Ancient Irish Martial Art

The BBC Travel page had an article about, Batairecht, an old Irish martial art that is making a comeback. Below is an excerpt. The full article can be read here.

In a gym in Ireland's County Leitrim, Bernard Leddy rocked back on his heels to measure up his target. Then his hips pivoted, his weight shifted forward, and he used a cudgel to deliver a thunderous blow to the jaw of a rubber sparring dummy. Leddy was wielding this wooden weapon in the manner of his Irish ancestors.

Similar strikes killed many men in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Back then, this long wooden stick with a bulbous head, called a shillelagh, was key to bataireacht, or Irish stick fighting. And this Irish martial art, which dates back more than 500 years, was once as central to national identity as kung fu in China or Samurai jiu-jitsu in Japan.

From its 16th Century origins, bataireacht – which is a blend of fencing, boxing and grappling that sees fighters punch, jostle and strike with their sticks – boomed in the 1700s after the occupying British banned Irish people from carrying many types of weapons. Instead they protected themselves with supposed walking sticks, which were actually shillelagh. By the 1800s, bataireacht was so popular it was taught in Irish schools, before changing attitudes towards fighting and the impact of the Great Irish Famine all but erased it by the turn of the 20th Century. Now, thanks to Leddy and members of the huge and proud Irish diaspora, bataireacht is making a comeback.

Leddy has been involved in martial arts for 40 years and first came across bataireacht videos online around a decade ago. Investigating further, he discovered that one of the world's only remaining bataireacht instructors was Glen Doyle, a Canadian of Irish descent whose family members have been stick fighters for generations. Leddy travelled to Newfoundland to train under Doyle and has since become a coach himself and helped spread bataireacht across the globe.

The Irishman has moulded many new instructors and supervised the creation of about 50 bataireacht schools and study groups in Ireland, the UK, US, Taiwan, Pakistan, Mexico, Egypt and the Czech Republic. "I'm delighted at the growth of bataireacht, but I'm not surprised," Leddy said. "Because once people realise how effective bataireacht is, they immediately want to know more. In 20 years, I want it to be in every hall in Ireland, if not the world."

While bataireacht is a relatively safe activity when practised in gyms under the supervision of experts, in the 1700s and 1800s it was wild and deadly. Back then, this martial art was central to a lethal form of mayhem called faction fighting, said John W Hurley, author of the book Shillelagh: The Irish Fighting Stick.

These massive organised brawls between rival factions bound by blood, parish or geography could involve hundreds, even thousands of Irish men. During these illegal melees, held at festivals and funerals, men hurled rocks, fired guns and swung shillelagh. "The spirit of 'Shillelagh Law' was to always be willing to go out and fight, and die if necessary, to maintain your personal or family or faction reputation," Hurley said.

Ironically, this blood-soaked bedlam often was recreational, according to Carolyn Conley, professor emerita of history at the University of Alabama and an expert on Ireland's crime in the 1800s, with arranged melees filling a void in entertainment options in rural Ireland. In fact, between 1866 and 1892, more than 40% of murders in Ireland were linked to recreational brawls. "My research indicates [arranged violence] was not only common but often viewed with approval by judges and landowners, some of whom participated," she said.

One County Kerry brawl in 1834 saw 35 people killed. A plaque marks that site in the serene seaside town of Ballyheigue, which, thanks to its pristine, 2km-long beach, is now a popular stop on the Wild Atlantic Way, a 2,600km driving route along Ireland's west coast.

 

 

Kagoshima's Samurai Heritage

Below is an excerpt from an article that appeared at the Japan Travel website. The full post may be read here.

Try Jigen-ryu, the martial art practiced by Satsuma’s samurai

The samurai of the Satsuma Domain were known to be some of the strongest in Japan, and they trained every day, practicing a martial art called Jigen-ryu. Their strength is credited to the techniques of Jigen-ryu and the mindset it promotes.

Jigen-ryu instructs its followers that “swords should not be drawn,” and strongly cautions against unnecessary killing. However, it also emphasizes that when danger strikes, a warrior should be prepared to cut an enemy down in a state of mind free of all thoughts and desires. Jigen-ryu places importance on making the first move and putting everything into that first strike to bring about victory in a quick, sharp slash. The martial art was established between the late 16th and early 17th century and has a history of over 400 years. The teachings of Jigen-ryu were considered secret, and the Satsuma samurai had a duty to prevent the techniques from becoming known outside of the domain.

At the Jigen-ryu Swordsmanship Museum, you can bring both your body and mind closer to that of the samurai. Try out tategi-uchi, a basic and essential form of training in which the swordsman hits an upright wooden pole with a wooden stick the same length and weight as a katana. This helps a warrior to swing a katana confidently and with strength, without unnecessary movements of the body. The samurai of Satsuma were instructed to strike the tategi 3,000 times in the morning and 8,000 times in the evening. Visitors to the Jigen-ryu Swordsmanship Museum can experience tategi-uchi with an advance reservation. Loose fitting clothing and a towel is recommended.

 

The Kung Fu Masters of China's Henan Province

Below is an excerpt from the travel column at the South China Morning Post regarding the kung fu masters presently teaching in Henan Province. The whole article  may be read here.

Shaolin Temple. Those two words may conjure up images of Zen-like monks living a reclusive life in the mountains, imitating the movements of animals in the pursuit of enlightenment. Or perhaps you picture those monks doing somersaults, landing to break metal bars over their heads while spears are stuck into their throats. The cinema and savvy publicity by the current abbot have a lot to answer for.

