TABBY CAT Yiquan

Bon Chance

This is it guys, end of the line. I'm forcing this blog to dig a trench, then I'm gonna stand the blog up at the lip of that, machine gun it, and hope it falls back just right so I don't have to nudge it's body over the edge with my boot. Isn't that the approved 20th and 21st century way of dealing with entities that have ... exceeded their pull-date? I only know what my betters have taught me. And the main lesson I have learned from the study of history is: Might Makes Right.

Point Being: This Is The Final Entry of Tabby Cat Yiquan Blog.

By the way, I have noticed that some people on the web have quoted this blog selectively and are using cherry picked fragments as dung chips to fuel the fires of various inane, pointless, and idiotic pre-existing controversies, whether about Yiquan per se or martial arts in general. That kind of activity is all totally idiotic (as is this blog too, come to think of it). Anyway, I don't want anything I write to feed the flames of useless controversy. It's all pointless. So soon, if I find any more selective quoting in support of controversies and squabbles, I will probably password-protect (the skeletal remains of) this blog or just delete it altogher.

But before I do that, I want to summarize my basic points. So that nobody can accuse me anything (people love to accuse other people of stuff).

Two sub-categories in my Summary: General and Personal.

GENERAL:

a. Master Yao is a genuinely great martial artist, ranking among the absolute top Masters in the world. He has my utter, undying respect as a Master, an Artist, and a Gentleman.

b. Master Yao is a fantastic, untiring, 1000% devoted teacher of martial arts, who spares no effort and pours his whole heart into teaching any student, no matter how retarded said student may be, as much as that person can possibly absorb.

c. Yiquan has the best training drills for "internal power" (whether you should choose to understand that as "The Power Formerly Known As Qi" or, alternatively, as "Hunyuanli" is your personal business, I couldn't care less) of any qi/nei/breath/motion/meditation art known to me. And - I know a lot.

d. I am eternally grateful for the incredible hospitality, teachings, and friendship extended to me by ALL the members of the Zong Xun Wu Guan school!! Absolutely wonderful people, who exemplify the highest ideals of their art.

PERSONAL:

a. Though I had fun participating in the "combat" side of Yiquan ("push hands" and sanshou), I personally found that to be of less personal interest, to me, than the "zhuang", "mojin", and "shili" side of the art, NOT due to ANY deficiency in YQ's combat skills development, but just because my orientation is a purely personal, totally moronic and Quixotic quest to find the outer realization of the injunction from the Tao Te Ching:

Nothing in the world is softer and more supple than water.
Yet when attacking the hard and the strong nothing can surpass it.
The supple overcomes the hard.
The soft overcomes the strong.
None in the world do not know this.
Yet none can practice it.

Therefore, ONLY to ME PERSONALLY (PLEEEEEEZ do NOT use my remarks to fuel stupid criticisms of Yiquan!), the combat development side of Yiquan's "tui shou" and "san shou" do not quite match up to the training assumptions that I require myself to work with.

I always have to assume the following:

• non-sportive frame
• multiple attackers
• larger than myself
• armed with edged weapons (at a minimum)
• bad: surface/proximate obstacles/visibility
• no "face off"
• surprise instantaneous attack with lethal intent

Only water and wind have the necessary qualities to survive under that set of assumptions.

===============================================================

So. As far as Yi Quan is concerned "that's all folks", except that I have, as promised, inserted digital scans of my personal copy of the 6-page Yiquan training syllabus, which I received in the first hour of my first class, into this blog entry, at the bottom. A check mark on a line means I was taught the item, personally by Master Yao. A star next to a section was marked by Master Yao when he had finished teaching me every line item in the section. Any whole section that has a long line through the whole section means that section was not included in my 1-month program (main thing missing was only the heavy bag hitting, which we didn't quite have time to get to, and which interests me least anyway (see above comments). Otherwise, I pretty much learned it all.

No other marks or annotations on the pages mean anything special, and there are no clues marked in any way on these pages to identify what I've referred to elsewhere in this blog as "The Missing Basic". Cause if I identify that I''ll get all kinds of shit from all sides, and I just don't want to hear it. I'm not a debater, I'm merely a cat who walks by himself - and I like a quiet forest path for that. So look to the end of this blog entry for those pages.

Keep in my that in my 1-month of very intensive 7-days-per-week, I was learning the "first pass" chuji or rumen (beginner level) of this curriculum. If I go again, I will in effect re-learn the entire thing from beginning to end, as a "second pass" zhong ji level. Good thing is that while I was being explicitly taught the chu ji (beginner) version of all this, I was at the same time acting as interpreter to Master Yao while he taught another foreign classmate that zhong ji version. So I kind of know how that next level works. Basically the physical components are quite similar to the initial chu ji version (bit snappier in execution of the fali and tui shou drills) but the mental visualizations change a lot, what I call the "drill stories". I heard (and translated) most of the Intermediate Level new drill stories. Then finally, you re-learn it all again at the Advanced (gao ji) level, and no, sorry, I have absolutely NO idea what that entails.

