Back to Beijing (sort of)

For the first time in a month, I actually made it to a bagua class tonight. It wasn’t easy getting there: the train waited a long time at each of the stations on the way down to Xizhimen.

Anyway, once I got there, it was great. The classes are held at the YWCA, just off Wangfujing. It’s a terrific, traditional Beijing courtyard complex, with three main yards and several smaller ones. The school has moved from the back courtyard to the slightly smaller one in the middle. This means that the Bagua and Shaolin students practice in the yard itself, while the Taiji students are in a room to one side, and the Sanda students in a room on the other side. The yard itself has a couple of trees growing in it and tonight, with moonlight, and the white lights from the rooms, was at that low level of brightness where color vision starts to go into black and white. it had a strange, otherworldy feel to it. I still can’t get over the fact that I live in Beijing. I’m rubbish at the bagua now, though. With being so ridiculously busy recently, I haven’t had time to practise, and my level has dropped a lot. It looks like we won’t be working on the sword for some time, which is a big pity: I’ll have to have some private lessons for that.

Afterwards, I got a cab to Houhai, and grabbed a taco at Hutong Pizza. The hutongs are all really empty; only the main streets around the lakes are busy and even then there aren’t many people. This is the real Beijing, as far as I’m concerned, and I haven’t had time to go there since early September. I grabbed a Tsingtao in Huxleys’. The change in season means a new way of experiencing Beijing – no more rooftop bars, it’s inside next to the stoves now – much more ‘European’!