Last week
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.
