Martial Arts Visit To China - 2008

Nick and Lynn Wojciechowski have recently returned from a second visit to China, the home of Kung Fu. This trip was with a Scottish Tai Chi group, the 7 Stars School of Taijiquan, (www.7starstjq.co.uk) and went to South Mount Wudang for six days training with the South Wudang Daoist Association. Bob Lowey, the principal instructor of the 7 Stars School is a disciple of Grand Master You Xuande, Leader of the Association. There was also some sightseeing at the beginning and end of the trip.

The trip looked to be getting off to an inauspicious start when we got to Glasgow airport. We discovered that our planned flight via Amsterdam to China had been cancelled, and we were being rerouted through Heathrow’s terminal 5. The luggage of two of the group was delayed, but happily thereafter all went well. We started off in Shanghai which straddles the Huangpu River just before it empties into the Yangtze. A massive city with a population of 20 million people; the initial impression is of traffic chaos – amazing when our guide tells us that only 20 years ago few people in the city had a car. We had a couple of days here - a beautifully tranquil garden oasis, a touristy area with many shops, an evening walk along the river bank. Perhaps the highlight, though, was the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, which is the third highest in the world. The viewing level gave a spectacular 360° view of Shanghai, with high rise buildings as far as the eye can see, and the Huangpu, busy with passenger and cargo boats. The ground floor of the tower held a museum of Shanghai life which demonstrated the European influences over the centuries - the origin of Shanghai’s relatively mixed culture.

An overnight train journey then took us to the city of Wuhan where we were going to meet Master You. Here we had our first ‘local flavour’ experience – going to one of the city’s many small noodle shops for breakfast. The city’s signature dish, hot dry noodles with a spicy peanut sauce was enjoyed by all. The shop was very busy with locals & we were definitely a bit of a curiosity. Wuhan doesn’t appear to have many Westerners, certainly not 11 at once in one of these small shops. We visited the Yellow Crane Tower in the afternoon and later discovered this had been at the time of the massive earthquake - during that night we had several text messages from friends to check we were OK as news spread to the West, and in the morning our guide told us she had been aware of a tremor, though not of its significance.

After breakfast we were taken to meet Master You, who made us extremely welcome, speaking to each of us individually through an interpreter, Jiali, who was a friend of Bob’s and a member of our group. He instructed Bob and some others to demonstrate their tai chi progress since the last visit in the car park, and took a great many photos. We were travelling to Wudang Mountain by bus, and Master You travelled with us. On the way we stopped at Wudang Martial Arts Office in Huang Gang, in what had been the home of an ancient Chinese poet, Su DongPo. This was an incredibly tranquil setting. Some of Master You’s disciples did Tai Chi, Bagua and Xing Yi demonstrations for us. These were extremely impressive, with very obvious power.

The coach journey to South Mount Wudang took around 6 hours, over some of the worst roads we have ever travelled on. The holes were huge, looking like years of deterioration. The traffic weaved all over the road to avoid the dangers, the bus was bouncing – scary stuff! Part of the road was a vast 8 lane highway with no road markings; we assumed that they had simply worn off. As we moved away from the city we started to see paddy fields, buffaloes pulling ploughs, rice being planted, and rice which had been harvested being threshed. Sometimes this was being done on the inside lane of the highway – again the traffic just drove around. We stopped for dinner en route to Wudang - our second ‘local flavour’ experience - in a very small restaurant run by a farmer, and we were told that the food would be ‘wild’. One dish was a chicken stew, including the head, feet and the unlaid eggs which had been inside the bird when it was killed for the pot. When asked, the farmer willingly removed the head from the dish but it certainly was an unexpected sight for our group.

It was dark when we arrived at our hotel. Everyone was tired but also excited that our training was going to be starting the next day, and when it arrived it was beautiful, sunny and clear – it was great to be away from the city haze. We were surprised to see that we were in a small village – it had been so dark when we arrived that we hadn’t noticed.

