Martial Arts

I would be lying if I said that I knew China would be like this before I came: modern, plastic-wrapped, money-minded, slightly lost. I think most of my knowledge of Chinese history came from books like “Wild Swans” and Ha Jin’s novels, and revolved around Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution, bits that are useful now only for context, but which are memories forcibly repressed by most of the public. I’m pretty sure I’ve read more of Mao’s writings than my students have. My impressions of Chinese culture came from, honestly, martial arts movies: honor, dedication, sweat, comfy-looking pants and cloth-soled shoes, respect for teachers, and a love of form. Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Michelle Yeoh – these were my guides. I didn’t even learn their real names until I came here (Li Xiaolong, Li Lianjie, and Yang Ziqiong, respectively; Chow Yun Fat is really Zhou Runfa, if you’re curious, Jackie Chan is Cheng Long, and Stephen Chow is Zhou Xingchi, although Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi are still Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi) but I devoured their films and with them the stereotype that most Westerners hold: Chinese people are good at martial arts.

I’ve been doing martial arts for years, and all of my schools, regardless of style, have held that same belief, a kind of breathless awe and hushed tones in reference to the mysterious land in the Far East – a place of ancient systems and long traditions and all kinds of secret teachings that let you do things like run up walls and kill people with a gesture of your palm. Even my boxing coaches had a thing for China. We imagined laboring up and down stone temple staircases with buckets of water on our shoulders; we dreamt of kicking trees and screaming under waterfalls and burning through hours of standing meditation while balancing on a single bamboo leaf. Even the “street” systems that emphasize so-called real-world applications and self-defense over elaborate and beautiful forms give a nod to the Chinese kung fu practitioners.

I’d like to clear up a common misconception. “Kung fu” does not mean “martial arts.” It also does not mean “ass-kicking” or “opponent-wasting” or “magically acquiring an impressive set of skills by going through a three-minute montage of pushups and rigorous training involving awkward stances and hitting things with sticks.” “Kung fu,” or more accurately gōngfū simply means a skill or achievement that is attained after a long period of sustained hard work and dedication. There are gōngfū tea ceremonies that demonstrate long practice in the art of tea preparation. One can be said to have gōngfū in her painting or cooking skills. Michael Jordan most definitely was one of the greatest gōngfū masters of basketball, ever; I’ve had a few teachers in my life who have attained gōngfū in their classrooms; my dad has achieved gōngfū in hunting wild turkeys – all through long, hard work and dedication.

“Martial arts” is better translated as wushu, which means “military skills or tactics.” Some people think that this term refers to a specific style of martial arts – Northern Shaolin Temple Long Fist, to be specific, but that’s only because that was a prevalent form used in Hong Kong action movies for a while, and so the names became intertwined. It’s like saying that “pizza” means Chicago-style deep dish; while my husband would argue that this is most certainly the case, there are those who prefer New York thin crust, and still others who dig the crappy versions slung out by franchise delivery joints, or the nouveau California styles that have things like goat cheese and sunflower seeds on them. The word can cover a lot of different things.

I’ve been studying martial arts for about six years, although you wouldn’t know it to watch me. I’m a beginner in all respects except intention – I can set a house on fire with my will – but learning subtler things takes me quite a while. I am content to learn slowly, mostly because the frustration teaches me far more than success ever has. I think all martial artists have some elaborate story of how they came to the practice; I hear a lot of guys, in particular, say that they had always been interested in it, had grown up with posters of Bruce Lee above their bed. These are the guys who used to bring the throwing-star catalogue to class in high school and brag about the nunchakus in their locker. I was friends with those guys, but that’s not why I started training. And unlike most women, my interest didn’t come from a fear of being mugged late at night on my way home from a party, either. I got interested in martial arts because of this single scene, the Night Fight, in one of my favorite movies of all time. Click here to watch.

Corny, yes. But aren’t they beautiful? The precision, the focus, the complete habitation of one’s body and the sense of being utterly present, of having one’s mind and arms and legs and back and chest and intentions and experience all moving in unison for a common purpose – this is what appealed to me. I am, by nature, a fragmentary person, shape-shifting and often fractured, and it was this sense of wholeness and discipline that drew me in, and has kept me ever since.

