I didn’t do much Tuishou last Wednesday night. I spent the time with forms and stretching, and watching other people push. I did one session with The Guy Who is Not from China, who is beginning to employ the quick push method, trying to surprise me into tightening me up. I’ve found that the most common methods of getting one’s opponent to tighten up into a rigid, easy-to-push line are force and speed. While I do need to learn to deal with these better, I’d still like to get more into more complicated aspects as well, such as yielding and meeting force without tightening up, and delivering power from that state.

Saturday morning found the concert hall at CKS Memorial half-covered in scaffolding, but our space was still mostly there. A worker with a hose sprayed the remains of cigarettes and bird droppings from the floor nearby. I practiced the empty-handed form but not sword as I seem to have broken my practice sword and will have to get another one. This is the third one; I need to take better care of them.

I was reminded as I practiced the form that, not only are there a million things to remember, but also that I am doing a great deal of them wrong. A lot of it is just internalizing all of these things until I don’t have to think about them. Then they will hopefully join my list of tools for use not only in forms and Tuishou, but daily life as well.

Mr. Qin arrived later on, as I was taking some pictures. It seems that, though he is about my age, he actually also studied along with Teacher Xu under his old teacher, the late Teacher Yu, who was a student of Master Song, also deceased. It seems that there’s a bit of intrigue here, as a group of devotees of the late Master Song happen to practice on the veranda on other side of the concert hall, and have been known to act out a bit whenever they catch sight of anyone wearing our purple uniform. They seem to think we’re trying to steal their secrets or something, I guess. Not From China Guy said that, when he was walking by, they glared at him and said “WTF are you looking at?”

Teacher Xu said that they actually worship Master Song and follow his secretive methods. They also frown on Teacher Xu, seeing him as a kind of renegade disciple, which I think is pretty cool. Next time I’m over there, maybe I’ll go take a look.

“Little Qin” (as Teacher Xu calls Mr. Qin) is apparently also involved with them to some degree. I didn’t talk with him about it too much as I practiced with him, however. He told me that I needed to free up my hips and suggested some exercises. I find that I twist too much when I push, which exposes too many weaknesses.

The day became quite hot as noon approached and the other groups left us alone on the balcony. Mr. V and the guy I pushed with at Sun Yat-sen Hall got pretty busy, resulting in Mr. V sustaining a no-doubt unintentional eye-poking. Later, he and an older student practiced moving Tuishou, and they danced around the balcony trying to shove each other over.

“Some people push very well but only in one way,” Teacher Xu was saying. “It could be, however, that if you change your tactics a bit, approach them from a different angle, you’ll find that they won’t be able to deal with it very well.”

I’m always up late on Friday nights, so getting up on Saturday morning is tough. I managed to get to CKS Hall’s concert hall around 9am. The opera hall is all covered up for “renovation” and the concert hall looks like it is going to get the same treatment, whatever that is. Part of the balcony had been roped off, and all of the groups practicing were crowded together. Right next to our group was a group that looked like they were practicing Shaolin-style moves, all dressed in a particularly ill-advised shade of black, considering the punishing heat of the sun that day. It reminded me of way back when I practiced a similar style, all kicks and jumps and sudden, harsh tight moves. Not surprisingly, none of them looked older than 40.

Teacher Xu corrected me on some of my form moves, and then taught me a few more. I don’t mind going slowly; I figure I will try and keep just the two forms up, the sword and the empty-handed one I’m working on now, as I’ve forgotten two other sword forms and a many empty-handed ones over the years.

At one point a thin, older fellow in white came up and wanted to do Tuishou with me. He was apparently an old student of Teacher Xu’s, or at least they knew each other. He pushed a little like Yang Qing-feng, but faster and with a more limited repertoire, often repeating the same moves. I didn’t try to push him, instead just going back and forth for a while.

Later on a heavy-set fellow dressed in our uniform arrived. I didn’t recall ever seeing him before, but he obviously knew everyone. His name was Mr. Qin, and he talked about the stir caused when someone posted some Tai-chi-related articles on a Hong Kong Internet Tai-chi discussion forum. Apparently some pretty petty threats were tossed around. I listened to Teacher Xu and Mr. Qin as I practiced my form, fascinated at the level of complexity in the Tai-chi community, something I’ve never really been exposed to. After listening to them discuss it at length, I was rather glad of that as well.

Teacher Xu had to leave around noon, and there were only a few students left, including Mr. Qin. I asked if we could do some tuishou, and he obliged. When we started, I was discouraged to note that he seemed to push more like the Tree Root group and less like Teacher Xu. One time he pulled me down fairly harshly. “There’s no need for that,” I said.

“Sorry,” he said. I felt disappointed and wondered if I should just stop and go home, but there was something in his pushing style that seemed more substantial than the usual tree root stuff I encounter on Wednesdays, so I stayed. For one thing, he would push until he met resistance, and part of the reason he seemed so tight and inflexible was that he was putting more emphasis on the “locking” part of our mantra than the “relax” part, but also because he was seeing if I could get out of the holds. Once I admitted that I had run out of ideas, he was glad to explain the answers to me, and things improved from there. As with Qing-feng, I wonder how much of what he explained can be transferred to use while pushing with other people, but I guess I’ll find that out when I try it with other people. It turns out that Mr. Qin is actually an army officer who works at the Ministry of Defense. Interesting.

