A New Challenge (5)

Reading time: 8 minutes

Image: Erik Stout (wrapped in an electric blanket)

Heating heating heating!

While Black Friday apparently caused no casualties this year, In Holland Sinterklaas has yet again left the country, moms are going crazy preparing Christmas dinners and in corporate everyone drives each other crazy, like always, to get the books ready before the end of the year; for the first time since I can’t even remember that completely bypasses me.

At the moment I have been away from the Netherlands for more than three months and that’s a milestone for me; I haven’t been out of the country for so long before. It's funny to notice that the above features already seem like something from a long and distant past. Because at the moment winter has really started here in Eastern China and the main activity is to keep myself warm. It has already been freezing for a week and we are entering a frost period of about nine days in which the temperature will not rise above zero degrees (with outliers to -13 Celcius). If you consider that the difference between the indoor and outdoor temperature in the school building is at most about 10 degrees Celcius, you get a bit of a picture of our conditions, and it becomes understandable that there is not much occupation with anything besides keeping warm.

For eating in the dining room a ski suit is already mandatory. Our breathing clouds compete for space with the steam of the food and I am now also learning how to use chopsticks with my left hand because each hand needs to thaw for a while in a jacket pocket after three minutes. In addition, I wrote in the previous episode that there was no heating in the building, but this is not entirely true. Each room has an air conditioning unit; some a standing model (like a big fridge) and others a classic air conditioning unit high on the wall; all those things can blow hot air.

My room has a unit high on the wall (about 2,5 meters), and I think it's about 35 years old. Since there is hardly any insulation and the wonderfully large windows consist of single glass, the warm air stops falling at about 1.5 meters and then rises again just as fast. So that doesn't work at all and I'm starting to notice that the lack of a heat source in these conditions really is a shortcoming. Therefore I bought an electric heater; that way I can at least warm up quickly when I'm cold and sweaty after a training, have a little bit of a warm room after a shower and which I can turn on a few minutes before getting out of bed.

Image: School building in the snow (Erik Stout)

Talking about showering and how little things can make life so much more enjoyable. When I got here, we lacked a shower wiper. There was a kind of mop, but that hardly moves water towards the well (and doesn’t dry the floor). Especially in September and October, when it was still warm here and we were eaten alive by mosquitoes, that stagnant water was delicious...for the mosquitoes. Until I found shower wipers in the neighbourhood minimarket, which made both showering and the weekly cleaning a lot more pleasant.

The shower room, by the way, consists of the shower and two toilets that are separated from each other by chipboard walls and doors. Furthermore, the floor and walls are tiled and there is no heating, but there is hot water. Now that it starts to get cold, the tile floor becomes especially unpleasant because when I step on the dry tiles after a shower, they are freezing cold. So if the shower just warmed me up, the floor immediately turns my feet back to ice lumps. Yet as always: the universe provides: I found a wonderful shower mat in a supermarket that I put on the floor after showering, keeping my precious delicate feet nice and warm!

And another little case of universe provides: to be able to type, with or without a heater, I need gloves without fingertips. My fellow student Emile still had a few lying around and because he had bought new ones, I was allowed to have them. Great for getting through the winter!

Tai Chi and San Da

Letting the body move like water (or wind) turns out to be a lot more difficult than it seems and in my case the pelvic and hip areas seem rather stuck. Where the first form (the ‘24’ form) was actually mastered quite quickly in terms of structure,[1] I’m now struggling with the ‘22’ form. It consists of a lot more torso twists and weight displacements from left to right than the 24 and after more than a month the level of progress, at least in my experience, remains way too low. This form moreover feels much more subtle than the 24, which perhaps also reveals something about my subtlety in general.

In addition, it is interesting to note that on the one hand I find it quite difficult to be continuously watched, assessed and adjusted on the performance, but on the other hand very pleasant because it puts great focus on how I move. The way we move often reflects our state of being and obstructions in the body can indicate obstructions in the mind.[2] Again we see, as in the case of stress for example, that the body provides information about the state of our entire organism.

