Daoist Gate

I happened upon the Daoist Gate website because someone over there wanted to be my friend on Youtube.   Looking at their sight leaves me with a feeling of optimism.  The descriptions and explanations are simple clear and honest.  I really appreciate that.  The world of Wudang martial arts has a strange and probably pained relationship to the past.  I want to call this the "new daoism."  It's links to the past seem tenuous, often frayed, sometimes blocked, or even devastated.  Yet what they are producing today has promise. 

Weak Legs

A 9 year old student asked me during class the other day if I did any strength training.  I did my teacher thing and screwed up one side of my face while bulging out my eye on the other, "No," I replied,  "Do you do any strength training?"  This kid admitted that he didn't but I could see by the way he looked at the ground that someone had been trying to breed a feeling of deficiency in this kid's head.  Now we aren't talking about just any old 9 year old, this kid can walk across the room on his hands and he can do a press handstand from a straddle position on the floor.  So I said, "OK, you stand in a low horse stance and I'll put all my weight on your shoulders and you try to lift me up."  I leaned down on his shoulders and lifted myself up on to the very tips of my toes so that he had about 150lbs on his shoulders.  He then stood up with out even a second thought, lifting me into the air.  "That was easy right?" I asked.  "You could lift two adults couldn't you?."  "Yeah," he said, looking a little brighter.  "So you're strong enough already right?"  He just looked at me, unsure what to say.  "Now you have to figure out how to transfer the force of your legs to your arms.  That's what you need to work on."  And then we got back to the two-man form we had been working on when he asked the question.

If any of my readers doubt the above anecdote I challenge you to do the experiment yourself.  Find a small healthy kid, 5 to 8 years old.  Show them how to do a horse stance and then try putting all your weight on their shoulders.  As long as the kid's back is straight and her legs are aligned to take weight she should have no trouble lifting you up.

Why is this relevant?  Why now?

On my last trip to China I wandered all over Ching Cheng Shan mountain in Sichuan.  The "trails" are mostly steep stone stair cases that wind up into the clouds.  If you are lazy and have a little cash, you can hire two guys to carry you up three miles of stairs in a litter made with some cloth and two bamboo poles.  The guys who do the carrying all day long during the tourist season have pencil thin arms and legs.  They are skinny enough to be run-way models at a fashion show.  Their leg muscles do not bulge.

Likewise, I studied twice with Ye Shaolong, the second time I trained with him everyday for three months.  He is probably the world's greatest master of what George Xu calls "the power-stretch."  He uses low, slow expanding movements to develop explosive and suddenly recoiling power.  In his 70's, Ye Shaolong is one of the skinniest people I have ever met. He has no muscle.

In my early twenties, with ambitious winds blowing, I took to standing still in a low horse stance with my arms horizontal to the ground out to the sides, for one hour. I did this everyday for a year.  (20 years later, I still stand for an hour everyday but not all of it in a horse stance.) For the first few months, my thigh muscles got bigger, but then a funny thing happened.  As my alignment and circulation improved, my thigh muscles, my quadriceps, started to shrink.  After a year of this kind of practice my thigh muscles were smaller than they had been when I started.  And by the way, I wasn't just standing, I was training at least 6 hours a day and I didn't have a driver's license so I was also riding my bicycle up steep San Francisco hills as my sole form of transportation.  I'll say it again, my muscles got smaller.

Ouch! That's got to hurt

Most people who practice martial arts actually never learn this because they don't have the discipline to pass through that first gate.  At the time, I was just like everyone else, I believed that I needed to improve my strength.  I now understand that strength itself is an obstacle to freedom.

The internal arts of Qigong, Daoyin, Taijiquan, Baguazhang, Xingyiquan, and some of the the mixed internal-external arts like Eight Immortals Sword, all have ways of training that do not require building strength.  Some Shaolin schools have these methods too.  In fact, under the proper guidance of a teacher, with a natural commitment to everyday practice, anyone can use these arts to reveal their true nature.  A true nature which, like that of your average 7 year old, is already very, very strong.

On this blog I have explored many justifications for the cultivation of weakness.  For instance:

--it makes you more sensitive,

--you need less food (making it possible for more people to eat in times of food scarcity),

--you need less energy to exercise leaving more energy available for other pursuits,

--it's better for circulation in times of less activity (which is what we are doing most of the time anyway),

--your movement is less conditioned to a series of set responses (spontaneously agile),

--and you don't need to wear spandex.

