adjusting to your environment (5)

I flew out of Tokyo as a typhoon hit the main island. My plane was delayed three hours, not too bad.

Practice started early the next morning in the Tao Ran Ting park as usual. It was raining heavily in Beijing. We usually practice outdoors but not in heavy rain. If it rains, we go inside the little tea restaurant, move some tables aside, and practice in there. But it was completely full that day. We walked across the park in the rain and found a hotel with an empty room (no easy feat in Beijing).

The space was very narrow, so all plans for ba gua zhang review / ba gua dao were set aside. Liu Laoshi ran me through several of the smaller Liu He Tang Lang Quan forms -- a little cramped but workable in the small space.

Though my intention was to focus on ba gua zhang this trip, I had also polished my mantis fist forms, and that was a good thing due to the sudden change in content.

We continued working on the tang lang forms the next day and, after reviewing all the others, I finally got started on the remaining form in the set, zhao mian deng 照面灯, whose namepiece motion bears striking similarity to a fall - back - and - attack motion found in several ba gua weapons forms. More on that later, as we get to the ba gua dao later in the trip...

The remaining days were marked by excellent practice in severe heat and humidity. The moisture finally broke one hour before my scheduled flight. Beijing AIrport was hastily shut down and we hapless travelers were marched back through immigration, customs, picked up our luggage and began the hours and hours of waiting in line, fending off line-jumpers, arranging flights the next day, fighting for a hotel room, giving up and sleeping in the airport and arriving one day late in Tokyo.