A new challenge (3)
Reading time: 12 minutes, Video’s total time: 13 minutes.
1. Surroundings
2. Food & drink
3. Tai Chi progress
4. Clothing
Confucianism symbol: Hymalayan Acdemy, Taoism symbol: GDJ, edit: Erik Stout
Surroundings
The Weihai Kung Fu Academy is located on the peninsula section of Shandong (山东) province in eastern China (中国), about an hour's drive from the port cities of Weihai (威海) and Yantai (烟台). Among other things, this province is known as the birthplace of Confucius, the founder of one of the most important philosophical movements in China: Confucianism. Its "natural" counterpart, Taoism, also occupies an important place in this province.
We are in a low mountain range at an altitude of about 200 meters at the foot of a sacred mountain for Taoists: the Shengjing Shan (圣经山) which means “Bible Mountain” or “mountain of the holy book”. For Taoists that book is of course the Tao Te Ching and Shengjing Shan owes its name to a mighty large boulder on the top of the mountain (at 385 meters altitude), in which all 81 verses of the Tao Te Ching are carved. Due to erosion this can no longer be seen very well, but here and there Chinese characters can still be distinguished. In addition, temples and altars can be found all over the mountain, ranging from very small to completely carved caves. It contains images of Taoist Immortals and other sages or divine beings and these places are still used as a place of pilgrimage. Last week, a Chinese lady came to the mountain to meditate and ask for advice because she was stuck in her life.
In many stories Taoist sages leave populated areas to settle in the mountains. They recognize that their teachings are not wanted at that particular moment, and so turn their backs on society in order to be able to fully concentrate on their teachings in nature. Also goes one of the origin stories of the Tao Te Ching: Lao Tzu, after it became clear to him that no one was interested in his education, took his belongings and headed for the mountains. Arriving at the city wall, a guard recognized the old sage and asked him to write down his wisdom before he would leave the city for good. Lao Tzu agreed, and after 81 verses gave the text to the guard, who arranged for the text to become public property. Lao Tzu was never heard from again.
Next to my school there is a golden statue of Lao Tzu, I estimate about 10 meters high. Behind that statue is a large Taoist temple complex in which the divine hierarchy follows the upward movement of the mountain: at the bottom small temples for lower deities and as we get higher the temples become larger and also the statues of the Immortals in question etc.
What is striking is the incredible versatility of colors, both on the outside but especially inside the temples. For starters the statues themselves are decked out in the most diverse and beautiful decorations. In one of the larger halls, the central image of a seated deity is accompanied by a reclining Blue Lion. Furthermore, especially in the large halls (the largest has the size of a solid Cathedral), the walls are almost completely covered with embroidered canvases on which Taoist figures of all kinds of plumage are depicted.
The lamps are true works of art with ornaments, usually made of gold and beautifully decorated with all kinds of yin-yang signs and other Taoist symbolism. The ceiling is decorated with crane motifs and incredibly colourful painted, often with green and blue as the main shades.
In every temple there are meditation cushions and almost everywhere are percussion instruments. Particularly in the Great Temple there’s a beautifully decorated drum, almost a timpani, with an impressive wooden frame around it. From the upper ring of the skeleton, a wooden stand protruded straight up to end in a dangerous-looking wooden elephant's head, on which hangs a golden bell.
Of course, I couldn't resist asking the abbot if I could play the drums (because I had learned to say in Chinese that I know how to use drumsticks: "我会打鼓.“). That abbot thought that was funny, because after my jam session he said that it sounded nice (“听起来不错”).
