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?

Guns, Whiskey, Kungfu, and Indian Dance

I did not come from a guns and whiskey family.  But I recognize that of the four major American folkways, only one has ever taken any real pride in men dancing:  Rednecks.  For this gift of beauty and freedom, I am an honorary redneck.
Some people might say, “Scott, you’ve been practicing martial arts so long you have gongfu on the brain.”  It’s a possibility, I admit.  Sometimes I get excited and I start to see martial arts in everything (Richard Rorty would call it the narcissistic tendency of powerful ideas).  I can use Kungfu power to scrub the dishes.  I can use maximum muscle tendon twisting to wring-out the laundry.  I can set the table “the way a beautiful woman would do it,” (that’s an alternate name for Baguazhang seventh palm change).

But Chitresh Das, my Kathak (North Indian Classical Dance) teacher always said that Kathak had roots in the warrior tradition.  Ladies of ill repute did the same style of dance, under a different name of course, but that does not discount it’s warrior origins.  All Indian Classical dance has some version of deity invocation as well.  Kathak is done with 5 to 10 pounds of small bronze bells wrapped around the ankles and calves.  While it makes little sense from a guerrilla warfare point of view, an assembly of several thousand warriors stamping the ground with all those bells would rival the terror inducing sounds of a line of M1 tanks.  Besides, they function as armor for the lower leg and weight training.  Oh, and every movement from the warrior dances of Arjuna to the blood lusts of the Goddess Kali, to the dragon-tail pulling antics of Baby Krishna, to the flower picking of Princess Rada --can all be done with martial power and embodiment.  In fact, the stances and silk-reeling of Chen Style Taijiquan feel like kissing cousin’s to the Indian tradition I learned.

I’ve had a taste of several different styles of African and African Diaspora Dances but my actual training was in Congolese and African-Haitian Dance.  My Congolese Dance teacher, Malonga Casquelourd, learned to dance from soldiers on army bases.  Malonga’s father was a high ranking soldier in the Congolese Army and the family followed his deployments around the country.  Malonga had a fighter’s body and spirit.  Both Congolese and Haitian styles of dance have specific war/fighting training in them, but even the dances for funerals (sometimes confrontational), dances for dating/mating (also prone to challenges), and dances for work--all can be seen through my martial artist lens. The embedded fighting techniques are hidden everywhere in plain sight, they only need to be practiced as fighting, with a partner, to become functional.

Without the Redneck contribution to American tolerance, we would, as a culture, be cut off from understanding what it is to be a man who dances.  World-wide, a significant part of what it is for a man to express himself through dance is a demonstration of his ability to fight, a show of martial prowess.  (And I dare say, the same is often true for women.)

Wing Chun Kung Fu Opera

In China, the traveling theater functioned as a subversive organizing tool and a way to hide martial arts training.  It was a religious devotional act, watched by the gods (they would literally carry the statues of the gods out of the temples to watch the performances), it was sometimes a ritual exorcism too.  The theater was the source of most people's knowledge of history, and it's characters were both gods and heroic ancestors.

There are various versions of the origins of Wing Chun Kuen but no-one knows for sure as there are no written records as the legend was passed down verbally from master to student.

During the Qing Dynasty period Southern China was in turmoil and many rebellious groups hid there and concealed their true identities from the ruling Qing government. These rebellious groups where supporters of the old Ming Emperors and their descendants, and they sought to overthrow the Qing. Many of them were the survivors of the armies, trained in Shaolin Kung Ku, that were defeated by the Qing. These rebels formed Unions / Associations / Societies as a cover for there activities. One of these Associations was called Hung Fa Wei Gun. This group had a large northern element, including the Hakka people, it was these that started an Opera Troop so they could travel around the country without causing suspicion. They taught the southern people Opera and their Shaolin Kung Fu.  After a time the Qing government found out about this and closed the Association down forcibly. It was many years before the people dared to start an Opera Troop again. They eventually did and called the Association “King Fa Wei Gun”. This became a centre for Opera and Martial Arts training.  After a few years the King Fa Wei Gun purchased two Junks for the Opera troops to travel around the country.