Sad thing is that none of this training, or blogging, or controversy, or anything we do means anything. Because apparently nothing means anything. Please read David Carse's illuminating book on "Perfect Brilliant Stillness", that pretty well covers it. That dumbass New-Agey title is goopy (probably forced on Carse by his publisher) but the content will, literally, blow "you" away. And then there won't be anything there anymore.

Now I am reading "The World Without Us", which shows how the artifacts of industrial civilization will crumble back into dirt and dust once we no longer have the energy to maintain them. I figure the curtain will open on that stage within 10 years.

Well... end of the line. Blogging... such a faceless, non-contact, anonymous, incorporeal activity. I won't say it hasn't been fun not knowing y'all!

But I will see you all again, in the place where there is no darkness.

=============================================================================

White Flag

You could say that Beijing's streets are one of 2 basic types: Dead Zones or Hot Zones. Dead Zones are streets that are fully re-developed, dominated by big hotels, car dealerships, office buildings, etc. They are lifeless but clean, sterile-y pleasant like anywhere in North America. Hot Zones are where the face of the street is a succession of family type of micro business, small stores, auto repair places, tiny restaurants, fruit sellers, maybe the occasional elementary school, etc. all in a long line fronting the street, broken here and there by the entrances to as-yet undemolished hutong's leading off at 90 degrees... You can see the brick hovels lining those cross streets.

A Hot Zone is absolutely, literally crawling with life. People are out in front of their little stores and restaurants, talking with friends customers, people are eating on the sidewalk, playing cards, old ladies squawking at each other, little kids peeing in the gutter, older sister type of little girls fanning baby cousins or even a sibling or two. And the clamor and noise is astounding. Loudspeakers blaring from eveyr dinky storefront, car horns, bicycle bells, ghetto blasters, cell phones ringing, shouting matches erupting, card playing groups whacking down their bets like challenging their friends to a duel at dawn... no end to it. Sometimes one side of the same street can be Hot while the other side is Dead. Or alternating Dead/Hot zones on the same side of the same street as the blocks pass.

A Dead Zone has no noise.

Sometimes a Hot Zone will actually spill over into the natural territory of a Dead Zone. Then it is interesting to see the old ladies and card players and peeing little kids and dinner eaters and street TV watchers and newspaper readers sprawled all over the steps of the headquarters of some cold corporate monster. Ha!

Speaking of NOISE, I told you that Yiquan has shout training, right? That is a bit like Japanese ki-ai thing, tightens your own spirit and supposedly scares the enemy. But beyond the normal audible shout training they have "silent" shout training too. Master Yao taught me the other day. Basically you do the regular Yiquan shout thing (too complex for me to describe here) but you do that silently. Kind of fun.

But the BEST real world use of shout I ever saw happened the other day, in a Hot Zone. A bike riding old man, real tough looking, maybe he was on the Long March or something, came along right past where I was waiting on the corner to cross the street. Just as he was about to stream past a taxi directly in front of him, the taxi who had been looking like it was going straight ahead, suddenly seemed to veer into the path of that cyclist. That guy, without the slightest alteration in speed, gave a sudden unbelievable SHOUT at 400 decibels - louder than any car horn, not to mention bike bell, I have yet heard here. As he streamed majestically past, the startled taxi not only gave way but was so freaked out he jumped the curb and nearly flattened me and 3 old ladies standing with me.

THAT was THE BEST use of voice in real life I have yet encountered. And maybe with no training at all, other than real life.

After 30 or whatever straight days of training 7 hours per day (except Sundays have been 4 hours) I took today off and took the train to Baidaihe, on the Northeast coast. I though the "air" problem was confined to Beijing, but no! The air is a total soup for 200 plus miles out of Beijing, apparently all of North China. Much much worse than I had thought. No wonder the recent Beijing partial car ban made no difference at all. That's just pissing into the wind... the entire atmosphere here across North China is fucked. You can't see for more than 100 meters or so in any direction, anywhere you go, city or country. Yikes.

Have you read 'The Last Generation' by Fred Pearce? Even if you are a climate change skeptic, that is a best-of-breed book on the subject of global warming that will scare your pants off precisely because he is so rational and addresses skeptics so seriously and scientifically. We may be totally screwed.

Oh well. Fun while it lasted.