All martial artists will tell you: look around, try different styles. The differences exist for a lot of reasons, many of which are historical (e.g. the monks were fighting people who attacked on horseback; the farmers had only tilling implements as weapons; the princess had less muscle mass than her opponents), but often what works for one body or personality type won’t be as effective for another, so the trick is to find the school that works for you. Some people swear cult-like allegiance to their particular form, and waste unbelievable amounts of energy boasting about how their style kicks the ass of X’s, Y’s, and Z’s. Dude – if Z fought X in a dark alley, X would totally kill Z, man, seriously… or even better, No one’s ever won a UFC title doing Wing Chun, man, face it. This is a load of bullshit, and I have no patience for it. The prolonged and dedicated study of any form will lead to knowledge, discovery, and skill on the part of the practitioner. Anyone who is learning martial arts just to kick somebody’s ass has already missed the point. Most teachers will remind students that, ultimately, all form is abandoned; we must train, train, train until the principles become part of who we are, and then we must forget it all and be only in the present situation. Bruce Lee taught that one must take what one needs from different forms, and then leave the rest.

I began with Shaolin Long Fist, mainly because I was clinging to the fantasy of being an action star and wanted to do pretty kicks and fancy things with my fists. I loved the sweat of it, the uniformity of the students (in that we literally wore uniforms), and the tantalizing future goals evidenced by the truly awesome horizontal butterfly kicks of our teacher, whirling through the air six feet up, parallel to the floor. It soon became clear, though, that no actual sparring was going to take place – this was an exhibition form at best, and I realized that what I really wanted to do was hit things, hard.

This led me to muay thai. Muay thai is one of the hardest forms of martial arts, which means “hardest” in the “hard on your body,” “hard on your opponent,” and “hard” in the “unyielding” senses of the word. It comes from Thailand, and has produced some of the more spectacular fighters to make it on the global scene. (The current phenom is Tony Jaa – Panom Yeerum in Thai – who resembles Bruce Lee in many ways but adds a certain acrobatic flair to his already overwhelming physicality. Click here to check out a hokey but impressive little exhibition video.) Most muay thai fighters in Thailand are very young, due to the 100% injury rate – a body can only take and deliver that much abuse for so long.

This is from a fight we attended in Bangkok. The oldest fighter was 22.

I loved muay thai, even though the woman I most frequently sparred with got her leg shattered in a competition match and had to undergo several reconstructive surgeries. She can walk again, but her fighting days are over. My teachers were humble and brilliant and kind, and they made me feel safe knowing I had such friendly yet lethal friends around.

With muay thai, I learned to find power. It can be a startling experience, learning the biomechanics of one’s own body and discovering the destructive potential that lies therein. There is nothing quite like hand-to-hand combat to put you in touch with yourself: your energy, your fears, your sense of self-preservation, things that made you angry or sad years and years ago – it all comes out. At first I was afraid to get hit, an impulse that seems only natural, I think. I will never forget the day that my teacher taught me the true nature of this. I was standing on one side of the ring, taped up, gloves on, no pads on my legs. We had finished stretching and warming up, but were all milling about, waiting for class to really get going with some drills or something. My teacher strode right up to me and, without a pause, punched me right in the face – not so hard that he broke my nose, but hard enough to make my head spin and my eyes water. I was stunned. A tremendous surge of energy flooded my body, and my vision clicked open; it was as if I had never truly seen before, had never met my own senses. I was happy, energized, and totally, totally awake. My hands were up and I was hitting him back before I had time to think or analyze or get nervous. We chased each other around for a while, and he managed to land a few more right in my face before calling time out. He was grinning: “That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?” I’d never felt better.