The rest of the article is here, and there is some more here. (hat tip to Emlyn at Jianghu)

Invitation to Nude Beach Olympics II

If you happen to be in San Francisco this weekend....

Saturday, October 10, 2009, Noon , Baker Beach North (clothing optional-- Golden Gate Bridge end of beach)
Look for 4’ white Olympic Torch
Free event

"Athletes must compete nude. Athletes are competing for honor and a wreath. Spectators are clothing optional. More musicians with acoustic instruments are welcome. Gamblers are invited to bet on contests.

Olympic Champion chosen by highest individual total points....

Ancient Greek wrestling. Getting opponent’s buttocks, back, or shoulder on the ground within the ring is a win. 2 out of 3 falls. No slugging, kicking, biting, or gouging.

Sumo wrestling. Getting any part of opponents body on the ground outside of the ring is a win. 2 out of 3 matches. No slugging, kicking, biting, or gouging.

Discus. Closest Frisbee to target wins.

Broad jump. Athlete’s choice on approach distance or style of jump.

Volleyball. 2 out of 3 wins in 21 point sets. This year, teams chosen by team captains in rotation from a pool of players. (This issue has already come up. In future years, based on athletes’ preferences, we may or may not have competitions with intact teams who have trained and played together.)

Touch football (?). Requests have been made to play touch football. If a minimum of 10 players sign up, someone claims to be an impartial knowledgeable referee, and someone brings a football, there will be a game.

Kickboxing exhibition. One out-of-state athlete is looking for an opponent. Telephone us, if you exist......"

(Read the whole thing)

Video from Nude Beach Olympics I at www.freebodyculture.blip.tv

Look for me if you go...I'll be the one wearing three pairs of long underwear under my pants with a haramaki, a wool shirt scarf and hat!

If you like this stuff you'll also like this one on Turkish Wrestling.

More Humiliation

I just finished reading Paul A. Cohen's book, History in Three Keys, The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth.  Expect a positive review in the next week.   I mention it now because some quotes from the book are included in the review below.

I bought a copy of, The Xingyi Quan of the Chinese Army, Huang Bo Nien's Xingyi Fist and Weapon Instruction, by Dennis Rovere, with translation by Chow Hon Huen.  It's published by Blue Snake Books, Berkeley, California.  It's a waste of money.  I bought it because Dojo Rat gave it a positive review. I realize now that he gave it a positive review because he thought it might be of interest to those of us who like history.  Well--I'll be damned--I'm going to get my money's worth by having some fun reviewing it!

The book is a translation of a short manual about Xingyi training from the 1920's, supposedly used by Chang Kai-sheik's army and the KMT.  It would have been a pamphlet except that Dennis Rovere added a lot of his own useless material, explanations and pictures.  With the exception of a section on Bayonet Fighting, which we will address shortly, the original manual is nearly identical to material already published in nearly every Xingyi book.  Take for example this translation by John Groschwitz, The Xingyi Boxing Manual.  This kind of manual is meant to be memorized and contemplated, but every single detail needs to be taught and digested over years.  They all read like a teacher's lecture notes.  (That's OK, I guess, but did we need another one?)

Why was the manual published in the first place?  Dennis Rovere doesn't seem to know.  The answer is that it was a salvo in a political debate of the 1920's.  Take for instance this satirical note by Lu Xun (probably the best known intellectual of the "New Culture" movement) comparing Kungfu guys to the Boxer Uprising, published in New Youth, 1918:

Recently, there have been a fair number of people scattered about who have been energetically promoting boxing [quan].  I seem to recall this having happened once before.  But at that time the promoters were the Manchu court and high officials, where as now they are Republican educators--people occupying a quite different place in society.  I have no way of telling, as an outsider, whether their goals are the same or different.

