Another crazily busy week, so not so much time for blogging!
Last Sunday’s Drunken Broadsword went pretty well; we’re at least half-way through the set now. Rather than progress too fast, I’m trying to focus on details at this point; how many hops in which direction, which way does the sabre slice the figure-eight, this kind of thing. Our teacher is reminding us all the time to relax our wrists so that the sabre can swing fluidly… There’s one sequence where we are supposed to get up from a forward roll, go into a jump, then land in a splits position, before springing back up to stand upright: eerrmm, no. I cannot do the splits, and although I’m doing stretching exercises, it will be a LONG time before I can simply fall from a standing position into the splits!
My bagua classmate Guo Liang came along to watch; after the class was over, we tried a bit of bagua sparring, which was pretty fun. Of course, we need to be careful – I accidently caught him with a palm strike to the side of the head, he accidently caught me with a kick to the knee. These things happen, but I wish he’d told me before we started that he was wearing steel-toed boots!
On Thursday, I had to work a bit late, so I couldn’t get to xingyiquan class. Time is very tight for this: it takes me 90 minutes to get from my office to where we have class, and I have to leave bang on time. It takes another hour to get home. The class is only an hour long, so leaving twenty or so minutes late from work means that the trip just isn’t worth it.
Friday night’s class with Master Zhou was great, as usual. We started off with a lot of stretching exercises. He can go down into a deep squat (pubu) and rest his forehead against the ankle of the extended leg, and he obviously intends that I should be able to as well. So, lots of painful stretching ensued, which is pretty beneficial. He’s very specific: he sees a lot of the stretching exercises I’ve been doing in the past, and stops me with a brusque “bu keyi – meiyou yong!” (“You can’t do that, it’s got no use!”). The exercises have to be done just so, in the right manner.
We worked on some new moves; the movements from our past lessons are now shaping up to form a sequence, which does include a bit of circle walking. He’s telling me off for taking steps that are too long and too round: in his form, the steps are short, and the moving foot always brushes against the static foot. We practiced some new attacks, including head locks and throws, drawing the usual stares from passersby 
As normal, we had a constant audience of three little girls, whose age I guess ranges between 4 and 7. They’re the daughters of one of his Chin Woo students, and seem to have adopted him as a father-figure; he’s really good with them, and our class is occasionally interrupted as he stops to banter with them, or pretend to chase them. Sometimes, he’ll try to get the eldest to translate something he’s trying to communicate to me, and she’ll make a valiant attempt, but it’s a bit of a challenge for a 7-year old
Neither of us can make it next week, so there’ll be a break for a while. After I’d finished training with Master Zhou, I went my regular part of the park to practice solo. As with Thursday’s xingyi class, I have to go directly from work to class, although the distance is less. On Friday, I’d remembered to take my sabre to work, so I was able to do some work on the xuan xuan set for the first time in a few weeks. I also worked on the Yang-24 and CMC-37 for a few sets. After that, I worked on Madam Ge’s ba mu zhang, and Zhang Sheng Li’s long xing set. I haven’t practiced the bagua jian set for some time now, and I’m a little concerned that I’m beginning to forget it – something I need to attend to ASAP.
Last night’s bagua class with Madam Ge gave me the oportunity to ask about the needles. In fact Jono had already mentioned it before I got there, and yes: she does know the the form. I asked her later whether she plans to run classes and she said (make allowances for my bad Chinese here, I may have misunderstood) that yes, she will be teaching it, but we need to learn the deerhorn knives first, in order to get experience with using a weapon in each hand. The needles are a subtler weapon than the knives, so we shouldn’t try to learn them first. Seems reasonable, so we’ll just have to be patient, I guess! She also said that she’ll bring the needles to xingyi class next Thursday to demonstrate the form. Jono did ask if she could demonstrate using the marker pens that we use to draw our circles on the concrete, but she pointed out that the bagua needles have a ring that’s used to spin them around the finger, so ordinary pens can’t be used.
I’ve noticed recently that when I go to class on Saturday night, I’m making a lot of mistakes in some of the moves – even though I usually get them right when I practice on Friday evening. Not sure what’s happening there…. One good thing is that I’m beginning to be able to sink my weight and sit low in the posture again; for a while, I was having trouble with that.
Madam Ge told me off for stepping too short: she wants us to take long steps. Every bagua style is different! I need to be careful to keep each one distinct – I can start mixing and matching when I’m an expert in each one, not before
After class, I had a chat with my classmate who came along to talk to Master Zhou the other week; he’s now started xingyiquan lessons with a couple of friends, and is obviously pretty impressed with Master Zhou’s style of demonstrating applications…!
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