My next obscure form…

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…

Emei zi and bagua bi

No mysterious strangers this week…. Last night’s class with Master Zhou was very interesting. We did a little bit of work on the form at the end of the class, but mostly we were working on fundamentals. In particular, he’s trying to teach me a series of stretching and softening exercises. These, he says, are essential for developing bagua’s power. My wrists and shoulders in particular need to loosen up a heck of a lot, and he’s given me some ways to work on that. Ouch, it’s painful!

He also expanded a bit more on what he said before about the bagua pens. I’d misunderstood his meaning on that occasion. He wasn’t saying that bagua pens had been adopted from an Emei style – he was saying that the weapons we were using in our course with Sun Laoshi are not actually bagua pens. The ones we have are 22cm long, with the ring to slip over the finger 5cm from the blunt end. The business end tapers to a blunt point, rather like the end of a pencil after it’s been used a few times. According to Master Zhou, this is actually an emei zi (I’m not sure of the meaning of zi in this context). A true bagua bi, according to him, is much longer, with the ring in the middle, and with the end flaring out before forming a point – more like the actual shape of a large Chinese brush-pen (to a western eye, one might say it looks kind of arrow-head shaped). This rings a bell, because in Frank Allen’s book Whirling Circles there’s a picture of Tina Zhou using one of these, and I had wondered to myself about the difference.

One thing bothered me a bit about this, though – everything I’d read suggested that bagua pens were designed to be concealed weapons for bodyguards, and I didn’t see how a weapon that’s basically a metal stick around 70cm long (that’s a rough estimate based on Master Zhou’s description) could be concealed in such a way that it would also be readily available for use. I could see that it might be stuck down the back of the trousers, but it seems that it might be difficult to draw them easily – apparently, though, this was one way they were carried. The other way was up the sleeves – it seemed unlikely to me, as wouldn’t the carrier then we walking around like a robot, with rigid, unbending arms? Heh. Yesterday happened to be a very rainy day, and I had with me one of those small, folding umbrellas. Master Zhou took that, extended it to about the length of the bagua pen, and put it up his sleeve – and could still bend his arm. How? Because the sleeves of his kung fu jacket are very wide. I’d been thinking of sleeves in terms of the clothes we wear today, in which the sleeves are very narrow tubes. In the Qing dynasty, the sleeves of court clothes for nobles and bodyguards alike were very, very wide and baggy – so there’s lots of room for movement around the pen. Suddenly it all made sense! Just goes to show, once again, you can’t really separate a martial art from the context and culture in which it was developed – every martial art’s moves were developed to meet the combat needs of a particular time and place.

Also, traditionally, clothes with long sleeves covering the hands meant you were rich; short sleeves leaving the arms bare meant you were a poor, working man. Heh.

Anyway, after this enlightening class, I went for solo practice, trying not to disturb the wild cats, which were dozing on the concrete around me. A couple of sets of CMC-37, several of what I will persist in calling my bagua pens even if they’re not, a couple of sets of ba mu zhang, and finally a half-hearted attempt at the bagua jian.

Anybody out there fancy chipping in with a bit more info about the emei zi?

Week 1 roundup

The calendar in my old Nokia, the one I lost, showed which week it was in the calendar; I find that none of my remaining calendars (Google calendar, Windows, Mac, or ancient backup Nokia) have this function. So, I won’t be using the number of the week much in post headings, at least until I buy a new phone! Anyway, I know for sure that this has been the first week of 2008…

On New Year’s eve, I had an invitation to go to a barbeque. I was a bit dubious at first, as it was at the home of a friend-of-a-friend, and I wasn’t sure I felt up to being polite to strangers; I felt more like being contemplative. Plus, there was a taijigong class that evening. In the end, I decided to skip class and go to the barbie, since I was getting a bit too antisocial.  As it turned out, it was a really good evening, with quite a lot of people I knew or kind-of-knew, and we had a really good time with lots of friendly piss-taking and banter.

