Bi+

My home internet connection is really playing up at the moment, and things keep timing out; here’s a few more thoughts on last night’s class which I would have added to the last post if I’d been able to access WordPress for more than a few minutes…

The form we’re learning is not the form shown in the YouTube clip I embedded recently, which apparently is also taught by Master Sun. In fact, in its general movements, it seems a bit more compact and ‘purposeful’, rather than showy – in fact, something more like the Blacktaoist clip of ‘Yin’ style. Of course, I say this after only one introductory lesson, so let’s wait and see!

The ‘pen’ has a rotating ring near the blunt end, which slips over the middle finger; this is used to spin the pen for rapid changes of direction. We were supposed to wrap non-slip tape around the  ring, but I forgot. So, it got pretty slipper, which made controlling it a bit more difficult than strictly necessary! Still, I managed, and didn’t drop either pen at all, though it was a close thing a couple of times.

What else..? Master Sun has a really strong Beijing accent! I have a number of his VCDs, which often start with him giving a short talk about the history and philosophy of baguazhang, and I hadn’t really noticed his accent there… perhaps he was “talking posh”, as we would say in Wales!

Madam Mi switched into English to give me some comments and feedback during the class. As the only caucasian in the class I guess, of course, I stand out as obviously not being a Chinese-speaker; however, I know that some of the Singaporean ‘hua ren‘ (Overseas Chinese) in the class also have weak Mandarin – so I hope they also benefited.

More on why I like this form… I suppose it’s because with this form I’m really feeliing bagua’s ‘whirlwind’ energy – frequent and rapid changes of direction, movement in the horizontal and vertical planes… if in taijiquan, I tend to think of yin and yang energy, and moving from to the other, in this needle form I really am getting a sense of the enrgy moving from one trigram to another… not sure I can really explain this one. Anyway, I could be imagining it; let’s see how I feel after a few more lessons!