 

I am visiting Henan province’s Dengfeng county, home to the temple, to track down styles of kung fu that have been practised in the area since the late Ming, early Qing dynasties. 

Television viewers have seen Dengfeng town, its streets teeming with kung fu kids jogging up and down in tracksuits before disappearing into their schools to practise routines. In the flesh, the scale of these institutions is overwhelming. But I am not here to visit these large modern schools.

Shaolin kung fu is misunderstood. TV shows would have us believe a monk named Bodhidharma, from India, taught yogic type exercises to the Buddhist monks to relieve aches and pains brought on by long periods of meditation. It was this, they say, that inspired the monks to create styles of kung fu based on the movements of animals.

The truth, though, is more prosaic. The Shaolin Temple lies in a mountain pass not far from the ancient capital of Luoyang. War, banditry and rebellion have long ravaged the area. The temple was often caught in the middle and so kept its own militia. Over hundreds of years, the fighters absorbed various forms of martial arts from the surrounding areas, the temple becoming a hub for the exchange of ideas and the development of kung fu.

Kung fu students train in Dengfeng.

I base myself at the small school of Hu Zhengsheng, in a village between the Shaolin Temple and Dengfeng town. Master Hu’s school focuses on Xinyiba, the so-called internal art of Shaolin, which takes a mini­malist attitude to training: a few core movements used to develop coordination and the mind-body connection.

Hu is one of the few teachers still in con­tact with the old masters out in the villages. Down to earth, tall and slim, he smiles often and doesn’t fit the stereo­typical kung fu master mould. 

He enjoys having his foreign students hang out and drink tea in his office; a respite, he says, from the stress of dealing with officials and the bureaucracy involved in running a business such as his. Hu sits on the floor and stretches his legs while telling us about his own shifus, principles and theory of the art. He swings around rusty antique weapons as he talks.

My search for the old Shaolin methods leads me first to 90-year-old Mao Yonghan, who, I’ve been told, was a monk in pre-revolution times. Hu phones ahead to tell Mao I am going to visit and, along with one of Hu’s students, I take a taxi to the address I have been given.

The small block of flats in the middle of Dengfeng town is old and run down. Next to it is wasteland littered with bricks, broken glass and rubble that residents have optimi­stically turned into an allotment. A man waiting by the road tells us he is Mao’s son and leads us into a concrete room on the ground floor of the residential block. Other than a small shrine and photos of people in kung fu poses on the wall, the damp, musty room is empty. Mao enters, dressed in full monk regalia, to greet us.

The story goes that in the 1930s, his parents sold him to the temple in exchange for corn and then went off to be beggars. He was raised by the Shaolin monks and train­ed as a wuseng (warrior monk). When he reached adulthood, he left monastic life to marry and start a family, but continued his martial arts. He began teaching only later.

Our meeting feels strained. The son sits us down for tea but will not let us converse with his father.We leave confused, and with­out having found out much about Mao’s fighting style. Fortunately, other masters live in the area.

The 72 Micro Seasons of Japan

Sometimes we could use a little finer resolution than the four seasons. Late autumn is different than early autumn after all.

Below is an excerpt from an article at Nippon.com, which describes the Japanese reckoning of the year into 72 micro seasons. The full post may be read here.

In ancient times the Japanese divided their year into 24 periods based on classical Chinese sources. The natural world comes to life in the even more vividly named 72 subdivisions of the traditional Japanese calendar.

The traditional Japanese calendar marks the passing of the seasons and changes in the natural world through the names given to different times of year. There are 24 major divisions, or sekki, from Risshun (Beginning of spring) in early February until Daikan (Greater cold). Originally taken from Chinese sources, these are still well-known around East Asia.

The 24 divisions are each split again into three for a total of 72 kō that last around five days each. The names were also originally taken from China, but they did not always match up well with the local climate. In Japan, they were eventually rewritten in 1685 by the court astronomer Shibukawa Shunkai. In their present form, they offer a poetic journey through the Japanese year in which the land awakens and blooms with life and activity before returning to slumber.

Switchbacks

It's been a while since we heard from Patrick Parker, a judo and aikido teacher who has had something special going on. 

He's been doing some traveling recently. When he writes about his travels, I can see the light of Budo shining through. 

Below is an excerpt from one of his posts. The full post may be read here.

I like to have two or three discrete take-away points after any adventure – a short bullet list of things I learned or what I got out of the adventure, or how I grew or changed.

When we did Kilimanjaro (I can’t believe that was only 6 months ago), the magnitude of the trek and the mountain itself made it really hard to leave with a short list of things I learned.  The mountain was just so big and intimidating that it was hard to keep everything in mind.

Since we have gotten back from Kilimanjaro, I have managed to come up with some take-away points, but I feel like I’m still trying to figure out what that adventure was all about,

Not so with Mount Saint Helens! Saint Helens is a much more manageable adventure – much easier to keep the whole thing in mind to process.  I knew from halfway through what I was taking away from this trek.

For me, at least on that particular day, Mount Saint Helens was all about two things – rebirth and switchbacks.  I have already written a couple of times about the amazing rebirth and renewal after Saint Helens blew her top.

Switchbacks

Anyone who has done any hiking in rough terrain is intimately familiar with switchbacks.

A switchback is a trail cut diagonally across the face of a hill or mountain.  By going diagonally the incline of the trail is reduced to something that is manageable without specialty mountain climbing gear and skills.

The down-side to switchbacks is that by making your climb less steep it makes your walk much longer because you end up zigzagging back and forth instead of taking a direct route to your destination.

