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Tai Chi & Qi Gong in China

by Alec Jones

RDTC Teacher Birmingham.

We arrived at the early morning practice spot, a sunny parking area in front of a restaurant. Because of the cold wind the previous day, the group had decided to use their indoor practice space - a room off of an underground car-park. This looked as though it was normally used as a dance hall. It had what we would call Christmas streamers across the low ceiling which to us looked a little out place. (It is not uncommon to see images of Father Christmas in restaurants and other public places. It was not long since the New Year festivities and like us, they seem reluctant to take the decorations down, but unlike us there is no twelfth night superstition so often decorations stay up all year round.) At one end of the room was a low stage, and some snooker tables at the other end.

As we followed our guide into the room we were met by the sound of Chinese music and a moving sea of people coming to the end of a Form. We were welcomed by Prof. Li and his wife and the two groups were introduced to each other. There were 24 in our group and just over 40 in the Chinese group. Very few of the Chinese spoke English, though some had a few words, and some of us had a few words of Chinese, apart form Tary, our guide, who is Chinese (and also Prof. Li's son-in-law!).

Prof. Li has retired from Beijing University and now lives in an area where there are lots of other retired people, many of whom worked at the University. Many of them meet each morning to practise Tai Chi together along with Prof. Li. These people are very fortunate to be able to practise with Prof. Li as he is held in high regard and still trains and coaches national martial arts champions. We were therefore very honoured to be able to go along to join in a practice session with them and then have Prof. Li teach us some Push Hands and Qigong.

Prof. Li decided that we should have a cultural exchange by showing each other our Tai Chi forms. The Chinese group played the 24 step Form, then a Fan Form.

The RDTC group (5 of us) were then asked to play our Short Form. I was very pleased that everyone was brave enough to do this as some of our group had only been playing Tai Chi for a couple of years. To show your Form in public is one thing, but to show it to a group of Chinese people who had probably been playing Tai Chi longer than some of us had been alive could have been quite daunting!

When playing Tai Chi in a group in China, it is usual to have music playing, in fact some of the forms have particular pieces specially written for specific Forms. So in true Chinese tradition they found some suitable music for us and off we went.

When we finished there were lots of “Thumbs up” and beaming smiles amongst the traditional applause.

Chinese people are very polite (if you can speak a word or two they generally say your Chinese is excellent), so I wondered how polite they were being and asked Tary afterwards what they had said to him. He said they were genuinely impressed and very interested as a lot of them would only have ever seen the more modern Forms practised in China.

Prof. Li then gave a short talk (in Chinese) to explain the history of Yang style and how it came down the lineage to Cheng Man-Ching and developed into Short Form.

Because of the standardised Forms taught in China I had heard that others Forms were not necessarily looked upon very favourably – even thought to be “not real Tai Chi”. This proved to be completely false. Prof. Li is very knowledgeable and deeply respectful of all styles. He said China may have given Tai Chi to the world, but the people of the world have taken Tai Chi to their hearts.

There then followed a 24 Step Form by the majority of our tour group. Then one of the group, who practised Wudang Wu style, was joined by one of the Chinese women who also played a similar Wu style. They played their Form together. They started off the same, and then their sequences diverged in different directions. It was interesting to see the similarities in Form and the differences in the qualities.

Prof. Li then taught us the Eight Strands of Brocade. I was particularly looking forward to this as it is something that I already teach and knew it would be a different version as there are many variations of this set. Although there were some external differences, the internal principles - natural breath, soft limit and intention - were very familiar.

Qigong on Wudang Mountain

At the end of the first week we were on Wudang Mountain, the birthplace of Tai Chi. First thing after breakfast we had a Qigong session with Master Zhu who had been studying for 17 years. He took us through some simple exercises which he said are very good as preparation for Tai Chi practice.

The exercises we were taught were great, and again the results were very familiar though how we arrived at the external shapes were slightly different. The principles of natural breath, body alignment and intention were the same as we already use. This was a very simple yet powerful experience. People felt the buzz of qi in their hands very strongly and the movements offered me new insights into “old” exercises by approaching them from different angles, i.e. the path the arms travelled along to arrive in familiar postures.

From an experience point of view this session was wonderful! Here we were, standing in the hotel lobby, on Wudang Mountain, looking out through the panoramic window onto the valley and hills beyond (very atmospheric), being led by a Taoist monk. It fitted with my “romantic/fantasy” image about the whole place.

This trip taught me that labelling Tai Chi as Chinese or Western is simply marking the cultural differences. For example, when playing Tai Chi in the East they tend to stand in lines as though on a grid, which to our eyes can easily look very regimented and controlled. This can be seen (as a simplistic view of Communism) to absorb the individual into the collective, but what it actually does is to give the individual their own space, and creates a solid, harmonised structure to the group as a whole where the individual can easily see and be seen.

It has been said that we, as Westerners, don't teach or practise “Chinese” Tai Chi, but from my experiences on this trip it is clear that just below the outer appearance the inner principles are exactly the same. This is surprising, yet not surprising, and very confirming of the RDTC path.

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