Meanwhile, my martial arts commitment is unchanged. "Gentle wind fine rain", "yi rou ke gang", the water crushes all before it, while yielding to all. I won't give up this idea not matter how many times it fails me in real life, or I fail it. Why? Well let me turn the question back to you: What else is out there?

There's a cheesy Euro-pop hit of a few years back, 'White Flag' lyrics something like:

I will go down with this ship.

And I won't put my hands up, and surrender.

There will be no white flag above my door

I'm in love and always will be.

Pure cheeeeeeeez! And yet, it expresses the right pitbull attitude. Never let reality interfere with your life!

Tesshu Yamaoka said (during the Meiji Era resurgence of nativist Shinto) that he'd continue to practice zazen even if he became the last person on earth believing in it. That's me and way of true Tao!

Without no seams, nor needlework

The grape crop is improving DAY by DAY here! I practically LIVE off Thompson (white) grapes that are widely sold here in markets and on practically every street corner by intinerant market gardner types of peddlers. I love those suckers! And one good thing about T. grapes is that, unlike other fruit, you can choose GOOD ones by eye, solely by color alone! Never fails. Color = taste, in T. grapes! These here are now getting close to equalling my Ultimate Grape Experience (UGE) which I always have in Chile, towards the end of their "summer" (late January, early February).. the white grapes in coastal Valparaiso area are just out of this world, food of the fricking Gods, whenever I'm down there training, I gorge off them, it's what I live for!

Actually there is lots of food here  in China. Too bad I'm a vegetarian, haha. Imagine that, a feline vegetarian. Don't see that every day. But seriously, the food situation here is fine. I'm happy to report that. Because don't they say:

Whoever has not seen hunger, does not know mankind.

Believe it!

Well my days here are dwindling down to a precious few. No sweat. I got what I came for! Now all I gotta do is make a successful wheels-up getaway! (After all don't they always say: "Steal this art" ahahaha!) But in fact far from stealing it, I gave lots of extra presents and donations and I buy extra unneeded stuff such as books from them, etc. You cannot "jijiao" your teacher in these traditional arts. Besides I admire Master Yao's spartan mode d'vivre, he ain't getting rich of this stuff.

Yes, I got what I came for. The Missing Basic. Who the hell would have thought... Yiquan of all things... What's that they say, it's a pity how you always seem to find something only in the LAST place you look.. ahahaha! There's logic for ya!

Anyway, you might wonder, if Yiquan is in possession of The Missing Basic (ultimately optimized internal practice) then why aren't Yiquan masters ruling the roost of martial arts? Fair question which I'll deal with here and now. First off, we should acknowledge, Yiquan masters ARE pretty fricking damn good! Master Yao and his brother are regarded as among the absolute first rank of premier hand to hand combat masters in China. So, Yiquan people are in fact the top people, or nearly so. So the question goes away, right? Well not entirely because that still doesn't seem fully comensurate with my claim about them being in possession of TMB, right? Right. So there are 3 interfering factors (DISCLAIMER for the MILLIIONITH FUCKING TIME: I am talking about ME ME ME and MY MY MY experiences ONLY! I say NOTHING about the ultimate value of this WONDERFUL YIQUAN ART which is suitable for everybody and I hope all of you reading this will come here and study it, etc. OK OK OK?? Underfrickingstood? I speak for myself alone, and I am a cat who walks by himself.)

Interfering Factors:

1. FOCUS: there are literally hundreds of Yiquan drills. Of which TMB is only one, hidden quietly. Not easy to identify unless you have a certain background. There are only so many hours in a day and a "real" Yiquan person has to master EVERYTHING in the curriculum, they cannot carpetbag it as I have.

2. CONTRADICTION: Yiquan to me a a slightly schizo art (I say that in the nicest possible way!) I love YQ! But... it has this strange Janus-like two-headed quality. The basic mo-jin's and shi-li's are so fucking FANTASTIC, but along the line somebody lost faith in the internal, and grafted all kinds of muscle tension/twitch training into the bloodline. Don't get me wrong. That stuffy is GREAT - for the right person. Which I am not. That stuff will take you in the direction of Bruce Lee (to whom I have already earlier compared Master Yao). A great place to be obviously! But not my place. Nope, because I for better or worse am fully committed to the principle of Nature's Way, the power of the river, the wave, "yi rou ke gan". That's all I care about. I don't care to face off against any muscle twitchy guy for sport. Not that I do so bad when that happens, ahaha! I have some tricks in my sleeve, Tabby does have claws believe it or not. But that isn't my interest, at all. I care only about the power of "gentle wind, fine rain".... TPFKAQ (The Power Formerly Known As Qi). But Yiquan, for better or worse, has chosen to branch in that other direction, and there I can never go, I cannot follow where they lead. Yet paradoxically it has been my huge privilege to finally receive TMB from them alone - the work of their old Master's hands evidently.