When we started our hike of Harry’s Ridge at Mount Saint Helens, I was amused to find that the trail starts out headed almost directly away from the mountain.  For the first quarter mile or so, the mountain is mostly behind you over your right shoulder.

Life is like hiking – there will be switchbacks

Sometimes you think are making great progress when your path takes a sharp turn and all of a sudden you seem to be headed directly away from where you want to end up.

What initially looks like a setback (in hiking or in life) might just be a switchback. Don’t despair, because switchbacks can look like an onerous detour when actually they are just an easier way to get to the destination.

In Search of Kyudo

Below is an excerpt from a very nice article from the Washington Post, where the author, an archer, goes to Japan to investigate Kyudo. The full post may be read here.

“This is where you’re supposed to be,” she says.

Then, without another word, she’s gone.

I inherited my interest in archery from my grandfather, Richard Earl Henion, a retired military man covered in faded blue tattoos. His passion for bows stretched back to the South Pacific during World War II. One day, on an Army scouting mission, he walked around a mountain pass and came upon a tribesman traveling in the opposite direction. My grandfather had his gun drawn. The local had a bow and arrow raised. They could not speak each other’s language, but they somehow managed to persuade each other to lower their weapons.

Richard Earl accompanied the man to his village, where they spent the night cavorting around a campfire. Before leaving, he bestowed upon the local a pack of smokes. The man, in return, gave him the bow that could have killed him.

My grandfather and I never found time to pursue archery together. But years after his death I started shooting traditional long and recurve bows under the guidance of a neighbor in the Appalachian Mountains. We live not far from where the “Hunger Games” movies were filmed, and my teacher — a mountaineer who can make bowstrings out of tree bark — encouraged the instinctive shooting style made famous in the films.

Japanese archery seems as far from Appalachia’s intuitive, wild-woman approach as I can get, geographically and metaphorically. Kyudo is one of Japan’s oldest martial arts, and it remains one of the most respected. The practice was banned by occupation forces after World War II. But in 1949, the All Nippon Kyudo Federation introduced a standardized method. Suddenly, anyone could study it.

The samurai-warrior practice is closely associated with Zen Buddhism, and it draws from Confucianism, Taoism, Shinto and onmyodo. Its ancient formality runs against my shoot-from-the-hip nature, which makes it all the more important for me to be here. I’m only 5-foot-2, but I take up a lot of space. The first word I learned, by necessity, while navigating crowded stations to get here:

“Sumimasen.” Excuse me.

My kyudo teacher, or sensei, Kazuhisa Miyasaka, didn’t set out to be an archer — or an innkeeper.

Like me, he’s at Uotoshi Ryokan because of his grandfather.

Miyasaka — a man with bushy eyebrows and unruly wisps of gray hair — studied archery briefly when he was a child. But it wasn’t until much later that he started to take it seriously. When he left to attend university in Tokyo, he never thought he’d return to the inn, which was founded by his grandfather and later run by his parents. But that changed when their health failed.

It was around that time that he encountered a kyudo teacher on campus. The sensei told him that — if he was going to return to the ryokan, which uniquely included a shooting place — he should study kyudo and become master of his own dojo. Ultimately, archery inspired Miyasaka to come home.

“Destiny?” he says of the timing. “I don’t know.”

Miyasaka has changed into the formal kimono he wears for demonstrations. We walk to the shooting hall, which is sided in rusty metal. The entire town of Yamanouchi is alive with surface streams that run alongside roads like veins. You can hear them, even when you cannot see them.

The entryway of the dojo, or training place, is a bridge.

Matos — hollow targets made of round wooden frames and black-and-white paper — line the interior of the shooting hall. One side of the building is composed of garage-style sliding doors. Miyasaka rolls one open to reveal a hidden courtyard. We’re across from a target house, where a roof protects the sand dune that holds matos in place. To reach it requires shooting over a kudzu-trimmed pond, approximately 90 feet.

“Almost same as battlefield space,” Miyasaka says.

When Miyasaka first took up archery, he was only interested in winning competitions. At one point, when performing an examination to advance to the next level of kyudo he consistently made his target. Still, he did not pass.

“My teacher said I was hitting very well. But my form was not beautiful,” Miyasaka says. “To some, archery looks like sport. To some, it looks like spirit. If you ask one hundred people, you will find one hundred different answers. ... Body remembers correct action. If we are not thinking, we get the target natural.”

It’s a case of matter over mind. And Miyasaka takes the challenge seriously. Sometimes, as a test of muscle memory, he turns off the dojo lights and shoots in the dark.

Book Review: Chanpuru, Thoughts and Reflections from the Dojo

A new book from Tambuli Media is Chanpuru, Thoughts and Reflections from the Dojo by Garry Parker.

Mr. Parker describes his arrival in Okinawa as a young man as a part of his military service and his subsequent training under Takamiyagi Sensei in traditional, old style Okinawan karate.

What young man hasn't dreamed of training intensively under a master teacher for a number of years? Mr. Parker certainly was able to live that  dream. He trained under Takamiyagi Sensei directly for some six years, before he returned to the US.

Once back in his native Georgia, he was unable to find any form of karate training that resembled in any way the traditional training he enjoyed in Okinawa, so at the urging of his teacher, he opened his own dojo.

One of the unexpected consequences was that he became acquainted with others who were in basically the same boat; having tasted the real thing in Okinawa or Japan, individuals who either trained alone or in small groups.

Parker returned to Okinawa regularly for intensive personal training under his teacher and so advanced his own skills.