At that school we also learned submission grappling, variously known as Brazilian jiujitsu, BJJ, or the Russian version, sombo. Deep down, grappling is my favorite: it’s basically rolling around on the floor trying either to strangle someone or break their bones. It has an immediate, geometric, and sometimes even playful quality that has taught me endless amounts about fear and relaxation, learning to breathe under pressure, and knowing one’s own body and the messages sent through the varieties of pain. Grappling is not like wrestling – pinning does not constitute a win, so the square-like, opponent-flattening mentality of Greco-Roman styles is detrimental rather than good. We call grappling “rolling,” because you have to learn to be a ball, to be flexible and changeable and always in motion. A win occurs when you get your opponent in a position where, unless they submit, they will either pass out from strangulation or risk a broken bone or joint. Submission is signaled by either physical or verbal “tapping” – basically, you cry uncle. This form is interesting because, somewhat counter-intuitively, technique will almost always triumph over strength. It was developed by a family of fighters in Brazil known as the Gracies, and gained international recognition and respect when the Gracies – all relatively small men – consistently won world championships against much larger and stronger opponents. One of my teachers liked to break in new students this way: big, beefy, cocky guys would come to the school thinking they were all that, and would often make a few comments about having a “chick” in class. Since I had trained longer than most of the other grapplers, the teacher would pick me to demonstrate a few techniques. The beefy guy would size me up, sneer, and come charging in, only to find himself two breaths away from a long nap and a hangover, or perhaps a dislocated shoulder, several seconds later. This introduction won over a lot of skeptics to the style, and I liked getting to hurt their chauvinistic pride.

The best lesson in grappling is relaxation. As a woman, when you have a man who weighs 240 pounds trying to smush you and break your leg in half, you have a certain amount of panic to deal with. There are also lessons to be learned in pain. The body produces different kinds of messages to communicate its situation to the brain: some say “If this doesn’t stop, we’re doing to die;” others say, “If this doesn’t stop, I’m going to break;” and still others say, “This totally sucks and I want you to know that, but no permanent damage will come of it, I don’t think.” It’s important to learn the difference between those sensations – even though all of them feel like “pain,” they mean very different things, and interact differently with things like pride and fear. I learned that sometimes the pain is there just to help you focus, and other times it’s there to let you know you have already lost, which is also good to recognize.

When my grappling and muay thai school closed for financial reasons, I felt a little lost. I imprint heavily on my coaches – I always have. If a trainer reaches out to me, I will leap tall buildings in single bounds and move mountains and sweat blood for them, I will cut off my hair and swim oceans, I will fast and meditate and hurt for them. I will do whatever they ask. With this kind of attachment, the end of a training relationship always feels like abandonment to me, even if there is no fault involved. I cast around for a while, training with them off and on in garages, home-made dojos, and in parks, but it was difficult for us all to find the time to make the kind of commitment I wanted without the infrastructure of a real school. And that’s when I found Mt. Tabor.

Mt. Tabor School of Martial Arts teaches kajukenbo: Tum Pai (“Central Way”) kajukenbo, to be exact. It’s an aggregate form created in the 1950’s in Hawaii by a dedicated group of bad-asses who wanted to develop a form to deal with the street violence that was harshing their mellow in those days and generally creating a dangerous and sketchy urban environment. They combined a number of ideas: Ka (from karate), Ju (from jujitsu), Ken (from kenpo), and Bo (from Chinese boxing) to form a new system that drew heavily from internal arts like taijiquan, but which proved effective in fighting both individuals and gangs in real-life situations. The original school was hardcore: classes didn’t end until someone was lying on the floor bleeding. Once the form made it to the mainland, it split into different groups ranging from those that followed the hardest style to those that favored yielding, redirection of force, and qi cultivation – like tum pai, the softest branch of the kajukenbo tree. Our school teaches a full range of engagement, from grappling to stand-up and weapons use, and the complete spectrum of distance, from full-contact to striking range, kicking range, hand-held weapons (sticks, staffs, knives, broken bottles, forks), thrown weapons (stars, rocks, high-heeled shoes, axes, television sets), and forced projectiles (bows and arrows, sling shots, guns). We train for one-on-one situations as well as those unfortunate circumstances when the guy picking a fight with you has a lot of drunken, angry friends. However, as it is a system of balance, we also practice taijiquan, the fundamental core of tum pai principles, as well as healing arts and herbal medicine at the advanced levels.

I am not very good at tum pai. I am, by nature, an aggressor as well as a care-taker. My first instinct is always to try to overwhelm a bad situation with energy: hit it harder, be fiercer, burn hotter, work more. As my shifu (“master”) has taught me, there will always be those who can hit harder than I can, who will be fiercer than I am, who will burn longer and wait for me to burn out. He has tried to teach me to be softer rather than harder, to learn how to listen and sense and yield rather than smash and crash and flame. My ambition and my pride push me to move quickly; his teachings ask me to slow down, to see. I have learned a lot from him, and from the other teachers at the school, as well. My main lesson there has been to swallow my pride, and to keep on track. Longevity and dedication are often the hardest things to learn, especially when we feel failure in all of our actions. There is a framed saying on the wall of the school:

The way of the warrior is long and hard. Sometimes mastery is simply a matter of staying on the path.

