A Malaysian guy joined our practice at the park last Sunday, and we ended up practicing tuishou together. His movements puzzled me, his hands making little jabs at me instead of being used to push. It seemed to me that he wanted to hit me instead of push me, but when I asked if he had a boxing background, he told me that he’d studied ba-gua before. I got used to his style eventually, though; it was just a matter of taking these predilections into account. I told him he should practice with Little Mountain Pig, who was more into that kind of thing, but when we got together, Pig told Malaysia to practice with Teacher X’s son first. He drew a ring in the dirt around them with his foot.

Once surrounded by the ring, the Malaysian guy just wailed on Teacher X’s son, jumping into the air and jabbing at him left and right, quick spinning hits and chops raining down on him. After a short time the kid’s face was streaming blood and his hand was sprained.

Little Mountain Pig had a talk with the Malaysian guy and then they went at it, this time much more peaceably, mostly because Pig knows a lot more about this kind of thing.

Meanwhile, a tall, skinny foreigner had approached Teacher X and was grappling with him, using all of his force and seemingly know knowing when to quit. He paired off with Mr. V, which I felt might be a mistake, but at least No Lose Guy wasn’t around. I was talking with Teacher X when the foreigner and Mr. V came crashing down nearby, Mr. V’s head nearly hitting the concrete wall.

I practiced the sword form; I feel I’m getting rusty and should probably re-learn some parts of it. I should also take my sword up the mountain in the morning so I can do that as well as the empty-handed stuff.

The next week, I went to practice at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, to find only Teacher X and his son there. I practiced with Little X, whose hand was bandaged after his bout with the Malaysian guy. “It’s strange; we learn all this stuff and then find it’s useless,” he said. I held my tongue, as, at least for me, Little X’s skillz aren’t exactly at the “all this stuff” level yet, though he has improved.

Teacher X showed me some useful tuishou approaches, and later on Little Mountain Pig showed up, but it was late by then and I had to go. Before I forget, Little Qin has a Youtube page with some videos of him doing forms and tuishou.

The park was full of tourists when I got there on Sunday morning, including several foreigners. Teacher X even walked over to talk with a couple of foreign guys sitting and watching us practice. It felt like summer. I warmed up with some formwork and then practiced tuishou with The Dentist, whom I am thinking deserves the moniker “Mr. V” more than Mr. V himself these days, as he is all about trying to overpower his opponent. It was tiring. UPS guy was in the fighting ring wrestling with a guy from the other groups, and a fighting class practiced nearby.

It was one of those rare times where Little Qin showed up, so I practiced with him for a while. He is always full of good ideas about technique, and showed me how just one touch with one hand completely changes and strengthens the dynamics of the other. I commented about how hard it was to grab and maintain a hold on his shoulders, and he said that most tai-chi practitioners end up with thick shoulders, or as he put it, “A back like a turtle and legs like a stork,” as someone described Master Zhang San-feng at one point.

Later on, an older guy in a yellow shirt came up and told Little Qin to hit him. He did, and the guy kept saying, “No effect!” He was really proud of his ability to be hit and not feel it. Then they did a kind of tuishou stance, and the guy in the yellow shirt would throw Little Qin off with such force the Little Qin’s feet would actually leave the ground. If you know how not little Little Qin is, you’d know that this is no mean feat, though I suspected he was doing it for show. I took some pictures of this and a line of us all trying to push the man in the yellow shirt. It was pretty funny.

Last Saturday I hadn’t really warmed up when someone pulled me over to practice tuishou with a little older guy sporting exactly two (2) teeth. He was skinny and very flexible, and kept advancing as he pushed, but he didn’t get much of anywhere with me, at least during that session. It was educational, though; practicing with people outsider of our group pretty much always is.

This Saturday I was warming up when another stranger walked up to me. One of his eyes was smaller than the other, and he wore a hearing aid. “Are you the foreigner I practiced with yesterday?” he asked. This gave me pause. How could he actually not know? I hadn’t gone to the park the day before in any case, so I was pretty sure I wasn’t. “I don’t think so,” I said.

“That foreigner said he had practiced tai-chi for 20 years,” he said.

“I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me,” I continued. “That guy is probably older than I am.” But he just looked confused at the concept of some people being older than others.

“Anyway, you foreigners don’t need tai-chi, you’re all so big and strong that you just pick us up and throw us!” he said. I glanced at Little Mountain Pig, who is just one of our students who is bigger than I am, and concluded that this fellow wasn’t quite right in the head.

The other groups were fighting in the circles, trying to push each other over the lines in the dirt. One of the guys wore a t-shirt that read “I (heart) giving blood.” I hoped his opponents didn’t take that too literally.

I practiced the forms and sword work in an empty space nearby for a while before noticing that Teacher X’s son was fighting in one of the rings. Not tui-shou, but actual boxing, it seemed. I walked over to have a look. The kid was staying well away from the boxer, who was slapping quick jabs in and jumping around. Afterwards, LM Pig gave it a shot, using tuishou and taichi to deal with the boxer, engaging him and pushing him around in between blows. It was interesting to see how the two dynamics interacted, but I think I’ll stick with tuishou, for now.