Actually I really am living my Chinese dream! I was walking back to my room in Liu Xueshang gong Yu with my new friend Yuan from Yunan who's a sweet taiji fanatic. We'd just finished pushing hands - the last hour of my 3hr evening practice - and were having a Chinglish chat where I speak in Chinese and she fills in the gaps with English and we'd frequently break off to discuss the etimology of a Chinese character. I've been given a great book and my brush strokes are coming along.
It's not a case of too liitle too late. More so much more to learn and less and less time. I'm almost regretting the comfort if classmates but that's been a great part of my China experience too tho there's been some hard lessons learnt there as well.
Which leads me back to tonight's midnight hour (I loved that late night Channel 4 programme -think that's when I first saw Germaine Grier, I digress with my late night ramblings...)
Psychology - half of my first degree and I feel I'm back there again with my latest readings from Maciocia the TCM emperor if the West. So Juan and I were trying to find the meaning of the two Chinese words for psychology - 'xin li'. Xin means heart, but li is confounding us. It's the same li as in 'wu li' that she teaches to pay for her studies. Wu 'it's in trees and clothes' I finally pinpointed as matter. But the li
is waiting for dictionary and the start of tomorrow's lesson.
As for the pushing hands - that's been a very sharp learning curve too. This pic is of my first encounter with my Hunyuan - primordial chaos- taiji group in March. The teacher (who disappeared within 2 weeks back home to Shandong Province, leaving me with his unruly bunch of students half of whom have become my 'Laoshi' and teach me different versions of the same exercise to confuse me. So now when I'm doing the form I have to be aware of which Laoshi is watching so that I mimick his or her version. Call me paranoid but.... I still haven't lowered my heightened sensitivity to acclimatise to the brash NE tendency to sound like they're having a full-blown brawl when they're just passing the time of day. The fisticuffs are not so uncommon here, especially in clinic!
So, back to that first chat with the teacher. I saw that his form was different Chen style but different and was too arrogant to be bothered to learn a deviant Chen style. So I said i was interested in pushing hands. He saw my Zhanzhuang (standing qigong) and said I had no Peng energy and made me stand with hands higher.
After 5 months Juan finally get together at the end of her practice around 9pm and push hands. The last time a classmate of hers came up and pushed me over - well almost. I sent an SOS email to my Chenjiagou taiji bro in Brisbane. His tips not only helped me to feel connected in the rear foot and feel the balloon in datian but miraculously the old knees stopped hurting. And of course the key is a calm mind and to play 'da' for the fun to learn to relax when being pushed and to use the other's push to root yourself...
So farewell dinners start next week and also a visit to famous Dr clinic with my Chinese buddy and lecturer who is a PhD student here with the aim of seeing some TCM treatments for cancer.
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