My greatest weakness in martial arts is this refusal to be soft. Of course, nothing in martial arts is unique to martial arts; our lives are merely reflected, and often, magnified, in the mirror the practice creates. Therefore, my greatest weakness in life is this refusal to be soft, the fear of failure and vulnerability, of “being a wuss.” This is an interesting thing to learn about one’s self – although the consciousness is only the first step. Letting go of the fear and giving in to vulnerability and yielding can take a very long time to master, I’m finding. My shifu asked me to study taijiquan and learn more about the ways of being quiet and like water, like a reed. This is one of the reasons I came to China.

Tàijíquán (太极拳, literally, “Grand Ultimate Fist” or “The Greatest Boxing Form Ever,”) is often regarded in the U.S. as an exercise form for the elderly, or as something practiced by annoying guys in bare feet and pony tails in the corner of the park. In reality, it is a beautiful and profound fighting system with a long and well-respected, if disputed, history. (Click here for a good summary. I had heard stories of hundreds upon hundreds of people doing taiji together in the parks in the early mornings; I was under the impression that everyone in China did taiji: “Chinese people are good at martial arts.”
It turns out that this is not the case. The only people who do this kind of early morning practice really are elderly, for the most part, with a few notable exceptions. There is a cute little flock of old ladies that gathers in a parking lot behind one of the classroom buildings here in campus every morning. They bring fans and swords and do relatively clunky versions of Yang style forms, with a backdrop of plinkety-plink traditional Chinese music warbling out of a tinny little tape deck. Much more common than taiji is a kind of mass line dancing that takes place in the evenings. Hundreds of people will gather in public places: plazas, arenas, parks, sidewalks, and do Jazzercise-style synchronized movements in their street clothes, after work. Taiji practice is more limited in scope, and taken more seriously.

The Chinese people have a different attitude toward skill than Americans do. If you are good at something, you are expected to prove it, or at the very least, show off a little. This was unexpected for me – I imagined them all to be full of humility yet secretly adept. Instead, if you tell a Chinese person that you study taijiquan, for example, or that you sing, or enjoy poetry, you will be asked to perform on the spot, wherever you are: in the library, in a parking lot, in an office. I am tremendously uncomfortable performing taiji even under the gaze of my teacher, let alone for the critical benefit of an expectant group of near-strangers; I have tried to explain that this practice violates certain cultural taboos for me. We are shy, I said. Having met a lot of Americans, they generally don’t buy this excuse. “Oh, you like Chinese poetry?” they’ll crow. “Recite something. Now.” It’s very unnerving. Yet they are happy to have the tables reversed: I’ve seen taiji performed in waiting rooms and basketball courts, just because the conversation turned to wushu. Apparently, the Chinese like to flaunt what they’ve got.

They are also convinced that no one not born and raised in China can ever truly experience qi, an integral part of internal arts, and an important aspect to Chinese medicine. I have tried to explain that most cultures have the concept of essential life force, and that most of us experience it in similar yet various ways. As a child, I formed qi balls with my hands and played with them without ever being taught what they were. Most of my Chinese friends remain skeptical, and will grill us on what it is we think we’re feeling. We use the common metaphors: magnets, electricity, heat, groundedness. They remain unconvinced and often haughty; silly Westerners, qi is for Chinese.

When we first got settled here in Chengdu, we found someone to teach us a new form – the 42-step competition form designed by Li Deyin, a Beijing taiji master who is known for training Westerners and who developed the 42-step as a way to showcase the variety of styles that exist traditionally, but in a sequence that can be performed in around six minutes. Our teacher was quiet and skillful, and who showed up to class every day in the same yellow silk outfit, a conceit I found both impressive and weird. His version of the form was awe-inspiring and snake-like, but his teaching style mostly involved telling us to be quiet and watch him again, and laughing at us when we made mistakes. I was not motivated, but enjoyed listening to him explain things: “Young people no like do taijiquan. They think it have no passion. No passion.” He was an amazing practitioner and had won multiple competitions and things, but as a teacher I found him dull, condescending, and confusing. He also expected us to learn too many moves at a time, and wouldn’t slow down even when we asked. We stopped training with him after the winter holiday, and spent a few frustrating months trying to learn the remainder of the form from an exhibition DVD.