By the time I left. Only a couple of students from our group remained as I crossed the baking square on my way back to the MRT station.

I was tired last night, as it had been a long day. After going through my forms and stretching, Mr. V walked up and offered to practice with me. I was a bit surprised as he’d been reluctant to push with me for some time. Recently he’s been hanging out with the Tree Root group, and I wondered if he’d learned anything new from them.

We began to push, as usual, with our respective right legs forward, which meant I had a disadvantage due to the old injury in my left knee. Oddly enough, Mr. V seemed intent on pushing me with one hand. Time after time he failed and had to resort to using two hands, but he kept trying to use one hand. I recalled way back when he was just starting out, I once pushed him over with one hand. Apparently he remembered as well.

Mr. V’s technique has become more subtle over the past few months, but it remains for the most part just as forceful. The Tree Root method involves setting one’s hands in a fixed position locking your opponent’s arms and using strength to keep them from moving, pushing inexorably back in a fixed direction. I have to say Mr. V has picked up on the concept pretty well; the way he pushes is a lot more similar to the Tree Root Master than before. Still, most of the time he had to resort to the ol’ college football charge to push me over. I let him, stepping back before anyone broke anything. I’ve still got bruises on my arm from the couple of times I tried to resist.

I waited for opportunities to show up and took them. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they would have worked had I not telegraphed ahead what I was doing, and sometimes they just flat out didn’t work. There were a few times where I manipulated him just so that he would fall over on his own. That’s my favorite strategy.

Time passed, and we kept pushing, still on the same foot. Mr. V was intent on some purpose, I felt. The light on the monument had gone out and the dancing ladies had departed by the time I finally suggested we switch feet. The pushing changed in nature then, as I had more backward space that way due to a stronger back stance. We pushed as other changed partners again and again, as Teacher Xu went around instructing others. It was hot and everyone was sweating profusely. I wasn’t too tired as I had for the most part given up using force and was trying to deal with Mr. V’s tactics as softly as possible. Students started leaving as 11pm approached. We’d started at 8:30.

Eventually we gained an audience as students stopped pushing and prepared to leave. I heard the new little guy, whose surname is the same as the Chinese term for Weeble-Wobble, mention “the foreigner” in an apparent reference to me. When this happened, Mr. V finally threw in the towel. A good thing, too, as I was becoming very thirsty.

I formally introduced myself to Weeble and said he could use my name to refer to me in the future, and not to call me “Elder Brother Teacher” as he apparently wanted to. The idea of levels and competition only hurt everyone’s chances to learn this particular art, I think.

I haven’t written for a couple of weeks, so I’ll have to play a bit of catch-up here.

Yang Qing-feng has been giving me a lot of tips lately. I’ve always found him one of the most difficult to push, and I would rather emulate his style than the tree-root group. Qing-feng is all about flexibility and rotation, not giving your opponent anything to push. He pushes me into a compromising position and then waits for me to figure out how to get out of it. I feel like a real rank beginner pushing with him, but I do feel like I’m making a little progress. Earlier, as I pushed with Mr. Hu, who has been hanging out with the tree-root group, the other members stood around until he won a bout. They made some appreciative noises and, apparently satisfied with their approach, went back to their discussion on tree-root tactics.

Last Wednesday Teacher Xu told me to concentrate on my lower backbone and torso rather than on my feet. It seemed to work. Apparently you can adjust your focus on your opponent, be it their feet, backbone, etc., but you shouldn’t concentrate on your own feet. He also said that too much swiveling of the hips can betray you, as it’s a move easily taken advantage of.

I’ve been going to practice on Saturday mornings at CKS Hall as well recently in order to further my study of the form I’ve been learning very slowly over the past few months. I figure that I will stop after that and just concentrate on one empty-handed form and the one sword form; that should be plenty to occupy me. Every time I learn a new one the old ones just go out the window, it seems. Another area I need to work on it stretching out my leg muscles, particularly the back of my thighs. They’ve always been too tight; even when I was a kid I had a hard time touching my toes.

Last Saturday when I was finished going through the form, the other students were doing Tuishou, so I joined in. I usually find Mr. Hu pretty easy to push; everyone else pushes me onto my backstance very quickly, which is training it pretty fiercely. I’m able to move further back now than I used to be, and my backstance is also stronger and more stable than before as well. One time a foreigner came up and talked with Teacher Xu for a while; it turned out that he was a yoga student from England. He seemed very interested in the art, but he was only going to be here for a short time.

There was a new guy I’d never seen before at practice at CKS Hall last time, baguaquan. He seemed to really want to push with me, and not long after we started he asked me if I was a student of the Zheng Man-qing school, as he felt I pushed in that style. For his part, he had five or six set moves that he cycled through, most of them meant to catch his opponent off balance. He became increasingly frustrated as we pushed. One time he managed to get me just about pushed over. I was bent over and unstable, and he’d basically beaten me. He made a quick, violent move and shoved me onto the concrete floor, right onto my bad knee.

I was pissed, but I restricted myself to telling him that I had no interest in studying the ba-gua moves he seemed to want to practice. This was tuishou practice, not pro wrestling. I sat for a bit nursing my sore knee before hobbling off across the square. My knee still bears a bruise, but it doesn’t hurt any more. It wasn’t that big a deal, but it’s a little frustrating to encounter such situations.