As you may have guessed, I’m on holiday. I’ve been in Singapore for the last couple of weeks, chilling out, catching up with people, and thinking hard about the future.

Not much martial arts stuff to report, except that once again it’s important to be in the right place at the right time, and to seize opportunities when they arise. I popped into Kinokuniya at Ngee Ann City last Monday, and noticed a sole copy of Dr. John Painter’s Combat Baguazhang Volume 2. I flicked through it, and immediately decided I had to buy it! It’s full of really good material. The next day, I went in again, and there were four or five copies of volume one, so of course I grabbed one of those too! Two days later, they had all vanished, so it seems there’s a number of people in Singapore who are on the lookout for baguazhang books!

I haven’t had time to do more than skim them so far, but these books look very, very good - just what I needed at this stage. No forms, more of a focus on principles and application, some interesting discussions about the history and philosophy of baguazhang, etc. I’ll only have time to read them once I get back to Beijing, I think.

What else? I caught up with Master Zhou Yue Wen for lunch; he’s doing well, it seems. Master Sun Ru Xian asked me if I could find a DVD of Filipino stick fighting for him, and thanks to Jono I managed to find one. Ummm, that’s about it, I think.

More once I’m back in the ‘Jing.

Decision: I’m curtailing my studies at the Yiquan Academy. I had planned to go through until the end of next week, but I now plan to make this week my last, and I’m not sure whether I’ll make it to the end of the week.

Mostly this has nothing to do with the Academy itself, only that it’s a 90-minute trip from where I live. I had planned to use the afternoons and evenings to prepare for next semester, but I’m finding that with all the travelling, plus the time it takes to find somewhere to eat after the morning and afternoon sessions, I’m not getting much work done. The fact is, my level of wushu ability right now is substantially lower than it was six months ago. The reason is, I didn’t have an opportunity to prepare my classes before the semester began, so I spent almost all of my “free” time frantically preparing lectures -and, consequently, I had no time to practice. If I want to have time to do martial arts seriously once the next semester starts, I need to be prepared. I’m going to dedicate next week to that.

So.

Today I did a bunch of very interesting stuff.

浑元桩(打乱程序摸劲) UNIVERSAL COMBAT POST (SEEKING FORCE WITH CHANGING DIRECTIONS）
浑元桩(六面力同时摸劲) UNIVERSAL COMBAT POST (SEEKING FORCE IN SIX DIRECTIONS SIMULTANEOUSLY)

These were cool. Here’s the beginning of training for full-body power. Woo! Hoo! Good stuff!

After the morning session, I headed down to Ritan Park, and practised bagua for a while. Ritan Park now has peacocks wandering around - when did that happen? Then it was dwon to Scitech, to catch up with a Serbian friend who has a lot to celebrate, and perhaps we will, soon.

Afternoon class (5:30 - 6:45):

丁八步头发力 T-EIGHT STEP EXERTING FORCE WITH HEAD
丁八步肩发力 T-EIGHT STEP EXERTING FORCE WITH SHOULDER
丁八步肘发力 T-EIGHT STEP EXERTING FORCE WITH ELBOW
丁八步掌发力 T-EIGHT STEP EXERTING FORCE WITH PALM
丁八步跨发力 T-EIGHT STEP EXERTING FORCE WITH HIP
丁八步膝发力 T-EIGHT STEP EXERTING FORCE WITH KNEE

Sorry, pardon my language, but OMFG. This is training for fa li, but what really blows me away is that the yiquan curriculum actually has exercises for headbutting. The only teacher who’s ever taught me this before was Zhou Yue Wen, and the way it’s taught here is exactly the way he did it, ie with the side of the head rather than the front (DON’T try this at home, kids!).

Taken all together, today’s lessons totally reinforce my impression that yiquan, and its structured, methodical, approach are superb*. However…

I was taught, as usual, by Li Xin. Didn’t see much of Master Yao till right at the end of the day. I was preparing to leave when they both came over to discuss payment.

When I first went to the school, Master Yao wrote down “600 RMB” next to each module. OK, that’s clear. Each module is nicely laid out, as you can see. So I was like, OK, no problem; I paid for the first two modules up front. As far as I was aware, that was OK; sure, I’ll pay more as we get to more advanced modules. Except, as you’ll note if you compare what I’ve written to the module list, what I’ve been taught is largely the first two modules, though not everything, plus lots from further ahead in the module.

Thinking about it last night, I reckoned I was surely into the third module by now, so I took cash out of the ATM before going to class, and paid Li Xin first thing this morning for a third module.

This was what the discussion today was about. Master Yao counted up the number of different moves I’ve been taught, said well these are equivalent to one module, these are equivalent to another module, these to a third, pay up more before we go on tomorrow please.

Well, OK. I kind of dislike the insinuation that I wouldn’t pay, but whatever. However, it seems that the charging is by move, not by module. This is another communication issue, let’s put it that way. I agreed to pay by module, and the modules’ content is very clearly laid out. However, what has actually been taught has been drawn from all over the curriculum. I’m not complaining about that, it’s been very useful and a great insight into what yiquan is all about. However, were I to put my MBA, cynical, hat on, I would observe that this does… ahem, encourage… me to buy all of the books ASAP.

