Right, this is coming quite a bit later than I expected due to unforeseen events; sorry if you’ve been waiting. I’ll try to keep it brief.

I attended classes at the Beijing Institute of Yiquan almost every weekday for three weeks. On most of these days I was there twice, from around 10:30am to 12:00pm, and 5:00pm to about 6:45pm. I studied the equivalent of four modules from their syllabus.

Yiquan

I knew almost nothing about yiquan before I started. I knew that it was derived originally from xingyiquan, with elements incorporated from baguazhang, taijiquan, and western boxing. What attracted me, though, was that it did not have set forms, as almost all other martial arts do, but seemed to develop strength and sensitivity through the use of standing postures. I really wanted to learn more about this because:

• My research into internal martial arts was increasingly convincing me that if I want to make progress, I need to work hard at standing techniques to develop strength and endurance. Most of my teachers have taught me forms but not standing, and I felt I needed to correct this.
• My time is very limited. I wondered whether there was a martial art that could combine effective training with effective meditation. It seemed that yiquan’s techniques might be the opportunity to do this.

My conclusion - such as it can be after only three weeks - is that yiquan really is superb. After many individual sessions, I really came out feeling that I had had a fresh insight into posture and physical structure. I am absolutely certain that continued study of yiquan will rapidly undo years of bad posture, relax chronically tight muscles, and overall generate the physical ’softness’ that’s at the heart of the internal martial arts.

Starting from these crucial foundations, the yiquan curriculum rapidly moves on to work on combat techniques, all of which seem to my unqualified eye to be extremely functional and effective.

As I said in one of my posts: yiquan rocks! I am deeply impressed.

The school environment

The school is in a street very close to Chaoyangmen subway station. It isn’t what I’d expected from the web site; it’s a basement apartment, not a traditional courtyard building. Training in the park only happens on Sundays, although I wasn’t able to attend any of these sessions.

Although based in a modern apartment building, the school is very much as I imagined traditional schools to be. The apartment’s main room is where students train, and there are two rooms connected to it where a number of students live full-time. It’s a completely different environment to the kind of “evening classes in a gym” that most of us westerners (and I include Singaporeans in that!) would usually have experienced. I found it a really cool experience. The more experienced students would sometimes go outside, and train in the street. I was the only foreign student during the period I attended the school. Most of the Chinese students were very friendly, and helped me out if they saw me doing something wrong. A couple spoke English, but most didn’t. The apartment was pretty hot and airless, given that it was summer, but with fans blowing it was quite tolerable.

The teaching experience

As you would expect in a traditional environment, I was - as a new student - taught by the senior student, Li Xin, not by the head of the school. In fact, I didn’t see Master Yao Chengguang very often after the first few days. However, he did keep track of what I was being taught; when he arrived late in the evening session, he would check with Li Xin what I had been taught that day, observe me practising and correct mistakes, and generally kept an eye on my progress. I really respect and like him, and overall found him to be very concerned about his students and his art.

Li Xin doesn’t speak any English, but he was very good at explaining the techniques and demonstrating what he wanted me to do. My limited Mandarin, and the excellent explanations in the supporting books, helped to clarify any issues.

The website gives the hours as Monday to Saturday, 8:30 - 11:30am and 3:30 - 7:30pm; this differs from my experience, where I was told I could attend 10-12 and 5-7 Mon-Fri. I wasn’t able to go on the weekend in any case, so I didn’t ask about these. As it turned out, I rarely attended even these hours fully; even given the shorter hours I spent there, I felt that it was plenty of time!

Given this good quality of instruction, I felt that I learned a lot very quickly. However, there were times when I felt that I was being pushed through the curriculum quicker than I was comfortable with, and that I was not given enough time to work properly on some techniques. This is not something that applies to me: a friend who attended the school on a different occasion said the same thing, and comments I’ve seen online suggest that other people also felt this.

Supporting materials

Master Yao has developed a series of books and DVDs to accompany the syllabus. They’re not cheap by any means, but they are one-off purchases. The books are excellent; they are extremely clear, and helped me understand the purpose of each exercise along with the mental visualisations that I should use. I haven’t had the time to watch the DVDs yet, so I can’t comment on them.

Pricing

The price per module is 600RMB. I finished four modules in three weeks, and would have done more if I hadn’t deliberately slowed the pace down. When you consider that I was there for between three to four hours every day, that’s extremely reasonable for Beijing!

The four English-language books are CAD $75 each, and the set of 8 DVDs is CAD $300. These are Western prices.

I referred to cost quite a bit during my posts, so I need to clarify that this is a personal blog and reflects my personal situation. I try hard to keep it neutral and informative, but nevertheless, I have no obligations to write about what “a typical student” would experience. So, I complained about costs at times because it’s an issue for me, and so I’m going to write about it. However, to be clear, I’m not a typical Western student; I’m earning a local salary, and furthermore, I attended this course during the University holidays, when I have no income whatsoever. Bear that in mind; most foreigners who wish to attend the Academy won’t have such issues.

