A demonstration by Nam Wah Pai

Free Taijigong Class and Talk
WU TU NAN TAIJIGONG FOR HEALTH featured in Mind Your Body 16 May

Date: 14 July (Saturday)
Time: 6.30pm to 8.30pm
Venue: 6C Geylang Lorong 7 (near kallang MRT)

Conducted in English and Chinese

Come early for Free Parking

Wear comfortable light clothing. Shoes not required.

Bring family and friends along! Come and find out for yourself why we are more effective from other Qi Gong and Taiji out there!

Do let us know if you are coming!

******************************
*************************

Our new class is starting on 18 July (Wed) and 20 July (Fri), 7pm to 9pm at the same venue.

If you miss the free talk and class, just pop in to join our classes, and if you like it at the end of the day, sign up on the spot!
Sim Pern Yiau
Wu Tu Nan Taijigong
(World Nam Wah Taiji Gong Association)
6C Geylang Lor 7 Singapore 388790
www.WuTuNanTaijiGong.com

Everything is transient

A Shanghai policeman and Cape Town gangsters

What’s the connection? Well, bear with me: I’m in the mood to ramble.

Empire Made Me is a fascinating book, which I really recommend reading. It’s the true story of an Englishman, a working-class veteran of the First World War who, unable to settle back into civilian life, signed up as a member of the Shanghai Municipal Police Force. Shanghai at that time was the Shanghai of legend: a British-dominated international city, where profit was god, life was cheap, and the rich mixed in all kinds of business and vice with chancers from all of the world, Chinese gangsters, and desperate Tsarist refugees.

The book’s main character, Richard Maurice Tinkler, arrived in this cauldron in 1919. Policemen such as him patrolled their beats alone, and depended on their authority to stay alive. Sometimes this wasn’t enough. This was a city that drew in fortune-seekers from all over China. Lots of them knew martial arts (the Jing Wu martial arts association had been formed in Shanghai only a few years earlier) – and many of those became members of the city’s powerful gangs. Outside the international enclave, Republican China was in chaos, with warlords defying the government, and weapons were everywhere. Within the city, White Russians trained in Western military skills were becoming increasingly destitute as their money began to run out. At the same time, the Japanese – with all of their own martial traditions – were becoming increasingly assertive and aggressive. In such an environment, the police needed to be able to stay alive when faced with desperate and skillful fighters.

Some men rose to the challenge. One of them was William Fairbairn, who eventually rose to become Shanghai’s Assistant Commisioner of Police and Tinkler’s superior. He survived hundreds of street fights – and learned from them. Studying the techniques used by people who were trying to kill him, he devised a training system for his police officers: a blunt, brutal, system that he called ‘defendu‘. The one and only purpose of this system was to stay alive. It was later said of Fairbairn that “he had an honest dislike for anything that smacked of decency in fighting“. He later trained British commandos during the Second World War, and his philosophy lives on in Special Forces training to this day.

The point that I found interesting in this story is that all ‘martial arts’ originated this way: trying to stay alive when people are trying to kill you in unfamiliar ways. In fact, ‘martial arts’ is a misnomer: ‘fighting systems’ is better. It’s only later that the philosophy is added in, and the focus shifts slightly from staying alive to staying alive and becoming a better human being.

And that’s why I find it interesting to see the emergence of a new fighting system: Piper. Inspired by Fairbairn, Piper’s developer Nigel February, did the same thing: he studied the techniques of the people who were trying to kill him on the street, and used what he learned to formulate a new system:

It’s not a martial art (yet): it’s a fighting system. South Africa is a violent society, where gangsters are drawing on ways of movement and fighting that are unfamiliar to most of us who train in Asian martial arts systems. Nigel and his colleagues have drawn a lot of flak from people who are getting hung up on what is or is not ‘African’, but let’s give them credit for what they are actually trying to do: stay alive on dangerous streets. What we’re seeing with them is what happened in the rural villages or unpoliced city streets of China many hundreds of years ago. Maybe sometime in the next year or two I’ll get the chance to go study with them….

It keeps me on my toes

Just back from Drunken Broadsword, covered in bits of grass and earth from practicing forward rolls in the park. A nice, fun session, going over what we’d done previously and then adding on a couple of new moves. I think I’m gradually getting the hang of the rapid “Flower sword” sequence, and I’ve filmed my teacher going through the set from several different angles – hopefully, I’ll find time to review these clips and practice at home before next week’s class.

The new moves we covered today include a second hands-free forward roll. This is bugging the heck out of me: I still am really nervous when I try this, fearful of breaking my neck! I’m tending to roll over my sword a lot, which naturally isn’t optimal: thank goodness I’m now using a bendy wushu sword, rather than the other, heavier one!

My teacher keeps on reminding me that all of the ‘drunken’ steps are done on tip-toe: he compares it to ballet. Easy to say, easy to remember, not so easy to do consistently. Practice, practice, practice… The arches of my feet are actually starting to feel quite sore as I write this. My teacher’s son came along to watch: he mentioned that Jackie Chan (whose ‘Drunken Master’ films I haven’t seen, btw) doesn’t do this, he just keeps his feet flat on the ground, and the style he uses isn’t as traditional as the one my teacher knows. I have no idea: I’m just glad to be learning it.

Week 27 roundup

Well, it’s been a pretty hectic week all round, so I haven’t had much time for blogging.

Last Sunday was my first lesson in Drunken Broadsword since coming back from Beijing. It was mostly revision, and working on finer points of detail, but we did learn some new moves. We’re at a point where we move from the ‘drunken’ swaying and ‘drinking from the cup’ into a sequence of rapid broadsword slashing whilst moving forward then back, leading into a jump… and it goes a bit too fast for me to see the hand movements, so today I’ll take along my camera to film it so I can study the moves at home.

