What follows is an extract from my personal journal about an incident that ocurred shortly after I came to China (and bere GM Feng passed away in May 2012).
Well it was about 6.30 am on a Saturday morning when I turned up at my usual Tai Chi class. I should have guessed something was up right away as there were not many people there and we stood around chatting more than we usually do. I just got on with some practice and thought nothing of it until the instructor told me to lock my bike. Which I did assuming there was a reason. It turned out that the Master had called and we were all to go to his house and demonstrate our skills for his pleasure. Well fair enough I thought and we all piled into a car and drove across Tangshan.
Now Master Xiang is a very rich man and has a few houses but his old one backs onto a very nice park filled with trees and his own private practice area. There were lots of other locals in the park practicing various martial arts, Yang style Tai Chi, Bagua and so on. After a long period of stretching, or chatting, I am not sure which really we demonstrated for the master and he gave us feedback. He seemed pleased and started muttering something (in Chinese) about inviting me to become a disciple. Now this is not good as you don’t really get to say know and becoming a disciple means he basically becomes your dad, but a kind of worst nightmare dad who can call you at anytime and ask you to do stuff like drive him to his mates wedding in another province.
Anyway I smiled and showed my respect and after a bit the master demonstrated Yuan Gong Quan (Ape Style… I kid you not) which was very interesting and after he suggested we all go back to the school and eat together. So far so good and we returned to the school where I watched Master Xiang do some calligraphy before he collapsed on his bed that he has in his office and promptly went to sleep. We had pretty much finished cooking and eating by the time he woken and this is when it started to go all a little too Chinese for my liking…..
Master Xiang, refreshed from his nap decided we would all go to Beijing to meet Grand Master Feng Zhijiang (you can watch a younger version of him doing the version of Chen style he calls Xinyi Hunyuan Quan here and you will perhaps note the roundness and softness of this form if you care to) . Now this is a bit of an honour and some of the other students have been waiting two years or more to meet the Grand Master who is 85 and an important lineage holder having trained with the legendary Chen Fake (if you want to know more about Chen Fake go to). Given I have been trying to get an invitation to train at his school in Beijing this was perhaps an opportunity not to miss even though I was still in my Tai Chi clothes and a bit sweaty from the training.
An hour later I and another student are back at the masters house waiting… and waiting…. when he does arrive we then spend an hour driving from one side of Tangshan to another picking people up before we finally get on the road to Beijing. It has by now started to become apparent we won’t be coming back to Tangshan that night but we will be staying at Master Xiang’s Beijing apartment. And this is pretty much how it goes for the next day or so with me finding out what is happening after it has happened. Anyway we get to see the grand master and he smiles and seems very pleasant. He twists my thumb by way of demonstrating his Tai Chi prowess. Lots of photos are taken and we pay him 200 rmb (20 quid) each for the pleasure. None the less it is rather fantastic to sit with someone who was actually a student of Chen Fake’s and Grand Master Feng is generally acknowledge to be one of the living greats in the field of Tai Chi.
So off to the apartment on the other side of Beijing and another hour in the car. When we get there the master takes us to a cafe and we eat dumplings and they chatter while I patiently listen to whatever it is they are saying. On returning to the car I learn we are now off to meet another grand master Li Shu Jun. This time he is the son of Li Jingwu. I should perhaps explain that Master Xiang, whose school I am currently attending was a student of both Master Feng Zhijiang and Master Li Jingwu. Consequently while we do Li Jingwu’s version of the Chen style form we do Master Feng’s Qigong form which he in turn learnt from a famous Qigong master Hu Yaozhen… confused?
This is a brief shorthand version of the lineage it gets much more complex that this believe me. You can read more about Li Jingwu here. You can also watch some push hands clips here which will give you some idea of his skill – sadely he has passed on.
However the chap we spend another hour driving to meet is only his second son. Luckily we have a Sat Nav to help us find our way around Beijing. A Sat Nav that has to be programmed in roman characters and requires one of the students to input this. A Sat Nav which actually doesn’t seem to help as we get lost anyway. Never the less we eventually arrive and meet this lovely man who was very charming and clearly an excellent and riveting story teller. If you understand Chinese. Two hours of his banter and I was starting to loose my mind as no one bothered to translate and as per usual I was pretty much ignored (they like to show off their laowyi but don’t feel the need to include you in the conversation).
What I did glean was that he was 16 when he trained with Chen Fake and is therefore one of the last of Chen Fake’s students still alive and there was a lovely picture of him at that age having just won his first competition. His wife served us really good oolong tea which would have been expensive so he was clearly pleased to meet with us and enjoyed telling all his stories about the old days. After we left I was instructed not to repeat anything I had heard as it was private talk and the Chen family members would not be happy if the stories got around. Rather bemused I did try to explain that I had not understood a word of it but that didn’t seem to phase them and the warning was repeated.