Overall

Yiquan is superb. I really do hope to carry on with it. I really liked the school environment, I found the teaching and support good, and the people are great. Would I recommend them to other people? Yes, as long as you’re clear what you’re getting into.

As I’ve mentioned, the school seems to me to run on very traditional lines. That’s great, but it can be very different to what many wushu students from overseas may be used to, which might lead to some misunderstanding over expectations. Also, if, like me, you don’t speak much Mandarin, you may find that there are communication problems (such as when I arrived to find the doors locked and no-one there).

As for the pace of the lessons, there are two points of view being expressed here. The way the school works is to take you through the material very fast. Andrzej explained this in a comment: the intention is to help the student get the overall idea of how the different element - health and combat - relate to each other. The material is then repeated several times, in increasing depth. This works, I think, very well - as long as the student has committed to yiquan, and is intending to spend a long time learning in-depth. However, for people in my situation (and my friend’s, and - I suspect - some of the others whose comments I’ve read online) we’re not there yet; we aren’t really sure about yiquan, we want to learn more, and we want to be sure we understand what we’re shown before we move on. When we’re pushed through faster, we remain unconvinced that this is really what we want, and we feel rushed, that’s the truth. Pointing this out isn’t a criticism of anyone; I’m just, again, highlighting an issue arising from different expectations. I’m lucky that Andrzej has been reading my blog, and has taken the time to explain where the school is coming from; I think other people who haven’t been so lucky may have left feeling a bit less satisfied.

Finally:

1. I began the three weeks knowing almost nothing about yiquan. I am now highly impressed, and had more than a few major insights while I was learning some yiquan techniques. It’s very, very good.
2. I really enjoyed my time there. The atmosphere was friendly and supportive, the teaching was good, and Master Yao is knowledagble and very committed to his school and students.
3. Was everything perfect, from my point of view? No. Mostly, these are due to my personal situation, and shouldn’t be of concern to most readers. Some issues are due to differences in expectations, and the Academy could make some changes to their marketing, but the quality of the art, the teaching, and the Academy are not issues here, and are all very high.
4. Would I recommend the Academy to readers who are curious about yiquan? Absolutely, yes.
5. Will I be carrying on with yiquan at the Academy? This is more tricky, due to personal factors. I do want to carry on learning yiquan. The Zongxun Academy is not convenient to get to, for me. Even after I move into Old Beijing later this month, by the time I’ve commuted back down from where I work, I’ll still be on the other side of the city. In fact, by coincidence, the other Yao brother, Yao Chengrong, has his school a few minutes’ walk away from my apartment, and it makes far more sense for me to try that. We’ll see. That’s just a practical matter, though: I would happily recommend Yao Chengguang to anybody.

OK, this has taken me a long time to write; I lost a draft and had to start again, so there’s perhaps lots more I could have written, but this is enough. Feel free to ask questions or respond in the comments!

I was exhausted when I got back home, so my last post was rather brief!

I was late leaving for class; I’d got up early to find the rain made the early-morning class with Sun Lao Shi impossible, so blogged and then faffed around instead. I left the university at about the right time… and then didn’t, because the back tyre of my bicycle had gone flat overnight. That means a puncture, and I haven’t got the tools to get the wheel off. There’s a guy who does bicycle repairs in the building next to mine, but he wasn’t there that early. I hung around for a while, but he didn’t show, so in the end I had to take the bus to Wudaokou.

On the subway round about Dongzhimen I was sitting next to an attractive young lady. We both stood up to give our seats to a man with a small child, and that got us talking. She spoke no English, so it wasn’t much of a conversation, though. She’s from Henan, and works for a German company, I got that much. She got off at Chaoyangmen as well, and went the same way as me for a short while; she had a map downloaded off the web and was looking for something, though I didn’t quite understand what. Anyway, we exchanged cards, and when I got online yesterday afternoon I checked out her company’s website - it seems she works for a state-owned counter-surveillance company! Wow. A bit of Googling shows that there’s been foreign investment in it, which is probably where the German bit comes in. I really should talk to random people on the subway more often!

At the Academy, I spent the morning working on downward hook punches; first static, and then stepping. Hard work, for me! The Japanese student arrived mid-morning with the other guy, the one with the gravelly voice; this one never trains. Instead he just sits, smokes cigarettes, and chats. He seems pretty tough, though, and I really get the impression that he’s a minder of some sort for the first guy as they seem to go everywhere together! It makes we wonder who the Japanese student is… I asked Li Xin, but he only said that the Japanese guy’s a fairly long-term student, who’s been training with Master Yao for about 3 years. They were filming again, so Li Xin and I moved outside to practice at the end of the street; this is where a lot of the live-in students have been going to practice when the basement gets really hot, I think. There were a few tots being looked after by their grannies; the kiddies were fascinated by the waiguoren puffing and gasping as he boxed, and some of the grannies gamely ventured to throw a few hooks themselves. Ahh, I love Beijing After I’d done this for an hour or so, we moved on to another fa li exercise, the name of which I forget, a horizontal, slightly rising, chopping move.