But the number one reason for not developing strength is that healthy human beings are already strong enough.  Even 5 year old children are very strong.  The problem is that normal human beings have disrupted the integration of natural, untrained strength, into their everyday activities.  This happens first of all in the arms, which develop both fine motor coordination and repetitive patterns, both of which leave the arms disconnected from the natural strength of the torso.  Also, adult hormones, particularly male hormones, produce muscle really easily if we prime them with lots of food and reckless exercise.  By reckless exercise I mean games or athletics that cause injuries.  Small injuries to the legs will instantly cause a healthy male to develop big thick quads, it can happen overnight. Once these arm and leg problems are established they become habits.  But natural strength doesn't go away, it's waiting for us just under the surface.  The real problem, the only real problem, is the fear that we need to be strong to face life's challenges--the notion that we need strength to prevail.

The likelihood of injury from strength training, by the way, is the reason that people who do strength training have to create all sorts of schedules to "cross train" the various muscle groups.  These people are now arguing that all training is actually in the recovery! Weird.

And don't get me started on core strength....  OK, it's too late.  Core strength is just a marketing scheme, like Green architectural-design-dog-walking-nanny services.  It just sounds good or something.  It plays on peoples feelings of insecurity and guilt.  There is no core that needs strengthening to begin with, but even if such a core existed, the market is saturated.  Every type of movement training from Yoga to tiny-tot-tap-dancing now claims to be good for your "core."

Here at North Star Martial Arts we specialize in Core Emptying!

That's Right! All negativity is stored in the inner "core"--known traditionally as the mingmen or "gate of fate."  Sign up for this once in a lifetime offer of 12 classes for only $99 (that's a $1 discount) and you will get a bonus "card" to keep track of your first one hundred days of Cultivating Weakness!  Empty your Core Today!  (Say the words "relax your dantian," or Tell them you heard it here at W.W.A.T.)

Like aggressive advertising, strength obscures our true nature.

Martial artists who try to develop strength are preparing themselves for some future attack, the nature of which is yet unknown.   I'm not against strength, heaven knows people love it, I'm just against the argument that we need it.  Anyone who says Chinese Internal Martial Arts require a person to develop strength is confused about the basic concepts.

note: (If you are a bit of a sadist and want to watch some people squirm, I'm about to post this at the unhinged Internet forum Rum Soaked Fist! check it out.)

Martial Theater

This article from Kungfu Magazine is a great overview of the total overlap of Triads, Kungfu, Theater, Religion and Opera.  It dips into the relationship between Theater and the Taiping Uprising, the Opium Wars, and the Triads.  Reading it you get that sense that Chinese Theater was nurtured in a violent world.  The authors keep their focus narrowly on Red Junk Opera, but what they say is likely true for many other styles of Theater and Martial Arts.  (hat tip: Jianghu)

_________________

Here is a quick interview where Xingyi master Song Guanghua explains:

Another interesting comment that M Song made is that the 5 element fists can be practiced in different ways depending on the context. Specifically, he stated that, for each element, there is a performance version, a training version and a combative version. Thus, when comparing the performance of the 5 elements across styles, one must know which version you are seeing, otherwise the comparison is meaningless.

__________________________

Also:

Popular Religion in China Stephan Feuchtwang

Has a great overview of Popular Religion in China!

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And if you haven't checked out Marnix Wells site it's worth a look!

Kickin' It!

Hey we had Kimby Caplan, a cinematographer, over around the holidays and she offered to spend about an hour filming me with her $20,000 camera.  Most of the filming was done in slow-motion.  It came out pretty good even though I was a bit hung-over.

Unfortunately I don't have the software for editing these big files yet.  The piece below was just a minute and a half and seems to work without editing.

Fortunately Youtube dramatically changed their rules.  It use to be that video uploads had to be under 100 MB.  Now they can be up to 2 GB!  That's twenty times larger.  Good thing too because a minute and a half on the fancy camera was over 500 MB.  It looks like Youtube brought the quality down about 80 MB (lost data?).  Still this is a new era.  Enjoy!



Here is the Video Link!

1000 Words for Rebel-Bandit

Winter is such a good time for working-out and getting extra sleep; not a great time for sitting in a chair and  writing.   But you're in luck because this book in my lap is due back to the library and it's full of notes that would be lost if I didn't do this blog thing now.  Also, I'm sipping some super-duper, so secret 3-ears-never-hear Chinese herbal tonic.

In my quest to try to understand the origins of Chinese Martial arts I've come to the conclusion that in the past there were people who practiced a religious tradition of exorcistic theater interlaced with Daoist liturgy, meditation, and daoyin, who used sophisticated internal martial arts technology, healing, talisman, re-telling history, with dance, puppets, mudras, music, processions, and animal sacrifice-- all together in a single art-event, ritual happening.  The people practicing these traditions did so through violence times, sometimes as participants in rebel movements, sometimes as part of bandit societies, and sometimes as citizens of weak or powerful central governments.