These educators have now renamed the old methods "that the Goddess of the Ninth Heaven transmitted to the Yellow Emperor"..."the new martial arts" or "Chinese-style gymnastics" and they make young people practice them.  I've heard there are a lot of benefits to be had from them.  Two of the more important may be listed here:

(1)  They have a physical education function.  It's said that when Chinese take instruction in foreign gymnastics it isn't effective;  the only thing that works for them is native-style gymnastics (that is, boxing).  I would have thought that if one spread one's arms and legs apart and picked up a foreign bronze hammer or wooden club in one's hands, it ought probably to have some "efficacy" as far as one's muscular development was concerned.  But it turns out this isn't so!  Naturally, therefore, the only course left to them is to switch to learning such tricks as "Wu Song disengaging himself from his manacles."  No doubt this is because Chinese are different from foreigners physiologically.

(2)  They have a military function.  The Chinese know how to box; the foreigners don't know how to box.  So if one day the two meet and start fighting it goes without saying the Chinese will win.... The only thing is that nowadays people always use firearms when they fight.  Although China "had firearms too in ancient times" it doesn't have them any more.  So if the Chinese don't learn the military art of using rattan shields, how can they protect themselves against firearms?  I think--since they don't elaborate on this, this reflects "my own very limited and shallow understanding"--I think that if they keep at it with their boxing they are bound to reach a point where they become "invulnerable to firearms."  (I presume by doing exercises to benefit their internal organs?)  Boxing was tried once before--in 1900.  Unfortunately on that occasion its reputation may be considered to have suffered a decisive setback.  We'll see how it fares this time around.  (This is from p. 230-231 of Paul A. Cohen's, History in Three Keys.)

The introduction of Rovere's book claims that the famous martial artist's Sun Lutang and Wang Xiangzhai both taught for the KMT. The question however, is not who taught there, but what was being taught.  If you pick up a copy of Marrow of the Nation and read chapter 7, you'll see that the Guo Shu (national martial arts) movement was wide spread in the 20's.  No doubt xingyi was part of the curriculum.  But I've yet to see any evidence that students of the military academy actually developed into top level martial artists-- perhaps they did--but that would be beside the point.  The point being that what mattered was organization, leadership, machine gun practice, strategic thinking, etc.  Bayonet training was the one form of hand-to-hand combat training that had some significance for modern warfare.  And that training came directly from the West where it was well developed.

Quoting from History in Three Keys again:

In a letter to his sister, Pvt. Harold Kinman of the First Marine Battalion, who initially saw combat in the Philippines, then in China, and after recovering from a wound in the U.S. Naval Hospital in Yokohama, again in the Philippines, provided an American perspective on the march from Tianjin to Beijing [this of course during the Boxer Rebellion, 1900]:  "That march is imprinted on my memory that nothing can efface.  It was full of terrible experiences, short of water, and forced to march after you were almost unable to walk.  Fighting for your life every day, surrounded by Chinese Imperial troops numbering from 30,000 to 40,000 strong.  Cutting your way out at the point of a bayonet while the shot and shell were flying all around you."  On one occasion, after "putting the Chinese to utter rout," the marines watched as the crack British cavalry, composed of Sikhs, turned and fled in the face of a Chinese charge.  Appalled at the "cowardice" of the Sikhs, the Americans, according to Kinman, sprang to their feet and charged the Chinese cavalry with fixed bayonets:  "There were hundreds killed and wounded we gave no quarter nor asked for any so you see we took no prisoners we killed them all that fell into our hands.  I will now close by wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year."