Around 12, I figured time was up, so I mentioned to Li Xin I was going to get lunch. He took me back to the Academy because Yao Lao Shi, for some reason, wanted me to be filmed doing a bit of sparring - I’m really not sure why. It didn’t go so well, because I really wasn’t clear what they were asking me to do - it was a kind of back and forth exercise, landing a punch on the opponent’s back hand, freezing, then moving backward so your opponent could land a punch on your back hand, and so on. Heh. I dunno. Anyway, after this Li Xin let me know that we’d come to the end of the fourth module, so the last payment was finished. For me, that seemed to be a good place to stop, with the last three sessions of the week being revision.

I went down to Jianguomen for lunch, and spent the afternoon in Starbucks at the Friendship Store. I was so tired, I almost fell asleep in the window seat. A friend on Twitter informed me that she’d actually done this; apparently, the staff come around and poke you to wake you up! There was another regular customer there, a Chinese woman who always seems to wear the same floral, vaguely cheongsam-styled, dress and a gauzy scarf. Her hair is cut quite short, and she always seems to be in a rush. She carries a big plastic bag, but I’m not sure what’s in it; I always feel torn between wondering whether she’s a creative media type or some sort of street person! Heh, she seems nice, though, and we smile at each other. Guess I’ll not know, since I won’t be back down that way for some time.

I went back to the Academy at 5. Li Xin was taking a new Chinese student through the basics, and really giving him a hard time. I suppose he needs to establish himself as top dog. After about an hour of revision, I decided to head on. By this time Master Yao and the Japanese were back again and doing more filming, and the place was getting crowded, so it seemed like an opportune time.

I have things to do on campus which I wouldn’t be able do till next week if I was going to the Academy today, and they do need to be done, so I decided that I wouldn’t go back today. So, I said my farewells, and thanked Master Yao. He said to just give him a call if I want to go back at any time. I probably will - perhaps in the break after next semester, and maybe on the occasional weekend before that.

So, that was the end of my training at the Yiquan Academy. It feels odd that it’s over, after being immersed in that world for three weeks.

After that it was home, stopping once more for dumplings and beer at Gulou, since that’s also not going to be on my route much from now on.

OK, I’ll write it all up soon, once I’m more rested and I’ve got my chores done.

That’s it; all over. I completed my last module this morning, and went to a quick revision this afternoon. That’s the end of it all for now; I’ve said my farewells for the time being.

Heh; sorry, even though the rain prevented this morning’s class with Sun Lao Shi, I was up just after 5am to get ready to go, and I’m dead tired right now. I almost fell asleep in Starbucks this afternoon!

Tomorrow I’m going to rest (read: sleep) and when I’m refreshed will write my review, I hope.

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!

That was the phrase I introduced to the Zhongguancun Toastmasters Club this evening, in my role as Wordsmith. It was an interesting evening, as we had a rare joint meeting with the Microsoft Toastmasters. However, as I mentioned in a previous post, I attend Toastmasters every Tuesday evening, which for the last couple of weeks has meant I can’t go to the Yiquan Academy on Tuesday afternoons.

I needed to catch up with my manager today to discuss an idea I’ve had for a prize to be awarded to students next semester, for the best group project. It involves drumming up private sponsorship, so needs a bit of thought and planning. The idea only struck me last night, and it needs to be acted on quickly if we’re going to do it. So…. I called up Master Yao and let him know I couldn’t make it at all today. Tomorrow willI be no problem, though. So no further yiquan news today!

It wasn’t a martial arts-free day, though! I got up shortly after 5am, and met Master Sun Ru Xian not long after 6. We reviewed the eight basic palms and then the first set of the 64 Palms again. After that, a surprise! He started teaching me the Shanxi whipstaff set. Yay! I’m - ahem - not exactly a natural, and rapidly became a menace to passersby, small animals and low-flying aircraft, but I will get better! Ahem, I hope. Poor Sun Lao Shi, I often think he must go home after lessons and bang his head against the wall at having such a retarded student! I’ll keep trying, though. He had a spare staff which he’s giving me. He’s a really generous guy. I think I’ve really fallen on my feet, finding him as a teacher. I do need to work hard to live up to his commitment.

As for that… look back at my post on “the narrowing of the ways”. After five years of searching, I rather think I may have found the right mix of teachers and styles to focus on. More on that in a future post, coming soon!

Newer Posts »