And I have also come to the conclusion that all of these skills could be arts unto themselves, that individuals throughout the ages have sometimes chosen to be exclusively musicians, or martial artists, or dancers.  And, each of these traditions easily lend themselves to composites of more than one art.  For instance, it was common for a scholar, a man who had passed an Imperial exam, to spend his evenings singing or reciting the histories while playing music with friends in a wine house.  It was also common not to do both. (Just a note here, because it keeps coming up:  For some reason only historians understand, a person who passed the lowest level of the Imperial exam is generally referred to in English texts as a member of the gentry or the elite.  I'll never be comfortable with this.)

I recently read David Robinson's  Bandits, Eunuchs, and the Son of Heaven, Rebellion and the Economy of Violence in Mid-Ming China .  Great book!  Remember that lame cliche that goes, there are a 1000 words for snow in the Eskimo language.  Well, reading this book one is inclined to think there are a 1000 words for rebel-bandit in Chinese.

Here are some of the fun ones:  ..."(W)ulai" (local tough), "liumang" (hooligan), "youshou" (loafer), "xianshou" (idler), "wangming" (desperado), "guanggun" (bare sticks), and "wuji zhi tu" (unregistered ones) on the one hand, and [there are] more ambiguous appellations, such as haojie (unfettered hero, "haojun" (unfettered hero), "renxia" (knight errant), and "youxia" (wandering knight errant) on the other. (p.21)

Robinson breaks through a lot of conventions.  He chooses to write about the middle of the Ming Dynasty (around 1500) because it is considered a time of relative peace, but he shows us how totally violent it was.  He challenges the standard focus on "gentry," meaning men who have passed the lowest level of civil exam, and instead looks at the entire breath of men and women, powerful, and not so powerful.   But his particular interest is the unfettered man of force and his ability to transcend and traverse all levels of society.

"Illicit violence was an integral element of Ming society, intimately linked to social dynamics, political life, military institutions, and economic development.  Nearly everyone in China--from statesmen and military commanders to local officials and concerned social thinkers, from lineage heads and traveling merchants to farmers , transport workers, and peddlers in the street--grappled with the question of how to use, regulate, or respond to violence in their lives." (p. 2)

"The role of marital arts, martial ethos, and military institutions in late imperial society forms an important if still little-explored facet of China's economy of violence.  Violence in theater, literature, and the visual arts provides valuable insight into the economy of violence, as does the role of physical and symbolic violence in religious practice, doctrine, and imagery....and popular concepts of honor, justice, and vengeance in various parts of China during the different historical periods...(p.2)

Robinson focuses on violence closest to the capital, exploring the idea that it would be more likely that the government would have some sort of monopoly on violence nearer to the capital than in far away provinces.  In fact, if that was true, and the 40,000 pirates off the southern coast (far from the capital) at the time would suggest it was, than violence was everywhere--because the capital was teaming with bandits and rebels.

....[P]rohibitions forbade bearing arms in certain contexts, most notably the strict laws against arms in or around the capital, especially the imperial palace.  Despite the extra security measures taken in Beijing, the prohibition against bearing arms in the capital was not observed.  Gangs of lahu, or urban gang members, brandishing knives, metal whip-chains, cudgels, swords, and various other weapons were frequently reported on the streets of Beijing during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  The violations certainly owe something to Beijing's enormous and very mobile population (between 800,000 and one million by 1500). (Robinson p.93)

He convincingly argues that it was common for bandits and various sorts of highway robbers to be part of patronage networks.  These networks protected them to some extent but also meant that local magistrates or other types of officials or men of power were getting a cut of the loot.  This allowed for complex negotiations which might mean that a particular group of bandits lived in one region and robbed in another.  The Ming Dynasty was enormously wealthy and probably the best commercial environment on earth at the time.  It may have also been the most crime ridden because nearly everyone was "on the take" in one way or another.

This jives with Esherick's description of Shan Dong province during the late Qing Dynasty in The Origins of the Boxer Uprising.  Esherick describes a situation where it was common for bandits to rob neighboring towns across provincial boarders but to play the roll of protector for their own villages.

During the Ming Dynasty these patronage networks permeated the society right up to the eunuchs surrounding the Emperor and even the Emperor himself.  (In 21st Century China we call these networks "guanxi" or "connections," and the result is widespread corruption.  However the current government seems to have effectively suppressed armed bandits on horseback.)

