Kung Fu Logic

What do you do if something hurts when doing it a thousand times? Exactly. You do it two thousand times! Please don't ask me what to do if that is still painful. I'd rather not find out. My new Kung Fu school (I left the one with the kids and the beating teachers, for several reasons, most of all they did not practice traditional Gong Fu), which I found with the help of Liu Xing (as everything else in China - the internet has the answer to all questions) seems very traditional, in the sense that they believe in pain but not entertainment value. Which meant that in the whole two hours I was there today I got to practice exactly one move. And as homework I am supposed to walk 1km every day... no big deal, right? Well, try that with bend knees and you'll see what I mean with pain. I have been doing this since Monday, so only for three days, and of course it still hurts! And what did Master say today? Well, if it still hurts, you should do it for 2km each day from now on.

I switched from training Shaolin, which is taught as a purely external art here, to 形意拳 Xing Yi Quan , one of the three internal arts (if you are interested in more background on Chinese Martial Arts - Wikipedia is actually a useful resource). I had not planned to do so, because I kinda like the kicking :) but more than once I ran against the wall of prejudice "Shaolin is not for girls!" I have to say, in some respects China is quite a sexist society. I still haven't figured out exactly how far equal rights go. You certainly have to give the communists credit for getting rid of brutalities like foot-binding and putting girls in school and women to work. (Not that I meant to imply that the latter two are brutalities!) But as in most developed countries, the leading positions in politics and business are still filled with men, and if a family only has the money to send one child to school, you can bet it will be the son, not the daughter. The old Confucian values like "a girl has to be soft-spoken and obey her father and husband" seem to go a long way. At least the "a girl should not be too educated" (if you think I'm making this up, read "A Moment in Peking" by Lin Yutang ) has been eradicated, as is proven every year when they publish the names of the students with the best results in the nationwide university entrance exam. Almost always girls. But I can't help but feel that Chinese girls are extremely obsessed with appearance (I always wondered how it's possible that their is a hair salon at every corner, but they are actually full of customers any time of day - la derniere crie is the perm for boys though... looks just outright ridiculous, sorry to say). But then, this is probably not so different from the States, where there is the chaste of "college chicks" only going to Ivy League Schools to get a "Mrs."

Coming back to Kung Fu... the way it seems to be taught at traditional schools is to start with Shaolin (kicking, punching, flexibility training) for little kids and once they get older, they can progress to internal arts, which means they learn to put actual power behind the moves they learned as kids. In the non-traditional school, Kung Fu is mostly for show. Now, of course, a lot of people start with 太极拳 Tai ji quan (which we like to pronounce Tai Qi, but the name doesn't have anything to do with 气 Qi) as adults. And if you pay (their considerable fee), they will teach you. You can turn up your nose at that, but the school supports a pretty nice training room and two full time teachers with that. The Master is about 50, has been practicing for 30years, the other teacher goes by the title of 师兄 Shixiong, which is a combination of 师 shi - teacher and 兄 xiong - older brother. He is not quite a 师傅 shifu (Master) yet, although he started Kung Fu at the age of 5. He actually grew up in the Shaolin temple (imagine a boarding school turned Buddhist temple with Kung Fu training every day from dawn till dusk - yes, that still exists. The Shaolin temple in Henan province is now a big tourist attraction and not cheap to visit, but the whole town is full of Kung Fu schools). Now, I don't want to get into any arguments about how traditional this school still is - ehem - but at least my "older brother" got some serious training in the 15 years he spent there. His right fist is about twice the size of his left - a result of iron palm training. And man, he's got power. So I let him and the Master convince me that I should study Xing Yi Quan instead of the not-for-girls Shaolin. I like my hands the way they are, thank you :)

In contrast to Tai ji quan, Xing yi quan has actual applicability for fighting (I don't think I have the space here to debate the finer points of this argument, but feel free to drop me a line if you want to). Its movements are very fast and powerful, and focus on stepping and punching. No elaborate kicks and jumps :( But the most important aspect is to learn to focus your jin - your power. Apparently this is done by standing in one position for about an hour - that's all I can say so far after two classes :) And the best thing about the school? They are open every day 10h to 21h. Apart from the evenings when they teach Shaolin and Tai ji quan, I could go and hurt myself, ehm, I mean practice every day! Imagine what this does to my motivation to do my actual job...

And on a totally unrelated note: I think this is funny. Reminds me of the subway in Nanjing. They're building two new lines, of which nothing was visible when I got here last August, the first one is supposed to open in May, and whenever someone (me included) hears that, they ask "which year?" Yes, this year. Everything here grows incredibly fast. The price we pay is the always hazy sky... at least you can't get sunburn!