Nearly half of The Xingyi Quan of the Chinese Army, is dedicated to Bayonet Fighting.  It makes the claim that Xingyi is used to teach bayonet fighting, that the techniques originally come from spear fighting.  It is obvious to anyone looking at the pictures that this is just a political claim, meant to give xenophobic cover to what was essentially a humiliating imitation of "Foreign Imperialist" training methods.  All the techniques pictured in the book can be found in any army manual, anywhere.  The book makes four claims for the uniqueness of Xingyi Bayonet training; 1) the back heel is down, 2) stick to the threat's weapon rather than knock it, 3) don't hit with the butt of the gun, 4) don't lunge.  All of these claims are obviously absurd.  Just look at the pictures I pulled off of Google Images.  They also have nothing to do with Xingyi.

Needless to say, I do not recommend the book.  I don't know what Blue Snake Books was thinking when they published it.  However, I did get a good laugh out of this bio:

Dennis Rovere is an internationally recognized expert in military, close combat and Chinese military strategy.  He is the first non-Asian to receive special recognition as a martial arts instructor from the Government of the Republic of China, and the first civilian to train with the Bodyguards Instructors' Unit of the Chinese Special Military Police (Wu Jing).  Since receiving his instructor's certification in 1974, Mr. Rovere has taught martial arts to both civilians and military units, including reconnaissance instructors and UN peacekeepers....

Them's some pretty heady credentials I've never heard of, and what is an architect from Calgary teaching those UN peacekeepers anyway?

UPDATE:  A link to this post got a whopping 36 Comments on a Forum called Rum Soaked Fist! My Youtube Videos African Bagua 1 & 2 and  Pure Internal all jumped up about 600 views in the last day.  I'll put my response to all the controversy in the comments section below, and on the forum.   Join the fray!

Not Your Grandmother's Tai Chi

(Someone out there is probably thinking, "you never met my grandmother."  My apologies to those of you who are the offspring of an unrestrained warrior woman.  Here is an alternate title for you: Pure Fighting.)

Kids have less of a filter, they often say what adults are thinking but are too reserved to say directly.  In a way, the practice of Taijiquan is about trying to be less reserved.  I know that sounds funny; aren't softness and weakness near synonyms for being reserved? But the goal of practicing Taijiquan is to reveal your true nature, if you are by nature reserved, than fine, but I think most people have what Freud called the id, a wild unrestrained, unrefined, spontaneous nature waiting underneath their ego.

But it's wrong to say that we are "trying" to be less reserved, it's more like we are letting go of the need to control, temporarily dropping our social guard, in order to rediscover how our body works.

One of the most popular questions kids ask, particularly about slow circular Taijiquan, is, " Can you use it in a fight?"  I have 100's of posts on this blog talking about Taijiquan as a healing art, a performing art, a pantomime art, a dueling art, a wrestling art, a throwing art, a religious ritual art, a spiritual development art, a game, a form of social engagement, a tool for developing police type threat control skills, a self-defense tool, a way to deepen intimacy with oneself and others, a way of managing stress associated with overwhelming guilt, embarrassment, or fear, a mental relaxation tool, a movement meditation tool, and best of all, a way of revealing our true nature--the way things actually are.

But I would be remiss if I did not occasionally address the Pure Fighting aspects of Taijiquan.  (I believe you can practice in all these ways simultaneously, especially if you set aside a lot of time for it, but it's just as beautiful to choose just one of these ways of practice.  If you don't care about Pure Fighting, that's great!  It is not important.  Really if you want to do something to reduce your chances of ending up in the hospital, wearing reflective clothing while crossing the street is a much better use of your efforts than studying martial arts!  Please skip the rest of this post and plug one of the phrases from the last paragraph into the search box!)

Pure fighting requires discarding restraint.  As an act of necessity it requires being truly wild yet totally committed.  Pure fighting presumes (and this is a huge and difficult presumption to make) that all the moral or psychological restraint one may possess has been discarded.  (Can you tell I'm a big fan of horror movies?)