There is a huge ethnic component to the violence and banditry but it is sometimes hard to sort out.  I also recently picked up a book by David A. Graff called Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300-900. Graff explains several things which are highly relevant.  During the lead up to the Tang Dynasty (600 CE) the region we call China developed every conceivable method for putting together groups of men to fight. That accumulated knowledge of military organizational experiments was well documented and continued to be used in all subsequent Dynasties to gather huge armies, militias, retainers, or rebels.  The other factor is that while infantries were used extensively and, if well trained, could be effective on the battle field, they were most useful for occupying an area or defending against a siege.  Cavalries were what won most battles and most wars.  Graff picked the year 300 to start his study because that was the era when the technological innovation of stirrups became pervasive.  Cavalries were made up mostly of Turks and Mongolians.  Lastly, reading about the early Tang Dynasty it is easy to get the impression that China has at least nine distinct regions capable of raising armies for the purpose of defending themselves or attacking their neighbors.  A civil war with nine different regions competing for dominance is always brewing underneath the apparent stability of every "Chinese" Dynasty.

Jumping back to the Ming Dynasty,  the Turks are gone (they went to Turkey) but there are lots of mounted Mongols serving as elite forces guarding the boarders, putting down uprisings, and sometimes protecting trade routes or even the capital.  There were also Hui people, Muslim families who are ethnically Han, who lived largely in the regions just south of the capital.  The Hui were heavily represented in the cavalries, and in the military in general.  The regular, and the various irregular but official, troops lived in large concentrations near the capital.  When the country was not actually at war, the horses used by the cavalry were supposed to be kept 'ready for action' by families registered for that purpose.  So war horses were widely available throughout the empire.  And everybody had weapons.

Robinson found this legal code:

Everyone who privately possesses armor for horse or men, shields, tubes of fire [a primitive gun], a catapult for throwing fire, banners and signaling devices and the like--military equipment that is forbidden to the people--will, for one such item, receive eighty strokes of the heavy bamboo.  for each [additional] item, add one degree.  If he manufactures the items privately, add to the punishment for possessing it privately, one degree.  In each case, the punishment is limited to one hundred strokes of the heavy bamboo and exile to 300 li.  If it is not complete [so it can not be used], there is no penalty.  He may be ordered to deliver it to the government.  Bows and arrows, lances, swords, and crossbows, as well as fishing forks and pitchforks, are not within the category of prohibited objects. (Robinson p.91)

Eunuchs are an interesting part of the story.  Many of them came from Hui villages.  There are accounts of whole villages castrating their young men because they heard that the Emperor was seeking new eunuchs.  It was common in certain regions for the third son to be castrated in hopes that he could become a eunuch.  So there were a lot of eunuchs running around (just in case you were wondering).  Eunuchs did fight, and often commanded troops. Just as an aside, I wonder if there were martial arts practices specifically for eunuchs? Is this another possible source for the development of internal martial arts? It would make sense because without the male hormones they wouldn't be able to build or keep muscle.   They would have had a type of weakness which did not have to be cultivated, but which might lead to a unique sort of martial prowess.  After reading about all the eunuchs, I'm starting to believe the story that Dong Haichuan (the founder of Baguazhang) was, as rumored, a eunuch.

The complete separation of civil and military (wen and wu) legal systems was a real disaster because it meant that wherever a military group was stationed, small groups of soldiers could rob and loot without being subject to the civil authorities.  This led to all kinds of patronage and intimidation.  And if you got pretty good at organizing bandit groups, why not strike out on your own?  Even start a rebellion?  Individuals with in these bandit groups often managed to keep their identities as soldiers or imperial cavalry, sometimes going back and forth, or simply maintaining both identities simultaneously.

In order to maintain control, both the central government and local government often chose to enlist, appease, or co-opt rebel-bandits:

Integrating these various kinds of violence into a bureaucratic order was always a calculated risk, and the line dividing defenders of the imperial order from its challengers often blurred with disturbing ease.  Writing on developments in Jiangxi during the early sixteenth century, Lin Ruozhou observed, "One variety of fierce bare sticks initially claims to be assisting officials to kill bandits, but in the process colludes with them, storing stolen goods for profit.  Later these folds take up for a living the false accusation of commoners to extort goods from them.  The only thing they fear is the return of peace." (Robinson p.90)

There is lots of cools stuff in this book.  At one point the wife of a rebel-bandit named Tiger Yang takes over and goes on a series of raids on the capital before finally being caught and executed.  At another point 350 monks from Shaolin Temple are used to help put down a rebellion but 25% them are slaughtered in the first battle.