Thursday night’s xingyiquan is moving into the first moves from the 12 animals. One of these, the ‘long xing’ movement involves a jump from the back foot into a simultaneous kick and sequence of palm strikes. I’m doing something wrong here, because the landing wrenches my knees a bit, and the move overall is straining the old injury on my achilles tendon. Hmmm, more practice needed. I’m really still trying to catch up in this class, as they made quite a bit of progress while I was in Beijing.

Friday night’s bagua class with Master Zhou was once again excellent. We looked at a lot of applications, and he’s happy to be a punching bag so that I can practice the moves – though as usual he demonstrates a lot more than I can absorb. No bruises this week, though! We’re moving from the single palm change into circle walking now, though I’m still doing both badly. More solo practice needed, but I’ve been too tired recently to do much. We’re also working on a bagua qigong set for body strengthening but, as with the drunken sword, I’m having trouble remembering the exact movements.

After class finished, one of my classmates from Ge Chunyan’s bagua class came along with a friend; they wanted to talk to Master Zhou about studying xingyi with him. We chatted for a while, and then I went on to solo practice in another part of the park. However, they passed me later on, so we talked again about their conversation with Master Zhou. Like me, they were impressed by his knowledge and understanding of the applications. Since they speak Mandarin, they were able to talk to him in more depth than I can. One thing that struck me was that they had discussed the connection between studying the Chinese internal martial arts and longevity: apparently, Master Zhou said that, according to the evidence, taijiquan and xingyiquan practitioners live longer than bagua players. Yikes!

Then, last night, bagua class with Madam Ge. We learned a few new moves, and reviewed some that we had started learning before; these are gradually getting fixed in my memory – at last! Guess I’m just a slow learner… One great thing about my Saturday night classes is that they’re a great cure for complacency and vanity – Madam Ge is always calling me on mistakes in my posture and stepping, and my classmate Bao Tai is always telling me I’m too fat!

Actually, both Master Zhou and Madam Ge repeatedly remind me that I don’t extend my lead arm enough. Master Zhou pointed out that my shoulders are too tense, and that’s probably the cause. Well, changing the body is a slow process. I’ve noticed that guys from the UK and the US tend to have extremely tense and bunched-up shoulders; I certainly did when I first came to Singapore, and I’ve spent the last few years trying to relax them – and still have a long way to go, though I’m much better than I was.

55. The meaning of life

The meaning of life lies in serving; the value of life in giving.

Master Sheng Yen

Keong Saik Road

Let me move away from bagua for once, to talk about one of the liminal areas of Singapore: Keong Saik Road. It’s definitely one of the jianghu areas of town – and there are quite a few more than many people would think I love this road: it’s just next to the park where I practice, and I’ll frequently go there afterwards for beer and noodles. At either end there’s a corner coffeeshop where I’m becoming something of a regular, and from where I can watch the comings and goings of all the area’s denizens.

Keong Saik is a combination of all kinds of traditional architectural styles, from shophouses to colonial-period Art Deco, all in various stages of repair. It used to be famous as a red-light area, and there are still brothels there, with prominent house numbers and red lanterns, the view inside from the street obscured by large fish tanks just in front of the door, although sometimes you can see a guy or two sitting in the lobby…

There are plenty of KTV lounges, with tables outside on the street where tough guys smoke and drink beer, with bar girls hovering around to tempt passersby inside. There’s nevertheless a process of gentrification going on, with chic boutique hotels rubbing shoulders with new-age bookstores and backpacker hostels, architecture partnerships, and small media companies; this hasn’t diluted the street’s vibrant energy though. There are also plenty of little places to eat, where the food is great and all the locals ignore the menus, because they’ll eat what the staff recommend…

Keong Saik is next to Kreta Ayer street, where traditional Cantonese Operas are still held regularly, and is very close to lots of the clan houses and traditional martial arts guans of Chinatown. Its borderline, subversive spirit is lives on in its proximity to all the gay bars in Neil Road. Sitting in the corner coffeeshop late in the evening, you’ll see a fascinating parade of humanity passing by: martial artists, happy clans talking rapidly in Cantonese, buffed-up pretty boys, miniskirted bar girls, or working girls, disoriented backpackers, taxi drivers, gold-chained thugs, orange-haired street guys…..

Last Friday, just next to where I was sitting, opposite the Indian temple, a big drunk guy, swerving across the road as his petite girlfriend tried to support him, banged on the hood of a taxi that was slowly crossing the other way. The cabbie, a short, skinny guy in his fifties, slammed on his brakes, and jumped out with a flurry of Hokkien curses…. It looked like a fight was coming… the big guy blustered and squared up…. the barefoot cabbie pulled a six-inch screwdriver from from his back pocket… both were screaming at each other….

Gradually, the girl pulled the big guy away, though he kept trying to turn around and come back… older passersby stopped to calm the cabbie down… eventually he got back in his car, and drove off, prompting another burst of invective as he passed the drunk… but for a moment or two I really thought I was going to see a stabbing.

Phew, who says Singapore is boring? These older areas keep alive Singapore’s old rough-and-ready spirit as a port city… I like Keong Saik Road! You can see various pictures of the street on Flickr.

Bagua applications

I just found this YouTube clip (embedding disabled) from UK-based neijia instructor Joanna Zorya, and I really like it: a very neat little display of the principles and use of bagua applications. More, please!

Dong Hai Chuan’s grave on Flickr

I’ve uploaded my pictures of Dong Hai Chuan’s grave, plus others from the cemetary, to a Flickr set. I ought to have made notes at the time, but didn’t so – since I can’t read Chinese – I can’t label them to say who’s who, but there are a number of bagua masters with tombs or memorials adjacent to Dong Hai Chuan.