day 126: pop quiz (cont'd)!!!

concepts:

• substance v. emptiness
• northern legs, southern fist

forms:

• pao quan
• chen long form
• kuen wu jian
  

aha! just when you thought you'd gotten away, it's not over!

today was a day of (more) pop quizzes.

it began somewhat inauspiciously. i arrived early to sort out some of the bagua things we'd covered yesterday, as well as review some tai chi and bagua qi-gong (which i haven't done anywhere near as much as i probably should have been doing over the past few months). being that it was a Sunday, i expected--and found--a very quiet park.

however, things were still remarkably empty when class time rolled around and Sifu arrived, and we found there was just me and him.

pao quan

at this point, Sifu asked me about my work on pao quan, and asked to see me do it. i've been practicing this, although i'm still at the stage of struggling to remember the form. after observing me, he said there was polishing work to do, since a lot of my movements lacked substance. i replied that i haven't been able to figure out the applications for a lot of the moves, and that it would probably be easier if i knew the applications, because otherwise a lot of the form seems somewhat empty for me. we agreed that i'd probably need some private classes with Sifu to go through the combat applications, since that would add substance to the form by allowing me to express the intent behind the movements.

Sifu noted that pao quan was an extension of tantui, not just in terms of a greater number of applications, but also in terms of introducing movement into them. this was intended to help practitioners gain a greater level of footwork and motion in fighting, with the driving principle being the integration of the upper body with the lower body. Sifu said i needed to work on this, since it was a fundamental aspect of kung fu, particularly with northern chinese martial arts. he pointed out the maxim common in kung fu: "northern legs, southern fist", which referenced that fighting ability required the upper body abilities common to southern chinese kung fu integrated with the lower body function prevalent to northern chinese styles.

chen long form

by this time our full class showed up--which today was only 3 people. Sifu had us perform the chen long form a couple of times, and then announced that he was going to take advantage of the low turnout to record each of us doing the form on video, particularly since there was now ample time to do it.

i ended up going 2nd, and while i was able to remember the entire form, i know that there were a couple of areas where i made some mistakes in the movement, and also probably didn't execute as well as i should have. but i chalk this up to some lingering awkwardness with the latter part of the form, which is something that can be rectified with more practice.

of course, whether these videos ever see the light of day is something i hope to not find out.

kuen wu jian

i asked Sifu if we could polish the kuen wu jian form, since it is still proving frustrating. Sifu nodded in agreement, and began taking us through several iterations.

he said that he wanted us to go to the next stage of kuen wu jian, which was called erlu, and involves integrating force into the form. what we've done is yilu, which is just the form, and apparently not very applicable to actual full-contact fighting. Sifu said that historically kuen wu jian was an effective sword-fighting style, but that the progenitors of the Wutan curriculum only learned the form, and found that they had to adapt fa jing principles to the form to return it to its roots as a fighting art.

i asked if kuen wu jian was affiliated with any particular kung fu style (much like there is a tai chi sword, bagua sword, etc.), or if it was just simply independent. Sifu said that it was independent, as were many of the weapons styles of ancient Chinese military history (e.g., there were spear styles, saber styles, etc.). he added that many of the kung fu styles that have their own weapons forms actually took pre-existing weapons styles and modified it to fit their own principles and concepts. kuen wu jian was not affiliated with any single kung fu style, but you can see its traces in the jian forms of many kung fu styles.

Sifu then said before we started on the erlu, he wanted us to fine-tune the yilu. so we spent the remainder of class focusing on the nuances of the first sequences of the form. we finished after awhile, once everyone had to begin leaving for other duties in their schedules.