8/11 Tuishou
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.
