How can you “do nothing and achieve everything”? At first, this might seem like some kind of fortune cookie wisdom that hippies pass around with a bong. It may be that, but that’s not all it is. This saying is the key to not only understanding Zen and Daoist philosophies, but to living them. And the “living them” part is the part in which I have always been interested. I can wax philosophical all day long. I have read some of the cool books, and I know lots of cool words and phrases – so what!? Anybody with a fifth grade education can do that – hell, I could probably get a parrot to do that. Repeating neat phrases and correcting people’s pronunciation of foreign words does not a master make!

Daoism has the concept of De (德). De (pronounced “duh”) is a particular focus of power and efficacy in overall field of experience (Dao 道). The degree to which something or someone is focused, concentrated, and efficacious is the degree to which they have attained “enlightenment” or “convergence with the Dao.” That has less to do with talking and more to do with being. But being what? Being what you already are without adding anything to it is what effortless means. This doesn’t look any particular way from the outside, and we can’t make any fixed rules such as, “enlightened people are non-violent” or “if you were one with the Dao, you would see things as I do.” No. None of that works. Only you know what you are. Only you can be you. When we meditate or practice the arts of effortlessness (Yiquan, qigong, Taijiquan, etc.), we are just being what we are and nothing else. That is important. The more we can do that, the less we are adding on. The less we are adding on, the closer we are to the Dao.

When we are just ourselves, we can accomplish feats in our lives that could not be accomplished any other way. These accomplishments very often feel as though they happen through us, rather than because of us. That is effortlessness. When we have no choice but to take the action we are taking, we are effortless. This lack of choice is not a restriction imposed on us from the outside. It is just that effortless action is right on the line between voluntary and involuntary. We can’t really tell the difference. Our instincts have this quality to them. We can’t really see from whence they arise, but we know they are true. Very often our rational mind understands our instincts and we act on them. A lion roaring at me engenders fear. My rational mind understands why I feel fear. My action (running like hell) satisfies the whole of me. This satisfaction is the hallmark of effortlessness. When we take action or non-action that is truly effortless, we are comfortable. We are comfortable physically and psychically. Effortless action engenders no internal struggle. It fans no flames of internal rebellion. Effortlessness has a peaceful effect on us. Our actions may not seem peaceful (running like hell from a lion screaming), but they are. We are ok with our actions when they are effortless, regardless of what those actions may be. We don’t have to seek effortlessness. It is what is here when we stop stirring the pot.

So, stop. Be still and move.

The concepts of effortlessness and activism might seem contradictory at first glance. If they do, look deeper. When we talk about the “effortless” way, we aren’t talking about not doing anything. When we talk about not “doing” anything, we aren’t talking about inaction. Effortlessness does not mean inaction. Effortlessness means without effort. By “effort” we mean struggling or contesting. When you are trying to move some stubborn piece of furniture by grunting, cussing, and sweating, you are struggling and making an effort to do something. When you are able to just move the furniture without fighting with it and yourself, you are acting in an effortless way.

 
When it comes to activism, it seems that the very idea from the start is one of contest and of struggle. It doesn’t have to be. The effortless way is one of inner peace, not necessarily outer peace. Effortlessness finds us when we just do something. When something is in us and finds unadulterated expression in the world, we are effortless. The effort we don’t want is an internal effort of struggle that happens when we are divided inside. When we are not divided, we can just be what we are. That is the foundation of Yiquan. Being what you are just happens. You don’t have to grapple with it or struggle in any way; you just do it. Activism is usually carried out by people wanting to change something. That fact is irrelevant to the question of effortlessness. What is relevant is the motivation to take action. Are you doing it because you are swept up in propaganda for some particular cause, or are you doing it naturally because it is in you to do so? We don’t have to look far for examples of the former. I know plenty of otherwise intelligent people who got all caught up in Obama’s candidacy. They thought things were going to change. Why did they think that? They thought that because the guy needing their support said it. And here we are with Obama not only continuing Bush’s regime, but expanding unconstitutional federal power; we are worse off in every way. The shine wears off and people start to realize what they have done. People can polish anything to get you to buy it. Living the effortless way is a natural defense against this. Effortlessness means just being what you are. It allows you to see behind the masks that people wear. It allows you accept the truth of our reality in real time. What some dude on tv has to say is utterly irrelevant. All that matters is what is in you, what is natural, and what comes first.

