An Encounter With a Taoist Master of Taiji

While wondering around Qingyang temple in Chengdu, I saw a westerner sat with an old monk, who waved me over. As I got closer, I saw a sign in English and Chinese saying Taijiquan school. The westerner had signed up to a month of studying here and not speaking Chinese, it was his first day. The master spoke some basic English, and I spoke to him a little in English, before switching to Chinese, when I told him Id learnt Wing Chun and a little Chen style Taiji. When he heard that, he said Wing Chun is too hard, and that it dispersed your Qi and that internal martial arts take you to a higher level. I felt a little skeptical of him, but was respectful, especially because of people being able to sign up for a months training. But after a while, he took my inside and invited me to push hands with one of his students, a young monk. He was like water, and every time I pushed on him, he flowed round it, and I was only able to unbalance him once, but kept getting unbalanced myself most times I tried. Then the master invited me to try with him, he told me to push him in his stomach, and I felt it go solid, and then he sent me flying, with a little push from his abdomin. It was a strange feeling. I tried to push him several times, and each time he sent me flying off. I was really impressed, and exchanged contact details, so hopefully we can meet again next time I visit Sichuan. He is the head of a large association for Yang style Taiji, and has many students around the world.

Some other minority people I came across on my recent travels

The Zhuang people are native to Guangxi province in southwest China. They are Chinas largest minority and have largely incorporated Han Chinese customs, but still retain a unique language, closely related to Thai. We stayed in a village on top of the Dragons Backbone rice terraces, high up in the mountains and slept with a family there. They were very friendly, and spoke enough Mandarin to be understood. We sat in a wooden house with no chimney and got smoked out by a fire in the middle, which was cooking a hotpot of pigs liver, potatoes and rice and drank home made rice wine.

The Dong people live mostly in northern Guangxi and southern Guizhou and have unique culture and customs. We stayed in Zhaoxing, their largest village for several days for the Chinese New Year and their own Taiguanren festival the days after. Their unique Drum towers and covered bridges are places for the locals to meet and are always full of old men, smoking and drinking. Their language sounds a little like Cantonese, but has 16 tones! Their religion is the worship of different spirit animals and buddhism, but they have no temples or organisation. The Taiguanren festival was held after Chinese New Year, and saw the locals dressing up as animals, ghosts, peasants and royalty, and parading through town singing and throwing fireworks around.

The Miao people can be found all over southern China and Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, where they are known as the Hmong. They have even emigrated in large numbers to America and France. They were traditionally very rebellious to the Han Chinese, which led to their oppression. They have many different sub groups, such as the Flower Miao, Red Miao, Black Miao, Long Horn Miao etc. We stayed in a village called Basha, where the locals cling to ancient traditions, such as wearing traditional clothes, and the men still carry huge daggers or swords and shave their head, leaving just a topknot in the middle. In fact, the people in the village were all crazy, it seemed like the whole village was drunk, children included. They often sang, danced and were really rowdy, all night long. I heard they are some of the biggest drinkers in China!

The Bai people inhabit the foothills and valleys in and around Dali, in northwestern Yunnan province. They were traditionally rebellious and up until the time of Kublai Khan, had their own kingdom. They are believed to descend from the inhabitants from the Angkor Wat in Cambodia, but how they came to China, I dont know. They are well known for the artwork on the sides of their building, which are otherwise white washed. Old women in traditional clothes are often found selling hash to tourists in the streets of old Dali, although they dont smoke it themselves, just eat the seeds.

The Famous Dr Ho of Jade Dragon Mountain

While in Lijiang I had the fortune of meeting Dr Ho, a Naxi Doctor made famous by several books and documentaries, including Michael Palins Himalayas. As you walk along the otherwise typical street of the Naxi village of Baisha, just outside Lijiang, you will see a big sign saying "most admired man" and clippings of newspaper articles about this friendly, but slightly eccentric doctor.
So me and my friends walked into his clinic, and he greeted us in perfect English, then led us outside to sit in the sun, drink his home made herbal tea, and read articles about his fame. He lived a hard life and was poor and sick, during the political instability of 1950s and 60s China. So he taught himself herbal medicine, healed himself, and then began healing other villagers for free. He had learnt English from Dr Joseph Rock, a famous botanist, who lived in the area in the 1930s. Dr Ho is in his mid 80s and is in excellent health, and very happy (he says the best medicine is happiness). Despite his fame, he is humble and welcoming, and will give you a check up and prescribe some herbal medicine (which he collects from the mountains himself) for free, although for tourists, he asks a donation of what you think its worth or you can afford.
He told us about how several westerners suffering from cancer and other terminal illnesses had come tohim for treatment, and years later are still alive and stable. He showed us their medical reports, showing they refused kimotherapy to prove it.

