Outside the practice hall cars move up and down the street loudly blaring advertisements. Trucks carrying corn and beans honk past scooters that are populated by whole families. Friends exchange lively gossip. Below the practice hall the lead student in each group calls out, “jyo!” (begin!) Yi, Er, San, Su! (One, two, three, four!) Line after line of students fall in lock-step vigorously kicking, punching and jumping. Inside the practice hall 13 students from the UK & one from America stretch out and punctually begin class. They set themselves into their best Standing meditation form. The teacher comes in the room and starts the process. Chen Xiao Xing stands behind each and one by one and places his hands subtly on our hips. With the gentlest of coaching; he draws us back and down into what feels like surely several inches in both directions. A quick glance in the mirror reveals it is actually an inch at most. He adjusts chins in, coaxes chests to sink and caresses every shoulder in the room to relaxing. At the moment he moves on to the next student the sensation begins for the former.
No matter how well you feel you have set yourself up into your best posture, there is always more. More refinement, more detail, more sensation. It is amazing how much of this type of sensation the body can take and still stand up. It is uncomfortable, but it is interesting discomfort; there is not one hint of knee pain or fear that any part of the body will become injured, it is quite simply muscle loading when the body is in exactly the correct biomechanical position for sitting down in a relaxed way. Except you are not sitting on a chair, you are sitting in your body. And even in the midst of this sensory flood located precisely in the thighs, the entire body does begin to relax. Over time one can truly feel the spine itself let go, and the muscles along the spine from the tail the to the neck follow. The hips open and release. Of course the body tries to tighten back up, used to its own deviations, but the elegant position itself reminds each muscle, tendon, ligament and bone to soften back up again.
What my own mind does with the experience of a thirty-minute standing session is quite an adventure. For a long moment it is blissfully quiet, taking in the sounds of the street and the school and my breath. Then without warning my mind simply wants to stand my body up, get a drink of water, stretch, and walk around. At that moment the contest begins: my mind or the process. This little war is not logical; I’m not afraid of injury and I know that this is the absolute core practice, without which there truly is no skill to be had in Taijiquan. I know I have just been positioned by one of the great teachers in the world and every shift of posture I receive is the tremendous gift of being absolutely correct. And then my mind opens my eyes and I look at the clock. There is still 29 minutes to go. I laugh at myself and remember an earlier conversation with David Gaffney. He said, “When it gets too intense, I remind myself that this is what we do for fun!”
In between sessions I like to post the blog, email and mess around for a bit online. Thanks to the efforts of one of our team here who got the wi-fi password figured out, I can do that inside the school yard now. The weather is still quite nice so once a day I sit outside on the stoop and log on. The kids are used to us now and feel more comfortable expressing their curiosity about who we are and where we are from. Yesterday I found myself surrounded by a group of kids staring at my lovely Mac screen. I immediately Googled Chenjiagou. Links to Google Maps and several websites in Chinese about this place popped on the screen. The kids read a bit and then I pulled up my own school’s website and the pages that show my relationship with Chen Xiao Wang and the Village here. After that I showed pictures and video clips of seminars with the Family, including Chen Zi Quan’s recent demo of the short Cannon Fist. It was a dear cultural moment but somewhat bittersweet as this screen into my comfortable beautiful amazingly blessed life is also a screen into a world they will likely never know.
And the world they know is changing rapidly. China is one big construction zone and Chenjiagou is not immune to this omnipotent truth. Unfortunately the changes here will not help the people but will swallow up at best and devastate at worst the natural simple and beautiful culture here. None of us who love this place have wanted to emerge from our denial but this is the trip where I realize we cannot avoid the inevitable any longer. A little under two years ago construction began for a “Taiji College.” The scuttle at that time was that it would be a 5-Star hotel and a training area. People could come and stay for three months, the maximum length of a single stay visa. They would train not with the family in traditional ways but in government run programs with government coaches. That didn’t sound great but is didn’t sound awful. And then the talk was that it was more, it was to become a Theme Park sort of place for Taiji including a white water rafting element because “Taiji is like water.” We all really thought this was just a joke, a misunderstanding from too many people passing on the story like the game Telephone.
When I was here March of this year, one could see the infrastructure starting. It was probably about a city block and included the shell of the hotel and training area. I felt that it was sort of large but certainly no theme park and I was relieved. Now, 6 months later, the infrastructure has become a sprawling mass of iron & concrete a few miles square. They work on it 20 hours a day. At night big flood lights pour over the scene like so many logging projects all over the world. And in that same devastating way, what will indeed become a Theme Park, complete with a White Water Rafting element, is a behemoth looming amidst this small historic Village that will certainly clear-cut its authentic culture.
It is too easy to say it is China. It is China yes but it is also the way of modernity. It is the way of human beings who succumb to their minds and allow the new & easy to dominate the old & difficult. The victor then is not Tradition that gives us a method to imbibe in rich heritage, to truly become artists of our trade. The victory gained is not what is gained by feeling a little pain in service of furthering both one’s Taijiquan and one’s life. The victory goes instead to the Mind that says: give me something easy. Give me a life where everything is painless and superficially fun. This is a true loss.
Its 5:50 am now and I can hear the students running, counting rhythmically, “Yi Er San Su!” The roosters are crowing and behind all this traditional morning routine, construction trucks lumber down the road. Soon it will be time for me to get to the practice commons. Today I do so with more intention. I recognize ironically that because I am among the blessed to be here in Chenjiagou at this time of huge transition, because I am still able to train Village Style in such an authentic and rich way, I am also among those charged with a responsibility. Those of us who unlike the kids here can come and go anywhere we please, are also broad witnesses to devastating transitions. So we are the people are charged to make different choices. We are charged not with perpetuating the new ways but instead charged with standing still, our thighs burning no matter what the clocks says. And when we do go back to our easy life, we are charged to keep this Tradition alive, to carry it out of the changing Village and into the changing world.
Kim
Thanks for the post, Kim. Sad and beautiful at the same time.
Posted by: Mira | October 22, 2011 at 08:34 PM