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the opening of his dojo Takamiyagi Sensei came to Georgia to take part and visit. Parker's students had a chance to experience some of that authentic taste, direct from source as well.

The book also includes many short pieces by Parker on a wide variety of subjects that are related to his karate training.

I found this to be a most pleasurable read and I would recommend it to anyone.

Japanese Sword Making

I ran across an interesting post at The Budo Bum on a visit to a Japanese Sword Maker. An excerpt from the post is below. The full post may be read here. Please pay a visit.

Visiting A Traditional Japanese Sword Smith

While visiting Japan recently, I had the opportunity to visit an old friend who represents one of the rarest and most beautiful facets of budo.  Kawahara Sadachika is a traditional Japanese swordsmith, making gorgeous blades in a tradition that goes back unbroken for over a thousand years.  Each of his blades is both a work of art, and a traditional weapon of the highest quality.  It is always a wonderful day when I can sit and visit with him.

Like most Japanese martial arts students, I spend a lot of time studying the techniques of the styles I train in.  Not nearly enough of us spend time learning to appreciate the skill, craftsmanship and artistry that go into many of the weapons we use.  In truth however, the weapons of the classical Japanese warrior were, if anything, even more refined and developed than the arts they practiced.  The tradition of the Japanese sword is twice as long as any of the extant martial traditions, with gorgeous blades that are clearly part of the nihonto tradition dating from the 900s.

Kawahara Sensei trained in the Gassan tradition of swordsmithing under Gassan Sadaichi.  Today he works in a small forge he built on the side of mountain in rural Shiga Prefecture.  The forge building is a simple, old style Japanese building with mud walls, many of which were damaged in recent typhoon.

The basic forge hasn’t changed much in hundreds of years.  Metal ventilation hoods now cut down on the number of fires that burn down forges, and most smiths can’t afford to keep a cadre of apprentices to swing the big hammer that does all of the heavy work, so they usually have a power hammer tucked into one corner.  It does the same thing an apprentice does.  It smacks the same spot time after time while the smith puts the steel in the right spot.

My friend Grigoris and I spent wonderful day with Kawahara Sensei talking about swords and looking at some blades he made.  Each one is wonderful display of master craftsmanship, exquisite functionality and subtle beauty.  He cleaned each one carefully for us so we could appreciate every level of it’s detail. 

Hiking the Great Wall of China

I found an article in the New York Times about a hiking trip some people took along a remote part of The Great Wall of China. I found it fascinating.

An excerpt is below. The whole article may be read here.

The Great Wall, Our Way

By JEANNIE RALSTON

At first, I thought the faded pink pillow on the crumbling stone floor of the watchtower was a remnant of a previous camping trip.

“Are we coming back here to sleep?” I asked our guide, Joe Zhang, at the beginning of a two-day hike last July along the Great Wall of China, which I was making with my husband, Robb Kendrick, a photographer, and two teenage sons.

Joe shook his head and guessed that the pillow belonged to a local farmer passing through. When I asked where we were going to camp, he pointed out the window to the snaking wall that sliced through lush Panlong (Coiling Dragon) Mountain, part of the Yanshan Range, which stretches across northern Hebei Province.

“If we camp tonight, we’ll set up tents inside a watchtower that way,” he said in good English. “If we camp.”

That “if,” which he felt compelled to repeat, bothered me. My family had signed up with the tour operator Great Wall Adventure Club to hike this remote part of the Great Wall because I loved the idea of actually sleeping on the wall. I envisioned drifting off to the same sounds and scents that a Mongol-fighting soldier would have experienced centuries ago. I imagined watching the sun burst over peaks crowned by ancient crenelated watchtowers in the morning.

Plenty of tour operators take visitors on half-day tours from Beijing to the Badaling or Mutianyu sections of the Great Wall, which are 40 to 50 miles north of the capital; with travel time from Beijing, that leaves about two hours on the wall. But I wanted to escape the crowds and get a wilder, deeper experience. On its Web site, the Dallas-based Great Wall Adventure Club guaranteed we’d camp on the wall, but in subsequent communications, I learned the guarantee held as long as the weather was good. As we prepared for our outing, I tried not to think of the forecast I’d heard for our first day: chance of thunderstorms, 80 percent.

At 8 that morning, Joe — a lively young man who’d studied Great Wall history in college and on his own — and a driver picked us up in a van at our rented Beijing apartment. After getting through snarls of city traffic, we made our way about 90 miles northeast, much of it on a new highway that wove through increasingly mountainous terrain, arriving in the village of Gubeikou about 10 a.m. 

When the driver dropped us off at a ticket booth where Joe bought our entrance permits, we took only what we needed that day — water, sunscreen, cameras — and Joe carried our lunch. Our overnight bags stayed in the van with the driver, who would meet us at the end of our day’s six-mile hike in the town of Jinshanling, a 20-minute drive away.

Climbing up a steep paved path, we were electrified by the first glimpse of the imposing wall above us. A watchtower, poking over the trees, was haunting in its deteriorating state. “It must have seemed like a skyscraper back then,” my oldest son, Gus Kendrick, 16, said.

The Great Wall — 5,500 miles by some counts, longer by others — is not one wall, but many that were built starting in ancient times, and were consolidated and reinforced during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). The purpose: keeping northern raiders from swooping down into the heart of China. 

