Welcome to what Teacher Xu tells me is my 45th entry in this account. I wasn’t keeping track, but Teacher Xu has a nifty little Sony Clie PDA that does, seemingly, everything, including counting how many post I have in my blogs.

I started out pushing with the new guy who started a month or so ago. He is still easy to push, a job that practically does itself, but he’s learning some things, so I adjusted my strategy slightly, which he noticed and commented on. Where before all I had to do was wait for him to fall over on his own accord, now there’s some actual defense going on.

Then I went straight to pushing with Not-China Guy, who seemed eager to give the rest of the class a repeat performance of throwing me around from Saturday. Unfortunately I wasn’t in the mood, so his efforts, which redoubled when the Tree-root Master was watching us push, were largely in vain. All those ppp’s, gone to waste. Oh, well.

That was all the pushing I did, sitting around, crushing leaves from the plants near the court, wondering if they were mint or not, and going through forms for the rest of the time, but I felt a bit better afterwards. I usually feel the hump of Wednesdays, and tuishou practice usually brings me out of it somewhat.

Watching other students pushing last Wednesday, I rather enjoyed watching people’s “post-push poses”, i.e. the stance they assume after a “successful” push when the other person goes flying or loses their balance. The further the person travels, the more elaborate the pose. Usually the hands fall into a relax, Zen-like position, as if the pusher had just attained some kind of enlightenment, and the legs assume a careless, lazy stance. The expression on the face must apparently be as oblivious as possible to the other person, as if the other person weren’t even there.

I’m sure I’m guilty of this myself. I just find it amusing. I spend quite a bit of time watching other people push. That night some of the tree-root group, including Weeble and the Interior Decorator, were going at it pretty intensely, thus the whole PPP revelation.

Teacher Xu said the first thing to do when coming across difficulty in tuishou is to relax; that way you many more options are open to you due to greater flexibility. It’s difficult to do this when your first instinct is to tense up, but it does work. He also said that if you’re not willing to push, be pushed and be “locked” so to speak, you’re never going to learn anything. This is mainly what I’m trying to do, go against my instincts, relax, and be willing to “lose”. That and training myself to “link” and “unlink” the various parts of my body, which allows for greater flexibility. Or perhaps greater flexibility allows for that. Or both.

Teacher Xu also gave me a copy of some DV footage of the other school practicing tuishou, as well as some of us. It was interesting in a sort of parallel-universe way how close we are to the other school in some ways, yet how different in others. Watching myself push, I look like I’m not really doing anything, and I look, to my eyes at least, very pushable, and it’s strange that my opponents in the video aren’t pushing me over quite easily.

On Saturday the balcony was filled with dancing teenagers, leaving us only a tiny corner by the closed coffee stand. The teenagers glared at us from the wall. I started out pushing with the Guy Not from China, who must have eaten more than his fair share of Wheaties that morning, because he was shoving like a Wall Street maniac. I resisted for a couple of rounds, and then just flew wherever he tossed me. It was kinda fun, and I stood less of chance of twisting something by resisting all of his yanking and shoving.

Next was Mr. You, which went much better. Slower, more educational. Little Qin arrived and embarked on a long tale of controversy on his website’s comment section before going through his stick forms, and I practiced the empty-handed form a few times, then the sword. Later, we pushed for a while, or rather he would “lock” me and I would try to escape, but I was tired by that point and more than ready for lunch.

I was still getting used to cooler weather, and I woke up early missing the sound of the air conditioner. Thus, I arrived at CKS Hall at the same time as Teacher Xu. The balcony was occupied by a group of excessively annoying college students who were busy prancing around playing games more suited to 3-year-olds. Except for one point where they tried to emulate a military assembly (poorly), much giggling was involved. A conspiricy theorist friend of mine blames the plastic in water bottles for the apparent feminization of young Taiwanese males these days. I’m not quite convinced of this, but there’s definitely something going on.

Anyway, I tried my best to ignore the giggling and screeching and went through the form. Teacher Xu taught me some new parts, which I practiced over and over, getting the hang of the moves. He also filled me in a bit more on our group’s history.

It seems that one of Master Zheng Man-qing’s students, Master Song Zhijian, made a few changes and came up with his own variety of the Yang style Master Zheng had taught him. Over the course of his long life, Master Song took on many students, accepting or rejecting them on the basis of their ba zi, which is a kind of fortune-telling based on one’s name and other details, but at some point he said, “No more. No more students.” One of the last students he took in was named Yu Wu-nan, who was a quick study but unpopular with the other students, who shunned him.

It was Teacher Yu who began teaching Xu Wu-long, aka Teacher Xu, before Yu died a few years ago. Little Qin also studied under Teacher Yu, and so calls Teacher Xu “Elder Brother Teacher”.

In the meantime, the followers of Master Song looked upon Yu and everyone who studied under him as a kind of bastard line of Master Song’s style, and they refuse to acknowledge it, calling it “illegitimate”.

And that’s where we are today. Interesting, no?

Bacala sprayed water everywhere, which is better than the guy who sprayed insecticide all over the place last week, while I practiced tuishou with the Guy Who is Not from China. He was really going at it, grabbing, shoving and twisting with a great amount of force and very little flexibility, all the while telling me that I wasn’t flexible enough. He told me to attack him, which was asking for trouble in my opinion as he would take any offensive move as an invitation to go crazy, and I was afraid someone would get hurt, which would suck if it were me. In the end we spent a lot of energy and time on a completely pointless shoving match.

Little Mountain Pig showed up, and Teacher Xu told us to do some tuishou, but he wasn’t really interested, so he taught me some Qin-na moves instead. I recalled some of the things I’d been taught in the army, which seemed to work ok, but for the most part I don’t know much about qin-na. Pig told me I was too soft and that I needed to use more force, throwing him back at least two steps. “I can attack you more easily from one step away,” he said.

I’d gotten all my exercise quota from Not from China, though, so I was pretty tired, and after practicing my sword form for a while, I headed off to lunch.

Late again to CKS Hall for the morning session. Everyone was either engaged in tuishou or conversation, so I went over by the closed-up coffee shop to practice the form. It felt good today, and I needed the benefit as I’ve been feeling a bit low-energy lately. My hands felt…not heavy, but more substantial, full of Qi coming and going. Every move felt like falling into a shallow well, just natural, even inevitable. Of course I was still doing many things wrong, as Teacher Xu did not hesitate to point out after a while.

I brought out the sword and went through that form a couple of times. Better than usual, but still not good. The weight and heft of the new blade still throw me from time to time. I still believe that once I get used to it it will be of great benefit. At the very least it will build up my wrists.

I did some pushhands with a newer student surnamed Zhang. He’s really young, younger even than Teacher Xu’s son, and hasn’t even done his military service yet. He’s as tall as I am, and has at least the equal to my reach. I only got into trouble once, when he was bending my wrist in such a way that I might have injured myself if I hadn’t disengaged. He was so concentrated on pushing me that he left himself open to even the slightest push, but evading his efforts was a decent workout and stretched me up to and beyond my limited range of motion. I need to work on that.

A thunderstorm was rolling in as Teacher Xu and the other students left at around 1pm. I went through the sword form again, alone on the opera hall balcony, and then left for my weekly feast at Sababa. A good practice.

I’d forgotten just when I began studying with Teacher Xu, so I went back to my archives to find out. I did a search and found that I started in fall of 2002. Five years ago. My, how time flies.