For Taijiquan to "work" as a pure fighting training system it must be "practiced without pretense" (the first precept of religious Daoism).  I say this because it is very easy to fall into bad habits when practicing with a partner.  Push-hands (tuishou) is the most common two person exercise people use to practice taijiquan.  There is a school of Push-hands which has popularized the expression, "Invest in Loss."  This is absurd, ironic, and also wrong.  They mean that if you practice loosing for a while, you will eventually figure out what your partner is doing and start winning.  This is a fools errand.

To train for pure fighting you must completely discard the notion of winning.  In pure fighting you must be capable of vanquishing multiple threats who are bigger stronger and have longer arms.  In fact, you have to assume that every attack is a potential sacrifice move, meaning the threat is risking everything in order to either, strike you in a vital area, knock you into something hard, get you on the hard ground, or make you vulnerable to one of the other attackers.  Sacrifice moves work, but martial artists don't usually train them because the risk is too high; however, dangerous people can and do use them.

All this while remaining light-hearted, good-natured, and lovable.  All this without becoming possessed by aggression.

The possibility of our art becoming a fantasy is ever present.  For instance, one cliche I hear batted around is that in order to learn fighting you must practice with a non-cooperative partner.  That is a sure way to create pretense.  In order to train for pure fighting your partners must be supremely cooperative.  They must expose all your errors to the light of day.

So now that I've gotten all that out of the way, we can talk about push-hands.  Obviously push-hands can be practiced for one or all of the reasons I listed above in the third paragraph of this post, but I'm talking about push-hands as training for pure fighting.  Of course, I'm only scratching the surface of this subject.

There are an enormous number of push-hands conventions, or rule sets.  Each one trains different things.  If you fail to acknowledge this you will train yourself for a fantasy.  For instance, there is a convention that if your partner moves their foot at all, they have lost.  In the convention, moving your foot is a stand in for being knocked to the ground.  In order to not make this convention a fantasy, you have to sometimes practice it all the way to the ground.  In a pure fighting situation moving your foot doesn't matter very much, as long as you can see where you are moving your foot.  And for this reason, in a Pure Fighting situation, moving forwards is often better than moving backwards.  (With multiple opponents, moving backwards exposes you to being tripped by an opponent on the ground.)

However if you step forward or lean forward without first finding an opening, your partner must show you that you can be struck; usually with an elbow strike, a slap to the head, or a hand on the neck or spine.  In training this doesn't have to injure your opponent, but it must convince them that they have made themselves vulnerable to damage.  Of course, in a Pure Fight, you can still continue to fight with some damage, so be careful not to presume that one strike is enough (but if you know how to chop, a chop to the back of the neck will sever the vertebra).  Similarly, if your opponent over extends, you must show them that you can dislocate their shoulder (cai).  If your opponent leans in, you have to presume they are willing  to sacrifice.  You have to presume that they are willing to take a strike to the head in order to strike you with their head, or wrap their arms around you and break your spine.  A partner leaning in with momentum, like a sumo wrestler, must be struck.  So in Pure Fighting training the better you get, the less you lean.

Tabby Cat actually had the audacity to say Taijiquan doesn't use strikes.  He says it isn't a striking system.  Look Tabby, in Taijiquan we fight using a ball, like a cat.  We don't point strike, or line strike, as Wang Xiangzhai put it, our "intent stays spherical."  This is because allowing our intent to come to a point, a line, an arc, or a ring will leave an opening. But that doesn't mean we don't strike.  Every movement in the Taijiquan form is a potential strike.  Period.  (Jianghu commented on that the same post.)

With multiple opponents, grappling is only used for sudden joint breaks.  You can damage and throw your opponent in less time and with less effort than it takes to seize and throw them.  In a Pure Fight you don't try to get your opponent to submit.  While it is always possible that a Pure Fight could happen in the shower or on the beach, chances are you and your opponents will be wearing strong clothes.  Grabbing or yanking clothing can be very effective, but it is not grappling.  Grappling gives the advantage to the bigger fighter.  Grappling in a multiple person fight leaves you vulnerable.

