CKS Hall was mostly back to normal after the ruling DPP changed the inscription on the massive gates last week after barricading them behind barbed wire to keep protesters away. I wasn’t able to come last week due to a couple of Jiayi gigs with my band in any case. A Christmas rock music concert was thumping from the center of the square, but fortunately nobody was crowding our group on the balcony.

I did forms for a while and got some instruction for backwards stepping from Teacher Xu. I’d been having some problems stepping back with my left foot as it seemed to put too much pressure on that knee for some reason, but it turns out that I wasn’t twisting in the right places, and the places I did twist, I “connected” too much. I have that problem in general with tuishou as well.

Little Qin arrived and did the sword form with a wooden stick. Afterwards we did some tuishou, which was instructive. Little Qin tends to grab wrists and lock them in place, but unlike the Tree Root Master, he doesn’t react violently when you try to push him, instead either relaxing and melting away from the push, or simply not reacting, secure in the futility of pushes from a certain angle.

He also gave me some advice for sword, echoing Teacher Xu’s earlier instruction to project one’s focus and energy along the blade. But Little Qin also added this: “Project your awareness to a point just beyond the tip of the blade,” he said, telling me to practice this by poking at things with the sword or whatever I happened to have on me at the time. “It’s like tossing stones.” The reason for this was, he said, that when we’re are in an actual confrontation, we tend to withdraw our awareness a little, so in that case our focus will be at the right place. The same goes for empty-handed movements, he added.

Late again to practice, but everyone was already paired up, so I went through my forms while they practiced tuishou. Chatted with Teacher Xu for a while, then paired up with Weeble, who was very talkative, not unlike Mr. You. He said he missed the Tree Root Master. “He is very solid, very hard,” he said admiringly. Weeble went for the quick, fast shove occasionally, and I managed to refrain from that myself. Still need to work on dealing with that better.

After class, did some sword practice and went home. That’s it. I’m afraid this isn’t a very interesting entry. No breakthroughs or revelations, just more practice. Perhaps I should wait for something to happen before I write in here instead of writing after every practice or two, lest it get too boring. Or maybe I just need to work harder.

I was at a movie premiere last Wednesday, and slept too late on Saturday, so yesterday was my first practice in a while, and I was even late for that. I was still tired; my knees have been aching lately for some reason. I did some stretching and then practiced with the interior designer, who has become quite pliant but still resorts to The Big Shove strategy a bit too often. I let him shove away, sometimes stepping back so we could get back to more subtle tuishou. For my part, whenever I felt that I was resorting to brute force, I’d reign myself in. “What’s wrong,” my partner asked. “Why don’t you follow through?” I didn’t answer, mostly because I can’t really explain it, and I didn’t want to implicate him in any anti-Big Shove rhetoric I might let slip.

After everyone had left, I stayed behind to go through my forms, which were terrible. I felt stiff and sore, but doing the forms half a dozen times improved things, at least to the point I felt I could finish my practice with a free conscience.