I want to reiterate that I am finding all of the training, and the material, to be amazing. However, I do, still, feel rushed, and I do feel pressured to keep paying. This afternoon’s session was kind of a tipping point for me. The sequences where I learned the head and shoulder strikes just didn’t come naturally to me; I keep trying to generate power from the hips, which is not correct for these moves. Even so, we moved on to new moves, while I think it was clear I couldn’t properly perform the ones we’d already covered. On this topic, I am aware of Andrzej’s comment and explanation, but I’m afraid I can’t really accept it; I’ll go over why exactly in my review.

Which brings me to what next. Tomorrow I will pay for one more module, however that happens to be composed, and no more. I don’t know how long it will take me to complete but once it is, I’m done; could be Wednesday or Thursday, maybe Friday.

At the end of the week, I’ll do an overall review. Don’t confuse my feelings about yiquan as a style, the standard of the teaching, and issues about the way the Academy is run as a business; these are separate topics, and I’ll address them separately in my review.

On the way home, I was hungry and stopped again at the dumpling joint at Guloudajie zhan. Surrounded by ar-ar-ar Beijing ren, I felt totally at ease, and was yet again reminded why I love this city so much…. I read a bit more of Dharma Bums, and felt invigorated by the correspondence between passages of the book and parts of my own life that I hadn’t thought about in a long time (the bits about mountain-climbing, FWIW!).

* Superb, but not complete. More about this in my final review.

Hmm. I’ve just discovered that Zhou Yue Wen has a website - or, rather, that one of his students has created it on his behalf.

I studied baguazhang with Master Zhou, but he also knows many other styles; his specialty is xingyiquan.

Master Zhou is the real deal. If you’re studying martial arts and are in, or can get to, Singapore, I wholeheartedly recommend him.

I’ve just been going through my hard drive, trying to find some pictures I took of the Piper guys when they visited Singapore in January 2008. I mis-filed the photos, and I’ve been trying to locate them for ages… Finally, I’ve located them. I particularly like this one…

Lloyd, Corey, and Nigel…

I’ve just realized that I never blogged about their visit; it was during my final days in Singapore before the move to Beijing, and I guess I was just too busy. It was extremely cool, though. I didn’t have time to train with them, but I saw a public demo, and hung out with them a couple of times. I was very impressed by seeing Piper in action; it’s fast, vicious, and extremely effective. The guys are really sound, I enjoyed their company. Hehehe, we exchanged some insights, and I think I made Lloyd’s eyes bulge at one point with a technique I learned from Master Zhou Yue Wen

It’s been a bit of a rough week; I’m mentally drafting a blog post about it, as it’s required lots of soul-searching. Not sure if I’ll publish it, though.

Anyway, I’ve been feeling bad about how my practice in both martial arts and meditation has been kind of sidelined in the months since I came to Beijing - which wasn’t entirely unexpected, but I didn’t expect the extent of it! So this week I’ve been trying to change conditions to let me get back into the groove.

Buying a bike was a good, and much overdue, idea. I’ve been able to explore parts of the campus I couldn’t easily get to before, and it’s helped me to find a place to practice. Previously, the only place I could find was on the edge of the sports field, surrounded by large areas of concrete. The qi felt really bad there, plus I was in full view of the crowds of students hanging out there, which was a bit awkward. On the bike, I’ve found a courtyard park area in the midst of the older staff apartments. It’s private, shady, and the air is really good. Lots of birds singing in the trees above, and a few old people doing qigong in the morning. It only takes a few minutes to get there by bike - although, going by bike means I have to use a shoulderstrap on my sabre’s scabbard, and sling it over my back. I look like some sort of demented bicycle cavalryman as I whizz around campus; it’s surely only a matter of time before I get arrested

So, I went there this morning - first morning practice for a few weeks, made easier by the new timetable. (I’m able to re-use stuff from last semester now, rather than getting up at 6am every day to start researching & writing on the day’s new lecture material). I started with 15 min or so of zhan zhuang, then went into a couple of sets of CMC-37 taiji. After that, I tried the xuan xuan broadsword set for the first time in ages, but got a mental block halfway through. Now worries, that happened from time to time even back in Singapore, when I was doing it regularly. Experience has taught me that when this happens, it’s best to just stop, rather than keep banging away at it. Next, a few reps of the moves I’ve learned so far of the ba da zhang, working on some details that I’m finding tricky. I followed that with a first attempt in ages of Master Zhou’s wuji long xing baguazhang set; I’m very rusty, but I really need to get back into it. Not sure why yet - I’m sure it’ll bubble up from the subconscious at some point - but having started a bit of zhang zhuang, I think there’s some sort of strong connection with the wuji set. Anyhow, I finished up with a couple of sets of the bagua needles form, before cycling back home through the crowds of students who were by then on their way to the day’s first lectures.

Back home, a met a technician who’d come to fix my computer, which was getting badly clogged up by a couple of years’ worth of Singapore and Chinese dust; it’s now running much cooler and faster. Hooray!

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