Master Sun Ru Xian is out of town, so I didn’t have class with him today. I did plan to get up early as normal, and just practice solo, but I woke up feeling lousy and decided to stay in bed. The headache’s lasted all day, I hope I’m not coming down with something.

There’s building work going on just outside the university walls. Typically, no-one warned us that the water supply would be affected. The block where the staff laundry is located has had no water for three days now. My block is OK, so my bathroom still has water, but there are some staff living in the laundry block, and they’re suffering. For me the worst of it is that I’m handwashing all my clothes in my bathroom. It’s not my forte, no matter how much I visualise Once Upon a Time in China II….

I did get out to practice this evening. After 20 minutes of zhan zhuang, the CMC-37 set must have been one of the best I’ve done so far. Today, the standing practice didn’t hurt at all, instead just striking the right balance of resilient softness… I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough on Snake Creeps Down, and have made adjustments so that it doesn’t pressure my knees so much. I followed that with a set of the xuan xuan broadsword, but my mental blank with that is still around. No worries, it will pass eventually - I’m confident it’s all still there in muscle memory, I just need to empty my mind enough to tap into it.

I spent most of the next hour working on Master Zhou’s wuji set, and I think I’m making good progress there; it’s coming back reasonably quickly, although many details remain fuzzy. I finished off with a bit of work on the ba da zhang, topped off with pan guan bi.

I attracted the attention of a moth again. What is it that they want? Do they like the salt in perspiration, or something?

By this time, it was past 9pm, and I was feeling pretty low on energy. My favourite dumpling shop outside the west gate stops taking orders at 9:30, so I hopped on my bike and went straight there - no time to go home and change, as I normally do. My arrival with broadsword slung over my shoulder, then laid on the table, caused a bit of a stir - more than I’d anticipated. The younger waiters all wanted to play with it. I really hadn’t expected it to be so strange for them - perhaps I’ve been spoiled by my experiences in Singapore! No matter what else I might say, it was a wonderful thing to live in a really old-school part of “Old Singapore”, full of wuguans (is that right?), temples, and so on, where the sight of people wandering around with swords and spears didn’t raise an eyebrow. I rather suspect that by the time I get back in August (for a visit only, my plans have changed…) a lot of that will already have gone. Singapore is losing its roots, sigh….

I spent some time this afternoon revisiting Tabby Cat’s older blog, the one describing his intensive yiquan course last year. This is the same that I hope to take a year after him - August 2008, compared to August 2007 for him. I’ve learned a lot since I originally read this, and have met Master Yao, so I am seeing different things this time round. Like Tabby (or should that be TC? No, then I only see childhood cartoon characters… Top Cat… heh…) I’m a firm believer in soft over hard; the CMC-37 set was the first taiji style I learned, and it’s still my favourite… I’ve seen for myself that the atmosphere in the Yiquan Academy can be pretty macho; not really my preferred environment… and yet I really think there’s something there that I can use to improve my taiji and bagua, as well as the inestimable value of the yiquan itself… I hope it all works out - fingers are crossed…

I didn’t write up everything that happened last week when I went to the Yiquan Academy, because there were a few things that happened that called for a little more reflection before I talked about them.

You can’t knock around the world of internal martial arts for as long as I have without learning, even by osmosis, that the masters consider the root and power of their arts to lie in zhan zhuang, or standing practice, rather than in the form. However… I haven’t particularly practiced zhan zhuang, and few of my teachers have put much emphasis on it. My taijiquan practice is what’s given me a feel for it, I guess, and particularly the taijigong taught by Nam Wah Pai in Singapore.

Yiquan, of course, is all about the zhan zhuang, with no set form at all. When I went to the Academy last week, H. told me we would just practice what I know as the basic “holding the tree” posture, with some mind work to accompany it. I’ve tried this posture a few times over the years, and have a few books that talk about it, but in all my solo work I’ve very rarely practised it - time always seemed so short, and I needed to work on the forms I was learning before I forgot them again!

So I stood in this position for about half an hour. After a few minutes, of course, muscles started to ache. My shoulders are chronically stiff, so they hurt. The long muscle or whatever that runs down the right side of the spine was also really tight as well; that’s the result of all the desk-work lately. What to do? H had shown me a “relaxation posture”, where the hands are moved to the back, next to the kidneys, to use if I got too tired, but it seemed better to me to try to get through the pain while keeping the same posture.

I decided to do what I learned on Vipassana meditation retreats; when experiencing physical pain, don’t seek relief by moving the body - instead, send the mind to the pain, and try to find the exact spot where the pain is located. The result is that the pain just goes away. It worked. That let me carry on doing the other extra practices that H. had mentioned. Glenn had also reminded me to form my back into a bow shape in order to tuck the coccyx underneath, so I remembered to work on that and on sinking my weight. After twenty minutes or so, I as tired, and a funny thing happened - it really felt that my arms were being held up not by strength and muscle, but by intent and will.