3. ADDITIVES: The TMB though the most important thing, does not function in a vacuum. It is like an incredibly powerful element or chemical that while essential and incredibly potent, does not function until brought into certain compounds. The other elements are not present in YQ. I presume if they wanted those thing, they'd add them, so again it appears that our paths diverge at this point.

But I'm very grateful, if I haven't already made that sufficiently clear. I got what I came for. What more can one ever ask? How often does that even happen at all? I wonder when we come to die, how many of us will say that?

But you might wonder, all  that verbiage above is what I say about them, about YQ. But what I seem to be hiding from  you is, what do the YQ-ster's here, classmates and assistants and Master Yao, and friends, what do they think about me?? In my opinion, they like me. They think I'm a nice guy. They are TOTALLY BLOWN AWAY and UTTERLY INCREDULOUS at my Mandarin Chinese speaking ability. I know that part... it IS really freaky. Actually it isn't supposed to be theoretically possible to speak as natively as I do, when  you've learned after age 12. But I do. So they are agog at that. And they like my courteous manner and nice presents and so on. But somehow, they do feel my lack of utter commitment to the basic hard/fast/twitchy/strong training method. Not that I cannot do it, but my heart just isn't there with that, and that comes through, they feel it, I know. So I think their final verdict on me would be something like below:

Nice guy, but after all - you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear!

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! *Tabby writhes maniacally on the hutong's dusty cobblestones*

Between the salt water ... and the sea strand

Nice-ish day today! Fall-ish weather. Though the sun is still ferocious, air is better, temp is moderated from the past few hellish days. A slight tinge of blue graces the Vault of Heaven.

Good morning class. As I do my 30/30 basic one hour standing (30 mins combat "post" per side) my (pre-existing) auric vision is hugely intensified. You know Matrix I movie, near the end where Neo sees the entire world's underlying energetic gridlines as luminous vertical green reverse katakana streams? Well the world actually is somewhat that way, underneath. Of course it is not mirror-image Japanese kana, that's just Hollywood. But the world is just beams of energy criss-crossing each other, when you see it aurically. For some reason (boredom?) standing that long intensifies my auric vision, so I can easily see the energy framework of the wuguan classroom, and my classmate's human auric fields, etc. That kind of vision overlays the normal physical view. Pulsing infinite gridlines of white and gold energy, with whirls of blue, gray and other colors where the humans are standing.

Yeh you don't believe in auras. So? Ask me whether I give a shit. They exist. Being able to see them is no biggie, and nope it won't xfer any USD to your Swiss bank account either. But it is a fun way to pass boring time... see the gridlines that underlie the world.

Actually all this standing,this past month, has been good for my body. For past few years,  my back had tended to get sore when I stand much, before. I don't mean training, I mean anything like just waiting for a bus or something. Just a little weak I guess. But all this standing has hugely strengthened my back, or maybe "core" in Pilates terms.

Today's main learning part of class was devoted to STAFF (chang gun - no no calm down that is pronouned "gwuhn" not English GUN!) They ran through some great shi li's and fa li's with us. Those staffs (staves?) are heavy as hell. Long. But I have always liked staff work, and it's interesting to do it under standard Yiquan shenfa (body frame) and movement protocol.

Seems as though most middle aged and older Beijingers own at least one, or more, Shi Tzu dogs, cute little guys. Those owners lavish affection on them. I have to say, I like that type of dog. They really look cute and they are very quiet and well-behaved (at least these real Chinese version. I never liked them back in the States before, they seemed ugly and annonying).

Needle in a Hayfield (Search for the Missing Basic)

I have been less than fully forthcoming in this blog. That is not the same thing as being untruthful. Everything I have written here has been my own truth - but has it been the whole truth? Listen guys, you get what you pay for! And ask yourselves, what are you paying me? AHAHAHA!

The fact is that I have surveyed (way more than 'surveyed' - I have sweated, bled, and practiced in-depth for years) at least 30 major energy/martial/yogic systems. HARDCORE years of practice of every one of them. Across how many continents and how many dozens of countries. All for what? I have mentioned it before: the Search for the Missing Basic.

And now the truth: my interest in Yiquan has also been just that. Another checklist system I needed to cover in hunting the MB. Since I am getting long in the tooth, I have to do my surveys intensively now, making every hour count, rather than taking slower years - cause I don't have 'years' anymore! I'm gonna be out of this fucking vale of tears soon enough. So I have to make every golden hour with its 60 jeweled minutes, do the work that once the draggy long years did. The Search for the Missing Basic!

The Missing Basic - the one practice method, a single basic drill that is The Most Ultimately Optimal for developing The Power Formerly Known As Qi.

