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My Younger Older Brothers

As you may have seen in movies, the Kungfu community here has a family and generational structure. Our master would be the father figure (Shifu), his master is the grandfather figure (Shiye), anyone who studied under our master’s master would be our aunt or uncle (Shushu), and anyone who studies under our master is our brother or sister. Brothers are further divided into older and younger, those who started studying before you (Shixiong), or those who started after (Shidi). Respect flows up this structure, as you might expect. So in my bumbling foreign way, I try to show respect to those above me and do what they say.

I am becoming more and more aware of the strange ways this structure juxtaposes with other issues in my life here, specifically in my interactions with my older kungfu brothers who are younger than me in age. I owe them respect, both because of tradition and because they are very skillful teachers. Further, they are at home in this culture and I look to them for guidance in how I conduct myself. So I frequently find myself imitating them almost unconsciously. Oh, that’s how I should do that stance. Oh, that’s what I do when Shiye visits.

Seeing them as role models in these ways sometimes blinds me as to their actual age, and I find myself imitating pretty immature behavior. Because in addition to kungfu teachers and Chinese natives, they are also 15-18 year old kids going through all the same bewildering stuff I went through not all that long ago. They are learning what professionalism means, what accountability means, learning about relationships, and learning about the world beyond the walls of the kungfu school and beyond the borders of China.

So I find myself in the strange situation of having to sometimes be a role model for my role models. It is difficult, because one frequently forgets if one should be learning or teaching at a given moment. Two people teaching each other at the same instant tends to devolve into an argument, and sometimes two learners becomes a case of the blind leading the blind. In truth, more often than not we all fall down and all behave like children, but I hope that in some ways I am having a good impact on them even as I learn from them.

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Pain and Injury as Part of Training Life

It has been my observation that the practice of martial arts revolves around the question of balancing training with injury. For the most practical, combative training, one probably wants to spar a lot. One adds rules to the sparring, because otherwise people get badly hurt. Even with rules, people get hurt sooner or later, so instead of hitting one another, martial artists often hit targets. This is important because one can not progress if one’s training is constantly interrupted recovering from injury. Safer still would be hitting only air, but I can tell you even Taiji can hurt your joints pretty badly while you are learning to coordinate your movements. So it seems to me that every martial artist confronts this question every time they approach training: How am I going to do this today and still be able to do it tomorrow?

Class two students practicing body hardening

This is on my mind these days, because we have been training pretty hard and I am consequently in a bit of pain. We are expected to train if we are able, and none of my injuries are serious enough to demand that I miss training, but they are all painful and they create mental stress. This in itself is a form of training, of course; maintaining emotional calm when every movement hurts.

The conclusion people come to, I think, is that there are two kinds of pain, good pain and bad pain, and both are valuable sources of information about what is going on in your body.  Specific pains can be a wealth of information about the balance of strength in different tendons and muscles. Good pain tells you that you are going beyond your current limits and improving. Bad pain tells you that if you keep going, you will do such damage that your training will have to be interrupted by recovery. One wants to push the line that divides the two as far as one can, so that though training is difficult, it can remain continuous.

As for the injuries that do inevitably occur when training hard, I am not a doctor but my experience has shown me that rest is not the best cure. Rest is necessary, but attentive light exercise will stimulate circulation, help the metabolism deliver energy and nutrients to the damaged area, and reduce recovery time. At least that is what I hope will happen, because my ribs are really sore…:-)

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Tacos in Wudang

The rare Wudang Taco little resembles it's Southwestern cousin, except in spirit

As I am settling back into the rhythm of life in Wudangshan, I thought I would write down one of my biggest impressions from my winter at home.

There’s truly no place like home. As much fun and excitement as maneuvering intercultural waters can be, the smallest tasks become significant undertakings. Example: yesterday I made tacos for my brother, Gao, who likes my cooking and missed it while I was gone. At home, I could complete a taco dinner, from conceiving the idea to plates hitting the table, in a few hours. There are grocery stores, organized in a way I understand. Ingredients are fairly consistently available, and I can ask questions comfortably and trust that the context in which I mean them will be understood.The conveniences of modern kitchens are not to be underrated.

Here, I shop at an outdoor market 20 minutes walk from our school. Crowded stalls separate my shopping into dry goods, fresh vegetables, and meat, tripling the amount of haggling to be done while I  dodge the piles of rotting refuse that the shopkeepers throw into the center aisle. Yesterday, I had to search high and low at three different markets to find cilantro, which normally would be easily available at any of the shops (I eventually found a rather wilted handful that worked well enough, though I think it was the last cilantro in all of Wudang). The meat is sold hanging on a hook in an outdoor stall. Logically, the seller does not take it out in the heat of the day, so if I want to buy meat I have to schedule my shopping for early morning or late afternoon. When I went to buy the bread I use to substitute for a tortilla, the vendor tried to tell me I couldn’t have the ones I wanted. I started to walk away, and his wife grabbed me and tried to direct my attention to some other, very nice, un-tortilla like bread. I said no thank you, and started to walk away again, and they thrust the tortilla bread at me, at which point I realized the price had gone up while I was away by 50%. Then I got home and realized why they had not wanted to sell it to me in the first place — stale, very stale. Then I had to use the kitchen. I tried to use one wok, and realized the wood fire beneath it from earlier had already died. I then switched to a coal brick burner, which cooked the food very nicely although I was choking on the coal fumes the whole while. Not bad tacos though, if I do say 🙂

I suspect that a Chinese person would feel as perplexed trying to prepare familiar foods in my local supermarket as I feel trying to cook here in China. It reminds me that no matter how widely I travel, no place will ever put me so at ease as the good old U.S.A.