Gong Fu Guru

by Simon Andrew Pollack

Third-generation baguazhang exponent Sui Yun Jiang faces a dilemma. While his own teacher chose Sui as his successor and passed on to him knowledge of the ancient Daoist martial art, Sui has been unable to find anyone with enough spare time and perseverance to replace him as teacher.

Although Sui has a number of students he teaches in the icy outdoors next to the Beijing Exhibition Hall every Tuesday and Sunday afternoon, none has yet proved proficient enough to succeed him as a baguazhang teacher.

Sui says his difficulty in finding someone to replace him is a result of the general decline of traditional gong fu (or kung fu, as it is more commonly known by its Cantonese transliteration) styles in China. While the Western world has recently experienced a bout of gong fu fever, Sui says the purpose of the styles displayed by gong fu stars such as Jacky Chan is mainly visual entertainment, and they lack the deeper principles of traditional Chinese martial arts. Sui says there have been few real gong fu teachers since the Cultural Revolution, and blames this lack on the slow development of Chinese culture in the face of rapid economic reform.

"Most of the current gong fu teachers teach only athletic movements for display, not for the development of the body's internal energy," Sui said. "Many gong fu teachers have incorporated a wide range of movements in order to attract more students, but this sort of gong fu amounts only to a form of athletic display."

Sui says increasing numbers of Chinese people are becoming interested in sanda, a new freestyle form of gong fu which incorporates front kicking and punching and judo-style throws. Although sanda was originally designed with the sole purpose of fighting, there are now attempts in China to make sanda gong fu an Olympic sport.

This cause in no way benefited from a promotional match between Chinese and American sanda competitors held in Beijing in September. While the match was advertised as a test between Chinese gong fu and Western boxing, it actually presented spectators with the ignoble sight of Americans who had trained in sanda part-time at home getting a drubbing from Chinese competitors who had undergone specialist training in sanda at sports institutes. The match was as painful to watch as it must surely have been for the bewildered, groggy American competitors.

Sui says that while sanda has its own benefits in terms of rigorous exercise, it was not a real form of gong fu.

Exuding a calm energy which belies his 54 years, Sui says only about 30 percent of real gong fu is about training people how to fight. "Gong fu involves not only training the physical aspects of the body, but also developing the internal flow of qi within the body," he said.

Qi, a central part of the traditional Chinese way of explaining how the body works, is thought to be an internal energy force which can be harnessed not only for self-defense but also to maintain internal health and to help heal the ailments of others. Sui says that as qi is invisible, it is difficult for people to accept its existence and to understand how it works.

"As acupuncture works by stimulating the flow of qi around the body's invisible internal meridian lines, training in gong fu develops internal power," he said.

Sui has never been in a fight, but the smooth power and speed shown in his demonstrations send people with a sensible aversion to pain moving back quickly. Sui stresses that baguazhang is a difficult martial art to master. While not employing the leaps and kicks and furious flurry of punches seen in gong fu movies, training in baguazhang requires painstaking hours of practice in order to harness the body's internal and intangible qi energy. Initial training involves students walking in a tight circle for long periods of time with hands outstretched in order to try and detect and marshal their own qi flow. Displays of baguazhang, which is based on circular movements of the body, present a graceful spectacle when performed by proficient practitioners.

Sui says baguazhang is Daoist in nature as it involves a balanced combination of hard and soft forces, correlating with the symbiotic relationship of yin and yang prevalent in Daoist thought. He says that through regular practice it is possible to put oneself into closer contact with nature, which is also based on the interaction of yin and yang.

Sui's teacher Li Ziming, who died in his early 80s, painstakingly wrote two volumes of instructions for Sui. Li's fine characters are interspersed with quotations by Chairman Mao Zedong, as the volumes were written during the politically sensitive times of the Cultural Revolution when traditional arts such as gong fu were reviled.

Sui says that although gong fu has not been suppressed in contemporary times, present conditions in China were not conducive to its development. He says government support is focused towards acrobatic gong fu forms rather than traditional styles. In addition, teachers of traditional gong fu were not part of the personal network hierarchies of government sports associations.

Sui is serious about his gong fu. A couple of years ago he decided to retire early from his job at the Beijing Exhibition Hall to devote his time to gong fu practice and teaching, even though this meant living on a monthly stipend of RMB200 a month. Sui accepts students from all backgrounds, and presently teaches a small band of dedicated Chinese and Korean students, plus one rather slow-learning Australian.

According to the traditional Chinese way, if a teacher accepts someone as his disciple, he should not charge any money. Since his foreign students insist on paying, Sui only charges 200 yuan each month. But there are exceptions. When some South Koreans studying at Beijing Sports University found they could no longer afford the tuition and wanted to quit, Sui asked them to stay and told them he would teach them for free.

Now that he has retired, Sui plans to devote the rest of his life to gong fu. "Gong fu is not only useful for people's physical strength," Sui said, "But serves to train the inner qualities - logic, reason and wisdom - of human beings. The Daoist monks in ancient times were not educated at all before they became monks (because only poor people followed this calling), but as time passed and they became older, they became wiser- not because they recited scriptures every day, but because gong fu made them wiser."

Would-be students can contact Sui Yunjiang at 68360803. Note that he only speaks Chinese, though.