Round about 11, I said my farewells and headed up to the temple at Bright Hill. I went to their countdown last year, which wasn’t really to my taste, but I wanted to see in the New Year again to the sound of the 108 chimes of the bell. I got there at just the right time; I went to stand next  to the bell and, while I was debating where to stand, found that the crowd had sort of formed up around me. Next thing I knew, the monks had arrived, and I wound up pretty much facing the abbot as he rang the bell. What I didn’t know last year was that the crowd was largely composed of people who had spent the previous week on retreat at the temple, and this was the culmination of that.

I didn’t stay too long afterwards, and got a cab home. On New Year’s Day, Madam Ge had arranged a farewell meal for Sun Zhi Jun and Mi Jun Pei. We went to a fish restaurant on Marine Parade, and had a nice few hours. Most people had a buffet; as the sole veggie, I was brought a plate of vegetable noodles. There were lots of speeches of appreciation from various students (I was “persuaded” to make one as well, and almost died of embarrassment!), and gifts of tokens of esteem to all of our teachers. The evening finished off with karaoke. I have an deep dislike of karaoke  – I don’t like to sing, and I never know the words or, often, the tune – so I didn’t sing. Five years in Asia, and I’ve never yet sung in karaoke – and I don’t plan on breaking that precedent!

On Wednesday, I went for solo practice, and then to drink tea with Chin Woo friends. I’m trying to cut down on the beer for the new year… Thursday to taijigong class at the Nam Wah Association.

On Friday, Master Zhou took me through a lot of exercises designed to work on loosening up the shoulders, and developing explosive power. My power is currently more of a damp fizzle; more work needed. A good place to start is on getting my posture right; I almost gave myself whiplash at one point as trying to project force forwards from the shoulders shook my neck and head back and forth…

Last night, for the first time in over a year, there was no more baguazhang with Madam Ge. Instead, I headed down to Lavender for my first class in Zen Meditation at the Kwan Yin Chan Lin centre. It was a big class, with around forty students, though I don’t know how many were first-timers; quite a few were return students. There were quite a few foreigners.  It was a very calming session, as Ven. Chi Boon began to outline what Zen is about.

One thing that I found very interesting was when he asked us what Zen is. When some students tried to answer, he pointed out that by using words, we depart from the true nature of zen. How could we answer without using words? As we mulled this over, trying to discover some abstract way to achieve this, intellectualising the problem, an assistant standing behind us suddenly rapped the floor loudly with a stick. The surprise of the noise jerked us back into the moment. That was the answer all along… I found it interesting because I’ve read about this before, just as you are reading it now, and thought I understood – but there was an almost physical sensation as the mind returned, and I hadn’t expected that.

We began to practise seated meditation; I’m nowhere near flexible enough to sit in full lotus position, or even half-lotus. My ankles are very stiff. I suddenly realised that they used to be much looser; after the first meditation retreat I attended in Thailand, I was meditating regularly, and that really stretched my ankles. It was during that period that I first went to Beijing, and began to study baguazhang – I wonder if stopping regular meditation is why I seem to find mud-stepping harder these days? Stiffer ankles…?  Hmmm. The style of meditation we were using is all about breathing from the dantian, which is very good for me – I’ve been finding that difficult recently.
We also spent ten minutes last night in slow walking meditation, where practice in bagua stepping proved useful.  I’m looking forward to the rest of the course! I have a feeling that it will tie in much more closely than I expected with my work on taijigong and bagua…

The unexpected

It’s been an evening of unexpected meetings, news, and insights… Where to start? Well, at the beginning, of course!

I made it to Duxton Plain Park in good time for my lesson with Master Zhou. As I was doing my stretches, a Chin Woo student whose face I vaguely know came up to me to let me know that Master Zhou was running late, and would be there in about fifteen minutes. No problem at any time, but it was fortuitous tonight; just a moment later a monk walked past. I’ve seen him around on a number of occasions; he’s a tall Chinese, in the robes of the New Kadampa movement. I assumed then that the Odiyana Centre was growing, and had brought in a second monk. Up until this summer, I was attending the centre regularly to hear dharma talks delivered by Kelsang Wangchg – who is, like me, from South Wales, and is the same age as me, give or take a couple of months.

