China Trip 2009

From May 5th to June 7^th I was in the People’s Republic, training with Master Chen, attending a Taijiquan conference (!) and doing a little tourism on the side.

I met Master Chen in the waiting room in Vancouver Airport and we changed our seats in order to sit together on the flight to Beijing. We chatted, worked on some airplane push-hands and watched a few movies. On arrival, we checked shared a hotel room and continued our meandering conversations about Taiji, teaching and learning and the principles of artistic practice. Early the next morning we headed out to Baiyunguan, White Cloud Temple, a centre of Daoism in China. We wandered through the courtyards and Master Chen translated many of the inscriptions and commented on different deities and images found in the temple. I discovered that in China, I am a shopaholic, and purchased all sorts of Daoist paraphanalia, including some lovely Horsetail Flywhisks. We had breakfast at a restaurant owned by Mao’s last nurse, that served spicy Chinese Muslim dishes. The rest of our party of students-to-be arrived and together Gabrielle (Atlanta), Kim (Atlanta), David (Bali via Australia), Charlie (Victoria), Steve (Ottawa), Alex (Salt Spring Island) and yours truly visited the Great Wall, a Wushu supply store (more shopaholism – Bagua deer-horn knives anyone?) and several restaurants. The Great Wall is great, but, like all tourist attractions, it would be better visited alone around 4:00am! The next day, we took the train to Wulian, the nearest town to Daqingshan. Both the Beijing airport and train station are from the future, making all Canadian and most American and European facilities look small, decrepit and outdated. Chinese architects like space without columns. You could fit Canada’s Houses of Parliament in the waiting room of Beijing central train station and have room left over for a hockey rink or two… (While China has yet to figure out plumbing, they have huge buildings, public transit, electric scooters and trees-everywhere-to-suck-up-the-monoxide down).

Master Chen and I also visited a Tui Na (therapeutic massage) studio run by one of his Taiji nephews. After our excellent if excruciating massages, the young massotherapists in training wanted to do push hands with me. The group practice the Hunyuan system. They all had a hard time, mainly because I am taller and weigh a lot more than they do. They resorted to tag-team “exhaust the foreigner” tactics and I think I was on the spot for about 40 minutes. Their teacher was a lot more skilled and showed me the odd ability to open and close his stomach-valves consciously, creating a ‘monster in the belly’ look in his abdomen and a loud growling sound; silly, but cool. Master Chen then gave an impromptu push-hands class, in Mandarin. In the cab on the way back to our hotel he asked me what he had been teaching, I replied that I had seen him teach not to have a slumped, collapsed posture and only to move one part at a time. He joked with me, saying he didn’t need to teach me in English anymore…

We arrived in Wulian after a 5-hour high speed train trip and were greeted by Master Chen’s sister, brother and entourage. We got into some very mafiosi-looking black sedans and drove to the mountain. The next day, we began training at 5:30am, pausing for breakfast at 8:00am and working for two more two hour periods throughout the day. Master Chen wanted everyone to do at least 20 repetitions of the Yi Lu routine each day, and those who didn’t know the whole form yet buckled down to learn it. We settled into a routine quite quickly. I would rise around 4:20am, have coffee and wake up and start warming up around 5:00am. By 5:30 I’d be ready for foundation drills and form repetitions and by 7:15 Master Chen would have given us technical corrections and we’d work on various movement mechanics with partners under his guidance. The afternoons and evenings were essentially the same – informal but continuous work with personal instruction from Master Chen. The day was punctuated by excellent, huge, delicious and fun-filled meals. While we all ate like horses, the food was very light and fresh and local and I had the weird experience of losing weight while stuffing myself silly.

A few days in Gabrielle and I drove to Qingdao to pick up Herb (Edmonton) from the airport. Herb was going to perform the Hunyuan Taiji 24 form at the competition that was a part of the 2^nd annual Hunyuan International Taiji Conference in Suzhou. He had about 10 days to perfect his form on the mountain before Master Chen, he and I would head to Suzhou.

During this time, Nick Mann also showed up on the mountain. Nick trained Chen Style with Gord Muir in Vancouver with a strong background in wrestling. I really enjoyed practicing push hands with him for this reason.

Master Chen, Herb and I travelled to Suzhou to attend the second Hunyuan International Conference. It was held at a very fancy hotel in downtown Suzhou, near the old part of the city. Suzhou is the only place I’ve seen so far in China that is actually traditional in its architecture and lay out. It is by far the most beautiful urban environment I’ve seen here, with low wooden buildings, canals and trees. There are also very many historical gardens, with extraordinary landscaping and buildings. It is a great relief that these things have been preserved. Most of the cities in China are really very ugly, or just like North America…

We visited the Humble Administrator’s Garden (he may have been modest, his garden is gigantic and luxurious) and the Garden of the Master of the Nets, also an architectural marvel; there are many koy but there are no nets! We also spent a nice afternoon wandering down Cang Lu after Herb did his Hunyuan form in the competition. Cang Lu is a little alley beside the canal with very good restaurants, cafés, galleries and bookstores. The architecture combines contemporary modernist styles with traditional Suzhou buildings and it is very beautiful. Earlier I visited the Suzhou Museum, designed by I.M. Pei, where a great exhibit of Pure Land and Vajrayana Buddhas was on display. There is also a Museum of Theatre, where I found some young Kunju actors rehearsing on a lovely traditional stage. The Museum, hard to find and tiny, is really worth a visit. There are two stages, a small indoor one and a larger courtyard stage. It is a real shame this style of building is no longer made, as the two theatres are really intimate and ideal. Suzhou is also a town where shops selling the same thing cluster together; there’s a road with wedding photo stores, one for musical instrument shops and another for dogs and dog grooming supplies. People really like little dogs in Suzhou (as pets).

The great joy for me in Suzhou, apart from the sites, was buying musical instruments and Daoist ritual paraphanalia. I got some gongs, drums, singing bells, cymbals and wooden fish (muyu) as well as a beautiful carved sandalwood yinyang bagua ornament, a Daoist Qingwei Thunder Block with Lei Gong, the bird-headed God of Thunder on it, a Qingwei Thunder Plaque and some CDs of traditional music and storytelling. I also found one of the large colourful flags that announce the entrance of a general in traditional Chinese theatre. In one of the galleries along Cang Lu, I had a chance to play the Guqin, a sort of elegant Zen zither. As a string player, it was pretty straightforward for me to find its rich, rewarding tone, although to really get comfortable, players need to develop a large callus on the outside edge of the left thumb.

Herb’s first form competition went well. He felt nervous, but looked very much at ease. I must say I’m a bit disappointed by the whole thing though. I saw some good gymnastics, basic calisthenics and wei jia gongfu, but nothing really internal. If the people here claimed that they were doing gymnastics, calisthenics and gongfu, that would be fine, but they seem to believe they are doing something very high level and mysterious. Most of the push-hands demontrations were completely fake and in one case a very capable exponent had to pretend to fall to make another more famous ‘master’ look good. That no one recognized this seems a little ridiculous to me. The push-hands was basically divided between excellent professional wrestlers and clumsy shovers in silk suits; not much taiji to be seen. Fortunately, Suzhou is so very interesting and beautiful that it more than makes up for the the incredible drugdery that seems endemic to all conferences in big hotels…

More soon.

~ by Daniel Mroz on June 18, 2009.