The stretch of wall between Gubeikou and Jinshanling, which we hiked on the first day, is considered a prime example of Ming dynasty construction, built from 1568 through 1583 on top of a 1,000-year-old relic of a wall from the Northern Qi dynasty (550-577). Because the Gubeikou area was a strategic passage to Beijing, the more than 40 watchtowers we passed are closely spaced, and the wall was especially strong and well reinforced, constructed of brick up its 23-foot height.

As we began our hike, I was struck by what felt like an eternal loneliness and loveliness; as far as I could see, nothing but that golden line careening across the crumpled mountains and standing guard alone, whether needed or not, for centuries.

Early in the hike, Joe pointed out a “character brick,” where the stamp of the maker is still visible after almost half a millennium. “You couldn’t see that at Badaling,” Joe said, referring to the most visited and photographed part of the wall closer to Beijing. The throngs of tourists are so thick, he said, that you feel like a “dumpling in a pot.” He also said that Badaling was heavily restored and not always authentically, part of renovations dating back to the 1950s. The wall there is so modernized that much of it has metal handrails.

The wall around Gubeikou has been untouched (except for spot repairs on unsafe areas), and part of the thrill is to see this man-made section surviving the war that nature has been waging against it for hundreds of years. Weeds have taken over much of what was once a 13-foot-wide surface, with only a narrow path in places formed by hikers before us. While many watchtowers were merely ghostly shells with window holes, some were surprisingly intact. On several we saw artful brickwork surrounding the arched windows; one tower had a complete domed ceiling.

After a scramble up a rubble-strewn incline, we rested in a large watchtower, each sitting on a sill of one of the several windows. Joe explained that, according to one theory, the first floor is where weapons were stored. Then he took us behind a wall to a narrow steep staircase; I climbed it on all fours and exited onto the second floor, where Joe said the soldiers might have slept (and, I thought, where I hoped we’d sleep).

The garrisons stationed here — possibly up to 100 soldiers in some watchtowers — were mainly on surveillance duty, and sentries regularly paced the wall. If an enemy was spotted, fires were lighted in the separate beacon towers (the Gubeikou section of the wall had 14 of them) to send a warning in code to other soldiers along the wall, who would then pass the alert through other beacon towers.

Then the soldiers went into fighting mode. Arrows could be shot from windows and slots in the towers. In places where the parapets were still intact we saw what are called loop holes — square spaces, also for archers — and lower down, we found half-moon openings through which rocks were rolled onto enemies. The boys squinted out of the slots as if looking for invaders and pretended to bend imaginary bows. The defense system worked until 1644 when the Manchus finally crossed the wall and took Beijing, ushering in the Qing dynasty.

About an hour into our hike, we came across evidence of another attack launched from Manchuria: a large gap in the wall, partly claimed by brush, that had been made by a cannonball in 1933. In the run-up to World War II, Japanese invaders marched down from their base in Manchuria, hoping to expand their territory, and the old wall proved useful once more — allowing the Chinese to hold them off temporarily. I had read somewhere beforehand that this battle was the last time the wall had been used for military purposes, but what we came across next belied that assertion.

In a watchtower, over a simple picnic lunch of bread, bananas, sausage and a Chinese version of Lay’s potato chips, Joe told us we were coming to a forbidden section: a part of the wall we couldn’t walk on because it was still used today as the northern boundary of an army compound. Along the top of a two-mile stretch of wall, timeworn brick met shiny razor wire. In the distance, Joe pointed out a modern concrete watchtower, woefully artless compared with its ancient counterparts. Joe said that the base’s purpose was a mystery, but guessed it was an ammunition depot. I later read that it could be an outpost for military exercises.

But no matter what goes on at the base, we hiked the next 90 minutes in the brush below the wall to avoid it — passing by farmers’ cornfields, pear trees and irrigation canals, by old cottages surrounded by bluebells and tiger lilies. Then we spent the rest of the day back on top, not getting down again until we came to Jinshanling, which means Gold Mountain Ridge, having seen only two other groups of hikers the entire day. The stretch of wall in Jinshanling has a wonderful variety of architectural styles and has been restored to what it might have looked like 500 years ago — at once elegant and forbidding.

The Art Among the Clouds

Today we have another guest post from Jonathan Bluestein. Jonathan's previous posts have all made it to the Top Ten Most Popluar Posts on Cook Ding's Kitchen for All Time. His previous posts are The Versatile Whip, Master Zhou: The Man, the Artist, the Teacher, and A Translation of The Science of Neijia Quan. If you haven't read them yet, please do.

The Art Among the Clouds

By Jonathan Bluestein

Some background on how this tale came to be

It is not every day that a person is lucky enough to be offered a tempting proposal by a world-leading authority of one’s profession, hobby or art of choice. It had been my lucky day, then, when I was contacted by my friend, master Chen Zhonghua, on March 2013. The purpose of his faithful email – to deliver an offer one cannot refuse…

My name is Jonathan Bluestein, and I am an Israeli martial artist and author. I practice Xing Yi Quan and Pigua Zhang. Over the last year, I have become acquainted with master Chen Zhonghua. For quite a few years, I have been writing a lengthy book – a broad research of martial arts. I had made contact with master Chen originally to interview him for my book, and he was very kind and helpful in this regard. With have maintained an email correspondence since.

Master Chen Zhonghua is the inheritor of a very special martial art – Chen Style Taiji Quan (Tai Chi Chuan). He is the grand-student of late master Chen Fa’ke – one of the most famous Chinese martial artists of the 20th century. By the time I had come to know him, he was already a well-known master, with established reputation and many schools and students worldwide.
  