It is easy to forget that food was always scarce in the old days.  Soldiers often worked for free in the hope of being fed.  One common system was that as soldier's family was responsible for keeping him supplied with food or money.  It was a form of tax on the family, and since not everyone had family serving in the military it was a tax with some prestige.  Still families often wanted to get out of it, which was made easier if the soldiers were far away, or if they were gone for a long time.  Sometimes they were two months away from receiving a message for as long as twenty years.  Long enough to start a new family.

Bandits, Eunuchs, and the Son of Heaven is not light reading, but it is very readable!  If you like this topic, I recommend it.  I got the book because I read the "Conclusion" on Google Books (p. 163) and found it intriguing.  Perhaps you will do the same?

The Banquet

Sometime last year I was talking with George Xu and a few other people out in the park.  We were talking about making mistakes, ways of training, and the unique skills of various martial arts masters.  George filled his torso with qi and turned it to the side in the opposite direction of his chin, then he put one hand behind his back and with the other he made the "lan" movement, a horizontal clearing action like opening a sliding door.  All this was a simultaneous gesture to accompany the statement, "If anyone can show me a mistake I am making in my gongfu, any mistake at all, I will right away throw a banquet for that person!"

Now, being the person I am, with the agenda I have, I must point out to my readers the obvious theatricality of his gesture.  Despite the fact that he has generally focused only on the fighting aspects of martial arts, he has obviously acquired some theatrical skill.  But why a banquet?

The answer has to do with the importance banquets have in Chinese culture in creating, establishing, transforming, and re-making, patronage networks and alliances.

Many years ago, I showed up a little late to a modest banquet George Xu was putting on for a visiting martial arts master at a local restaurant.  The visiting master, about 10 of George's students, a translator and an official from the Chinese consulate, were all already seated when I arrived.  As I walked up to the table I made some unconscious sound, I don't know what it was.  But suddenly people at the table in front of me split apart and someone gave up a seat for me.  The seat they gave me was right next to the translator who was a woman probably in her 40's.  As I sat down, introductions were made, everyone took a second to  acknowledge me and then the woman translator leaned over and whispered something in Shanghai dialect in my ear.  I whispered back an apology in English saying that I really didn't understand any Chinese.  The conversation at the table was mostly focused on asking the visiting Master questions.  We were taking turns posing questions to be translated.  When it was my turn, I asked about the master's early training, how old he was when he started training and what style he studied first.  Before the question was translated George looked at me and said, "That is a stupid question, who cares? you waste time."  As we ran out of good questions to ask, conversations broke out around the table.  The translator and I started talking about this and that, and then she said, "You have a really good Chinese accent.  Excellent."  Again I told her that my Chinese was quite limited.  She ignored this and complemented me again.  It was so weird.  I asked her, and other Chinese speakers at the table what was going on.  Why didn't she believe me?  It turned out that whatever that sound was that I made as I walked up to the table was heard as some kind of entirely appropriate status commanding greeting.  No one seemed willing to believe that I could make such a sound by accident.

Here is a description of the basic ranking at a banquet.

George Xu told me recently that in China when people throw banquets for him, since he doesn't smoke, no one at the table smokes.  This is often appreciated by the guests because it means they get to save money on cigarettes.  Normally, if there is a higher status master at the banquet, George will sit next to the right of the other master and be forced to inhale all the second hand smoke.  The way it works is that there is a pecking order in which people are allowed to offer the master cigarettes.  As soon as he finishes one, the next person in the chain will offer, and so on.  I imagine that it would be a big deal, though invisible to an outsider, if the master accepted a cigarette out of order.

Banquets are places where people are often asked to tell stories, to play music, to sing songs, or to perform feats of martial prowess like forms, breaking bricks, sticking bowls to their abdomin that can not be pulled off, breaking chopsticks on their throat, circus stuff, or even accepting friendly challenge matches.  Lots of drinking happens too.

George tells me that in his travels around China he will often take martial arts masters out for lunch or dinner (a mini-preliminary-banquet).  The irrepressible George Xu will often explain to a given master what he thinks the masters problems are, what mistakes the master is making in his martial training or practice.  Most masters immediately try to push the table out of the way so they can test his theory with a full power fight.  It is rare that they actually want to entertain the question of their own failures, or regard his challenge as an opportunity to learn.  Most of the time he manages to calm them down, saying that fighting would be a waste.  After all, he would be forced to fight like a wild animal and there would be no art in it.  Kind of reminds me of the famous dueling scene from Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai:  "Ah, a tie."  "No, I won!" ....