I have felt the TPFKAQ rushing through my body like a hydroelectric current sandblasting a radioactive beehive, since I first started training Shaolin at age 12. But that only opened the obvious question a "personal scientist" would immediately ask: What is the optimal, most powerful, single practice to intensity that? To the level of a Yang Lu Chan or beyond? What would one optimally do, in a single practice hour, for that?

The Missing Basic!

Now I've been through decades of dozens, even hundreds of systems and practices. All are great, all have their own special features and benefits. And all have a lot of irrelevant dross and marketing bullshit as well. Frankly I got around to Yiquan rather late in the day. But anyway Yiquan's turn finally came, the wheel halted on Yiquan's number, so I'm here in Beijing doin' it. Hard. Intensive. 7 hours 6 days per week, 4 hours on Sundays.

There are several hundred items on the standard Yiquan course syllabus, I have mentioned this before. As I have been here, on several occasions I have understood and experienced the "hunyuanli" (an active version of TPFKAQ). The several directions of practice close/open;up/down;back;forth suddenly all happen at once, at infinite speed. And when everything moves at infinite speed, there is no motion at all of course. And no sound. And only the golden light from heaven streaming all over you.

I experienced it, but I could not identify the trigger. Cause it would happen afterwards or at other random moments during practice. Some days yes, some days no. Why? I tried to be methodical in cross-checking my practice routine variations against the syllabus. Police work! I knew something was going on. I wrote about a few good drills, but the real search was all along one for The Missing Basic. I knew I was tight on its tail. But it was slippery, I needed to pull the net on it tighter, tighter, tighter than a mouse's asshole!

And tonight, I finally got a postive ID on it. The Missing Basic! After all these hundreds or dozens of systems, it was hiding in the YiQuan drill set.

No I'm not going to tell its  name. Why should I, just to get all kinds of random shit blastback from every idiot out there on the net. Y'all don't pay me enough for that. But it's in there, and I got it.

What I will do is, as I already promised, digital scan and publish my entire Yiquan drill inventory (syllabus), all six pages, onto the final entry in this blog (coming up real soon, a few more days of life left in this stupid blog, then I put it and you and myself out of our misery!) That curriculum list has gotten real marked up and dogeared by Master Yao as he methodically teaches me new stuff every class and brusquely checks it off right on the spot.

The Missing Basic is in there. If you can find it you can have it. Actually I should have realized it sooner. That MB drill has a very obvious clue in its inherent structure that should have tipped me off from the beginning.

But I missed it til tonight's practice. Like I said, I'm old. Not long for this goddamn predatory world!

Needle in a Hayfield (Search for the Missing Basic)

I have been less than fully forthcoming in this blog. That is not the same thing as being untruthful. Everything I have written here has been my own truth - but has it been the whole truth? Listen guys, you get what you pay for! And ask yourselves, what are you paying me? AHAHAHA!

The fact is that I have surveyed (way more than 'surveyed' - I have sweated, bled, and practiced in-depth for years) at least 30 major energy/martial/yogic systems. HARDCORE years of practice of every one of them. Across how many continents and how many dozens of countries. All for what? I have mentioned it before: the Search for the Missing Basic.

And now the truth: my interest in Yiquan has also been just that. Another checklist system I needed to cover in hunting the MB. Since I getting a bit long in the tooth, I have to do my surveys intensively now, making every hour count, rather than taking slower years - cause I don't have 'years' anymore! I'm gonna be out of this fucking vale of tears soon enough. So I have to make every golden hour with its 60 jeweled minutes, do the work that once the draggy long years did. The Search for the Missing Basic!

The Missing Basic - the one practice method, a single basic drill that is The Most Ultimately Optimal for developing The Power Formerly Known As Qi.

I have felt the TPFKAQ rushing through my body like a hydroelectric current sandblasting a radioactive beehive, since I first started training Shaolin at age 12. But that only opened the obvious question a "personal scientist" would immediately ask: What is the optimal, most powerful, single practice to intensity that? To the level of a Yang Lu Chan or beyond? What would one optimally do, in a single practice hour, for that?

The Missing Basic!

Now I've been through decades of dozens, even hundreds of systems and practices. All are great, all have their own special features and benefits. And all have a lot of irrelevant dross and marketing bullshit as well. Frankly I got around to Yiquan rather late in the day. But anyway Yiquan's turn finally came, the wheel halted on Yiquan's number, so I'm here in Beijing doin' it. Hard. Intensive. 7 hours 6 days per week, 4 hours on Sundays.