It as at this point that we tried out the sparring. I’m usually very bad at this; I think too slowly, and easily get my balance messed up. My partner/opponent was quite a bit bigger than me, stronger than me, and about fifteen years younger than me. However, the effect of the standing practice seemed to be that when he issued force, it just seemed to pass through me; I didn’t need to have to consciously react to it, and it didn’t affect me. My awareness was still intense in my arms, and I could sense changes in his strength and respond naturally, without thought. At one point, he got through my guard and pushed me forcefully on the right pectoral, which would normally have sent me flying backwards. On this occasion, I could just sense exactly where the power was, and was able to pivot around it and step behind him; he went flying forwards instead, as his strength didn’t find anywhere to land.

This is very uncommon for me! In fact, it was just total beginner’s luck.

Still. This is the first time I’ve ever managed experienced what taiji, for example, is meant to be all about - to use softness to defeat an opponent who was actively seeking to throw me hard into a wall. To experience why the internal martial arts are powerful beyond qinna and other physical techniques. Heh. I know that some of the people who read this blog are very good internal martial artists and will be saying “At last! It took you long enough!”. I know. I’m a slow learner, but I’m just trying to learn at my own pace - bear with me!

A related event occurred the following Saturday, when I went for my bagua pan guan bi class with Sun Zhi Jun and Mi Lao Shi. I’ve revised the form, and can go through it without many mistakes now. They were telling me, though, that it looked ugly. How could I change that, without being able to see myself? I just did it again with more focus; putting more intent into the movements as if I was surrounded by opponents. Much better, was the response. Hmmm. So “intent” was what improved it…

As usual, none of this leads up to any particular point. However, it is an important breakthrough for me to discover that combining standing practice with a meditation technique did clearly, and immediately, show results against an aggressive training partner. Heh, apologies again to those of you who’ve been patiently waiting for me to “get it”!

Yesterday morning I went down to Chaoyangmen subway station to meet H. My gosh - it took me longer to get from the university to Wudaokou on the bus than it did to get from Wudaokou to Chaoyangmen on the train and subway! Beijing’s traffic just gets worse and worse…

H. had brought along an American acquaintance from the hostel where she’s staying, a guy called Glenn who has studied bagua and yiquan before. The three of us went along to the Yiquan Academy, where she’s been studying for the past three weeks.

The Academy’s training area is apparently nicknamed “The Submarine”, and it’s an apt name! It’s a small basement room with no natural light, lockers along one wall, and doors leading off to a few offices. There’s also a small dormitory, with beds racked three-high. Very small… possibly even “cramped”…. There were a few Chinese students already there; young guys in their twenties who, I think, live in the dorm.

Anyhow, Glenn and I were just there as observers, not to participate in any lessons. H. told me to practice zhan zhuang, according to the way she’s learned it there; Glenn added some tips from what he’s learned. He was practicing a yiquan ‘health dance’ that he’d learned in the States; from the comments made by the Chinese students, it seems to be different to what is taught at the Academy.

After a short while, Master Yao Chengguang arrived. H. introduced us, and we had a short chat. I explained that I couldn’t start training immediately, but would like to do so intensively after my teaching ends; we agreed that I would give him a call nearer the time. First impression is that he’s very tough, no-frills, but impressive; I liked him but I certainly wouldn’t like to get on his wrong side.

After half an hour or so, Glenn tried a bit of tui shou with one of the students; it looked interesting, so I asked to try as well. I’m not strong at all, and after half an hour of zhan zhuang, my muscles were tired, so I couldn’t use strength. It was pretty cool, and I don’t think I embarrassed myself, even though the Chinese student could of course have flattened me if he’d really tried! Afterwards, Master Yao asked me if I would like to try some more - I’m not sure if he meant with him! I was tired though - my aerobic fitness is rubbish - so I declined, politely I hope. If I’m going to study there, I need to a) get fitter before I start (some hope!) and b) be prepared to be knocked about - from what I saw, they really throw each other around, and there’s no mats, or padding on the walls. Sometimes, some of the students where just sent flying through (open) doorways, or into the dormitory!

H. and I left a little early, as we wanted to go to the Xiang Shan park; she’s going back to England next week, so it was her last chance to catch a bit of Chinese nature! We had a really nice day out, and eventually said our farewells. Who knows if we’ll ever meet again! It’s been a real pleasure to meet another Brit who shares my interest in martial arts and Buddhism… Incidentally, she mentioned that if I hadn’t mentioned the Yiquan course to her, and she had gone travelling for a while before leaving China, she would have been in Chengdu when the earthquake hit. Scary. Funny how lives can turn around chance conversations…

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…