Chen leads a very interesting ‘career’ in the martial arts. Most teaches would be bound to one or two schools in which they teach, that would also normally be close to their own homes. Master Chen has developed a different model for teaching. He instead is constantly on the move, teaching intensive seminars worldwide, remaining for up to 3 months at a given place to teach. He would then later return to where he taught, correct his students, teach some more, and move somewhere else. While being very mobile is this regard, Chen still retains a few locations which he usually visits and stays at every year – in China, Canada and the United States.

 
Back in 2006, master Chen had begun building what would undoubtedly become his greatest legacy – the Taiji resort on Da Qing Shan (Great Green Mountain) in Rizhao, Shandong province, China. On this relatively secluded mountain range, Chen had set up a school for those dedicated to their dream of learning the art of Taiji Quan. Perhaps, a ‘school’ is too small of a word to describe what had become a complex consisting of several hotel buildings and villas, a gym and a few huge courtyards, and would shortly even have its own lake. But this is no modest enterprise – to begin with, it was meant to make Taiji accessible to as many students as possible who might arrive from afar to learn in all seriousness. There, master Chen is committed to spend 3 consecutive months every year, teaching several classes every day.   

Then in April 2013, came along that surprising email from master Chen, roughly stating as follows:

“Dear Jonathan,

I remember and have been thinking of your work and research (the book I was writing). I will be hosting an international martial arts seminar on Da Qing Shan in May. I wish to invite you over, and will even be willing to cover some of your living expenses for the purpose of helping out with your research. Please let me know if you’d be interested…”

Being such a generous offer from that nice of a guy, who also happens to be a great master, I could not possibly consider refusing. I started booking flights the next day, and by May 23rd, I was on the mountain.


On Great Green Mountain

A long and winding road – a 3 hour drive, took us new visitors from Qingdao International Airport to the resort on Da Qing Shan. Past 21:00PM that night, the entire area was pitch black – reasonable for such a remote place, where a ‘city’ is the size of an average neighbourhood elsewhere. One could barely see 10 meters ahead, and by the time we had arrived, all my eyes could detect was the vague silhouette of a tall building, with quite a lot of stairs. By early morning though, it had become apparent that we had arrived at a sort of paradise.    

It is challenging to convey to a city dweller the calmness and serenity which embraces the mountain. My ears, which had become attuned to the nervous callings of cars and people, were at once put to ease with the melody of nature. The resort, though large, had been incorporated seamlessly into its surroundings, and affected little the greenery and wildlife surrounding it. Over the next few days, I took a few short hiking trips to surrounding peaks, which revealed an astounding beauty and magnificence. Pictures could hardly do the place justice, as for most of the time, this mountainous area is engulfed by clouds. To be living among clouds is by itself an experience like no other – so natural and pleasing, yet unfortunately so foreign for the most of us.

The Daqingshan resort had been designed with great care and attention to the implementation of Chinese cultural symbols. The place had been filled with traditional Chinese art of all kinds – statues, paintings, carvings and more. The training grounds outside were no different – adorned with Daoist floor mosaics, decorated with large stones painted on with calligraphy and furnished with hillside wooden pagodas.

The roads splitting from the resort led one atop fabulous peaks and fantastic cultural monuments, including some impressive temples, towers and caves. Among these roamed beautiful and graceful animals – goats, rabbits, lizards and birds of prey among them. The mountain itself was from all sides overlooking valleys which seemed to stretch endlessly into the horizon, shimmering away through their countless rice fields as the sun  smiled unto them once in a while, from within the fog-bound sky. 

The Place and the People

During my stay, master Chen was holding the first International Taiji Festival on Da Qing Shan. The festival was attended by over a 1000 people over the course of 5 days (I have myself stayed for 10 days). Most of these people were visitors from all across China, who came to compete in form demonstrations and push hands. The rest amounted to several dozen students of master Chen, who came from all over the world. One such delegation from the United States was lead by Sensei Mike Calandra – a veteran martial artist who, after decades long practice (of over 5 different martial arts) decided to become master Chen’s student after watching him perform for 5 minutes at his (Mike’s) school. Since then, for 15 years now, Mike has been part of the Practical Method family, and have also been master Chen’s disciple for quite some time.

We were all dining at the local restaurant, which featured tasty traditional Chinese cuisine. There were a wide variety of dishes served every day, which varied from the common (beef and chicken of all sorts), to the strange (fried silk worm cocoons), to the very tasty (sugary fried bananas and special Chinese pancakes). Whatever one’s culinary inclinations were, it seemed that everyone’s appetite was pleased by the end of the day.

I have made many new friends on the mountain. There were father-son duo Roy and Lance from Canada, with father Roy being a young-spirited 75 year-old that have outdone many of the younger folk in his performances. There was a lovely German delegation, with wonderful and gentle people who were all into art, with some performing at the event. Perhaps most I liked Master Bon and Massimo, too older gentlemen who came all the way from Italy. True to the Italian spirit, they were warm, charming and fun-loving to the utmost. Frankly, there were just too many nice people for me to mention…
 

Many of Chen’s students on the mountain were highly skilled professionals, highly intelligent and educated beyond what is common.

Some of them had more than one Phd. We had a construction-business professional, a chemical engineer, a medical doctor, and many other talented and interesting individuals sharing one common love for Chen’s Practical Method Taiji. One of the brighter minds that attended the event was Yaron Seidman – a veteran disciple of master Chen, who is a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor. Having recently released a fine book on Chinese Medicine (called Hun Yuan Xin Fa), he gave a long public lecture on his field of expertise, which had been fairly enlightening (the picture below is from the lecture, which had many more people sitting in the back).

