What to do in Beijing? There’s no shortage of options, in terms of teachers, forms, and so on! On the other hand, I have a massive list of things that I need to get done while I’m in China – and most of them are career-related, rather than martial arts…
So, right now I’m starting to work out what I want to get done. Here’s a few thoughts:
- I’ve trained with Master Liu Jing Ru before, and would like to do so again. He’s very well spoken-of as being traditional in his styles. However, he lives far away from where I will be based, and his styles are different to what I’ve learned. Do I want to start a whole new set?
- Master Sun Zhi Jun is Madam Ge’s main teacher; he’s the one to go to if I want to maintain my current knowledge – namely, the ba mu zhang, the sword, and the needles. I’m hearing different things, though: some say he’s one of bagua’s best fighters, others say that his styles have too much xin pai (performance style) in them. He does live much closer to my base in Haidian than Master Liu, but it’s still quite far.
- Professor Huang Zhen Huan lives very close to where I’ll be, and I have his phone number. He was a student of Wu Tu Nan for twenty years, so I’m guessing he practices Wu style, rather than the Yang-based forms I know. On the other hand, I may well ask him to help me work on developing softness, and push hands…
- I am very tempted to learn another obscure form – bagua fan
Here’s two examples from YouTube:
I know that Zhang Sheng Li of the Beijing Milun School knows at least one fan form, and in any case I want to contact him to review the Long Xing form he taught me…
I’ve always wanted to learn fan…
Re: Master Sun Zhi Jun. From what I’ve seen, he seems to only have performance wushu students, but I’m sure I read somewhere that he also has traditional gongfu students.
Emlyn, what’s your purpose behind learning martial arts? There are many valid reasons to do so, of course. I’m just thinking that if combat effectiveness is a chief reason (is it?) then diversifying your learning this much would not be helpful to say the least.
It’s fine if it’s just a culture absorption thing though.
@ Stephan: how come? In my case, I’m not entirely sure why, other than that I think it’s cool… possibly because of the appearance of a metal fan in the restaurant fight scene in CTHD….
@ Eastpaw: I’ve long since learned that the martial arts world is just as bitchy as the playground. One reason why I’ve been to classes with lots of different teachers is to see for myself whether they can teach me what I want to learn. As for why I’m learning martial arts… I’ve spent a couple of months trying to work that out; I had a gut feeling, but couldn’t express it. Funnily enough, I think I finally got it during zen meditation class last night, before I came back to read your comment! I’ll let you know in a later post
Both Liu Jingru and Sun Zhijun come from traditional backgrounds (and have traditional disciples) but have long taught baguazhang to wushu players for competitions as well (don’t know if it was their choice or the government’s
).
They definitely have different character to their movement, so if you like a particular teacher’s movement, it may be best to stick with that teacher (it is very hard to learn even one correctly!).
“I’ve long since learned that the martial arts world is just as bitchy as the playground.”
Worse! Haha!
“I’ll let you know in a later post”
All right. Looking forward to that then.