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…

Invasion of the history snatchers

The Qianmen district of Beijing is one that is very dear to my heart – although sadly, I now have to write that it was very dear to my heart. It’s gone now, replaced with an identical copy of itself.

I’ve mentioned before why I liked it so much. I spent many summer nights there, getting lost in the narrow, wandering, alleyways, drinking beer and eating delicious food in tiny little restaurants where staff bantered with customers, and everything was great as long as you didn’t look in the kitchen.

On my first trip to Beijing in 2004, my Norwegian friend Stefan and I stood around watching the card games in the street, and stayed around until the only people left were the locals, who would be walking around in their pyjamas because of the heat.

In 2005, I hung out with Fei from Xi’an; we dived into the old courtyard buildings, looking at the different architectural styles, and chatting to the migrant workers who paid extortionate rates for clapboard rooms that had been thrown up in the courtyards. Everywhere we went, we encountered a warm welcome. With her, I had a really enjoyable evening in a tiny dumpling shop, where we were quizzed and teased by the rest of the diners.

In 2007, I went back to find the area reduced to rubble, surrounded by hoardings. The new “walls” were graced with huge pictures of the future Qianmen; it looked like Second Life.

I guess I’ll see the reality for myself next year. It sounds like it’s appalling. I’ve just found an article about it in the online journal China Heritage Quarterly. An area that once was part of the jianghu (in my interpretation of it – see my About page):

he previously privileged occupants of the Inner City during the Ming dynasty were forced to move elsewhere, often to new residences in the Outer City. As a result of this brief southern migration Qianmen flourished, as erstwhile residents of the Inner City relocated their roots and businesses to the south. In addition to its already existing reputation as a mercantile centre, the area also soon became a new entertainment district which residents and visitors, many of them scholars from other provinces who were in Beijing to sit the civil service examination, could dine out at the many restaurants that lined the streets, find lodgings, purchase luxurious goods, or attend a performance of the opera.[1]
Fig.1 The demolition of buildings in Qianmen district in January 2007. [Kelly Layton]

Equally important for social life in Qianmen, and for its status as Beijing’s entertainment district, was the commerce in brothels catering to the varied sexual appetites of their male clientele. Indeed, according to the local historian Zhang Jinqi (and many salacious accounts in ‘apocryphal histories’, yeshi), it was here that the Tongzhi Emperor (r.1862-74), during one of his late night incognito excursions to escape from the frustrations of court life and his libidinally frustrated eunuch retainers, contracted syphilis whilst fulfilling his own concupiscent urges, from which he would eventually die.

has been transformed into a sanitised, commercial zone of shopping malls disguised in “authentic” Qing-style buildings.

OHO’s redevelopment of the area of Qianmen promises to be a new, faux-Qing-style pedestrian shopping mall, a place where Beijing’s residents and tourists may engage in lifestyle practices that dabble with history whilst never really having to come to terms with it.

Of course, the life will all be gone, and the community dispersed. I guess I can only be glad that at least I saw it as it was.

It’s official

Just got the news that the last hurdle has been cleared (touch wood), and I am definitely moving to Beijing in February 2008. Exciting times…

Pens, balls, and other sensitive parts

I’ve had a lot of insomnia recently and, when I did sleep, strange, disturbing dreams that have left me feeling unrested. I just mention this as the leadup to saying that I’m tired; spaced-out tired. I had an invitation to go to a pretty high-profile design industry event last night, but I just didn’t feel up to schmoozing and smalltalk; I reckoned that going to train as usual would tire me out physically, and perhaps let me sleep a bit better.

So, I went to class with Master Zhou. Because of the state I was in, my reactions were incredibly slow, so that when he demonstrated one attack, I didn’t ride it well and got thrown on my backside. I actually landed on the top of my coccyx, which hurt like crazy at the time, and is throbbing now as I write. Anyway, it certainly woke me up.

I mentioned to him that I plan to study the Judge’s Pen form with Master Sun Zhijun, and he laughed uproariously, which suprised me. It was only later that I realised I’d used the wrong tone. Mandarin-speakers will guess what I’d actually said… He also mentioned that the pen/needle comes from the Emei bagua tradition, not from the Beijing or Shanghai lineages, and that it’s been imported into the Cheng/Yin lines. Anybody able to comment on that?