Anyhow, this evening the monk was accompanied by Kelsang Lamden, the resident nun, who said hi, so I went over to chat. The monk is Kelsang Tonglam; he’s from Hong Kong, but has lived for some time in the UK – with the accent to prove it! A very nice guy. The big shock for me was to hear that Wangchog has disrobed and returned to lay life. It’s perfectly acceptable in many (most?) Buddhist traditions for this to happen, so it’s not a bad thing, but I truly am astonished; Wangchog always seemed so happy and committed. Still, as Lamden said, people change. Apparently he’s still in Singapore; I’ll make an effort to catch up with him before I go to Beijing.

By this time Master Zhou had arrived, so I said goodbye and got on with the class. We did a lot of work with exercises to try to loosen my over-tight shoulders, and then worked on the form a bit more; mostly repetition, as I’d forgotten most of what I learned last week… Since filming Mi Lao Shi has proved so useful in remembering the bagua needles form, I asked Master Zhou if I could film him going through the set. He was OK with that, but unfortunately my batteries died halfway through. Doh! Next class, perhaps.

Following the class, I went elsewhere in the park, and practised solo. I spent most of the next hour and a half working on the bagua needles form, trying to get it into muscle memory. I still need to find the right diameter circle to walk, in order to finish where I started; sometimes I get it, other times not…. I also went through the CMC-37 a few times, plus the xuan xuan dao. I finished up with one last go at the needles set, and a walk through Zhang Sheng Li’s long xing set – the first bagua set I learned. During these last two, I vaguely noticed someone sit down on a nearby bench to watch; this happens often enough that I pay it no mind. After I’d finished, I was drinking water and getting ready to go meet friends, when I noticed the watcher coming over to talk to me. He was Chinese, a mainlander by his accent, and in his 30s or 40s. He only spoke to me in Chinese, and started correcting me a lot on my posture and stepping. Using slow, simple sentences, and lots of demonstrations, he talked a lot about the use and non-use of force in the internal arts, the use of body structure and angles, the right width of a stance, and a lot more. It was all really good, and he plainly knows his stuff. He was emphatic that I had to loosen up a lot, and was very soft in his applications – soft like a whip…. Very good feedback…. He wouldn’t tell me his name, or what he does. He says he’s a student only of taijiquan, but clearly knows quite a bit about bagua. He wouldn’t even name his taiji style; he said he doesn’t know it, he was just taught like this by a very old man back in China. Eventually, my friends started calling to see where I was. I ignored the calls, but then a search party arrived, and it was time for me to move on. My mysterious teacher then departed, saying only that we would meet again….

What a stiff(ness)!

Wow, it’s been a pretty intense week martial arts-wise!

At the Nam Wah Taijigong Association, we’re working on the Yang-24 sequence now; for me it’s much-needed revision, as I haven’t practiced this for a long time. My practice of the sequence has also gotten a bit mixed up, as Nam Wah’s sequence is small-frame, whereas in Beijing I learned the large-frame version. We’re moving very slowly through the new moves, holding each position for what feels like very long periods! It isn’t really for very long, but a lot of muscles and tendons aren’t used to even short pauses in these positions, and complain vociferously!

As I mentioned, I’m now also studying twice a week with Master Zhou. I think he feels that this will give us plenty of time to finish the form, so last night we tried something new. Next to where we practice, there’s a trio of heavy upright wooden poles, set in a triangle and supporting metal bars for pullups. When I first started studying with Madam Ge, I used these to try to work out the applications for the moves; I stopped that fairly soon, after I was reminded that I needed to work more on the basics first. (Looking back on that post with hindsight is pretty interesting; I now know that Mr Ng was taught bagua by Master Zhou’s twin brother!).

Anyway, last night, Master Zhou decided to focus solely on applications. Normally, although he shows me a lot of these, we don’t do much repetition, so I tend to forget them. This time, he showed me a sequence of moves, and I just did them again and again, circling one of the poles and using it as my target, to a chorus of “Hit the eyes! Hit the eyes! Hit the balls! Hit the chest!” Etc, etc…. Hehehe, my contribution was to teach Master Zhou the English word “balls”, which he’s very pleased to add to his vocabulary of what to hit and how to do it!