 
Being effortless doesn’t mean sticking your head in the sand. It implies quite the opposite. Those of us believing in the bullshit of others are the ones with their heads in the sand. Being effortless means acknowledging the natural order of our being. We feel our own Qi first. We know intuitively what action to take. When we listen to that, we can seek out the proper information, people, events, etc., that resonate with that inner knowing. We still learn and pay attention to other people, of course. But what comes first and foremost is our intuition.

 
Your intuition may very well lead you to take some sort of action. That action might not be peaceful. It might be difficult, angry, or even violent. There are no rules to this, you are what you are – be that. If you put rules on it and say, “oh, I can’t be violent” then you aren’t being what you are, you’re being what you think about what you are. If you say that going to the capital and bullhorning someone is not very Zenlike, I’d say ok. I’m not trying to be Zenlike. If I were, I wouldn’t be very Zenlike! The point is to be yourself, not some ideal.
If you wake up and must take an action, take it. Don’t divide yourself. Just be.

A: Has M Yao’s Yiquan moved away from M Wang’s Yiquan in its appearance?

C: On top of the foundation laid down by M Wang, M Yao made his Yiquan clearer, more detailed. He used modern kinesiology to explain Yiquan. He also investigated the aspects of physiology, psychology, neurology and sports science that related to Yiquan. His training syllabus was continuous with that of M Wang. For example, ‘opposing force’ and reaction training, these two ideas are Yiquan’s roots, we can’t do without them. How do we develop these methods further? You can’t keep expressing the essence of the art in vague ways that leave people scratching their heads. That kind of thing will only lead to misunderstandings by Yiquan students. In this respect, M Yao made Yiquan clearer, more transparent. He changed some of the terms and explanations used during M Wang’s time for more modern, more easily understood names. During the Xian Nong Tan intensive, ‘uncles’ Han Xingqiao and Bu Enfu visited us there. Primarily, they came over to show us how to train the jibengong, but at the same time they also recounted their experiences of training under M Wang in Shen county (in Hebei province). ‘Uncle’ Bu [Enfu] said that they had to run, do leg stretches, and do punchbag work as part of their training. Every morning they would do long-distance running to build up their stamina. They would run from the countryside into the county town with M Wang following behind. When they got too hot they would take off their tops and pass them to M Wang. Once they got into town they would stretch their legs and practice kicks by the gate tower. They did punchbag work every day. The punchbags back then were a bit different from the ones we use now, the filling was a mix of wood shavings and sand. Because they punched the bags every day, their skin on their knuckles would split open and start to bleed. The blood would seep into the bag and clot around the wood shavings, forming little clusters. The next day their punches would once again break apart these clusters. Imagine them pain of breaking those clusters up every day! We asked M Bu to give us some pointers for combat, but he said “There’s no need for me to tell you when you’ve got M Yao around. What I can talk about is how I learnt boxing.” M Bu boxing coach was an Italian. Even before he became M Wang’s disciple, he was already a professional boxer and national shuai jiao [chinese wrestling] champion. That’s why he wasn’t allowed to compete in boxing tournaments post-Liberation, because only amateurs could enter.