The tournament itself had drawn many excellent fighters and practitioners. One delegation came over from and in the name of Chen Village – the birthplace of Chen style Taiji. These guys did well in the various competitions, and made a good name for themselves. Other guests were of different styles of Taiji Quan – Hun Yuan Taiji (of Feng Zhiqiang), Yang style, and the exceedingly rare Wu-Hao style.

An elderly master of the latter style made a performance of his traditional form, and then followed by showing a method of making his bones noticeably twist and make cracking sounds – one which I have never in my life seen before. Other Wu-Hao masters also showed great ability and skill, and it was obvious from the minute and profoundly accurate movements of their body that they possessed serious gong fu. Master Bon from Italy gave some great demonstrations of both the Chen style form (of Chen village) and of Shaolin Northern Mantis, which in my opinion were even more impressive considering he was already 57 years of age. But most impressive of all was the form demonstration of one of master Chen’s older gongfu brothers, who at age 82 was featuring some of the best Taiji I have ever seen. Firm as a mountain and yet flowing like a river creek, and going through the lowest postures with perfect precision, he had been a living proof to the health benefits that are possible to garner from the dedicated practice of Taiji Quan.

The Man who is Master Chen

I remember a talk that was held one night at dinner, in which one of master Chen’s disciples said the following: “Once in a while, there comes a person within a field of expertise – sports, art, science or otherwise – who is exceptional; head and shoulders above others; and since such a person was born with that type of talent, he would always look at us from above – we could never reach his level...”   
Personally, I do not believe is such predicaments. I see Chen as an ordinary human being – not even of a special talent. Rather, I believe that Chen Zhonghua, like my own grand-teacher Zhou Jingxuan, is a man who had gradually developed his skill level in a certain art to a degree that most other people cannot comprehend – to a level of mastery; and Chen Zhonghua is, indeed, a true master. That, he had achieved through a quality that is far more impressive than talent – that of decades-long dedication.

Even back when I only knew master Chen through online video chats and email conversations, it was evident that he had a unique element to his personality. That attribute turned out to be an exceptional calmness, patience and peace of mind. I recall that when I first met master Chen on Da Qing Shan, it had been at about 5AM, just prior to his regular morning class. The weather was cold and the air misty, and master Chen’s hand was very soft and quite warm as I was shaking it. The feeling of his hand alone could give one a clue to his personality, which was reflected in that simple physical action as it had been in every other

movement or task he would perform during the day. There was a quality to Chen’s way of handling himself that revealed his mastery if one was keen on observing well – even more so than in his martial arts. In fact, the mastery of martial arts is only secondary to the mastery of everyday life, and it is not at all often that one encounters a person who seems to have gain a complete mastery of both. That kind of achievement does not make Chen a better human being than others. It simply means that he is making the most of his natural capacity – something which is definitely worthy of looking up to.
  
Chen’s inner serenity was evident throughout my stay, especially as he was organizing his large international event on the mountain. The event called for the arrangement of housing, food, changing schedules, competitions, demonstrations, special dinners, speeches, ceremonies and such for over a thousand practitioners and guests. Beside Chen’s loyal disciple and close assistant, ‘Walrus‘ Tim from Canada, Chen had to handle the whole ordeal by himself, all the while still teaching and practicing. Though at times things turned out to be slightly chaotic, as one could expect when a Typhoon hits the place for 24 hours, Chen remained very focused and at ease. This is where one could see best his mastery of the martial arts as he applied it to daily life.

The common stereotype for a martial arts master running a very large organization is that of some ‘big boss’, with a thundering voice and a physique to suit an outbursting charisma. Master Chen though is much different in that respect – quiet, unassuming, yielding from social conflict, slim and standing only about 5’6 tall. Nonetheless, his modest presence and soft speech seem to inspire his students as they had been listening to great military leader.
  
Like his martial arts skills, his attitude seemed out of the ordinary, and somewhat counter-intuitive. For instance – he is very generous, and would appear to be more so when under stress. One night before I came to the mountain, he told his students: “When I am in adversity, I try to give more to others”. That kind of Daoist mindset would be incomprehensible to people who had been brought up in Western culture, but this is actually the same sort of attitude that makes his Taiji Quan so efficient.
 
In class one time, master Chen said:  “All people live by two standards of morality and action. For instance – you have one standard for your family, and another for the rest of the world. In martial arts, this is true as well. When a stronger, bigger opponent attacks, your mind knows that the right thing is to become smaller and weaker – too much so for him to handle. But nonetheless, you act by your other ‘standard’ – the wish to try and become as big and strong as him to match him, so you expand, enlarge and stiffen-up, which in turn fails your efforts”. In so saying, master Chen was illustrating how a Daoist principle was not only relevant to martial arts, but also to daily life. That enabled me to see how his personal path was one with his martial arts, and how these two aspects were in fact one, and required mutual development.

One of the things that set master Chen apart from other teachers is that he does not back off from public challenges of his skill. In fact, he welcomes them. Chen is adamant on the importance of this approach. He believes that a true master should be open and honest about his skills, and not shy away from physical conflict when it is important to make a point and prove one’s method. A common line of thinking in the martial arts community in our time is that one has not proven anything unless one goes about to compete in a setting like professional mixed martial arts. I do not hold that view. In any case, I have myself witnessed master Chen easily handle people who were over twice his size, casually tossing them into the air or bouncing them into the ground, whether they try their best to strike or grasp him in any way. Surely, master Chen is not a professional fighter, and does not pretend to be. However, at over 50 years of age, he has a skill set that enables him to effortlessly overcome the vast majority of martial artists.