There are several hundred items on the standard Yiquan course syllabus, I have mentioned this before. As I have been here, on several occasions I have understood and experienced the "hunyuanli" (an active version of TPFKAQ). The several directions of practice close/open;up/down;back;forth suddenly all happen at once, at infinite speed. And when everything moves at infinite speed, there is no motion at all of course. And no sound. And only the golden light from heaven streaming all over you.

I experienced it, but I could not identify the trigger. Cause it would happen afterwards or at other random moments during practice. Some days yes, some days no. Why? I tried to be methodical in cross-checking my practice routine variations against the syllabus. Police work! I knew something was going on. I wrote about a few good drills, but the real search was all along one for The Missing Basic. I knew I was tight on its tail. But it was slippery, I needed to pull the net on it tighter, tighter, tighter than a mouse's asshole!

And tonight, I finally got a postive ID on it. The Missing Basic! After all these hundreds or dozens of systems, it was hiding in the YiQuan drill set.

No I'm not going to tell its  name. Why should I, just to get all kinds of random shit blastback from every idiot out there on the net. Y'all don't pay me enough for that. But it's in there, and I got it.

What I will do is, as I already promised, digital scan and publish my entire Yiquan drill inventory (syllabus), all six pages, onto the final entry in this blog (coming up real soon, a few more days of life left in this stupid blog, then I put it and you and myself out of our misery!) That curriculum list has gotten real marked up and dogeared by Master Yao as he methodically teaches me new stuff every class and brusquely checks it off right on the spot.

The Missing Basic is in there. If you can find it you can have it. Actually I should have realized it sooner. That MB drill has a very obvious clue in its inherent structure that should have tipped me off from the beginning.

But I missed it til tonight's practice. Like I said, I'm old. Not long for this goddamn predatory world!

184 hours

184 free training hours. Suppose you had (( 7 (hours per day) X 6 (days per week) X 4 (weeks) ) + ((4 (Sundays) * 4 (hours per Sunday))) = 184 total training hours. And you could do them anywhere in the world, with any teacher who'll take you.

What would you do? Where would you go? Or just stay home and do what you're doing now? How would you train? In other words suppose you could do nothing but train, all day long, almost 6.5 days per week. Would you do some form over and over? Walk your circle 8 hours per day? Medidate? Qi gong one or basic qi movements over and over? Sparring or push hands all day? Road and bag work? Grappling? Or sprinkles and bits of all the above? An established method or would you roll your own thing? Or just hit the beach and fuck all this.

Well anyway that is the time I have spent on learning Yiquan here. It has a lot of good stuff I must say!

But why is it that no art seems to be getting us any closer to "yi rou ke gang". NONE of them! In every martial art or defensive system I have yet seen, a 250 lb NFL linebacker who trains that art for 2 weeks is going to destroy any and every 75 year old grandma who has practiced it for 10 years. No exceptions. In fact, let's just forget about that 2 weeks thing... Yah it is true that you sometimes read about some ol' granny who kicks a young burglar's ass by pounding him with an umbrella as she chases him across her lawn or something. But I think you get the basic picture.

So what is up with that? I'm pursuing the wrong field here.

It's just a predatory system here in this vale of tears. Our genes are making us kill and enslave one another, as human males, so that we can secure sufficient excess meat that we can offer to a human female in exchange for sex. Just elementary Applied Field Primatology.

And the more the Alpha Chimp (candidate) male has 5 things:

• Size,
• Speed,
• Strength,
• Killer Instinct,
• Killing Experience

- the more certain is the outcome. All this 'yi rou ke gang' stuff is pure bullshit cause we think with that we can turn our eyes away from the ugly sight of that bare metal underneath our feet.

Anyway, did more "push hands" in class this morning. Fun! But what's really got me salivating is they are gonna teach me their "shi li" and "mo jin" stuff using the long staff tomorow! Now that should really be something to stand up and cheer about!

Is YiQuan an "internal" or an "external" art? Probably it doesn't matter. In fact, NOTHING matters right?? But still. I ponder. It's pedigree and history seems more "internal". And all that standing has an "internal" flavor to it! Yet on the other side of the ledger, they deny The Power Formerly Known As Qi... plus they grafted on all this 1920's boxing stuff... ??? So which is it? Was it Aristotle who said

When  you are with Logicians, claim to be a Grammarian. When  you are with Grammarians, claim to be a Logician.

AHAHAHA! No, no - just kidding here. Really the whole greatness of Yiquan is its Catholic nature, so I'm just having fun here.