Now check out this video from the 60's.  They are training for a game, not Pure Fighting.  Watch at the end when the "loser" demonstrates how easy it is to get Stan Israel (the big guy) in a headlock.  Striking the neck would have been even easier.



Now jump ahead 40 years and watch Stan Israel's student Mario Napoli sweep away all the competition at an International Competition in the "birth place" of Taijiquan, Chen Village.



My hat is off to Mario Napoli.  Shirts off too!  A beautiful performance.  "Jiayou" America!  That must have been a load of fun.  But what did we learn?  First of all, the competition doesn't look very good.  Why?  Perhaps the old masters in China are too secretive.  Perhaps the highest levels of internal training never existed in Chen Village.  Perhaps the higher level masters had all left for Shanghai and Beijing by 1920.  It's pretty hard to avoid the conclusion that the training in New York has been better and more consistent over the last 40 years than it has been in Chen Village.

I don't blame Napoli for this, obviously Chen Village set the rules.  He played the game and he played it well, but that rule-set doesn't look like push-hands.  It appears to give the advantage to the thicker competitor.  Having long arms and legs is a disadvantage because you aren't allowed to slap, kick, or strike.  It looks a lot like Sumo.  Don't get me wrong, I love Sumo, especially "Skinny Sumo," but nearly everything they do seems like the opposite of what a Pure Fight form of push-hands would train.  If they were to put on Gi's, would they all lose to Judo guys?  How would a couple of college Greco-Roman wrestlers do with this rule-set.  I'm betting pretty good.

Despite my mellow temperament and fun loving, parlor game, deepen your intimacy approach to push-hands.  I've never lost sight of the Pure Fight.  Among my teachers George Xu, particularly, has never let me loose sight of it.  On the other hand, despite the fact that this is a really long post that took me all morning to write, I care a lot more about dancing than I do about push-hands.

I've never been to a push-hands competition (or a Pure Fight for that matter!), but  I wonder if there is a rule-set that would make me happier.  Would disqualifying a competitor for grabbing, or leaning, or taking a step back, or losing their frame make a more interesting game?  That would be giving a whole lot of power to the judges wouldn't it?

I stubbornly believe it is possible to create a push-hands milieu where everyone agrees that the fruition of competition is to set everyone free by revealing our true nature-- through the cultivation of weakness.  Training for Pure Fighting, does not require aggression, it does not require us to give up even an sliver of our true nature.

Oh well, it's a good thing we have so many fun things to try.

Fighting is like Performing

The possibility of freezing in a fight, particularly during a surprise attack, is real.  Even for experienced fighters.  Even if we don't freeze, there is a high likelihood that we will experience some distortion of time.  This can be anything from an inability to remember anything that happened, to seeing the event play out in slow motion with very particular details.  The same is true for our perception of space.  We may feel anything from a total narrowing of perception, as if we were looking down a tunnel, to a sense that we are safely floating above the action observing the entire scene.

If I didn't hear  dismissive comments all the time like, "My martial art isn't pretty, but it works!"  I probably wouldn't harp on this point so much.  Folks, if it doesn't apply aesthetic considerations, it ain't martial arts.

As every experienced performer will tell you, freezing during a performance is a real possibility.  It's called stage fright and it feels like your whole body is wrapped up in plastic wrap.  Performers also sometimes have the feeling that they just stepped on the stage, and now they are stepping off--an hour performance can feel as if only a second or two has passed.  A performer can have the feeling that they can just languish in the time they have to take the next action, as if time were standing still.  Likewise, a performer can go through an entire show with out remembering or even noticing that there is an audience out there.  Or they may find themselves stepping out of the performance and watching it from above.

And just to beat a dead horse, Sgt.  Rory Miller has made a big deal of how important it is to give yourself permission in advance to brake social norms, like being nice or polite.  If you have to defend yourself, you have to utterly discard being nice.  The stage is a social environment where we can safely be horrible to each other.

Performance and Martial Arts are one tradition, not two.

George Xu on The Ball