The old guy from last week was already at the park when I arrived, and Mr. You showed up soon afterwards as I was going through my sword form. I’m gradually getting used to the bigger, heavier sword, but it will be a while before it feels natural. The old guy had a very small, very stupid dog with him. It had an alarming tendency to run underneath people’s feet and wait to be stepped on.

Everyone else showed up, including Teacher Xu, the annoying woman from last week and the new guy. I began pushing with Mr. You, who was more forceful and tightly-wound this week for some reason. My instinct is to fight force with more force, and I have to tell myself to relax and, if I can’t counter a move that way, to just not counter it at all. Later, Mr. You said he was “trying new things.”

As we practiced, the annoying woman stood next to us and gave a running commentary with such brilliant narrative efforts as “Ooh, so good!” and “His arms are really long!” Her comical noises became so grating that I finally said, “Let’s go somewhere a little quieter,” and we moved to the other side of the square. The annoying woman followed us, ostensibly trying to gather up the suicidal dog and keep it from being trampled.

I was really tired, having gotten up before 7am that morning due to an overdose of sunlight coming in my window, but I managed to push with the new guy for a while. Mainly all I had to do was stand there while he anchored me to the ground with his pushing. Then I pushed with another older new-ish guy, who referred to the Tree Root Master as “teacher”, so I imagine he’s going to follow that route. I then practiced with Teacher Xu’s son, who had perfected one simple, forceful push and was damned if he wasn’t going to use it.

After that I was bushed, and sat drinking the rest of my water while the other chatted. The mosquitoes were bad that night, raising itchy lumps on my wrists and arms.

Saturday practice was canceled due to the typhoon, but it should be on again this weekend. On Wednesday night the new guy from last week was at the park when I arrived, along with an older couple, a middle-aged woman and an older man with white sweatpants hiked up over his stomach. They were chatting with some of the other students, so I went to practice the forms.

Practicing with the new sword, I was still getting used to it. It really adds to the inertia of the moves, the power of the strokes. The sword is not a flickable toy of no consequence, but a solid weapon. The heavy metal clunks into place. I don’t know why I bothered with the other one for so long.

I sat on the ground stretching and watching the other students push. Teacher Xu arrived and started talking with the new people. Mr. You, feeling much better than last week, approached me wanting to practice, so we started pushing. “I’m still using too much force,” I said at one point, shaking my head. “I need to cut that out.”

But Mr. You disagreed. “That’s not just force, that’s energy; you’re issuing energy. Nothing wrong with that.” I tried to think of it that way, but I ended up using all resistance and no deflection. It just didn’t work.

Next I pushed with Mr. Wang, who pointed out how rigid and unyielding I was, but didn’t seem to want to hear that about himself. I really find that, the more I talk about pushing, the less I learn. I need to just shut up and listen more.

Class was wrapping up, the students gathering together and chatting about this and that. Teacher Xu was instructing the three new people, so I walked over to listen. Usually when Teacher Xu is talking about tuishou, there’s something to be learned. But instead he told me to push with the older guy. “Don’t attack or use any sudden moves; just let him push,” he said. The woman took one look at me and said, “Oh, here comes a big challenge!” as if she thought I look really imposing. She yelled some pigeon English at me. I ignored her and began practicing with the guy in the sweatpants.

I did my best, and though the old guy got pretty busy on me, it wasn’t much of a challenge. If I weren’t wondering if he was having some kind of fit I would have laughed out loud. We only sparred for a short while. All three were praising my so-called “skills” despite my assurance that most if not all of the other students were better than I am. But I suppose they’ll find that out if they stick around long enough.

I bought a new practice sword today from the martial arts supply store on Nanchang Road, which is only open until 6pm on weekdays. Instead of the cheaper, lighter plastic retractable practice swords I’ve been using, this time I spent a little more and got a solid steel one. It’s bigger, longer, sturdier and most importantly, heavier. When I was practicing at the park it was like doing a whole new form; the weight really makes a difference. The extra length took some getting used to as well, but the weight made each move different, using different muscles and creating new dynamics. Actually, many of the moves in the form make more sense with a heavier weapon, and I think it will be smoother after I get used to it. Definitely money well spent, though the first time I tried it the sword rattled. I’d already removed the tassle as well, and was worried that they might not take it back, but the second time I used it the rattle was gone. It must not have opened all the way.

