Where Do I Go From Here?

In 2002 I no longer had Mr. Chen to help me with my kung fu training. In our three years together I had learned a lot of kung fu and taijiquan, here's a list:

-Shanxi Xingyiquan
-Taiji 42
-Ba Fan Shou (8 Overturning Hands)
-Mian Zhang Quan (Cotton Palm Continuous Fist)
-Wudong Taiji Sword
-Shaolin Quan ( Wu Jia Bu, etc.)
-Shaolin Pole and Spear

I spent a lot of time practicing what Mr. Chen had taught me, but really missed the man. I decided to go back to China for part of the summer, in hopes of capturing more of the essence of xingyiquan. For some reason, I did not want to return to Taiyuan--the thought of it was too painful, and it would remind me of Mr. Chen too much. I could not contact Yu Chang Lin or any of the Nanjing Xingyiquan Association; they were not listed on any Internet sites and it was not possible to communicate over the telephone. Instead I opted to contact David, a contestant at the competition who spoke perfect English. He was a Chinese minority, his father being Mongolian and his mother Manchurian and he looked like an ancient warrior in modern clothing. David worked in a hospital in Nanning, Guanxi Province and worked as a translator/guide part time. Being a martial artist also, he made the perfect guide for me. So I called him on the phone and said I was coming back to China, could he arrange for me to train with a xingyiquan master?

After a 16-hour plane ride, I landed in Hong Kong. I believe I caught another small airplane and landed in Nanning where David was waiting. He had arranged for an "affordable" hotel for me in a busy part of Nanning. That hotel had an opulent lobby with marble floors and shiny bellhops, but the rooms were well below any USA standards. Every morning I would find dead roaches in my half-filled water glasses, and my room phone would ring several times during the early evening hours. It was always a woman's voice, speaking in sultry tones. It took me a couple of days to figure out what was going on--there were prostitutes all over Nanning. Walking down certain streets, they would be sitting outside massage parlors calling out to me, talking to me, trying to entice me to enter their rooms. Occasionally one of them would grab a piece of my shirt and try to drag me inside. I would smile tell them no thanks, and keep moving. I had discovered a tea shop in the neighborhood, and I would go there every afternoon. The manager of the tea shop was a young man who called himself Steven, a big NBA fan. I learned a lot about Chinese tea from him, and purchased tea utensils and bags of good tea there. The downside was that I had to walk past the hookers to get to his shop, but it was worth it--the tea, that is.

David told me that before I met the xingyiquan master, I had to meet a friend of his who knew the master; David's friend's was simply called Mr. Chui. We went to Mr. Chui's apartment and he greeted us at the door and offered us a seat in his small apartment. I had been around quite a few serious martial artists at the tournament in Pingyao--trained with them, ate with them and lived with them. There were always a few in the crowd that had a special air about them--Yu Chang Lin and his teacher, for instance. Everything about Mr. Chui's appearance, surroundings and demeanor made it obvious that he was a martial arts fanatic. While many of the xingyi boxers I had met appeared strong and robust, Mr. Chui had the body of a Greek god. Any movement he made seemed to contain a little extra energy behind it--it was really impressive. As we sipped flower tea, his wife came into the room, was introduced and then disappeared somewhere in the customary fashion of a Chinese wife. We talked martial arts, but I could not keep from looking into a corner of the room where a very large and obviously hand-made martial arts training dummy was set up. It looked roughly like a Wing Chun wooden dummy, with a broad "torso" area and extended "arms and legs", except that this dummy was not made of wood. It appeared to be cast iron, a detail that was not lost on me. This piece of training equipment took up about a third of their small apartment, but I had a feeling Mrs. Chui did not complain.

Mr. Chui saw me looking at it, and spoke to me in Chinese, with David translating.
"Do you know what that is?"
"It looks like a wooden dummy, made of iron?"
"Yes," said Mr. Chui, "iron is much better than wood"
"Isn't that a little dangerous, can you get hurt using it?"
"You can," Mr. Chui replied, "but you have to also practice qigong to avoid problems--Tibetan qigong is the best."

David then began to relate Mr. Chui's story to me. During the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Chui was a young man and had joined up with Mao's fanatical Red Guard. I remembered that my teacher Mr. Chen had had a few run-ins with Red Guard, and had once fought a band of five or six Red Guard in the street. I imagined the Red Guard as a bunch of gangsters, beating people and fighting at every chance, and Mr. Chui's story confirmed this. David said that as a member of the Red Guard, Mr. Chui had hundreds of fights on the streets. When the Cultural Revolution ended (and the Red Guard were no longer) Mr. Chui continued fighting--he enjoyed it too much. He estimates that he may have had close to 1,000 street fights. Mr. Chui later worked for a "boss", as a bodyguard, traveling all over China and Burma with the boss. When I met him, he was working security for a Nanning night club, and since his job still called for him to fight, he was a training maniac. Along with the Iron Dummy in his living room, Mr. Chui said he wore "Iron shoes" when training outside during his three to four hour workouts. His specialty was xingyi spear, and he wore his iron shoes while practicing spear. I commented that I had worn ankle weights for xingyi training in the past, but it really hurt my knees, so I stopped.
"But the iron shoes I use are not too heavy", replied Mr. Chui, "would you like to see them?"

The iron shoes were extremely heavy; I picked one of them up and estimate it at between fifteen and twenty pounds. The thought of someone wearing those to train--but I had no doubts about Mr. Chui (see photo above). Mr. Chui (white shirt and glasses in photo, holding a pole) had massive calloused knuckles on his hands, and one rainy day he demonstrated their power to me. The rain had driven us under a canopy during training, and there was a brick building there. Mr. Chui casually began pounding the brick building with his fists, each relaxed blow landing with a sonic BOOM against the wall. My eyes widened, and David laughed: "Mr. Chui is over 50 years old but he still loves fighting." During our daily training, Mr. Chui showed me some interesting skills. He was an expert at throwing small knives and darts, and could launch five at a time into a target.
Conversely, the xingiquan master (no name given) was a tall, thin, bespectacled man. Whether he dressed in white or black, he always had a black sash tied around his waist, reminiscent of a karate belt (see picture above). He was good friends with Mr. Chui, and they had trained together for years. Yin and Yang. The xingyi master was very soft spoken and polite to me. "Do you want to learn the xingyi fist or weapon?" he asked.
I requested weapon and he taught me xingyiquan 6 Harmony pole (xingyi liu he guan). Every morning we met in the park and trained for a few hours. The rest of my days were free time, which I spent in the tea shop or sight-seeing. But I couldn't stay forever, about a month was my limit. It was time to go back to America to teach what I had learned. As Mr. Chui rode off on his bicycle, he waved and called out to me:
"Keep training hard every day."--the same advice Mr. Chen had given me.