How could it be otherwise

Another scorcher today here in Beijing. Air has NOT improved from the 4-day even/odd car restriction experiment, as far as I can tell. But I have to admit the traffic is much better. Now you can almost cross the street without getting killed (the evil twist of the screw is that there is free turning on red without stopping, into the crosswalk at every intersection and the turners emphatically do NOT yield to peds in the crosswalk! Consider yourself lucky if you escape with nothing but an angry fuck-you 200 decibel horn blast as they sideswipe you)

Anyway, on to Yiquan. Good class this morning. Actually Master Yao was out, shepherding the final stages of his new forthcoming book at the publishers office, so the assistant "coach" (jiaolian as they call them) trained us. We did some push hands and striking work. Of course goes without saying if you have been following this blog, all classwork, partner work, etc is only AFTER I have stood in their "universal combat post" zhuang for one solid hour, 9 to 10 AM. 30 mins right foot, 30 mins left.

But still I will never be fully reconciled to their version of push hands. Even though its a total fit to their own mentality, and therefore an excellent style of art. But see, I am fully committed to a different way of looking at things. To me, water is the exemplar.

For it is written:

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water.
Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.
This is because there is nothing that can take its place.

That the weak overcomes the strong,
And the submissive overcomes the hard,
Everyone in the world knows yet no one can put this knowledge into practice.

That is the Dao De Jing, 78. That is what I BELIEVE! Therefore, using strength is obviously off the menu for me. But it has been fun learning in this alternate parallel universe to my normal assumptions.

But WHY do I think like that? Easy, cause you have to assume you'll up against edged weapons. You know, a knife. Then your strength is mostly useless. A fast, experienced hand with a knife cannot be easily overcome by strength. But you cannot hurt water with even the sharpest knife. QED.

Actually as far as I can tell, Yiquan here does not include knife defense in the curriculum. Well some would say that's alright cause there IS no good defense against a knife anyway! *sigh* But anyway that is my philosophical commitment.

Look at Ron Paul go! I like that guy. He seems not to be bought or sold like all the rest. He seems to actually believe in freedom (that alone is practically a federal offense Thought Crime at this point!) But he could be a victim of his own popularity. Cause if he seems too popular, in the view of the USA mil.gov High Command, they'll probably have to neutralize him by their usual tools of either vote fraud, controlled mainstream media lockout, or if it comes to that, black ops sanction. As they did to Kennedy.

It ain't me Babe

Sundays are the only day with no afternoon/evening class. So only a 3.5 hour training, in the morning, in the Nanguangongyuan (park).

By the way, any apparent "dings" that may appear in the blog as criticism of Yiquan are actually mere lovetaps on its glistening jeweled surface... I'm not negative about it overall in the least, but if I am writing this blog I feel responsible to call 'em as they lay, as I really see it. But I am the merest pimple on the Great Pumpkin of this venerable art, so DO NOT TAKE ANYTHING I WRITE SERIOUSLY!

One guy I was "pushing" with this morning nearly whiplashed my head right off its stalk, with a vicious quick downpull on the TONS of totally gratuitous strength that I was putting on him, in my efforts to be a good-soldier training partner. Ouch. *sigh* Never mind, I've had far worse. It's just... the irony of it all. WHY would I EVER, in my "native" mode, put strength on anybody, for any reason? I never would. "Four Ounces" is my credo, and it has served me well through lo these many decades of savage tusslin'. But now, to be a good doobie, I go against everything I know to be true, purely in the pursuit of deeper education... and thus I get brutally whacked in a world I never made.

This version of "push hands" is analogous to 2 people who agree to play a nice game of tic tac toe. They sit down cozily across from each other, take out a nice clean sheet of paper, sharpen a couple of pencils, draw a neat little grid and begin their play. Suddenly one person leaps up, twists the other's head, and plunges his pencil into the other guy's eardrum, piercing clean through his brain! Thus bringing the game to a premature close... AHAHAHAHA! Sorry, sorry, sorry ...  just having fun here. But honestly that's how it feels, it's like "Here's a gun, go ahead and shoot me" - giving strength to the partner as a handle, for no reason at all. In taiji, we only take advantage of the residual strength that the partner just can't help giving us, due to his relative immaturity and lack of skill. We don't ask him to deliberately handicap himself! But as I have said, YQ is NOT TJQ! If I keep clinging to the TJQ paradigm how can I ever learn cool new stuff?

Therefore, enough carping! Yiquan is truly a great art, we have the Founder's record to vouch for that. So The Secret is wrapped somewhere in all this big YQ training "inventory". I will be publishing the entire inventory consisting of a 6 page syllabus of drills and practices, including all the push hands stuff, in my final blog entry. Then it will be up to YOU to sift through that and determine - what among all that is the real pearl in the Yiquan oyster??