Dou Shiming (1921-1997), one of Wang Xiangzhai's indoor disciples

Another time, when uncle Dou [Shiming] came to visit us at Xian Nong Tan stadium and saw the material that we were practicing, he said “Ruibin, you guys better practice hard, because M Yao is trying to really teach you!” M Dou said “A lot of the things you guys are practicing, M Yao never taught us.” The truth is, it was not that M Yao didn’t teach those things in the past, it’s just that his teaching methods had become more reasonable, more scientific and more varied. For example, during M Wang’s time, his students just ran in order to build stamina. By M Yao’s time, he had adopted boxing’s method of punching whilst running in order to train his students’ co-ordination during hard exercise. But Yiquan’s version of this exercise [running and punching] is different from that in boxing. This is ‘yang wei zhong yong’(making use of western ideas to benefit China), borrowing other people’s ideas in order to improve our own things. As early as the 1920s and 30s, M Wang put forward the idea of investigating people’s cells during exercise; at that point people were still fixated on muscle groups. M Wang’s understanding and research were ahead of their time. When M Yao was at the research centre, he used modern scientific instruments to verify the changes that occur to people’s muscles, cells and nerves whilst practicing yiquan, gaining clear, objective data in the process. The older generation of masters didn’t have this opportunity, they had to use the external form of a student to gauge how hard they were working out, which can easily lead to problems. Students who train hard are at risk of overload, fatigue, or damage to internal organs, which is a case of more haste, less speed. A reasonable training regime must combine training, application and recovery all in one. Now that science has become more advanced, it’s time to make these things more quantifiable, and let the numbers speak for themselves. I followed M Yao for all those years, I’ve always kept M Yao’s last words in mind, I haven’t dared slacken off. I’ve met many of M Wang disciples, who trained with M Wang at different times, and I’ve seen all of them perform, and so I think I have a right to talk about Yiquan. Yiquan’s history isn’t very long, I’m only the third generation. Even after M Wang founded Yiquan, he was continually experimenting and reformulating Yiquan’s training methods. M Yao built on the foundation that M Wang had laid, and through his own experimentation and realisations, gradually improved Yiquan’s training methods into the scientific, systematic regime of today. Of course, with the passage of time, we can’t just stay standing still, we have to develop and progress with the times. It’s like anything else, if it doesn’t develop then it will regress. I’ve discovered that some people have recently discovered some of M Wang’s early writings that he later refuted and are treating them as some kind of treasure. For those that have never met M Wang’s early disciples, they can look at the photographs and records they left behind, you will find that their ‘frame’ and movements still have a lot of xingyi in them. Nowadays, a lot of the Yiquan that’s being taught is distorted, either because the teacher has not understood the essence of Yiquan or has taken the teachings too literally. The west long ago adopted taiji as an exercise for astronauts to investigate the issue of people’s ability to move around in zero gravity. M Yao said to me at the time, “Yiquan is very difficult to practice, if we don’t use modern, scientific methods to explain how it does what it does, students will have great difficulty in grasping it. Other people [meaning the west?] are also investigating and developing, before long they will surpass us.”

A: I think it’s not wrong for wushu, including Yiquan, to develop in the direction of modern competition and leitai fighting. Not only do I not think it’s wrong, I think it should evolve in that direction.

C: You’re right. M Wang’s decision to adjust his students’ ‘frames’ in order to enter boxing tournaments is a prime example of M Wang’s willingess to break with tradition and his eagerness to innovate. If a martial art wishes to maintain its vigour, it has to move with the times. That’s the only way that we can compete fairly, and the only way we can get a chance to realistically test out our gongfu. Otherwise, if a martial art shuts its doors, makes excuses why it can’t compete, the result will be that that martial art will die. Of course, no matter how a martial art evolves, its essence, its internal techniques and culture melded into one, cannot be lost, that is the crucial point for Yiquan’s devlopment, as well as for other martial arts.

A: Nowadays, a lot of the people who practice Yiquan never saw Wang Xiangzhai for themselves, they’ve only heard or read about him. These people all want to develop M Wang’s ability to ‘launch’ people and talk about his feats with relish. What do you think of this phenomenon?

C: This kind of desire isn’t wrong, but you shouldn’t blindly pursue it. You need to understand the process, and that process is the training methods. It’s as if you wanted to climb onto the roof of a house, you first need a ladder. The number of rungs on the ladder will be determined by the ‘quality’ of the students – that’s the crucial point. For example, in M Wang’s case, there were 3 rungs; in M Yao’s case, he was given 5 rungs; and for my own students, I might set out 8 rungs. This is a natural law – times are moving forward, science is advancing but people’s reactions are becoming duller. Although spirit, intention and body awareness are important to Yiquan, the development of ‘natural power’ is even more important. The trend of modern people’s physiques generally not being as good as those of previous generations is even more reason for us to take a step-by-step, gradual approach in order to master this [ability], it’s a process of growth. As M Wang said, “A raise of the hand, a lift of the leg, What do you want to do? What’s the aim of it? What’s the effect? What are the intervening processes and phenomena?” You go from not being able to issue force, to being able to issue and not just to issue but also to launch people, this process is very important.

A: I bet there are lots of ‘knacks’ that have to be physically shown as part of this process.
C: Yes. For example, when I was training jiji zhuang under M Yao in the countryside, I couldn’t grasp the requirement of straightening the body and slightly caving the chest [han xiong] at the same time. M Yao took up a combat stance and said “Feel my chest”. As soon as I touched the centre of his chest, I instantly understood, and when I next did zhan zhuang, I immediately found the internal sensation. Another example was when M Yao was teaching us how to use a punchbag. He said, “When I’m hitting the bag, you should not only look at my movements, but also at my bearing (shen tai).” After you had seen his expression in the moment of issuing force, when you came to hit the bag yourself it made a world of difference.

