Wuji 101

Last night I headed on down to Duxton Park for my first lesson with Master Zhou. I’m still digesting it, so I won’t say too much yet. He made it clear that he teaches bagua to be used; he also knows the “pretty” baguazhang used in the “national forms” for performance, but that’s not what he teaches.

We spent most of the lesson trying to get me to do the single palm change at least tolerably well: naturally, it’s different from what I’ve studied before. I have a lot, and I mean A LOT, of work ahead of me just to on this: getting the palm positions right, waist flexibility, gua strength and expansion, weight sinking, chin position, and so on… He’s really detailed in his explanations, talking about exactly where the strength and ‘li’ should be in the hands, very hands on about which muscles should be tense or slack, and so on.

Just from the single palm change, he hit me at least thirty different ways. It got to the point where I could only laugh at my own helplessness. When he says he teaches the use of bagua, he isn’t joking! My oh my…

There’s a scene in the Matrix that goes like this:

Tank: We’re supposed to start with these operation programs first. That’s major boring shit. Let’s do something a little more fun. How about… combat training.
Neo: Ju jitsu? I’m gonna learn Ju jitsu.
[Tank winks and loads the program]
Neo: Holy shit!
Tank: Hey Mikey, I think he likes it. How about some more?
Neo: Hell, yes. Hell yeah.

I kind of feel like Neo did. Hell yeah, let’s have some more of this… Master Zhou originally suggested that we meet on both Wednesdays and Fridays; I counter-suggested just Fridays, in order to keep Wednesday free for other training. After last night, frankly I would be happy to move to twice a week. Even so, I think it may be better to stay once-a-week for a while, simply because these are early days, we don’t really know each other yet, and it may be best to go slow. My reason for saying this is a familiar one: my poor level of Chinese. It’s difficult for both of us, but at least I’m used to it! It was pretty clear that Master Zhou found it frustrating to not be unable to convey everything he wanted to. Luckily, there were a lot of Chin Woo people around, and some were able to help translate, but it’s not something to rely on. So one part of me says, take it slow, get the basics first before increasing the lesson frequency. (The other part says, to hell with that start learning fast!). Hehehe.

Some of his other bagua students, from the group I met before, were also around, and I chatted a bit to them. They invited me to come along to their group revision sessions, but unfortunately I’m not free when they meet up.

After our lesson finished, I went back to my normal training spot, a bit further down the park from Chin Woo, and revised what I’d learned on my own. After that, a cycle through my other forms, and a bit of xingyi revision. The xingyi forms haven’t really gotten into muscle memory yet, so I’m still fairly unsure with them. I need to spend a bit of time reviewing the videos and mimicking the movments, I think.

Finally, later in the evening, back up to where Chin Woo were packing up, to chat to some of the guys there. I’m getting to know some more of them now, and they’re really welcoming. I need to revise to my attitude to aging, I think – some of the most dramatically acrobatic members of the lion dance troupe are guys in their late 40s or 50s!