Interesting Historical Document

Here is a link to an ebook about an Australian man's journey through China in the 1890's:
AN AUSTRALIAN IN CHINA, BEING THE NARRATIVE OF A QUIET JOURNEY ACROSS CHINA TO BURMA, by GEORGE ERNEST MORRISON M.B., C.M. Edin., F.R.G. First published in 1895.

Warriors, Artists, and Technicians #1

What is the difference between a warrior, a martial artist, and a skilled expert?

A warrior is a member of a class, generally it is a privilege of birth. The warrior is not a universal concept but variants of it exist world wide. The first warriors could also be called shaman-kings. Most likely they developed from hunter-gather groups that occupied mountains, jungles or dry plains. These hunter-groups, often at war with each other, were in the habit of raiding the first agricultural settlements. At some point, these settlements probably got the idea that they could offer the hunter-groups ruler-ship in exchange for protection. They thus became the first warrior classes.

These warrior shaman's most powerful weapon was inspiring fear. Chinese historians record this kind of shaman-commander charging off into battle with a poisonous snake in each hand, wild hair, animal skins, horns and a terrifying mask. After countless generations, these shaman-warriors morphed into warriors with a strict code. The warriors of neighboring kingdoms fought each other on designatied fields of battle, with codes of conduct and rules about how to kill, whom to kill, and what to do with captured enemies.

In China, this was the time when the Zhouyi was written. The Zhouyi eventual developed into the Yijing (I Ching) or the book of changes. Richard Rutt's translation and commentary sheds really interesting light on this era of warrior inspired codes that used divination and both mass animal and human sacrifice as a tools for staying in power.

This is not just history. The warrior-shaman-kings are still around in isolated parts of Indonesia. (See Don F. Draeger's beautiful book the The Weapons & Fighting Arts of Indonesia.) The Lords Army in the Congo, would also qualify. As would The Terror Twins in the Burma-Thai boarder region.

Part two: Warrior Codes

Nei Jia Quan

Jess O'Brien edited together a bunch of interviews with internal martial artists called Nei Jia Quan Internal Martial Arts, Teachers of Tai Ji Quan, Xing Yi Quan, and Ba Gua Zhang.
What I like about the book is I can really imagine these various teachers are talking to me. In fact, it's pretty funny, because a lot of the time I have this sense that the teachers are shouting at me. I'm willing to bet Paul Gale likes to shout. Here is a nice excerpt:

"'The bottom of the foot is the back.' There's a physical reality of it that the bottom of the foot is the back, meaning that the bottom of your foot is pulling your back forward. You have to learn to move that way, otherwise there's no foundation. You'll always get swept and knocked down because you'll be top-heavy."

I think my favorite section was the interview with Luo Dexiu where he talks about the cultural barriers he had to get around in order to learn from very traditional teachers. In that traditional setting a direct question would have been perceived as a challenge to the status of his teacher, and his teacher would have gotten very angry. He and his fellow students came up with all sorts of ingenious ways to get questions answered with out actually ever asking a question.  At one point he and another student stage angry huff and puff arguments and then ask the teacher to settle them.   This technique got some their questions answered.
I noticed a theme that many of the teachers brought up.  They said qi is given too much attention and that yi (intentionality?)  is not given enough.  I guess that's true with some teachers, but it wasn't true with any of mine.

It's impossible to generalize about all the student teacher relationships out there, but in my opinion once you've internalized about 300 martial applications of various sorts, yi in the application sense of the word becomes less important.  One can continue using the word yi by tweaking it's meaning but there are other terms for this "higher level" yi such as jingshen. 

It's a good book and I had fun arguing with the various teachers.  I would have shortened most of the interviews if I was editing it, but I'm planning to buy volume 2 if there is one.
The book includes interviews with these teachers: Gabriel Chin, Tim Cartmell, Paul Gale, Fong Ha, Luo De Xiu, Allen Pittman, William Lewis, Tony Yang, Zhao Da Yuan, Bruce Frantzis. Check it out.

Do you own your legs?

Readers can comment on this provocative idea:
George Xu claims to be the source behind Chi Running. One of the things he said is that most people let their legs carry their bodies, they don't use their bodies to carry their legs. By this I understand him to mean that most people lack both integration between their legs and their torso, and they also lack a kind of mind or embodiment.