Grandmaster Wang learned first from Xing Yi heavy, Guo Yun Shen. By all reports, Guo was not a big "inventory" type of guy. In fact he seemed to use only one technique to dispatch all comers, his "beng" (pounding basic punch). Yet he had the internal totally mastered. What if anything did GM Wang add to that, from all the zillions of other Masters he later surveyed? What is the nuclear core of GM Wang's unearthly achievement? I bet Guo did and taught that old workhorse of san ti shi (Three Essentials staning practice) also. Is that the key? If so then why did GM Wang reject San Ti Shi (or, if you prefer, modify STS beyond recognition?)

Something isn't adding up here!!

Why don't we have another GM Wang in our own day?

Million Dollar Tabby

A nice class this morning at the park. I have seen more of ordinary Chinese life through these park classes. Basically people are just people. Who really wants all these wars, all these Imperial shitstorms? The men in the shadows, the High Command - that's who. War is a racket.

But I digress. Yes, another good class. Lots of push hands. The Yiquan push-hands world is an alternate parallel universe to the Yang/Zheng 'what we think of as normal taiji push hands'. They REQUIRE muscular strength and tension, heavier the better, forearms to forearms, as a pre-requisite to start their practice. Then the game is to try to very quickly and forcefully redirect the strength that your partner gives in some way disadvantageous to him. But the point is, you know how in the Tai Chi world, if you use a little strength your partner will spit some venom at you 'you are using waaaaaaaaay to much strength'. Then you need to go hide under the bed til the shame of it blows over. Well with these Yiquan guys it is just the opposite - they'll bark at you for NOT using enough strength. Cause they can't do their thing unless you give them a nice strong arm and tense body to work with.

Of course just as when  you ask Christian how come they support wars when their man JC said love your enemies, don't resist evil etc. you get a song and dance about how JC didn't really mean that, and it's actually ok to kill under X or Y conditions, see, cause this is what JC actually meant, blabbity blah blah. Well similarly, maybe not these fine local Yiquanster's here but probably somewhere there's somebody who would see all this tension and say 'well it might look like tension but actually you can't really be competely relaxed  anyway and therefore blabity blah blah...' Excuses! Nobody wants to really believe what both JC and Yang Cheng Fu said plain and simple. Why? Cause it is  just too damn hard to do it their way!

Nothing at all wrong with this anyway. After all Yiquan is not tai chi. And look at Aikido, they also require a tense partner to make their stuff work (though they would never admit it, but a good tai chi player can feel their tension a mile away). BUT recall that MY Personal Prime Directive is still 'yi rou ke gang'... the soft must overcome the hard. Thus fundamentally I have to say, Yiquan while a FANTASTIC art, long-term cannot be a match with me. Though I love their fundamentals dearly. And their final outcome is obviously great, look at Master Yao! It is just a question of personal preference in method. Probably it all comes out the same place.

For example, suppose you lived in Boston in 1840, but you wanted to be in San Francisco. Well you have 2 choices: you can take a covered wagon overland straight west, or you can sail on a clipper ship around the Horn. Either way will get you there. Each method has it own particular advantages, costs, comforts, dangers, risks, benefits. Just personal choice weighing your own preferences and situation. But one thing is clear: you MUST choose, you CANNOT somehow compromise or do both and expect to ever get there. Because as methods, wagon overland vs clipper round the Horn are absolutely and fundamentally incompatible. There is no realistic compromise between them, nor can they be mixed or spliced in any practical way at that time.

Thus similarly I feel I am near the conclusion that the assumptions and development path in terms of push hands and sparring and any kind of adversary type work in Yiquan vs Taiji are fundamentally incompatible. The man who chases two rabbits goes to be hungry! But, just as if you are in Boston with SF goal as above, though the wagon vs boat methods are totally incompatible, if a rich uncle left you a million gold dollars, that would be a fundamental feedstock that would be useful regardless of the method you finally choose. That is what some of these great Yiquan mo jin and shi li (energy) standing poses and solo drills are. Energy in the bank! So I'll keep on with those after I leave here.

Beijing latest: Today is Day 2 of the great Four Day Car Control Experiment. You can drive today if you have an even number plate, otherwise park it. Tomorrow, only odd. Etc, for 4 days. The streets are way less crowded. The air is no better. Probably if implemented for real this would backfire as everybody would just by another car, and the number of total cars would double. Typical human thing. But for now it is nice, for those of us that don't drive here. Actually Beijing, and probably all of China cities, is much more a driving city than say Tokyo. In Tokyo walking/traintaking is a very feasible and human-scaled lifestyle. But here, though there's lots of local sidewalk liveliness and pavement life community goings-on, still it isn't really a walking city. Not only the bad air but also the dangerous cross currents at intersections and the scale of buildings, the lack of overall subway train/coverage - it isn't a walking town. But Tokyo is fine to walk in. Maybe when Beijing gets the "post Olympic" new subway lines going, things will change. For now this is a driving/cabbing town.