His circumstances were that he nearly died as an infant (and carries damages from that experience), is short of height and weighs little. But had his skill set been in the hands of someone who is 6’3 and weighed accordingly, with no health issues, then I doubt that there would have been anyone in the world that could have handled such a person. For his size, his health background and the likes of these, it is no short of a miracle that very powerful people cannot withstand the skill of this soft, little man.
   
I myself had the honor of being on the receiving end of master Chen’s technique many times during my stay on the mountain. Frankly, there was no way whatsoever that I could have resisted his will. Gripping any part of his body, I found myself high in the air, landing several meters away. Trying to pull on him sent me via an uncontrolled spiral to the ground. Such things were on the nicer side of him, too – he had been taking it easy on me and on his students, so we would not get hurt (he certainly can cause an excessive amount of damage at will, either with locks, throws, take downs or strikes). The first picture below has Chen in one such moment, about to get a student tossed sideways by accurately manipulating the student’s center of gravity. The student, while trying really hard to push master Chen, couldn’t do anything to resist. The second picture has master Chen about to send another student flying up the air vertically. That student, too, was helpless against master Chen’s skill.

A common pattern was emerging before my eyes, of Chen really being able to prove any of his skills against anyone on the mountain who wished to test him (and he was challenged in one way or another on a regular basis – though not to the extent to all-out fighting). During the international event that took place while I was attending the place, there were a few Chinese martial artists who tried to do just that, and like the others, found themselves easily manipulated into helplessness. The event also included a very serious and tough push hands competition, which at times borderlined Greco-Roman wrestling. The day after the competition was done with, master Chen was teaching competitive push hands. At one point, he saw the winners in the competition were not performing as well as they could have. He then approach them a few times, sparred with them, and tossed them around like ragdolls with incredible precision, using the exact same movements as in the Taiji long forms, and afterwards taking the time to show the moves as  they’re performed solo, so the students could see the connection. That by itself I have found to be very impressive, as very few people are capable of executing such complicated and large movements so successfully and accurately against resisting opponents.

The lineage of Chen style Practical Method is very different to other lines of Taiji Quan. Getting into the specific mechanics of the art would be too much for this article, so I would rather summarize its unique characteristics in a simpler language. It would appear that most martial arts focus on developing ways of dealing with momentum – one’s own and that of the opponent. The Chen Practical Method focuses instead on the creation of superior alignment, which enables one to generate a lever at any given angle, which would enable one to gain full and effortless control of a resisting opponent. The principle of generating a lever through a fulcrum point is the most important aspect in the mechanics of this art, and is incredibly difficult to manifest. Master Chen attests that it takes up to 7 years of dedicated work to achieve a high level of proficiency in that skill. However, once the skill is attained, it can be applied to any movement the art utilizes, and multiplies one’s power and ability many times over. Given, the development of this principle and method is a worthy long-term investment.
   

Through what I have seen, I have come to the conclusion that we can use the analogy of water flowing through pipes to illustrate the mechanics of this art in simple language. Imagine then, that the body is a high-pressure gardening hose, which normally has many holes in it. The holes are those parts in the body which through, at any given point, energy could leak. So for instance, if one’s back is not aligned and is easily bent when pressure is applied by an opponent, then the weak point in one’s back is ‘a hole in the hose’. The layperson has many such ‘holes’, and in physical activity, uses strong muscular contractions to seal the holes. But the muscles are have a limit to their capacity, and when the pressure becomes too great, they lose their hold and the hole opens up again. The Chen Practical Method attempts to solve the problem by twisting the hose (the inner tendons and fasciae of the body) in a way that would divert the pressure from the many holes into one single hole. Then, the body becomes like a regular gardening hose which has only on hole – one can try to resist the water (energy) flow with one’s finger (attack), but the water will immediately push back, and will do so with an even greater intensity, as the attempt to stop the flow has only increased the pressure.     This is exactly what happens when one tries to push on master Chen in any way – one would then find himself bouncing off by one’s own inertia.


The Open Gate

As of today, master Chen is with no doubt one of the leading internal martial arts masters in the world. Even more rare than his own existence as such, is the fact that he teaches openly, to whoever wishes to come at his doorstep. Making things even more comfortable – he had students, branches and schools scattered all across the globe. During my lifetime, I have rarely encountered or heard of such a great, inviting opportunity for martial artists to acquire real, traditional and authentic skill. Yet, master Chen still remains one of the lesser known teachers in the worldwide martial arts community, familiar mostly to a ‘select group’ of a few thousand people in the West, who are ‘in the know’ of the Internal Martial Arts community. Never before in our age, have the stereotype of the bearded Chinese master up the magnificent mountain have been so ironically accurate in describing a living person. To me, he is the real deal. But more importantly – he is a good man, with a caring heart for his students and traditions.

Myself, I am already committed to the practice and teachings of my teachers and arts, and have been so for many years – otherwise, I would have definitely become master Chen’s student. It is my hope though, that through reading this article, people who are interested and have the opportunity, will make the effort to seek out the tutoring of Chen Zhonghua. They will not be disappointed.

Master Chen teaches in the U.S., Canada, the Da Qing Shan resort in China, and in seminars throughout the world. He can be reached via is official website, at:  http://www.chenzhonghua.com/

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Jonathan Bluestein is best-selling author, martial arts teacher, and head of Blue Jade Martial Arts International. Check out his website for more information about his books and the martial arts taught by his organization: www.bluejadesociety.com
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