When I woke up this morning, I could hardly walk, my legs were so stiff! I’ll attribute this partly to being out and about on the bike, but mostly to yesterday’s pan guan bi lesson with Master Sun Zhijun.

We worked for some time on the form, where I’m improving a lot (he says) - though there are still plenty of issues I need to work on! These are less to do with the form itself, though, and more to do with my perennial problems of left shoulder and lower back - which sometimes improve, and sometimes regress, but never seem to go away!

I showed him the video of Shao Zhong Ming performing pan guan bi, which I have on my iPod touch, and asked him how many different forms there are for this weapon - as the one in that clip is very different from what I’m learning. His answer was that because this weapon isn’t traditionally from bagua, but was borrowed from xingyiquan, there are really as many forms as there are with empty hand. The form Shao uses in the video is older, but Shao had had to learn it in something of a hurry prior to the competition. The form he’s teaching me is one that he’s developed more recently - it looks different, but the basic moves and concepts are actually all the same.

We then spent the rest of the lesson working on some applications, which was exceedingly cool. Anyone learning a form for the first time (or at least, someone like me who has no real combat or even sparring experience) will always try to work out what the movements are for - and it’s always funny when my guesses turn out to be completely wrong! Hehe, so anyway, we went through a few demonstrations, which involved strikes to the neck, back, achilles tendon and calf… et cetera, et cetera….

Master Sun reminded me that the forms really only are to train the body in movement; when it comes to fighting, the aim is to act naturally, to seek spontaneous opportunity, and he gave me a few demonstrations of what he meant. All of this, by the way, is increasing my affection -and respect - for the pan guan bi as a weapon. It’s not sharp, but even lightweight strikes like those yesterday show how effective it could be - it can really hurt! I have a book on pressure points that I’ve lent to a friend here (who dismissed it as “rubbish, because no-one who knows this stuff ever teaches it to a foreigner”!) and I’m going to have to get it back and look at it some more. Even if it’s not ‘authentic dian xue’, it’s still a useful compendium of soft spots that would make someone unhappy if you hit them hard there with a steel spike….

My main need now is for a training partner. I don’t think Mi Lao Shi has really trained in the applications - I could be wrong, but Master Sun is doing all the talking now (in fact, yesterday was the most he’s ever spoken in all the classes I’ve attended, and he certainly seems far more cheerful when he’s talking about all this!). However, this may be about to change… As a foreigner in Beijing, you soon realize there’s an insatiable desire amongst the Chinese to improve their English. I got an email this morning from another of Master Sun’s students, Li Ming. I’ve met her a few times at Master Sun’s apartment, and she’s helped translate during some lessons. She used to be a journalist and editor, until she became a professional kung fu coach. She suggests we meet up for some language exchange, and perhaps bagua practice together. Could be very interesting indeed, so I’ll try to set that up…

The extra practice I put in last week seems to have paid off, and yesterday’s pan guan bi lesson made some real progress.

When I went to Master Sun’s apartment, I was greeted by my teacher from Singapore, Madam Ge Chun Yen. She’s in town for a while because her father is ill. We chatted briefly, and then I went outside for class with Master Sun and Mi Lao Shi; Madam Ge stayed inside.

The lesson was good. Mi Lao Shi corrected me on a number of fine details, and is particularly trying to get my performance to flow more smoothly. When we learned this set in Singapore, it was in poor light, and with a big class, so everything was broken down into small steps; I’m still mentally counting “yi, er, san, si, wu, yi, er san si” etc as I go through the stages, and I’m tending to stop at the end of each move rather than flow seamlessly into the next. My arm movements also tend to be stiff and cramped, rather than sweeping and expansive. Lots to work on; for the first time, I’ve used my phone to record Mi Lao Shi doing some moves, and then asked her to film me so that I can contrast the two. Hopefully that will help my solo practice; should have thought of it before!

Master Sun seems to have decided that I’ve made enough progress that he’ll get more actively involved, and for the last ten minutes or so we started to work on some applications; he showed how to block some attacks, and respond with strikes to pressure points in the arms, throat, and shoulders. Of course, I found that under pressure, I couldn’t remember the specific moves - I need to practice more, to get this ingrained and automatic! Heh, it was very cool, though; this is what I’ve been aiming for. Mentally, my challenge for myself is to get good enough that I could use the bagua judge’s pen against the Piper system - some hope, eh?

Not too much to report. Saturday’s pan guan bi class went quickly; I enlivened the day for Master Sun and Mi Laoshi by vigorously stabbing myself in the leg during one move. It didn’t hurt too much, really! Then on to the Bookworm to catch up with Dragoncache again. He brought along a friend of his, a Russian girl who’s as passionate about tango as I am about martial arts. Very interesting, and beautiful - far too good for a stunted, pugnacious little troll like me! A fun evening.

On Sunday morning, I felt really grotty, as if a heavy cold were about to hit me, so I let Sun Lao Shi know I couldn’t make it to class, and stayed in bed. Eventually made it out and had an interesting time the remainder of the day, but it wasn’t really a martial arts weekend, I must say.

On Friday evening, I caught up with H at the Vineyard Cafe. Like so many others, she’s been caught up in the tightening of the visa situation here, so she’s decided to go back to the UK, for a while at least. She had planned to go travelling around for a month before she goes, but I happened to mention my plan in July-August to take the 30-day course at the Yiquan Academy. Her eyes lit up at the prospect of 30 days of zhan zhuang (ahem, how many other people would accept that as a totally appropriate response? It’s great to hang around with other martial arts geeks!), and she thought that would be preferable to aimlessly travelling… I sent her the URL, and she called them on Sunday. Last I heard, she’s starting tomorrow… She said she’d let me know how it goes and, always your faithful correspondent, I shall convey the news as I receive it…