Zhao Daoxin, one of Wang Xiangzhai's top disciples who later went on to found his own martial art, Xin Hui Zhang

A: (Wang Xiangzhai’s disciple and champion boxer) Bu Enfu once mentioned M Wang and his disciples in conversation with Liu Pulei, saying “I don’t dare mess with [Yao] Zongxun and [Zhao] Daoxin, with the rest of them, if they stay away I can hit them, if they come in close I can throw them.” Amongst the older generation of martial arts masters in Beijing, M Yao was known as ‘Yan Wang’ (the Chinese judge of the dead), they had a lot of respect for his attainments in martial arts.
C: (nods) M Yao’s premature passing caused uncalculable damage to Yiquan. If he had only lived longer, Yiquan wouldn’t be in the state it is today. Prior to M Yao having to go into hospital, he and Ivan Fok (head of the HK Yiquan Association) had already agreed that he [Ivan Fok] would contribute 3 million RMB towards the construction of a training ground for M Yao. After M Yao was hospitalised, Ivan Fok initially wanted to continue with the project. ‘Uncles’ Ao [shi-peng], Zhang Zhong and I went ‘house-hunting’. The site we were considering was in Wenchang Hutong oppposite the The Cultural Palace of Nationalities in Xidan [in central Beijing]. The complex consisted of 4 or 5 houses surrounding a courtyard of about 100 square metres. At that point, we wanted to buy the whole complex. Later on, some people suggested that we should ‘use business to fund martial arts’, i.e. we should use this money to do business. M Yao was of the opinion that Mr Fok had provided this money in order to promote Yiquan, not to do business. And besides, none of us knew the first thing about running a business. One day I was visiting M Yao at the hospital and happened to see him writing a letter to Mr Fok. In it, he had written, “This sum of money was intended for the development of Yiquan, it can’t just be used for any old purpose. Don’t give it to anyone without my express permission.” After M Yao had finished writing the letter, he asked me to post it. M Yao passed away soon after, and this project was left unrealised.

A: It’s a pity M Yao could not see his grand aspirations realised in his lifetime.
C: While M Yao was in hospital, Guangzi, Rongzi, Huzi (‘Tiger’, a nickname for Li Hongjin), Bai Xuezheng, Wei Yuzhu and myself took it in turns to look in on him in hospital. Seeing this, M Yao sighed and said “This illness of mine has set back your training.” And so, even though he was on a drip, he would still oversee our practice. The most striking memory I have of that time was when I was doing the large Ti An shili, M Yao said “Make it even bigger….bigger than that….even bigger….Yes, that’s it.” He told me, “Remember, that’s surging power (gudang li).” It was also during this period that he instructed me on how to deal with both the younger and older generations of the Yiquan community, person by person, name by name. One day slightly later on, when M Yao was getting near the end, ‘uncle’ Ao and I were sitting by M Yao’s bedside when uncle Ao said “Ruibin, why don’t you ask M Yao if he’s got anything left he needs to tell you.” M Yao, lying on his hospital bed, motioned for me to kneel down in front of the bed. He said “Everything there is to tell I have already told you, there’s nothing more to say. Just remember, keep on practicing, don’t slacken off, that’s all.”

A: A lot of people say that M Yao’s premature passing was because he was depressed due to the political campaigns that he had suffered under.

C: We all experienced the brutality of the cultural revolution. For someone like M Yao, who had his own ideals and ambitions in the martial arts, not to be able to realise his ambitions due to historical reasons and the oppressive environment, well, that kind of pain is not something most ordinary people could withstand. When M Yao was transferred over to An Zhen Hospital, many of his kungfu brothers called a meeting at which they decided not to put him through an operation.Myself and a few others advocated going through with the operation, saying “He’s got to have the operation. At least if he has the operation there’s some hope [for recovery]; if he doesn’t there’s no hope at all.” In the end, they decided to go through with it. After the operation, the surgeon in charge called over myself, uncle Ao, Madame Yao and Guangzi, and said that M Yao was critically ill, he couldn’t undergo any further operations. All the surgeon had done was gastric reconstruction to let M Yao eat some liquids. He told us to prepare ourselves for the worst, that M Yao had 3 to 6 months left. While M Yao was in hospital the Beijing Wushu Association gave its wholehearted supported to M Yao, especially in terms of his medical bills. Medicines are divided into grades; for example, nowadays, globulin is freely available, but back then supplies were extremely scarce, if you didn’t make the grade they wouldn’t give you the medicine. And so Beijing Wushu Association wrote a letter allowing M Yao a portion of his needs, and Ivan Fok bought another portion in Hong Kong for M Yao. M Yao was hospitalised for the 6 months from September 1984 until he passed away on the 11th of January, 1985. I wasn’t at his side when he passed away, which is something that causes me pangs of guilt even now. It so happened that my grandmother was on her deathbed at around the same time, so my family had me stay by her side. I even said to Guangzi “If there’s any change in the old man’s condition, let me know”. Perhaps because he had never gone through this before, he couldn’t find me that day and so didn’t tell me when M Yao passed away. After M Yao’s funeral, my shixiong Xu Ruhai saw me at the garden [where we used to train], as soon as he saw me he started scolding me, saying “Where the hell did you get to? Near the end M Yao kept on asking after you, yet no-one could find you!” I heard that that day uncle Ao, Bo Jiacong and Guangzi. Right near the end, Xu Ruhai and some others went to see him, and asked Guangzi to go to the house in Ma Dian; by the time Guangzi got back from Ma Dian, M Yao had already passed away.  [In saying this, a look of sadness passes across M Cui's face]

