tuo

tuo is one of the twelve animal forms in xing yi quan. I am not sure what it is exactly – various translations refer to alligators, water lizards, water striders, and so on. It is one of the simpler animal forms, essentially one motion repeated side to side while advancing with a zig-zag step.
For the past five years, we have been working on one version of the twelve animal forms and several of them are essentially a single motion, repeated over and over (tiger, horse [single- and double-fist versions], snake, tai {another strange creature, some kind of bird], the eagle-and-bear combination) – just over half, now that I think about it.
The other five (swallow, sparrow-hawk, chicken, monkey, dragon) are more complicated, with much greater variety of motion.
We had a hint of things to come two years back when Liu Laoshi came to Tokyo and briefly taught a special, more complicated version of the horse form. This year, he brought over “new” versions of a few other animal forms, all far more complicated. Mr. T has been leading us in review of the “new” tiger and it is truly a new beast altogether. We just started reviewing the “new” monkey this week, which is not so much more complicated than the prior one.
The picture above shows two different ways to write the character “tuo”. When I asked him this summer in Beijing, Liu Laoshi cast about, picked up a rock and scratched out the two versions on the pavement.
You don’t have to look far in Chinese parks to find someone “painting” Chinese characters on the pavement with a brush dipped in water. There is something beautiful in watching the character be drawn, and something mysterious in watching it slowly fade to dryness before your eyes.
Characters scratched with rocks may last a bit longer but are similarly impermanent. Despite the hardness of the rock, the characters drawn possess a similar beauty to those done with water and brush.
I had asked how to write the character, and nodded with understanding and satisfaction when he finished the first version. Then he went on with the second. I wonder how many ways that character can be written. And I also wonder how many more versions of the twelve animals he has up his sleeve.