Finally we got to the apartment, I bagged a bed and crashed…. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!
Next morning we rise early, me still in my training clothes from the morning before and head off to Ditan park in search for some Tai Chi “players”. An hour later we arrive and take an early morning stroll through the park. Delightfuull and it is full of people dancing (public dancing is very popular in China) and lots and lots of Yang Style. Apparently this is the park where Master Feng used to teach and there is a Huyuan Qigiong class in session but Master Xiang is not impressed and we depart of Tiantin Park instead. Another hour in the car and we arrive.
Entering the park we get split up and the Master leaves us to wander about which is again delightful. Lots of public dancing and some Tai Chi of various sorts. There is even a public choir conducted by this energetic man and it sounded fantastic. Finally we find a Chen style group practicing and there is much discussion among the group as to the lineage of the master (who isn’t there that day). There is a poster with a picture of Master Feng with this chap but to the consternation of our instructor there is no indication of who the mans teacher actually was. Anyway we were all roundly unimpressed in a suitably ‘look down our noses’ sort of way and we moved on.
On the way out of the park I came across a lovely old man painting calligraphy of Buddhist scriptures in water on the pavement. We exchanged pleasantries or at least we seemed two while behind us tow women practiced a sword form, I couldn’t identify. Just down by the gate we met our final Tai Chi grand master, Chen Yu, a grandson of Chen Fake who runs his school in the park. I have to say this was pretty much the best of the different schools we had seen and the form was very impressive even the instructor said as much. Though Master Xiang was nowhere to be seen. We found him a little later watching from a distance and when I asked Allen Sun (our instructor) why there was a suggestion that when two Grand Masters meet its a bit like matter and anti-matter coming together… there maybe some serious action. Well given both of them are getting on a bit and both seem a little overweight I am not sure quite how much damage they could do to each other before need a bit of a sit down but you can never tell with these Tai Chi types.
Sooo… off back to Tangshan? No such luck.
We are whisked away to meet a business associate of Master Xiang who appears to run some kind of networking club for journalists. We eat a delightful lunch which he pays for, sit around in his office while the Master Xiang sleeps it off, then wait an hour on the street for a driver to bring a car to take Master Xiang back to his apartment. And then we go back to Tangshan with one of the students driving which is a real relief since Master Xiang drives like a “c%$t”! It seems to be a truism that in China the richer you are the worse you are allowed to drive. It is almost expected that you will have no regard for your or anyone else’s safety. That you will cut up people in the most dangerous manner. That you will, if stuck in a traffic line, drive onto the pavement on the right then cut right across the traffic to turn left. I could go on but I think you get the idea.
So two more hours of listening to the old man we had taken along talk Chinese. I don’t think he stopped talking once and again no one explained. The gist of it all was I think another bitching session about Chen Zheng Lei (one of the family members who is very well known in the west and teaches the form of Chen style I first learnt in China a couple of years ago under Master Lou Mei first and then Master Fun Neng Bin). This bitching and general dissing of other teachers seems like an endless repetition of the same old gripes which perhaps have more to do with the success that Chen Zheng Lei and the other family members have made of turning Chen style into a successful business enterprise than anything else. Having trained with disciples of Chen Zheng Lei I have to say I have the greatest respect for them and their skill. The form maybe a little different. It may, if you could say this about Tai Chi be a little more harder (as opposed to softer) but hey ho time to get over it boys!
I arrive home (yes my apartment feels like home now) at 6 pm Sunday evening still wearing the same clothes I had left the apartment in at 5.15 am the previous morning and utterly sick of listening to people speaking Chinese and wondering how I could avoid ever having to spend that much time stuck in a car with Master Xiang and his mob ever again. In some ways it was a fantastic weekend and I bonded with some of the other students at the school (one of whom incidentally is the dean of the faculty where I work) but in other ways it was an absolute nightmare.
I guess it will stand as a warning that when it all starts to go a little too Chinese make sure you have a good excuse as to why you can’t ………………… (insert whatever ridiculous spur of the moment suggestion they have come up with). On the other hand perhaps I should be more respectful as it was clearly something Master Xiang wanted to do for me, either to impress me to or to educate me about his lineage. As we are unable to speak with each other it maybe sometime before I find out.
Friday 30th September 2011.
China Tai Chi Guide
Five Elements Academy
Long Tou Shan Tai Chi School
Seven Stars Internal Arts
Traditional Tai Chi School
Wandering Dao, China