A: Let’s change the topic, you’ve already discussed a lot today,do you think you could go into the details of what the intensive training at Xian Nong Tan involved?

C: During the intensive we trained for more than three hours in the afternoon three times a week. The training was divided into stages. In the first stage, we would do an hour of zhan zhuang, then practice shi li and mo ca bu, nothing else. In the second stage, we would still do zhan zhuang, but the stances would be different to those in the first stage. After zhan zhuang, we would start practicing air punches, specifically advancing straight punch [jinbu faquan]. M Yao had me lead the others in this punching practice: we would start with one-sided punches, a straight punch, then a ‘drilling fist’ [zuan quan], followed by ‘planting fist’ [zai quan], within which there are 3 variations. After that, we would move on to ‘combined’ exercises that trained combos, footwork, posture and leg methods [tui fa]. Before practicing leg methods, we would do leg stretches, straight front kicks and shi li with our legs. When practicing leg methods, we would use a ball held in place vertically by springs or leather straps to train the accuracy and ‘crispness’ [cui jinr] of the issuing of force in our kicks. Later on, we added training with focus mitts. These included static and moving focus mitt training.

A: Is the focus mitt training in Yiquan the same as that in San Da and boxing?

C: No. In Yiquan, when you hit focus mitts, you hit it once as soon as the mitt comes towards you and again once you’ve gauged the correct distance. This trains the practitioner’s reflexes. At first, you don’t have to hit the mitts hard. I always used to tell my students, it’s like skeet-shooting, you’re waiting there with your gun, as soon as the clay disc shoots out, you should raise your gun and hear the disc breaking almost at the same time. At the same time, your posture, footwork and distancing need to be good, because the guy holding the focus mitt will also be moving. The mitt holder is crucial in helping students achieve good results from this training. At the end of the day, it’s all about training up-down, left-right and front-back. After mitt training, we move on to reactions training. The ‘rule’ of this exercise is that if I don’t do [something], you don’t do anything. For example, my fist is coming towards you, you’re not allowed to react until it reaches your forehead. You can’t counter-react as soon as I launch my attack; this is real reaction training. At that time, all of us developed thick calluses on our foreheads. In this way, not only did it train our reactions, but also the ability of the backbone to absorb force, because you’re very ’solid’ (zheng) when you react. Of course, there are other benefits to this kind of practice, but I won’t go into them just now. Later on, we started hitting punchbags. But before we hit the punchbags, we first held du li zhuang (single-leg pose) and fu hu zhuang (crouching tiger pose) for 20 to 30 minutes each.

Yao Chengguang in 'Crouching Tiger' pose (Fu Hu Zhuang)

Once we were all used to it, each training session would consist of zhan zhuang, airpunching, foot shi li, reaction training, focus mitts and punchbag work. After we had finished working through all of this jibengong [basic exercises], we would start sparring. In the beginning, when we practiced sparring we weren’t allowed to hit the head. We wore those very basic steel helmets that the PLA used to use for bayonet practice. Even though you weren’t allowed to go for the head, you still had to be conscious of protecting the head. After we had finished sparring, we then had to run around the Xian Nong Tan stadium whilst throwing punches: on the first lap we would throw straight punches,on the second it was drilling, and on the third planting, followed by 1 lap of varying speeds and 1 lap at steady speed. 5 laps of the stadium was almost 5000m. Our punchbag work was timed: we would hit the bag for 6 sets, each set being 3 minutes long. In one 3 minute set I could throw 260-270 combos. Guangzi could too. The rest interval between sets varied between 1 minute and 40 seconds. M Yao would support the punchbag while we were hitting it, following the movements of the bag as you hit it. That was his way of testing if your punches had penetrating power, and also whether you could punch with a consistent amount of power each time. M Yao also redoubled our training of zheng li (yiquan’s ‘opposing forces’ concept). M Yao told me “zheng li and reaction training are the core of Yiquan”. He sought the power of reflex through two relative bodies (your own and the opponent’s) (?). A lot of people right now are talking about ‘er zheng li’ (opposing force pairs); M Yao also discussed this, but in order to master zheng li, you need to start off by training specific force pairs.