Reading Chinese history, or any history for that matter, it becomes apparent that industrial commerce has created a world of food abundance which was unknown 160 years ago.  Hunger was common and most people lived with food "insecurity" on a daily basis.  Banquets were probably an important way of establishing confidence in the social networks which would provide food to everyone at the banquet. Each person attending a banquet represented not only themselves but lineages, ancestors, big families and many other types of social networks.  These networks necessarily involved men of marital prowess who fought both to gain food resources (like land, water, livestock, money, equipment, and safe roads) and to protect the network from bandits, rebels or other types of raiders.  The volatility of food resources was in constant play with wide spread violence and ever changing power dynamics.  Banquets were a way of establishing patronage alliances, or mending them when they went sour.

The large size of the Chinese empire, its cities, and its wealth, required the constant mobility of men at arms.  The diversity of mutually incomprehensible languages in China meant that communication was often a problem.  The banquet ritual was probably a way to make sure, as we like to say, everyone was on the same page.

So, my current theory is that martial arts were an extremely important part of the banquet ritual, and the banquet ritual was widespread even among the many non-Han Chinese ethnic groups.  The basic ritual involves two tables; a small one against the north wall with offerings for the ancestors, and a large table with offerings for the living.  We could venture now into the realm of rituals, food offerings to the gods and to ancestors, but the subject is to big and unwieldy.  Banquets are important rituals in Europe too.  It's possible to over play the importance of banquets in Chinese culture and it's possible to under play them.  It's also such a big subject I want to avoid saying something definitive.   Most likely there is a lot of variation in practice.

So rather than stick my foot in my mouth, here is a post I wrote for Rum Soaked Fist forum about the purpose of martial arts forms:

__________________________

Yes, forms can be used to train meditation, spacial awareness, integration, or to remember enormous amounts of kinesthetic information and...yes, a hundred other things, but it is a mistake to think those can't be trained some other way. Forms are just one way, not the only way.

The problem here is that we should be asking "How" and "When" questions more than "What" and "Why questions. The history of these arts has been intentionally corrupted and distorted. If we assume we already know "How" forms were used, then we prejudice the answers to "What" questions.

How were forms used historically? When were they performed? Given the traditional contexts in which they were used, how well did they function?

Here are some theories (yes, it's all conjecture...reality based conjecture):

1. Banquets and feasts are key Chinese religious and social institutions which were essential to creating alliances between powerful martial leaders, local officials, rebels, bandits, and other stake holders--especially in times of food insecurity. Because it was very often necessary to make alliances with people from different regions, language groups, or ethnic origins, martial arts forms (along with other demonstrations of martial prowess, singing, music, etc...) played a key roll in sealing agreements. A public exchange of forms showed a willingness to put-out and forms were thought to display "zheng," a righteous upright nature.  (Calligraphy was also thought to display "zheng.")

2. Troops were often stationed at one location for a few years, and then rotated out, back to their homes--but they were still, in a sense, "on-call." They would also gather periodically for training. It might be that having a form that you practiced with fellow troops when you were together, and then on your own, when you were at home, gave a strong sense of continuity and shared fate--essential elements of a "call-up" army. It was common for troops to be brought from disparate parts of the country where different languages were spoken--they couldn't converse as a way of bonding, so they did forms.

3. In the past, theater and exorcism were one subject. Da (hitting/fighting) is one of the five key components of theatrical training (the other four are singing, reciting history, acting, and dance). Jinghu, Chinese opera, like most if not all Chinese theater styles or jia (literally families), begins with stances (often held for an hour at a time, sometimes measured by an incense stick in the hand), the stances are then connected by transitional movements. The performer is also the conductor, unlike most western traditions, the music follows the movements (they did not need music to practice the forms). The individual aspects of the stances and movement are all taught in great detail, but every movement must be perfectly integrated into a single whole body movement with a seamless flow of qi. A theater performance is a form--identical in nearly every way to a martial arts form.
Forms are just a component of a type of theater which did not always need to be entertaining in the western sense of the word, often it was for the gods--or some other not-so-obvious purpose.

4. Whenever I go into a park early in the morning in a Chinese city, I find a spot and do my forms. If I see some people doing forms which are similar to forms I know, I do those first. If not I just keep going through my forms. Inevitably someone comes up to me and tries to figure out how I'm related to them through lineage, or if not them, someone else in the park. It's a ritual. Forms are like ID cards in China, they say...this guy is a human. It's deep stuff.