In the past month, we have found a new teacher. Things come when you least expect it, it seems – if only we hadn’t expected it sooner. His name is Wang Chunlin. Chinese has so many overlaps between a sound and multiple meanings, that it can often be unclear which meaning is intended, especially without the benefit of seeing the character. Chinese speakers have developed an elegant and charming way of clarifying these sounds, especially in regard to their names. It’s a bit like the brevity code used in radio communications: rather than saying C-A-T, for example, brevity code would say “Charlie-Alpha-Tango,” which are sounds that cannot be confused with any other in the code over a potentially distorted frequency. When Wang Chunlin introduced himself to us, he said, “Wo xing Wang,” My family name is Wang (which means “King”). “Wo jiao Chun – chuntiande chun; Lin, shulinde lin.” My given name is Chun – as in “Chuntian,” (which means “Autumn,”) and Lin – as in “Shulin,” (or a “forest of trees.”) So, his name means, literally, Autumn Forest King. I love this about Chinese names. (My husband’s Chinese name translates literally to something like “Great Literary Mind Hu,” while mine means “Elegant Orchid.”)

Autumn Forest King has, in the space of two weeks, completely rearranged my experience of martial arts, my concept of my own practice, and my relationship to taijiquan. In the first ten minutes of our first private lesson, he had us doing some simple warm-up drills that, initially, had me rolling my eyes. Basic, basic, basic. Standing. Holding. Arms up. Arms out. Holding the ball. And then, suddenly, I was overwhelmed. I was no longer doing a simple breathing exercise, no longer standing and waiting for the drills to begin. I was holding a tremendous and terrifying energy between my hands; my feet were riveted to the ground, and in my arms was an awesome and entirely new experience of power. For the first time in all my years of practice, I felt like I understood why we polish ourselves down, why we must eliminate those aspects of ourselves that get in our own way and block this constant source of energy from flowing naturally and continuously through our bodies. It was so simple, so elemental, but I felt all my previous desire to attain and achieve and prove myself to my coaches and opponents and myself slip off of me like a heavy wet blanket. I had one concern and one concern only, and that was to learn how to properly allow this energy to move through me. It seemed that, once that was done, all other movements would become increasingly simple, increasingly soft – my task was to stay out of the way of this energy that would come on its own, and everything else was just flowing with and around it.

Over the course of four or five lessons, my taiji practice has been fundamentally altered. I am still not “good” at it, still thinking too much and getting in my own way with thoughts and lack of correct practice, but my idea of what it is has changed to the point where I know what I have to do to improve. I can now practice alone and know when it’s right and when it’s not. Autumn Forest King doesn’t speak English, so I am relearning the names of the movements and the concepts in Chinese, a task that makes things a little more difficult and more tiring, but there are keys inside the names for things, as well, and everything is instructive. I am simultaneously student and translator. I have to let go of everything: my memory of past instruction, my bad habits, my pride, my language. We practice in 100 degree weather in the middle of the afternoon. When we finish, my brain feels twisted and wrung out to dry; my knees feel shaky and weak. I’m drenched with sweat. He is kind and funny and makes us laugh; he works hard to help us understand, and we do. Slowly.

This is Wang Chunlin doing the 42-step form that I’m learning.

When I started studying martial arts, it was to be beautiful and fierce. Then, it became about the challenge, about besting my opponents and proving myself as a fighter and as a woman. Later, I learned to swallow my ambitions and try to empty myself out, to learn and stay dedicated and whole. Now, I am starting to grow softer and more open, and to understand more about what energy and longevity really mean. While it is easier to find a martial artist in the United States now than in China, there are still secrets to be found here. The cultural emphasis on repetition, on precision and memorization, on long-term commitment to a goal lends itself well to the practice of martial arts, and they take a well-deserved quiet pride in the length of their history and traditions. In America, I thought I could learn by force of will. Now, I understand that there is nothing but practice.

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~ by knifemaker on June 8, 2008.