To get to the school you have to go through an entrance gate because Shengjing Shan is also a tourist attraction and that gate is located at the end of the village of Xiyu. There are two supermarkets (like very small seven elevens) where you can only get food and drinks in plastic, as well as clothes, shoes, tools, beer and soda, umbrellas, and other useful utensils. Every now and then my fellow students and I go for a beer and we consume it in the village square, which can result in hilarious scenes like when a slightly tipsy import Chinese (A Japanese) starts babbling just a little too loud and just a little too close to our faces, after which he ceaselessly begins to offer us cigarettes after he can’t manage to bring the flame of the lighter towards the cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
I find the nature on the mountain particularly interesting. There is a combination of deciduous and coniferous trees but there is also vegetation that resembles more tropical climates. Some research did indeed provide information that this area shows a special mixture of northern and southern vegetation. The mountain peaks are a mix of steep rocks with green forests and according to tradition, one of the high rock formations would show the face of Lao Tzu (also depicted on a large memorial plaque with the well-known 8 Taoist immortals, that you run into as soon as you pass the entrance gate to the mountain).
Intensive cultivation and deforestation in the past have caused animal life in this area to decrease drastically. Large species of birds and mammals can no longer be found here except for roe deer and owls. By contrast, the insect life is extremely extensive and colourful. We have seen fantastic bright green and camouflage coloured praying mantises. They move quite slowly and if you kneel down in front of them, then the head turns to my face. I have already done a stare contest with one of these rascals. The mantis won. There also seem to be snakes and scorpions in this area and I have already seen beautiful black dragonflies.
It is clear that we are here in the middle of the Chinese countryside. The peace is blissful and in the evening we go to bed with cricket concerts. The people here are super nice, there is plenty of work on the land and sometimes I see people washing their clothes in a nearby flowing stream. in the morning, behind the Statue of Lao Tzu, the sun rises during the morning training and you can smell the coolness of the mountain air, sometimes accompanied by a hint of anise. Contrary to reports of a lot of smog in the big cities, the air here is remarkably clean.
My room faces south and the mountain is behind the school facing north. So I look out over the wide valley and can fully follow the entire orbit of both the sun and the moon in clear weather. Sometimes the sun is bright red early in the morning. Just before it emerges, the sky turns almost blue-purple and when there’s clouds they seem to be on fire. Then, when the sun has just come out from behind the hill in that bright red state, we can look at it very briefly without blinking. Moreover, last week I woke up once at 4 a.m. The starry sky was spectacular and Orion stood proudly in the sky. These are gems of moments.
Upon my arrival mid-September the main street of the village was strewn with corn cobs; every 100 meters there was a strip of corn about two meters wide and ten meters long on the road. Everyone took that into account and every car and tricycle drove neatly around the corn. In the evening, whole families sat to extract the corn from the cobs and prepare it for transportation. Currently (at the end of October) it is clearly apple time, and large cargoes of just harvested apples are transported from here.
Those (mostly electric) tricycles are the most used means of transportation in the village. Brilliant fun things and at the school there is also one with which we can occasionally go to Xiyu or a village further away.
Also an almost daily recurring phenomenon: fireworks! Probably the fireworks discussion in the Netherlands around the new year will flare up again, but here no one’s making a fuss. Weddings, funerals, birthdays, New Years, harvests, Tuesdays, every occasion for loud bangs is a good one; at least so the adage seems to be here.
To get money we can go to the town of Gejia (葛家). That’s about an hour’s walk or half an hour by bus. However, if the ATM does not take the card there, we have to continue to the city of Wendeng (文登); normally half an hour by car but by bus at least an hour and a half. Nevertheless, we are in Wendeng for less than 50 eurocents and can practice our Chinese with the locals during the ride.
Food and drink
It’s been almost two months without coffee, cheese, chocolate and wine. Please let that sink in! All silliness aside, it takes amazingly little effort. My first weekend in China we ended up in a tea shop in Wendeng. There we were offered several teas to taste by a tea artist (a kind of barista for tea) during a fabulous tea party. The green tea I finally bought felt like velvet on the tongue and a black tea was reminiscent of spinach, but in an extremely pleasant way. In terms of drinking, it is mainly water and tea with the occasional sip of Coke, Sprite or an amazingly sweet soda from Russia that I like for a strange reason.