5. Forms are a good way of measuring time, before clocks they insured you were practicing a minimum amount of time.

Ice: It Works in Practice, But Does it Work in Theory

How does ice work on injuries?  Here are two contradictory opinions by experienced Sports Medicine MD's written this year within a month of each other:

Ask the Running Doc argues that ice works because it increases circulation.

Moji argues The Technical Benefits of Icing come from reducing circulation.

I'm cool with that, clinical experience should be enough to justify the ongoing medical experiment--as it is with acupuncture, homeopathy, many allopathic medications, surgical protocols and even prayer.  But remember, hypnosis works extremely well to reduce swelling and relieve pain for 10% of the population.  These people have an individual proclivity to being hypnotized.  If you are one of those 10% you should be using hypnosis, not ice!  (Check out this book for more details.)

I suppose we could rank different healing methods for how close they adhere to the gold standard of, "I don't know how it works."  Some are surely better than others?  Ice has been a favorite of physical therapists probably from the beginning of the profession, even before there was clinical evidence.  Physical therapists seem to be quite effective at getting people up and walking after surgery, but I have to wonder if they have ever done any broad based medical studies comparing ice, massage, and "exercises" to the old fashioned cattle prod.  (If there was such a study you'd have to pay $25 on-line to read it--an industry wide standard which really does wonders for the prevalence of the "I don't know" factor.)

In the late 1980's when I first got into thinking about Chinese medicine in relationship to martial arts, ice was thought to increase the likelihood of arthritis by creating "trapped cold" in the channels.  One metaphor I remember went like this:  Ice is like the Highway Patrol running a traffic break in order to clear an accident (slowing qi and blood flow).   On the other hand, Chinese herbs (both topical and internal) are like opening up extra lanes for traffic to go around the accident while it is being cleared up (increasing qi and blood flow).

Now-a-days most of the acupuncturists I know recommend icing at regular intervals during the first 24 hours after an injury.

I asked a muscle chemistry scientist the other day what he thought.  He agreed that the science is far from settled.  He thought that ice applied immediately to blunt trauma on a muscle would reduce the size of the bruise because the blood vessels which were "leaking" from damage would shrink, causing the body to lose less blood during the time it takes for clotting to take effect.  However in the case of overworked muscles--muscles which are in pain from fatigue-- heat would be better.  Fatigued muscles do not bruise and since the muscle cells are actually damaged but not dead, they are likely to regenerate more efficiently with heat.  (The cells also grow in size after being damaged so the muscles will get bigger, and I would argue they also become more single- minded.)

I asked a professional tennis coach what he thought about ice and he explained that after 4 hours of pounding on a tennis court the legs swell so much that it is necessary to take a bath in ice up to waist!  This reduces the swelling and stiffness that would otherwise make it too difficult and painful to continue training, especially over the next two days.

I suppose in thinking about this stuff we could start from the assumption that the human body is either super resilient or ultra fragile.  If you are working from the super resilient angle, as I did back in the days when I was doing rosho, push-hands, and sparring three nights a week, you've probably got lots of little injuries.  When I finally quit I realized how injured I was, it took about 3 months to heal at which point my practice started improving fast.  On the other hand, the fragile angle is the source of all whining, and I hate whining!  The fragile view of human nature is the source of all victimology and worrying.  When I remember that I'm not fragile, I suddenly remember that I don't need to put up with other peoples' nonsense, like boring meetings!  Down with meetings!

In offering my own experience I hope I don't sound fragile.  I'm cool with weakness, but wimpy is not my thing.  At one point I tried putting styrofoam cups filled with water in the freezer.  I would then rip off the rim so that I had a big hunk of ice with an insulated handle I could use for ice massage.  After a week of ice massaging my knee I started to feel cold channels all the way down to my foot that weren't going away from day to day.  So I stopped.  On the other hand, when I went to see a podiatrist he explained the hunter effect.  He told me it was named after a Dr. Hunter, but I have since learned that the hunter effect got its name from actual hunters.  You see hunters sometimes go hunting where it is so cold that their limbs can freeze and fall off.  However, when a limb gets cold for more than about 20 minutes, the size of the hunter's blood vessels increase allowing the limb to warm on the inside, even as it is getting colder on the outside.  My podiatrist claimed that ice works because when you are icing the blood vessels increase in diamiter and after about 20 minutes when you stop icing the amount of blood reaching the injury increases by as much as 4 fold.

I've heard that ice is getting used to prevent both brain and heart damage in a growing range of medical emergencies.  Freeze sprays are the major technological innovation that have made Mixed Martial Arts possible.  Without them there would be too much blood.