This, as you can imagine, gathered a lot of attention from passers-by! We were joined for a lot of the lesson by a very tall, striking woman from Dalian and her small son, about six years old I would guess, who was totally fascinated by this! (The son, I mean, the mother less so). Master Zhou’s very good with kids, and chatted away happily to them as I kept on circling and striking… Later, the Chin Woo Lion Dancers started drumming away nearby; the boy really wanted to see this, so off they went to watch… After class, as I went down to where I practice solo, I passed the drummers and they were still there, the mother talking to Chin Woo students, the little boy doing gymnastics… They wouldn’t have been there if they hadn’t stopped to watch my practice; I wonder whether something has been set in motion that will change that little boy’s life, however slightly? It would be nice to think so!

So, then it was time for solo practice. Most of this was working on the needles form, trying to drill it into muscle memory, and getting it into the circle walking. Thank goodness I took that video of Mi Lao Shi – there’s absolutely no way I would have remembered this. With repeat views of the video, though, I think I’m getting it, and was eventually finishing the form in the same spot that I’d started in. After that, I wound down with some sets of CMC-37 taijiquan, and xuan xuan dao, before going to meet some of the Chin Woo folks in a coffee shop on Keong Saik Road.

This morning…. oh my…. my ankles and leg tendons ache from holding the Yang-24 positions…. my back and shoulders ache from the whirling and twisting of the needles form… my palms, shoulders , back of my heel and sole of my foot ache from hitting and kicking those poles! Ouch! Ouch!

End of the needles

Well, yesterday was our last class for the bagua needles. There was a bit of a sting in the tail – I’d thought that it would just be a revision session, but there was more to learn, and it was the toughest session yet for me.

Up until this class, I’d thought that we were learning a linear form; this isn’t unheard of in bagua. Yesterday, it turned out that it’s a circular form. We’d been taught the movements in a linear form to make it easier, but yesterday, we  turned it into a circle. Mostly this was pretty straightforward, but there were some parts where I wasn’t sure what the frack was going on… It didn’t help that it’s intended to be performed in a small, 8-step circle but – due to the size of the class, we were walking around a much larger circle, so when we were supposed to be on the circumference looking outwards, we were actually at the centre looking inwards, as it were. I think most other people found this easier to get the hang of, but of course I couldn’t follow the verbal explanation and got totally lost…

Anyway, I had my camera so at the end I  asked Mi Lao Shi if I could film her doing the set as it was meant to be done. She was OK about that, but we had to go down a floor to get decent light (the class was back in our regular place, on the top of a car park; the light was pretty bad). Sun Lao Shi was waiting for her so that they could leave but, to be fair, they were very patient! As soon as she had finished the set, she jumped into the waiting car, and off they went! Perhaps I’ll see them in Beijing, perhaps not…

I’m glad to have the video, anyway. I can put it on my iPod and use it for a learning aid when I’m practicing in the park!

Bagua bi, nearly done

It’s Christmas Day, but that doesn’t stop dedicated bagua students from attending class! For today only, we were indoors, in a local school’s sports hall.

As I’m not taking the “Applications” course, I got there just as that was winding up. Apparently I’d missed Master Sun doing some demonstrations, though later I got to see him showing xingyi set that was very impressive.

We finished the needle set today, and were all given a certificate of attendance for the course or courses that we’ve participated in:

My goodness, what a terrible picture of me! Or perhaps not, since I’ve completely failed in my plan to lose weight

Today’s final part of the set was quite tough for me to get right; Mi Lao Shi had to correct me a number of times; I’m sure I’m straining her patience, but if so, she doesn’t show it! Anyhow, we still have one final revision class tomorrow night, and then that’s the needle class finished. It’s a very nice form, I do still really like it!

So now it’s time to go do a bit of last-minute Christmas shopping, sparing a thought for my bagua classmate Jono, who as I speak is somewhere in Eastern Russia, heading for Moscow on the Trans-Siberian express…

Achoo!

