China 2006

We took a jaunt to Hangzhou last weekend, to enable Master Tian to see relatives he hadn't see in years. He was born there, his father Tian Zhaolin having a large house by the lake's edge. A huge character representing "Tian" hung over the entrance. It was, no doubt,t he kind of classical Chinese house with circular doorways and inner courtyards that feautured in Crouching Tiger and that still spurs me to build a centre like it one day. Of that house, paid for by money earned from teaching, nothing remains.The government confiscated it and had it demolished after the Revolution.

Hangzhou is one of the pearls of Chinese tourism. However, our dawn journey there was instructive, shocking and deeply disturbing. With one eye on the rickety bus avoiding death multiple times a minute, we stared in disbelief out the window. The 300 or so miles resembled, in the grey morning mist, a vast Auschwitz-Birkenau; endless grey concrete bunkers squatting under a glowering sky, full of Dead Souls, worker ants harnessed for the factories which are powering the economy, the subject of all the news and paper headlines. The human misery is ignored. The factory flats are surrounded by pale green cabbage fields flecked with plastic flotsam, and punctuated at distressing frequency by fetid cesspits of hellish fluid, where children scamper. Not one tree pauses the sickly monologue, no colour gladdens the scene. Cadmium spills are common, potent carcinogens in the drinking water. All the water here stinks. Toxic sludge oozes from every pipe and every human pore.

When we arrived at the even greyer bus depot, wreathed in diesel fumes, we were sick in our souls. Humans shouldn't live like this. We weren't made for this. Even when we went up to the tea plantation, which was pleasant, we were told the ground water was contaminated. The lake itself was pretty, but so what? Like Irish tourism,a consensus on national treasures leads to sequestration for the generation of cash. Our hosts appreciation of beauty extended to pointed requests for validation of China's greatness. I have heard this in Dublin pubs all too often. A vague unsettlement and insecurity in one's land seeks  Mandate By Compliment. The road to leisure is an anaesthetic. You are uglynumbed, so when the beauty spot hoves into view, your reaction is in proportion to the horror you have passed through. Some countries are better than others. France takes pride in its country lanes, every village has a mayor. Bouisse (Pop 45), where I'll be doing my summer retreats, has a full-time gardener looking after the plants and shrubbery. Many Mediterranean countries only preserve their beauty spots after some tourist has pointed it out to them. It is no different with the arts. Bestial humans have played Bach.The icon of the age is a grove dear to Goethe lovingly preserved in a death camp.

China is losing its culture to the Tourist industry, just like in Paddywhack Ireland. Beijing airport gave me the best and only Qin ( kind of sitar) performance I have seen here. The culture is for sale. The Olympics will try to tell you otherwise, but don't believe it.  I am Indiana Jones, plucking a rare treasure from the crumbling temple. There have been hiccups here, issues of Confucian "Face" I have little patience for. All is for sale. Old Yang tai chi will wither and die here, slowly asphyxiating in the anoxia of indifference under a leaden-white, cadmium sky.

Nanqiao. Our lives are settling into a daily routine. We rouse at 8am or so, after deep sleep, if one of us doesn't wake the other with some bull walrus impressions, and we stumble out of our window-less hotel room into the sunny but cold air of Nanqiao (the hotel saga I shall relate later). We walk about 6 blocks past areas where window frame cutters work. It is a peculiarity of Chinese business that all the same tradesmen must work within the same district. While this is common perhaps in New York (one thinks of the diamond district) it does strike me as odd, because everyone is touting for the same business. I hope to detail a massive area of Beijing called Teatown in a later blog. I haven't actually had much chance to write, as we've been too knackered after training. Down the road, we experience the usual staring. Foreigners are rare here, and we've been treated to mostly curious and friendly looks, but now and again we get stares of fear and loathing. Just today, I was remarking on how cute two little kids looked playing badminton (they must have been 3), when their father hurriedly picked them up and, fearfully glancing at us, huddled them around him as he watched us pass by, no doubt because of the bloody children bones he saw hanging off our necks and the kiddie entrails out our mouths. We haven't experienced much of what you might label racism, but this evening we had a disgraceful meal in a wild west restaurant where we were served rubber duck with raw cabbage, and when we pointed at some nice dishes the manager, a real Basil Fawlty, refused  very animatedly, thinking we were going to rob the customer of his food, and said we couldn't have them. I felt my liver impatience begin to rear its ugly head, and wanted to go, but Chris said relax, don't worry, but then our waiter, who appeared to be on cocaine, and who had dashed around with trembling hands, pointing at the menu and speaking terrifically fast, seeing how we were lifting it out and commenting how the poor beast had died  just to feed us with its rubber flesh, when he presented us with rubber gloves to eat our rubber duck,Chris exploded and shouted " Fack off!" It really was blatantly offensive and they didn't seem to care, the entire staff came out and were laughing and giggling,( I can giggle at it now too) so we paid and walked out, having had barely a mouthful. Rare, but at least we know that rudeness is everywhere. I'm not so sure it was racism, but perhaps plain ignorance. I've had hairy encounters with food and restuarants across the Propert-,ehhh, Emerald Isle. Anyway, we firebombed the joint later.

So, on our way to Master Tian's, we pass multiple apartment blocks being built. His daughter Carol, who lives with him, would like to move to Shanghai, but there are so many apartments being built that it is difficult to find a buyer. One of the complexes nearby has Greek temples on the roof. I have a photo of it on the blog here. Once in the main entrance, we have to climb six floors to Master Tian's apt. where he always greets us warmly and offers us tea. For two hours in the morning, we revise the sectio ns of the Form that we did last year-sections one and two- his son Bing Yuan helping us out, with Master Tian supplying the finer details. He practises every day and practised right throughout the Cultural Revolution in private when it coud have cost him his life. He posseses a supple power and elegance in his Form which, when he shows us, really manifests the essence of tai chi, power emanting from the dantien via the waist and limbs directed by theYi, or intention. It is a joy to watch. We traipse through the Form over and over, getting corrected in bits and pieces. Without the previous years of training, I would never have had the capacity to grasp the material so quickly, so Beginners among you take heart; I'm learning a Long Form in three weeks but the more you practice, the quicker you pick up new material.

We break for lunch at 12, when Bing brings us to some tiny eaterie which wouldn't pass any health and safety inspection in any EU country, but yet the paradox is that the food seems to improve the more unsanitary the joint. I draw the line at the toilets though. I am most grateful to be in a 4 star hotel, let me tell you. Several foreigners have fallen to the cesspits and died over the years.

In the afternoon, we learn the rest of the Middle  FrameThird Section which is quite different from the Wu Long Form, yet some moves are remarkably cognate, Repulse Monkey being one. Chuan You, who adapted the Wu Form, was a student of Yang Lu Chan, so it bears out the Small Frame story which, as I have said, is not generally known in the west. Tai chi was done slowly  by Beginners! It was done fast at high levels. Master Tian won't allow us to film the Short Frame, but we need to persuade him that people in the highly sceptical west won't believe us without proof.  

At 5, we say our goodbyes, and head back to the hotel, where we do things like write blogs and use Skype internet telephony. It's amazing! Free calls to anyone in the world, and cheap ones even if they don't also use it, and the sound quality is astonishing. My visceral contempt for Vodafone and Eircom is justified after all. They have been robbing us for years. Download today at www.skype.com

Well, we're off to sleep now, just some propaganda news (all cheerful, upbeat pro-Chinese features) and then it's lights out.

I forgot to mention the odd whiskey snatched of course, and the endless cups of tea Ted.  But of tea, more shall I relate.

Jin Yang out