It’s Saturday morning, and my knuckles hurt. My wrist is very tender when moved or touched, and is beginning to develop blotchy bruises. My legs hurt, my neck is stiff, and I have a faint headache. Yes, I went training with Master Zhou again last night! (I don’t think the headache is his fault, that’s down to recent insomnia).
We attracted quite a crowd. He was showing me another set of applications – including some that would most definitely bring tears to your eyes if used in anger. Oh yes, lots of tears. Usually, he’ll demonstrate on me (not full force, of course), and then I have a go; with one of these techniques in particular, it took me a while before I could bring myself to try it, it’s so nasty. And no, I’m not going to tell you what it was; I wouldn’t want to be blamed for an outbreak of wide-eyed victims who are suddenly walking a bit funny. So anyway, yes, we acquired a fair number of sarong-clad Indian foreign workers who hung around to watch. I hope they don’t try any of what they saw on the building site..
I wrote once before about William Fairbairn, who was once the Assistant Commissioner of the Shanghai Municipal Police, in the legendary inter-war period. As I wrote then, he learned from the experiences he had on the street, and used them to develop a system of unarmed combat for his officers – a system that prompted someone to say of him “he had an honest dislike for anything that smacked of decency in fighting“. Hehehe, Master Zhou trained in Shanghai, and the technique I was working on last night give me a better insight into the sort of thing that so shocked Fairbairn’s prim and proper contemporaries. Perhaps he’d encountered some of Master Zhou’s forebears!
Speaking of which, we got to talking about taijiquan, which he also knows. I mentioned that the first style I learned, back in the UK, was the Cheng Man Ching style. It turns out that Master Zhou’s own master in Yang Style taijiquan was Fu Zhong Wen – who was a student of Yang Chengfu at the same time as Cheng, and of roughly equal seniority. I think he was also trying to tell me something else, but my Mandarin wasn’t up to it, and I couldn’t follow. In any case, I’m increasingly fascinated by how many famous lineages are represented here in Singapore.
This is Fu Zhong Wen:
Apparently, William Fairbairn learned a bit from Cui Zhendong (not 100% certain due to dubious Romanization on his part, but quite high chance), who happens to be the source of your Wuji Bagua (Cui Zhendong -> Ji Jinshan -> Zhou Yuewen -> You)!
Of course, we don’t know exactly WHAT Cui would have talk him in those days – they weren’t particularly open back then…
OK, now I’m a bit spooked out! That’s a big coincidence… I guess you’re getting this from something written by Fairbairn? Can you let me know the title? Do you have a copy?
I’ve none of his materials myself, but a thread at EmptyFlower here has an article with quotations from him here: http://www.emptyflower.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=872&st=20&start=20
Perhaps you can match it up with any documents of his you might own!