The blockage in the hip and pelvic area does not come as a surprise. In recent years I have run into blockages in that area more often and it is a nice present to now have the time and opportunity to examine the area and thus find out what is needed to allow the energy flows to move freely throughout the body.

Image: With my buddy Emile on top of the holy mountain “Shengjing Shan” (圣经山)

In addition there is an unexpected pleasure, because I really like to learn San Da, or Chinese kickboxing. I enjoy learning to punch, kick (without falling over), fend off and take an opponent out. In addition I have a great sparring partner with my fellow student Emile, because he is trained in taekwondo and has experience with other martial arts. So apart from the master I can also learn a lot from him. By the way, Emile is an interesting guy with a bizarre story, which I will share in a next episode.

State of affairs in the village

Now that winter has started I get a bit of a picture of village life in the cold. Until the end of October, the villagers were busy on the land. On a few fields near the school, where vegetables were pulled out of the ground in September (I think Chinese cabbage), they were filled with trees in October. They are now bare and I am very curious what will grow next year.

Image: Trees planted in autumn (Erik Stout)

In the two neighbourhood mini markets there is an elevation on the left at the entrance the size of a spacious double bed (very spacious, say a mini stage). On that elevation there are blankets and under there is a kind of coal stove, so that that ‘stage’ is wonderfully heated. That seems to be a common way to stay warm in the winter and the whole family usually lies on it when I come in for my weekly groceries.

Now, before there are questions about why there are no such coal stoves in the school: that's because the school is on holy ground. Once the entrance gate to the Shengjing Shan (literally: mountain of the Holy Book, by which is meant the Tao Te Ching) is passed, only the monks and nuns of the Taoist monastery are allowed to make fire. According to the master, this is controlled quite strictly and the police are quickly at the door if smoke rises from the school building.

Book tips

For those of you who already know me, it will come as no surprise that I am still devouring wonderful books. Here are some tips for the holidays.

I recently read Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. I recommend his Discworld books to anyone who can appreciate shameless laughter at all our little vices, cunning and ignorance on which we often base our behaviour.

Small Gods tells the story of the Great God Om, founder and protector of the state of Omnia, who finds himself currently trapped in the body of a one-eyed tortoise due to a drastic drop in true believers. His only remaining true believer is Brutha, a rather simple monk at the bottom of the order, who has to compete with Om against Vorbis, the Chief Exquisitor of the Quisition, who, as is customary, does not believe in Om at all but uses the name of the god for his own purposes. Brilliant and wonderfully funny satire!

G.K. Chesterton – The Club of Queer Trades

I'm a fan of Chesterton because of his poetic way of storytelling and fabulous sense of paradox. In the Club of Queer Trades, the story is told of an eccentric and Bohemian Club, to which one can only become a member if the candidate has invented a completely new method by which he earns his living; it should be a completely new industry. Chesterton describes that the discovery of this strange club is a curiously refreshing thing, namely the realization that discovering ten new professions in the world gives the same feeling as watching the very first ship or the very first plow. It makes a person feel what he or she should feel in the childhood of the world, where everything is still possible. Read the book online via the link in the title.

Heinrich Zimmer – Philosophies of India

Zimmer was a German Indologist who ended up in the United States fleeing from the Nazis. His greatest tragedy was that he was never able to visit the country for which his love was so great. Joseph Campbell, known for The Hero With a Thousand Faces, attended Zimmer's lectures at Columbia University and devoted the 12 years after Zimmer's death to editing and accomplishing his major works, including this Philosophies of India.

In this work, Zimmer and Campbell take us on a journey of discovery through the different philosophies that originated in India from ancient times. The realization of the ultimate truth that lies in Brahman, nirvana, or moksha, is viewed and described from different perspectives and the largest currents including Jainism, Sankhya & Yoga, Vedanta, Buddhism and Tantra are extensively compared with each other. This work is a must for lovers of the colourful and stimulating philosophies of India and incidentally offers many opportunities for increasing one's own insight.

Enjoy and jolly greetings,
Erik Stout

[1] Mastered in the sense that there is an understanding of how the figure should be executed. Of course, there is no question of a natural and smooth execution for a long time.

[2] See here how emotions can be identified through observation of our gait (or: way of walking).