This integration of the legs and torso, once gained, can be measured as a smaller, more efficient range of motion.  Xu refers to this type of embodiment as the predator mind. It is a kind of fearless self-possession. It is a predatory way of seeing and moving.  It is relaxed yet ready to pounce. It is drawn in toward the center but not closed, not  contracted.

Understanding Chinese Culture

The perfect expression of a Daoist practice is simultaneously resolving and inspiring. Inappropriate conduct leaves things (qi) unresolved. Appropriate conduct resolves things (zhengqi). Unresolved ancestors manifest through the actions of those still living -- their descendants. Thus, we can see religious merit or gongfu, as the practice of resolving our ancestors inappropriate conduct through our own appropriate conduct. (Taoism and the Arts of China)(Schipper p.49)
The primary purpose of a Daoist funeral is to bring resolution to the recently dead.  It's as if they were not quite dead yet.

We in the West find these propositions difficult to grasp because we see the universe in terms of independent creation, causation and agency. The notion of qi presupposes that all events/things are mutually self-recreating.

Roger Ames makes some salient points about the nature of Chinese thinking. We says that are always participants in the unraveling of traditional Chinese subjects, never 'objective observers.'

From the Chinese perspective, agents cannot be decontextualized and superordinated in any final sense; to identify and isolate an agent [re: divine creator] is an abstraction which removes it from the concrete reality of flux, exaggerating its continuity at the expense of its change. Since change is interior to all situations, human beings do not act upon a world that is independent of them. Rather, they are interdependent in the world in which they reside, simultaneously shaping it and being shaped by it. Order is always reflexive, subject and object, are not contraries, but interchangeable aspects of a single category in which any distinction between the agent and the action, between subject and object, between what does and what is done, is simply a matter of perspective. (Ames 1998, p.20-21)

Martial Arts Training Manuals

Someone else who believes that gongfu is entirely about fighting are Brian Kennedy and Elizabeth Guo, authors of Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals, A Historical Survey. I read the whole book, it's got lots of great pictures and historical information. It's easy to summarize their view: Martial Arts is a job. Whatever, it's still a great idea for a book. They summarize about 30 different historic training manuals. One of my favorite facts from the book is that it was illegal to publish martial arts books for most of the Ching Dynasty (1650 to 1900~).

Pirates of Tai Chi

North Atlantic Press has put out a whole bunch of great martial arts books, many of which need a lot of editing. Among them is: Scholar Boxer, Chang Naizhou's Theory of Internal Martial Arts and the Evolution of Taijiquan with complete translation of the original writings (editied by Xu Zhen, 1932), by Marnix Wells. See, even the title needs editing! Yet, it is the best attempt at a history of Taijiquan's actual historic origins I have seen.

It's a tough challenge. The textual sources are really limited and he seems to have drawn on most of them. I, of course, would want to look into actual Daoist writings, but I'm not optimistic that relevant late Ming or early Ching Dynasty Daoist sources are going to surface anytime soon, if they exist. I would also look in theatrical sources. He does deal with Shaolin Buddhist origins, and that's great. Aye...maties, but here is the money quote:

"Qi Jiguang's boxing, the major source of Taijiquan techniques, and the internal School Boxing of Wang Zhennan are both traceable to maritime Zhejiang in the early sixteenth century. Its city of Ningbo had been the official port for Japanese missions. After their forced termination in 1549, its off-shore Zhoushan Island became a base for Japanese and local pirates. It was there that Qi Jiguang describes learning the practical art of boxing in Major Liu's thatched hall. Manuals by generals Qi Jiguang, and his mentor Yu Dayou, leaders against Japanese pirate attacks, provide us with the first detailed knowledge of Chinese (internal) fencing and boxing." [Page 7.]

Dude, you hear that! Taijiquan comes from fighting pirates on the sea! Johnny Depp look out! After Pirates of the Caribbean 3, we can make Tai Chi Pirates of Zhejiang!

I always felt like all those dantian circles had something to do with the sea. When you are fighting on boats for weeks at a time all your organs learn to move with the natural pulsation of your "sea-legs." I know my Chen style Taijiquan improved a lot after a month of working 20 hours a day standing in a modified horse stance on fishing boats in Alaska.