hungry, thirsty, and gotta piss 3

Hungry, thirsty, gotta piss (3): fang song

Practice #10, last of the night practices for me. I am keeping Liu Laoshi up too late at night, and he needs to rest before his upcoming trip to Tokyo to teach us over there. Mr. T arrives from Tokyo tomorrow (coach for the Japan team at a major tournament); he returns to Tokyo on 25 August. I go back on the 26th, and Liu Laoshi on the 27th.
Of course I will try to sneak in a daytime practice or two with him, work schedule permitting. He teaches a few people in the morning, his grandson in the afternoons. But he is 72, after all, and teaching three classes a day can be both tiring and time-consuming before leaving for ten days in a foreign country.
So it all adds up to an end to the night-time practices in Tao Ran Ting park, to the post-practice scramble through buses and subway transfers, to all of it. Or most of it – I will be spending much more time with my friends who practice on the sidewalk near my hotel late at night (see posts elsewhere).
The last night practice was a good one. I arrived in the usual state – unfed, thirsty, needing to piss. We relaxed over tea for a while before starting. He unexpectedly ran me through all the xingyi offerings one more time – silly me, I had spent the prior night doing solo review of bagua to prepare for this night. But we got to the bagua at last. And for as much praise as he had just given for my xingyi, he doled out an equal helping of concern for the state my bagua has fallen into recently.
We skipped over the 8 basic palms and went directly into the more complicated 8 palm changes. Aiya, never thought we would get through the first one…we stayed later than intended but my first three palm changes were given a thorough re-working.
Throughout our xingyi work over the prior several days, his single most-uttered word was “aiya”, the quintessential Chinese expression of mild consternation bordering on irritation. The shortened “ai” was a close second and seems to signal a shift from mild to severe irritation. When the aiya’s and ai’s finally gave way to the occasional good news of “haode” and “bucuo”, I could relax a bit.
Relax. Fang song. That was the word of our final night practice. Again and again. Relax and lower the shoulders. Relax and round the chest. Relax and extend the arms. Further. (but I can’t extend them and relax at the same time!). Ah, fang song, fang song.
I remember that word very keenly from my stay at PingYang WuXiao, a martial arts school in the countryside where I lived for more than a month almost ten years ago. At that time I had almost no Chinese language ability, but I did know fang song.
One of the younger students – a short kid for his age so he looked extra young and was thus a crowd pleaser at our demonstrations – watched me working on the taiji quan 42 form. He smiled and offered a single comment: fang song.
Aiya. This little kid is telling me….yes, and he was right. And still is.