Bleeding aside, the thing most of these arguments seem to agree on is that ice reduces swelling.  While not everyone agrees that swelling is bad, it is natural after all, more and more sources are coming down on the swelling-is-bad side of the argument.  Prolonged swelling is thought to be really bad.

While I always recommend that if you go to an expert, you follow the doctor's instructions.  The jury is still out on ice, so I also recommend that you take charge of and perform your own experiments.

Insulting the Monkey King

This is a funny blog post about the outrage some Chinese people are feeling about the great Monkey literature of the past.  When you are reading it just remember that the Monkey King stories may have some roots in India, and that they began as theater and spoken word and only after centuries of improvisation did they finally get written down.

Mistakes

Elaine Scarry's book On Beauty and Being Just begins by explaining that there are two types of mistakes we make about beauty. The first is the mistake of thinking something is not beautiful and later realizing that it is. The second mistake is thinking something is beautiful and later realizing that we've been duped. She then goes on to argue that it is our experience of these two types of mistakes which gives us our sense of justice. It's a sweet argument. (I'll come back to this.)

What is the role of the artist?  This question has been bugging me lately.  Recently an experienced arts teacher, who is a director of an organization I work for, came to observe and evaluate one of my kids classes.  He gave me a stellar review.  Saying that I'm doing everything right, that my teaching is nuanced, that I inspire creativity, kinesthetic awareness and critical thinking, that my classes produce results, and draw on a deep knowledge of art and culture. He even wants to bring beginning teaching artists to watch me teach, as a model of great teaching.  But, I learned... and this is a kicker... that I'm terrible with other adults and lack professionalism in relationships with other artists and administrators.  For instance, I show my annoyance at meetings by putting my head on the table and groaning quietly to myself, I start arguments and I make shocking comments that no body understands (cognitive dissonance).

Is this what being an artist is for me?  I'm not apologetic.  I dropped out of high school because I didn't want to sit in chairs anymore.  I get a guilty conscious if I think I've been too nice in a situation which required bluntness.

The arts organization I work for used to have a Japanese Artistic Director.  She had a deep respect for artists.  It now occurs to me that part of that respect may simply have been her Japanese upbringing.  In Japan, artists are expected to be outrageous, unusual, spontaneous, unpredictable and moody.  Japanese culture has enormous tolerance for non-conformist behavior from artists.

I hear sometimes from my left leaning friends that artists aren't rewarded enough for their art unless they "sell out."  That it would be a better world if artists could easily find monetary support for making their art, even if what they do doesn't sell or isn't saleable.  I wonder if the opposite is true.  Does our society try to pay-off good artists so that they will be less disruptive?  That is, in effect, what I'm being told, "You get paid to come to meetings, can't you just be more like everyone else?"  No, I answer, it isn't worth the pay.  But I worry that some day someone might pay me enough to be nicer than I want to be.

Then I start to question that list of things in the second paragraph which I'm supposedly doing right.  My teaching is nuanced? Really? More like boldly physical and deeply respectful of natural aggression.  I guess I do inspire creativity, "Invent a new way to break your partner's arm. You have 30 seconds. Go!"  Critical thinking?  I think that was an accident.  How about, I expose people to the profoundly irrational nature of the heart mind connection.

Getting back to the first paragraph, what is the relationship between an artist's role in society and beauty itself?  I believe it is my duty to point out mistakes about beauty.  I believe that recognition of the enormous number of mistakes I've made about beauty inspires me as an artists and as a person who seeks justice.  I feel a missionary duty to make beauty, whatever that may be, available and accessible.  And also to protect beauty from forces which might destroy it.

It's overwhelming to contemplate all the mistakes I've made in my practice as a martial artist.  I look back at the years and I see so many mistakes, things I thought were correct, things I thought would lead to greater beauty, but which later turned out to be distractions or wrong turns.  It's almost as if my practice is simply the process of discovering and correcting errors about what's beautiful.

As a teacher my job is, my calling is, bringing out beauty that otherwise would go unnoticed, unclaimed, uncreated, or unfelt.  In that sense, I am armed and dangerous.

The first time I met George Xu, 22 years ago, he said to me, "What's the point of punching if you don't have enough power to break bones?"  At that moment I realized that there was something beautiful about breaking bones that I had been missing.

Girl Meets Bug

Just in case any of my readers are wondering if I have any friends...here is one of them!

From a Chinese medicine point of view I believe these "caterpillars" tonify spleen qi, which means they help you hold your head up high! I imagine they might give you goosebumps too, which would mean they support weiqi (qi on the surface of the body).   Please donate to her campaign.