We had training for the next six days, 8.30 till around 11.30am, and 3 – 6pm under the excellent tuition of Master Qu, one of Master You’s disciples. The training areas were at the Temple and the South Wudang Academy, each almost a half hour hike up the mountain, so we were well warmed up, morning and afternoon, by the time we got there. All the training was outdoors which was great, the fresh air and fabulous scenery completing the whole experience. We settled into a routine of ‘having a blether’ around the table after dinner. On one notable occasion Jiali decided that we were all going to learn a Chinese song about two tigers, which strangely was set to the music of Frère Jacques. She had us singing lines individually - even those who normally never sing in public! - to make sure we had mastered the words, then altogether and of course we had to finish by singing it in parts. The fresh air, two hours walking up and down the mountain and six hours tuition each day meant that on most nights everyone was tucked up in bed by 9pm!

The training itself was quite different from anything Nick & Lynn had done before. It felt strange to be involved in training sessions which were not challenging from a cardiovascular point of view. Wudang Tai Chi is quite different from Tai Chi we have seen in the West, having some fast movements, but the focus is very much on leg strength and holding low postures. Although we were never out of breath, our thigh and calf muscles certainly felt the effort we were putting in. Also different was the fact that most of our kung fu stances involve tilting the hips back to enhance body linking, stability and rooting to the ground, whereas with Wudang Tai Chi the object is to tuck the hips under to enhance the circular flow of Chi - vital energy - round the body. Master Qu constantly worked at getting us all into the correct postures and it was a relief for us to see that everyone was having the same difficulty. The problem was not that Tai Chi was new to us, more that most Westerners do not have the correct very early training to allow them to fully achieve the postures required. Qu understood this but still pushed us all to get as close as possible to what he was looking for.

The other surprising aspect for us was the very relaxed approach to the training sessions. We are accustomed to working constantly throughout a session, with only short breaks for drinks of water. Here, periodically someone would, for example, suggest some photos and we would have fun setting up poses for everyone. It took us a while to accustom to this, but it certainly made for a less intense feeling, and we still completed the form we were being taught. Master Qu was a delight. He was young, serious when he needed to be, but had an irrepressible sense of humour and a great enthusiasm for Tai Chi. Coming from our Kung Fu background, we found it hard at times to keep soft hand movements, so he regularly made fun of our tiger’s claws, pretending to claw and roar at us like a tiger. After our last days training, Master Qu and two of the others with whom we had regular contact joined us for dinner, giving us the opportunity to thank them and have a toast to the enjoyment we had all had at Wudang.

Master You did us the honour of inviting the group to his home on the mountain above the temple - a total of 518 steps from the bottom level. We were also delighted to be able to witness the induction as disciples of two members of our group and a Chinese woman. This is a very formal ceremony, involving making a lifetime commitment to Daoism and to Master You and Wudang Tai Chi. The disciple is then given a new name chosen by the Master. This name begins with You Li; the Master’s name followed by Li, which says that the person is a 15th generation disciple. Our two colleagues became You Li Lun, so called because he is English and Lun sounds like the beginning of London, and You Li Hai, which reflected the fact that he is currently living in Shanghai. The disciples are not required to live at the Temple, but are expected to make regular visits. For Chinese disciples it is not permitted to cut their hair, but Westerners are excused this. These ceremonies were followed by demonstrations of forms by disciples, and some of their defensive applications. Master You showed these, involving our group members both as ‘victims’ and having us practise on each other.

While at Wudang we stayed in a very basic hotel in a small village. The staff of the hotel were warm, friendly and hospitable, even joining in our ‘Two Tigers’ singing evening. It was extremely interesting to see something of the life of the local people who clearly worked very hard, terracing and farming every square yard of land. They regarded us with good humour, smiling as we trekked up the mountain road twice a day. The road itself had little motorised traffic, mostly a few motor bikes, so instead an assortment of cattle, goats and chickens kept us company.

It was strange to move back to the cities after this beautiful environment. We were all keen to do some souvenir shopping and to relax a bit, so we didn’t do very much more sightseeing – our guide tailored the last couple of days to our needs very well. One of the highlights for us was an hour one afternoon after some shopping when we all went to a coffee shop, just sitting outside chatting & doing nothing. Actually, having coffee available was one definite benefit of being back in a city!

This was a thoroughly enjoyable trip enhanced by the fact that our small group gelled well. A couple of days into training, we were given red South Wudang T shirts, and from then on we were ‘Team Wudang’. We would like to thank Bob for organising the trip and letting us go along, and all the group members for making a couple of ‘tiger’s claw’ people feel welcome.