the Naxi people of Lijiang

While recently travelling in the southwest of China, I visited the city of Lijiang and its surrounding areas. Although a really touristy place, I really fell in love with the Naxi people and their culture. They are said to have been descended from Tibetans and moved off the plateau in ancient times to settle in the fertile valleys where they live today at around 2,500m above sea level.

The Naxi were traditional a matriarchal people, which means that all inheritance, including family name, riches and land, were passed onto the female of the family. This is still practiced by the Mosuo people, who are closely related and live to the north of Lijiang, around Lugu Lake.

Their indigenous religion is a kind of mixture of animism, shamanism and ancestor worship, which is governed by the Dongba, which are the local shamans. The Dongba were traditionally the only people who could read and write the native language, which is the last remaining heiroglyphic language still in use. The common people would use Chinese. The spoken language sounds a little like Tibetan. Culturally, the Naxi have taken aspects of Tibetan and Han Chinese culture and given them their own flavour.

I found the Naxi people to be very welcoming and hospitable, and to have an interesting culture and history. If you want to read more on them, I would recommend reading "The Forgotten Kingdom: Living With The Nakhi of Likiang" by Peter Gouillart, a Russian who lived in Lijiang during the 1930s.

the philosophy of Tai Ji

In Chinese, Tai Ji (太極), is the philosophy of Yin and Yang (陰陽). Yin represents everything soft, passive, negative and he moon; while Yang represents everything hard, active, postive, bright and the sun. Tai Ji is the interplay between these two forces. In the beginning there was Wu Ji (無極), the primordial state of non-being and complete stillness, but when it was put into motion, it divided into two, Yin and Yang. These are not opposites, but rather complimentary. Everything exists because of this constant change. This is represented by the famous symbol, which is half black, half white. In the symbol, the dark side represents Yin, and contains a spot of white, which is Yang, and vice versa. This shows that there is no pure Yin or Yang, and that they are interdependant on each other. You cannot have day without also having night, you cannot experience pleasure without also experiencing pain. As Lao Zi wrote in the Dao De Jing:

"It is because everyone under Heaven recognises beauty as beauty, that the idea of ugliness exists. And equally if everyone recognised virtue as virtue, this would merely create fresh conceptions of wickdness. For truly Being and Not-being grow out of one another; difficult and easy complete one another. Long and short test one another; high and low determine one another. The sounds of instrument and voice give harmony to one another. Front and back give sequence to one another. Therefore the Sage relies on actionless activity, carries on wordless teaching, but the myriad creatures are worked upon by him; he does not disown them. He rears them, but does not lay claim to them, controls them, but does not lean upon them, achieves his aim, but does not call attention to what he does; and for the very reason that he does call attention to what he does. He is not ejected from fruition of what he has done."

This chapter of the Dao De Jing is very profound, and talks about the interplay of Yin and Yang. Lao Zi says that a wise man should be in harmony with the cycle of change in the cosmos and the same applies to martial arts. In Tai Ji Quan we never oppose the opponents force. Instead we compliment it. We are not, however, floppy and lifeless. Yin and Yang must be in harmony, so if someones attacks, we may feel very hard to them, but that is not opposing or using muscular strength. It is using the mind, and it feels like an inflated balloon. We allow the opponent to fully extend his power and ultimately use it against him - actionless activity. In the Tai Ji Quan classic written by legendary Taoist master Zhang San Feng, he says:

"You must emphasise the use of the mind in controlling the movements, rather than the mere use of the external muscles. You should follow the Tai Ji principle of opposites: when you move upward, the mind must be aware of down; when moving forward, the mind thinks of moving back; when shifting to the left side, the mind should simultaneously notice the right side-so that if the mind is going up, it is also going down."

