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There’s a storm coming in

Well, come and gone, to be exact, but only in the most literal sense.

Last night – round about 3am – there was a big electrical storm; the most intense I’ve experienced in all my time in Singapore. It seemed to be right overhead. I could feel the claps of thunder down my back; the percussive shock was overwhelming. The lighting flashed purple on my retina even though I had the curtains drawn, my eyes closed, and was facing away from the window towards the wall. The rain battered my windows like an avalanche of white noise. There was nothing to do but wait it out. It felt like a portent.

An ideal job?

I usually repost interesting ads from That’s Beijing on my other blog, but this one definitely belongs here!

Contact

Ad Number:	219045
Ad placer:	soundless
Location:

Description

Live in the best environment to learn Chinese and martial arts. We are proposing an exchange of services were you would work for a few hours every week (10-15max), probably teaching English, and would be rewarded with the following: ..Free Tailor made Chinese Classes 90min*5days a week ..Free Martial arts classes from 2 hours and up to 6hours a day depending on your physical condition. ..Free Place to live/ Live in a lovely courtyard where you could have cherries and figs directly from the tree, your own room and enjoy a warm sauna after a hard day. ..Free Food.The place Wuzhi (30 km east of chenjiagou, 80k north of zhengzhou, 40km south of the Yun Tai mountain) in Henan County. Our goal is to provide Very affordable instruction for the people of the country side. I you want to be of it , act now. Limited offer. Mr Simon

Of course, as with everything that sounds great in China, there’s probably a catch. But hey, doesn’t it sound idyllic?

47. If the mountain won’t move

If the mountain won’t move, build a road around it. If the road won’t turn, change your path. If you are unable to even change your path, just transform your mind.

Master Sheng Yen

Wu-Tang update #3

The DVD of Zhang Sheng Li’s Long Hsing just arrived, yay! I probably won’t have time to watch it properly until next weekend, but I’ve briefly scanned some sections and I like what I see. Even watching the first palm change, which I thought I remembered pretty well, I’m seeing details that I’d forgotten since I trained with Zhang in Beijing. The commentary seems like it’s going to be very useful as well. Excellent! Fuller review to come in time.

A useful quote

Sorry, another quote but this time from a different source:

Debi: You know what you need?
Marty: What?
Debi: Shakabuku.
Marty: You wanna tell me what that means?
Debi: It’s a swift, spiritual kick to the head that alters your reality forever.
Marty: Oh, that’d be good. I think.

New faces in the park

As regular readers know, I live near Duxton Plain Park and that’s where I go to practice. In the last couple of years, I’ve only seen one other Westerner there – my German friend Patricia, who trains with Chin Woo. There used to be a Russian guy, Seva, who was a top student with Rennie Chong, but he moved to Australia while I was in China.

In the last week, though, I’ve seen two new faces. First: Carlos, an Englishman who’s training in Wing Chun at the same Cantonese clan house I wrote about recently. Tonight, I met Laurence (who I think is French, judging by his accent). He’s studying Wu style taijiquan with a master in Hong Kong street.  This rings a bell – I think I read something on sgwutan about a master who taught taiji as a martial art in that part of town.

Hmm, anyway, Duxton Plain Park is turning into the place to be

46. A big duck cuts a big wake

A big duck cuts a big wake; a small duck cuts a small wake. Big or small, each duck will paddle its own way to the other shore – but only if it paddles.

Master Sheng Yen

The mental states of martial arts

I’m gradually coming to understand that different martial arts require very different mental states in order to work properly. Longer-established practitioners will probably laugh that I’m only now coming to see this, but anyway, I’ll welcome any feedback.

Taijiquan, for example, is very meditative. It requires a still mind, in order to develop the fine-grained physical sensitivity that makes it really effective. In many ways, I find my taiji practice is at its best when I achieve a state very similar to vipassana meditation.

When I’m practicing baguazhang in depth, I find that I slip into the state that Erle Montaigue calls “eagle vision” (or something like that) – that’s to say, I’m highly aware of movement, with my concentration applied equally to a piercing focus on ‘the opponent’, and on peripheral movements; it’s a bit hard to describe. This mentality is highly focused on the beginnings of movements, and lining up to take immediate advantage of any mistakes.

Capoeira, on the other hand, develops a ‘playful’ attitude, in which performance, style, and trickery are as important the ‘defeat’ of your enemy. I know that capoeira is an effective fighting style, but the mindset is focussed on mind games as much as physical actions, or so it seems to me.

This difference is why I gave up capoeira – hopefully, only temporarily. I found I couldn’t keep the mindsets separate, largely because I was too inexperienced in both arts. Slipping into a ‘bagua’ mindset whilst playing capoeira made me too aggressive, and took the fun out of the roda for the other player. Practicing bagua with a capoeira frame of mind… hehehe, the mind boggles! I imagine it could be done, but at my level of ability, it just comes across as messing around and not taking the lesson seriously. I actually think that to have ability in both bagua and capoeira would be an extremely effective combination, but I would need to learn them consecutively, not concurrently.

I’m on this train of thought because of the upcoming xingyi classes. Xingyi also has a specific mindset: to singlemindedly advance , crushing the opponent. I recently linked to a page about Fu style bagua, which also has this to say about xingyi:

In order to screen the best practitioners for teaching positions at the Central Academy and in the provincial schools, General Li, General Zhang Zi Jiang, and General Fung Zu Ziang held the first full contact, national competition in 1928 in Nanjing. Hundreds of the best Chinese martial artists participated in san shou fighting, weapons and wrestling in a lei tai ring format.
[...]
This tournament is historically significant in China, but somewhat wicked to recall. After the first several days, the fighting competitions had to be halted because too many competitors were seriously maimed-two were killed. As some records have it, the Hsing-Yi practitioners were considered the most brutal fighters, displaying little or no conscience when they fought. Many BaGua Zhang practitioners were considered as skilled; however, they displayed more humanity when it came to all out combat.

I’m uncomfortably aware that I have this ability to focus my will on achieving results without regard for consequences. In fact, it’s got me through some tough times, but it’s also responsible for the periods that I most dislike about myself. One reason I’m so glad to have discovered meditation is that it enabled me to step away from that, and to become more compassionate. I’ll have to be careful that studying xingyi doesn’t re-awaken that aspect of myself.

I’ll be very interested to hear what other people think about this…

Oh, as an aside: when I first went to Beijing to study Mandarin, I made a couple of very good friends – a Norwegian guy, and an American woman (who became an item, and in fact are going to be married in the not-so-distant future!). Anyway, when our time in the language school ended, I came back to Singapore to start my MBA, and they went to Nanjing, where the woman was enrolling on a Master’s degree. The Norwegian was in the middle of an anthropology doctorate, and wanted to spend his time in China doing research on groups of people meeting up to practice martial arts and qigong. We all thought that Nanjing would be a great place for this – but it turned out that he really wasn’t able to find much. I wonder if it’s because martial arts in Nanjing is too closely associated with the Guomindang-period schools? Perhaps there were more than the usual number of purges or re-education campaigns there? Anybody know?

New xingyiquan classes

Madam Ge Chun Yan will be starting a new xingyiquan class on Thursday 3rd May. The class will be held at the usual location on Marine Parade Drive, at 7:30pm. The announcement isn’t up on her website yet, but I expect it will be soon.

I studied Shaanxi xingyiquan for a short while during the first semester of my MBA; that was under Victor Chong (beware: really annoying sound effects on the website), but my workload didn’t let me continue. I’m not sure what style Mdm Ge teaches, but I hope to enrol – although getting to class from work is going to take some doing…