I’m coughing, sneezing, and spluttering in the early days of a cold, with ear-ache building up… Yesterday I found myself in the office wearing a jacket and warm cap to insulate myself from the aircon, and still having massive sneezes come out of nowhere to leave important documents decorated in green (sorry, I know you didn’t need that image!).

I figured that I’ve learned my lesson; training with a cold is a  bad idea, so I called Master Zhou to tell him I couldn’t make it to class. After work, I took the MRT home, and stopped off at the supermarket to buy comfort food (pizza and red wine) so that I could fight off the cold before an early night. The walk home from there took me through the park where I train, and lo and behold there was Master Zhou on his own, warming up for training. This was before our normal class time – I’ve never seen him there so early, in all the time we’ve been meeting!

So, I stopped for a chat. At that point, I wasn’t sneezing heavily, so I’m sure he thinks I was skiving, but I really am ill! I told him about the news, and we agreed that it’s a short time in which to finish. The upshot is that we’re probably going to start meeting twice a week now, on Wednesdays as well as Fridays, and we’ll focus less on applications and more on just learning the form properly.

Pan guan bi, lesson 2

More to learn tonight, and as a class we’re collectively showing signs of difficulty remembering the moves; some are visibly struggling. Well, it’s an intensive course, we knew that, but it’s still a lot of ground to cover. There are a lot of people there, over 30, and it can be difficult for some to see what’s being demonstrated. We’re in rows, with Mi Lao Shi on one side, and Ge Lao Shi on the other, so that as we turn there’s always one in view. They take it in turns to guide the class; I sometimes get the feeling that there’s a certain battle of wills over who gets to lead when and for how long

I make sure I get to stand in the first rank, near a teacher; since I can’t understand the spoken directions, I have to be able to see the demonstration clearly. It so happens that both lessons so far I’ve been nearest to Mi Lao Shi, who I must say is a good teacher; she speaks slowly and clearly, demonstrates the move from different angles, and is generally very clear to follow. I hadn’t met her before, and I’m impressed. Sun Lao Shi gave a talk at the end; other than that, he didn’t take an active role in tonight’s class.

Before I go on, let me just remind you all that this is a learner’s blog, not an expert’s view. As I go through classes, I try to make sense of what I’m experiencing, and to work out what it all means. Sometimes I just get it wrong, and I look back later and think “how stupid” – as I’m sure more experienced martial artists do when they read some of what I write. Well, never mind; at the end of the day, I’m just trying to get better.

So, that said, Stephan asked me what I meant in the last paragraph of my last post, so here are some thoughts I had while I was on the bus after class.

The taijiquan I practise is all Yang-based, so it’s pretty slow. I start by trying to be empty and soft; as I move, I’m alternating between full and empty, hard and soft. When I’m yielding, there’s an element of force ready to be expressed; when I’m expressing force, the ability to yield is present. The way weight, energy, etc, are used is like the taiji symbol: ying becomes yang, yang becomes yin, all part of an integrated whole.

With the bagua needle, I feel that the point of each needle seems like one end of a bar of energy. The bar’s energy changes. Each move represents a hexagram of several bars, depending on how the points and body are moving. Are the points moving in the same direction, or in opposite directions? In a straight line, or circling? Horizontally, or vertically? In parallel, or diverging? With the turn of the body, or against it? Arms, upper torso, legs, all moving the same way or in different ways… Each move thus has several “energy components” – full yang, full yin, changing yang, changing yin… Lots of small circles, and combinations of planes, all rapid and compact… Opening joints, closing them…kou bu bai bu…

In my mind’s eye, there’s a flickering effect as these different elements combine, fly apart, recombine in a different order… it’s like getting a small notebook, drawing one hexagram on each page, and then flicking rapidly through the sequence from beginning to end.

Does that make any sense? Basically, my experience of taiji and bagua are both about the interplay of yin and yang. Taiji does this with the body integrated as a whole; bagua needles does it as a combination of lots of smaller components… I’m sure I’ll be corrected by those who know better – which I welcome, and appreciate – but for the moment, this is how it’s making sense to me…

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!