Three times a day we are served a fine meal. Breakfast consists of hot soy milk, white sandwiches (which are a bit more like cake) and boiled eggs. A packet of soy powder is poured over with hot water to make the soy milk and the sandwiches are dipped in it. Lunch and dinner are both hot meals in which rice or cornbread are the main ingredients, respectively. These are supplemented with mainly fresh vegetables, potato slices, chicken pieces and fruit. Very basic, but I'm feasting and have never eaten daily fresh food for so long in a row; nothing from packages here. And the funny thing is that even though I wake up one or two times a night, I wake up incredibly energized in the mornings.
Moreover, the very hip ‘food sharing movement’ is already well established here. The rice / bread is in our own bowl but with the chopsticks we always grab a bite from the plates you crave. By the way, my French fellow student Emil and I have a bet on who most often drops something from our sticks onto the table. It is a neck-on-neck race, but he already managed to grab a mosquito, that was drinking out of my arm, with his chopsticks and removed it.
Twice a week there is a market in the village where we get fresh fruit and other delicacies. By default we get bananas because they do very well in the morning in the warm soy milk. One of the comfort foods we find there is fried bread, almost like you're eating fried quibbling. Baked Ducks can also be found. The entrails have been removed, but the whole duck is waiting for a buyer. The seller cuts the duck into pieces for us and only the beak does not go in the bag. Say what you want about it, but little is wasted this way.
A few weeks ago we (the students) were invited to the initiation of the son of the president of the Tai Chi Federation from Yantai, one of the big cities in Shandong. This was an important meeting where many tai chi masters gave demonstrations. Afterwards there was a big banquet where the guests sat at round tables. On each table was a large glass plate that could rotate, so that all the food calmly came to our side. The food was great, lots of Fish and shellfish (Yantai is a port city) and a nice combination of vegetables, meat and sweets. In addition, the Chinese are not averse to alcohol, and I was served a glass of baijiu (pronounced: baaidzhu), a national Chinese drink distilled from fermented cereals, most often sorghum, wheat, rice and corn. With over 50% alcohol, I only needed two sips to make the shifu notice that my head was starting to turn red. I also thought that my Chinese was progressing way too quick.
Tai Chi progress
Training is progressing steadily and new postures are added every week. Currently I am learning the '24 form' which means that this form consists of 24 postures. These postures are connected by transitions (or: connecting steps) so that a recognizable sequence is formed.
The number of poses in a form varies greatly, ranging from just 4 steps to a massive 108 steps that take 20 minutes to perform!
Each tai chi movement is an exercise in balance, coordination, physical control and regulation of breathing. Learning is literally a matter of “falling flat on my face, picking myself up and getting back in the race”. Moreover I practice each new movement on its own before it’s incorporated into the form.
There is now also a line in the weekly program. At first, the different classes appeared to be separate from each other. Yet while learning the form, more and more elements seem to come together. During the Sanda (Chinese kickboxing) classes it is taught how to perform explosive movements from relaxation; that is called cultivating chi-power and comes back into the form. Stretching several times a day increases flexibility so that the spine can be kept straight during difficult exit passes like, at least for me, ‘snake creeps down’. Here the body is rotated a quarter of a turn and a low, long sidestep is made. Adequate freedom of movement in both the adductors and hamstrings are a prerequisite. The spine (trunk + head) should be kept straight while one hand is brought in front and the other behind the body. So I often fall over, but the satisfaction is enormous when there is no fall and even, dare I say it, some grace begins to enter the form.
Clothing
Finally a nice observation about clothes, because the sports wardrobe that I eventually brought to China was not exactly hindered by knowledge of what I would end up in. The reasoning “tai chi consists of calm movements so I won't sweat too much” could go into the trash after the first day of training. I would sweat and how! But I hadn’t taken that into account as I should have. So experience has taught me that training in a sweaty cotton shirt with cold wind outside quickly causes a cold. But ... as always, the universe provides. A student had left both a good sports T-shirt and a very nice training pants for me and now the majority of the daily used sportswear consists of acquired items that came my way at exactly the right time. That seems to happen very often when the confidence is there to take a leap of faith.
Jolly greetings,
Erik Stout