Briefly, it was another great lesson. I learned a few new moves – though whether I will remember them is another issue – and applications, including a very nasty spin and backwards kick…bagua fighting really does go for the soft and painful parts, doesn’t it!

In The Matrix Reloaded, the character Seraph tells Neo that to know someone, you have to fight them. At the time, I thought that sounded like pseudo-philosophical bs, but now I begin to wonder. The parts of each class where Master Zhou demonstrates the applications of the moves we’ve just learned, and I try to defend myself are actually quite revealing. So are the parts where I try to apply them against him… I’m learning that I really don’t have the instinct, or mindset, to attack someone if I don’t have to. I always hesitate, or try to pull my blow, or deflect it so that it doesn’t land heavily. (OTOH, I have had a couple of experiences in the past when I had to use a move for real and didn’t hesitate at all, so maybe the necessity is the issue here). I’m noticing that when I’m defending, I’m instinctively using taiji principles and movements, softness, stickiness, deflection. Intellectually, of course, I know that I can’t compete with Master Zhou on strength or speed, but I’m not rationalizing that way when I’m under pressure. Interesting… When we’re practising repetitions of moves, I tire rapidly; if I want to progress, I need to do a lot on strength and stamina. And when I do successfully perform a move, he’ll always do a couple of rapid attacks back , just to make sure I don’t get too smug…

I asked Master Zhou to show me the rest of the form, what I still have remaining… and, oops, there’s a lot. I think I might be able to finish it before I go to Beijing, but we’re going to have to pick up the pace a bit. Apparently, there’s no-one in Beijing who could teach me this form; it’s Shanghai-based. So, lots of work to come…

After the class, I went to practice solo, as usual. I had a lot on my mind, so I decided to focus on taiji, and did seven or eight reps of the CMC-37 set over the next hour and a half, taking it slow…

Questions

Here are some of the people I’ve studied under during the last few years – some of them for periods of months, some for just a few hours.

• Nam Wah Pai (Taijiquan, Singapore)
• Nam Wah Taijigong Association (Taijiquan, Singapore)
• Rennie Chong (Taijiquan, Singapore)
• Madam Ge Chun Yan (Baguazhang, Singapore)
• Master Zhou Yue Wen (Baguazhang, Singapore)
• Alex Kozma (Baguazhang, Singapore)
• Master Liu Jing Ru (Baguazhang, Beijing)
• Zhang Sheng Li (Baguazhang, Beijing)
• Jinghua Wushu Association (Taijiquan, Beijing)

If you could ask them questions, what would you want to know?

Protected: A big change ahead

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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.

Training with Master Liu

I was lucky to get a couple of hours of training with Master Liu Jing Ru (interview with Master Liu here) while I was in Beijing. I’d arranged it by email at quite short notice, communicating with his student Kong Cheng, who was incredibly helpful. Kong Cheng was also there during the training session, acting as translator and training partner.

When I first started studying bagua, back in 2004 (I almost wrote way back: so muchhas happened since then!) I bought a few of his VCDs, and studied them intently, but I didn’t know who he was or where he was based, so it was a pleasure to meet him at last! We worked on the applications of the base eight palms, and in a short time we covered a heck of a lot, and cleared up a lot of queries that I had. I really felt it was worthwhile, and if I ever move back to Beijing (which isn’t impossible), I would certainly want to study regularly with him. He has a number of regular foreign students, who were actually practising nearby during my lesson, but I wasn’t able to stay and watch after we’d finished.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I also had hoped to train with Madam Ge’s teacher, Sun Zhijun, but that didn’t work out. Kong Cheng actually offered to take me to meet Master Sun, but my schedule was so full I just didn’t have the time.

Kong Cheng, by the way, is the Assistant-President of the Beijing Wushu Association, and Assistant-President of the Beijing Baguazhang Association, and not a bad person to know if you’re looking for bagua movies…

Dong Hai Chuan’s grave

At Dong Hai Chuan’s grave