been taught any applications. One of these people told me that if they practised the form enough, that was all that was needed and in a fight their qi would naturally make the moves effective. Ummm, no. To be honest, when I first got started in taiji, and was reading every book I could find, I think I probably felt the same way. My experience in the Zhong Yi Yiquan Wuguan has demonstrated to me, though, that regular hands-on experience with an unpredictable opponent is essential even in the internal arts. (In Singapore, if you really want to learn neijiaquan for combat I recommend, as always, Zhou Yue Wen).

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