monkeys (2)

August 9 and 18, 2008

I was born in the year of the monkey, 1968.

Monkeys are said to be inquisitive, troublesome, curious, and so on.

Let’s run through that list. Inquisitive? Yep. Troublesome? Don’t ask about my misspent youth, which is stretching on into a misspent middle age. Curious? We already covered that. It seems I have it pretty well covered.

Even so, something seems to be lacking in me and my monkeyness. I was trying work on the monkey form (猴形) in xing yi quan and it was not going well. It is quite unusual among the xing yi quan pantheon with its sharp turns and unusual finish. In the middle of the main sequence (repeated 3 or more times) there is a leaping motion which I just couldn’t nail.

My teacher, Liu Jingru, is 72 years old and spends his time sipping chrysanthemum tea and teaching in a park near his home. He is gentle and humorous but when push comes to shove, I am sent flying.

Our dialogue is in Mandarin Chinese with its growly, rolled R’s but punctuated by an occasional outburst of NONONONO or YESVERGOODA. He is both encouraging and demanding and almost never shows frustration with an overaged xingyi wannabe and his piss-poor Chinese skills.

But the other night I feared I would give him a heart attack. Couldn’t nail the jump. NONONO. Again. Couldn’t nail the jump. NONONO. Again. He usually speaks in simple, easy-to-understand Chinese, but I couldn’t catch any of his mumbled comments that night. Still, I think I got the general drift.

At night, the park is full of those out for an evening stroll. Forget the Olympics - there may be nothing more exciting, more eye-riveting than watching a martial arts teacher grill his foreigner student in the 100 degrees heat/ 95% humidity. More pressure, more tension, more failures. Passersby stopped, gawked, mumbled encouragement. He began to joke with them, lightening the atmosphere and probably avoiding a coronary. I had to laugh at last – and bam, I nailed that damn leap.

Xing yi quan （形意拳) is one of the three primary internal Chinese martial arts, and is certainly the one closest to the more familiar external styles based to some extent on outwardly visible forms of strength. The other two main internal styles are tai ji quan (太极拳), well known for its slow and graceful motions, and ba gua zhang (八卦掌), not so well-known but marked by its emphasis on circular motions which flow into counters from unexpected angles.

Xing yi quan is based on repeated drilling of five basic fists or attack styles. The next stage of practice involves forms named after either 10 or 12 animals. XYQ is not an imitative style, trying to copy the actual motions of animals (as with some animal styles, usually external). Rather, it tries to express some key element of the animal’s motions.

Yan Xing (燕形) is the swallow form, and it features distinctive and quick changes among high and low postures. Only once in the form does the performer’s body take a posture resembling that of a swallow with outspread wings (contrast to many eagle fist forms which are full of postures meant to resemble an eagle in physical appearance). So the point of yan xing is to show the ability to shift rapidly and effortlessly among high and low postures rather than try to physically copy the body of a bird.

Hou Xing, on the other hand, emphasizes the quick and agile hand motions of the monkey. One name for the leaping move is pa gar (爬杆), referring to the monkey scrambling up a stick or pole – hands moving all the while. Some nights after the above was written, I was doing well on the leap but had lost the correct hand motion (a series of four strikes). Seems I can’t put it all together and I have a ways to go before grasping the essence of monkeyness.