I practiced with one of the Tree Root guys first. “You’ve really improved!” He said. Lots of people say that, but I have my doubts. “Why don’t you say anything? I just told you that you’ve really gotten better,” he said.

“I still have a lot of problems,” I said. It was better than expressing any doubt in his sincerity. Good or bad, comparing different people…it’s all just an illusion of what’s really going on. I find the less I think about such things the better. There was a new guy there, pushing rather successfully with Mr. V. I wondered if he’d studied before.

I pushed with Mr. You for a while, but he wasn’t feeling well and quit after a short time. Then Teacher Xu walked up accompanied by the new guy, a young, excited-looking guy wearing black. “He’s just started tonight,” Teacher Xu told me. “Practice with him.” We began pushing and the new guy immediately flew into a frenzy of pushing this way and that. Most of the time all I had to do was wait for him to push himself over. He was almost sparring, but I refused to accelerate to his speed and tried to take each move as it came. He wore himself out fairly quickly.

Next up was the small guy with whom I had the disastrous encounter at Sun Yat-sen Hall a while back. I was very cautious and bailed at the first sign of trouble, lest anyone get hurt. “Why don’t you attack me?” he said.

“Because I don’t think I can handle your counter-attack,” I said. It was true enough, but he thought it was stupid.

“How can anyone learn anything that way?” he said. But I’d rather come away with a little less knowledge and nothing broken than vice-versa. He did slow down, though, and at least talked about not using force. “I’m not using force, see?” he would say, as he used a considerable amount of force. I couldn’t help but laugh at this, and I’m afraid he took offense as a result. Oh, well. It was funny.

Last up was Weeble, who gave an impressive tree root-inspired performance. “Relax, relax!” he told me as he grabbed my wrists in a tight, inflexible hold.

“How come you’re telling me to relax; you’re tight as a drum!” I said.

“I can’t relax,” he said. “I don’t know how.” I’m not sure that he meant by that. Isn’t that one of our big objectives, after all?

But it was getting late, and the lights of the 8/23 Battle Monument were switched off. Students were leaving. I left as the new young guy chatted with Teacher Xu. He seems really into this stuff; I wonder what inspired him to this degree.

Due to the typhoon last Wednesday, there was no practice in Yonghe. As I approached the Concert Hall at CKS on Saturday, I spied Teacher Xu talking with an older white guy in black. For a moment I thought one of the Shaolin guys had come over, but he wasn’t from their group either. Just after I arrived, he and Teacher Xu left, so I couldn’t hear what they were talking about. Another foreigner, Zach, who I saw once a long time ago was there, as well as another student I haven’t seen in a while, the UPS guy.

Our group had moved to the east side of the balcony by the coffee stand to escape the construction. I practiced the form for a while but kept running out of space, so I pushed with Mr. Lin for a while. Afterwards, Teacher Xu returned, and said that the older white guy was a trade representative from the US who found out about our group from his hotel and introduced, for some reason, by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He must be pretty high-level. Teacher Xu said the guy really needed to relax his body; he was apparently a little unyielding. Now isn’t that just like a US trade official? I thought snarkily. Teacher Xu said he’d been invited to teach a symposium or something in the states: cool.

My uniform was dirty, so I was in regular garb that day. Teacher Xu must have thought I was ready for another video-gathering excursion to the other side to film The Other Group, saying I shouldn’t push my luck.

I pushed with Zach for a while. He’s moved down to Taidong and rarely gets up this way, accounting for his long absence. Zach has the habit of stepping forward into his pushes, giving him added momentum, but also resulting in my often being backed into a wall or column. Later I pushed with the UPS guy, who is tall, taller than I am, and with actual negative body fat. He’s good at tuishou and I tend to learn a lot when pushing with him, though he came close to mangling my wrists while teaching me how to escape certain grasping tactics.