The Difficulties of Learning Martial Arts in China

Its many peoples dream to come to China and learn from the genuine masters of Kung Fu. It has been my dream for many years to do what Im doing. I had this fantasy that Id arrive in China and go to a park and be confronted by many wise old Mr Myagis or wandering monks, with millenia old secrets and deadly skills, but were bound a code of honour and justice never to use them except to help the weak. I guess this is what many of us kung fu nerds dream of.

However, reality is always waiting around the corner to come crashing down on us and crush our dreams. It is true that I have met people with very high levels of skill, and they have been very friendly and welcoming to me. But I would like to outline a few of the negative aspects I found here, not to badmouth or judge, but just to give the reader a balanced picture.

The first thing I found is that there are many people you will meet who can perform loads of beautiful taolu (forms/routines), they may even be able to show you some applications. In Chinese the word for this kind of kung fu is Hua Zha Zi (excuse my pinyin if its wrong), which means something like "flowery and phoney". However, these kind of people generally know so many different styles, they cannot possibly have an understanding of the principles. They wont teach any fighting, just show you form after form after form. Forms are meant as something like an encyclopedia to a style. They demonstrate all the key principles to a style, through a rehearsed set of movements. In ancient times, these were used as a means to preserve the teaching of a master to be carried down to the next generation. They are not an end in themselve, but a means to aid in understanding an art.

The second frustration is that because foreigners are a relatively new phenonenom in China, for many masters, having a foreign student is a status symbol. There was a couple of occasions with a teacher I had previously, where he would often ignore me and teach others more, but, as soon as someone came to watch, he would immediately come up to me and give me loads of attention.
Talking to other teachers or their students often brings about some jealousy too. That is more of a traditional teacher-student relationship thing, as part of the teachings of Confucius, so it is to be expected, although I personally prefer openness. Kwok Wan Ping, a Wing Chun master from Hong Kong jokingly told me, if you want to study with others fine, I dont mind, when you come back to me your welcome to try it out and if you can beat me, then I will learn from you! That is the kind of attitude I like, open-mindedness and a good sense of humour.

Everybody who has learnt anything about kung fu will want to be your teacher. There has been some times when Ive been practicing in the park alone and some worker has come up to me and started trying to teach me! The masters are very welcoming and friendly to westerners who have travelled across the world to learn their art. The problem with this is that the other students can get jealous, because the master will often give you more attention than other students.

I want to restate that this isnt a stab at China, or anything negative. I just want to put out a balanced view of martial arts in China, so people wont be disappointed when they dont immediately find a wise master.

an ancient treatment for back ache

A friend of my Tai Chi teacher is a traditional Chinese Doctor. His name is Dr Mu. I was at a wushu competition, when I mentioned I have some back problems, which have bothered me on and off for almost 2 years. Dr Mu told me he could alleviate it and grabbed a pressure point on my arm and told me to circlemy waist. It made it feel a lot better, but after a few minutes, it returned. So Dr Mu later gave me Tui Na, which is a medicinal massage for chronic pains and sports injuries. It really felt better, but he told me that it would return and so he would give me acupuncture.

Later that afternoon, Dr Mu took me to his house, an old style Chinese house in a slum next to a big factory, most of the area was rubble. We went inside and then I lay down and treatment began. It was like no acupuncture I'd ever seen, and also the most painful experience of my life. The first thing he did was take a small instrument that looked like a hammer withspikes on it, and tap my lower back all over until there was a decent amount of blood. Then he used the Ba Guan, which are cups that stick to the back and create a vacuum, this draws out bad blood. Then he massaged my legs and stabbed the muscle behind my knee with an acupuncture needle and put a cup on the cut. Then he told me I couldnt eat any fresh or uncooked food or drink beer for a day.

I would have felt a little sketchy about this, but Dr Mu has been practicing Chinese medicine for over 30 years, and martial arts for about 45 years, since he was 3 years old. He is a master of Mantis style, Shaolin (including drunken fist, monkey fist, hard qigong, which is the ability to break bricks and wooden poles broken onhis body), but now he has given it up to study Tai Chi as he is getting too old to do these hard styles. He can still do the hard stuff, one time he showed me monkey style and jumped into a tree and dangled by his legs blockingblows with his hands. Also, if he pushes hands with you, he feel like iron and is immovable. He is definitely a rare person in these modern times, andI feel people like him are disappearing from China as it tries so hard to modernise.