Another elder student, who also studies Chinese medicine, was giving massages. “They’re chiropractic,” he said. “It’s popular in the US, but Taiwan has yet to catch up in this area.” It looked tempting, but I stayed away due to the memory of a tingly, slightly numb hand after a session a while back.

I pushed with a new student, an older guy, on Wednesday. He’s very polite and full of compliments. I’m wondering which direction he’ll slip into, the hard style or the soft. It seems most students go with the hard push style, the tree-root style. It’s possible that the soft style seems too counter-intuitive to most people. Maybe that’s why I like it. Yang Qing-feng is the best student at this, and seemingly one of the only students who truly studies that style. I heard that once he and the Tree Root Master once got into an altercation because the latter thought that Yang was out of bounds by pulling as well as pushing. I find that fascinating, though hard to believe.

I then pushed with a more senior student for a while, mostly successfully (I don’t count just being able to push someone over as success, but rather whether I find myself not succumbing to the temptation to push forcefully or not as a successful session). Many of the students say I’ve improved, even the ones who haven’t been studying that long. This confirms my long-held suspicion that most often, such compliments aren’t really worth getting excited about. It’s when the compliments stop that you know that either 1) you’re making real progress or 2) you’ve pissed everyone off completely or 3) both.

Last up was the interior designer, who started out well but soon resorted to the all-out-shove technique, over and over again. Lesson for the night: Your opponent’s energy like water; you can’t stem the flow, but you can manage it, make yourself more hydrodynamic and use it to your advantage.

Only Teacher Xu was at CKS Hall when I got there at 9am, but other students arrived shortly afterwards. I pushed with the Guy Not From China for a while, and then worked on the form. The construction hasn’t completely taken over our area yet, but it probably will soon. On the roof tiny workmen were chiseling away swathes of orange tile, which crashed periodically to the ground. The enormously fat man who cleans the area wandered through, bearing quite a resemblance, movement-wise, to Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri on the Sopranos. “Shouldn’t you be able to lose weight with all the exercise you get cleaning?” Teacher Xu asked him. Baccala just shrugged.

“When you turn or change position with force,” Teacher Xu told us later, “every part of your body is rigidly connected, making you easily pushed. If you adjust your position by relaxing, nothing is connected into a straight, easily pushable line.”

He also advised me to push the skin of my opponent, rather than trying to push their muscles and bones. “Muscles and bones move away from you, but you can stay with the skin,” he said. He also demonstrated the negative effect caused by concentrating on one’s own stance while pushing.

The other group, the group we’re officially a renegade splittist offshoot of, was practicing on the opposite balcony on the other side of the hall. I borrowed a video camera and went over to take a look. It was a large group, much larger than our little band, all attired in white uniforms with “Chinese Tai-chi Association” or something similarly official-sounding written across the front. The group included many foreigners, men as well as women. I stayed and watched a while, observing the different pairs busy pushing. Most of it seemed faster and more forceful than our style, though a couple of pairs were going more slowly. Occasionally those who lost a bout ended up being shoved rather roughly out of the vicinity. I could see a lot of similarity to our style, despite the differences.

At one point the teacher called the group together, and they went through the first part of the basic form together, the teacher counting out the moves one by one. My old teacher used to do this as well. Learning the form is quicker this way, as you can just look at the people around you and copy them if you forget. They then went back to pushhands practice. I wasn’t the only one filming; several of the group walked around with cameras filming themselves and others. Nobody paid any attention to me or told me to get lost, presumably because I wasn’t wearing our uniform at the time. Maybe they thought I was a tourist.

My curiosity satiated, I walked around the other side of the hall, pausing to talk to some Falungong members who had decided, en masse it seems, to form an orchestra and were practicing in the wooded section just west of the hall.

Back at our area, Mr. Qin had arrived and was busy poking a coke bottle set about a yard in front of him with a white stick he had apparently brought for just that purpose. I tried pushing with one of the other students, but he seemed more eager to teach me the basics than actually push, so I stood there letting him push me for a while before the idea of a nice lunch at Sababa became too powerful to resist.