A: A lot of people nowadays think that M Yao’s Yiquan is trending towards modern competitive fighting, that it’s become almost the same as San Da. The implication being that what M Yao teaches is not what M Wang taught him. What do you think about these kinds of statements?

C: This kind of opinion is due to a limited understanding of Yiquan, they can’t see the essence of Yiquan. They don’t understand M Yao, nor do they understand M Wang. In martial arts, you can’t keep on focusing on some ‘original’ training methods. We should make the training methods of our art more scientific and more transparent. You can’t keep clinging to abstruse explanations.

A: Just now we got to talking about how you quit your job for Yiquan, what was all that about?
C: In 1981, soon after M Yao and I had returned from Shanghai, in order to develop a Beijing San Da team, [the world-renowned wushu coach] Wu Bin invited me to join what later became the Beijing Combat Research Association. But my factory refused flat out to let me go. Wu Bin then said, as long as you find a way to temporarily transfer over for 2 weeks, I’ve got a way to make you permanent. But my factory still wouldn’t let me go, and I had no way to change their mind. It was only when Wu Bin saw that I really couldn’t come over, that he decided to transfer Mei Huizhi instead.

A: That was a real opportunity to promote Yiquan.
C: Yes. If I’d just gritted my teeth and quit then it would have been OK. From then on, I felt hard done by the factory and lost all enthusiasm for my work. Soon afterwards, I found various excuses to not go to work, instead spending practically every day over at Tucheng training with M Yao. At that time it was usually just me and Guangzi there. Sometimes Liu Pulei and Wu Xiaonan (two of M Yao’s other disciples) would come over too.

By that point, Rongzi had already gotten married and moved out. M Ao, seeing how hard we practiced, bought pig’s trotters, ribs and kidneys for M Yao’s wife to cook. She would add seaweed to it to make it more nutritious. With the kidneys, Madame Yao would fry up a dish of ‘yao huar’ (lit. ‘kidney flowers’, a dish of pan-fried kidneys cut into flower shapes). It was interesting, because sometimes, having eaten Madame Yao’s ‘yao huar’, M Yao would personally fry me up his own version of yao huar, saying “Rui Bin, you’ve tasted some of my wife’s kidneys, now try my version..”  

A: You mentioned before that during the intensive training at Xian Nong Tan, apart from research, M Yao also used Yiquan’s training methods to help athletes from other disciplines. Could you go into a bit more detail about that?
C: At the end of 1981, start of 1982, the Sports Research Facility of Beijing Sports Commission founded the Yiquan Research Group and conducted extensive tests regarding the application of Yiquan training methods to other sporting events. For example, we assisted Xiu Ruijuan in her experiments on “The micro-circulatory system is the second heart of the human body” and proved that her hypothesis was correct. In another experiment, under the auspices of the National Sports Commission, myself, Guangzi and Gao Changyou ran 1500m on running machines with other athletes. Before running, our resting pulse rate and blood pressure were taken. The experiment was looking at how fast we returned to our resting state after exertion. Although we couldn’t run as fast as the athletes, we tried our best. I returned to resting state the fastest by doing zhan zhuang and shi li: it took me just over 4 minutes to return to my resting state. The athletes, using their traditional methods, required 12 minutes to return to their resting state. It’s a proven fact that the longer the recovery time, the less able an athlete is to engage in intense training. M Yao helped the 3-time Asian discus champion, Li Weinan, with his training. At that point, Li wanted to compete at the World Championships, but to do so he had to break the 61m barrier. That day, footage of Li’s performances was brought to the Yiquan Research Group for us to have a look. M Yao asked me, “Ruibin, can you see anything wrong with his action?” I immediately focused on Li’s posture at the moment of release, and said “His neck is bent.” Throwing events are all the same in that if you don’t have vertical force, the centrifugal force at the moment of release will be diminished. It’s like a car axle; if the axle is bent, how are the wheels supposed to turn? And so naturally M Yao used Yiquan’s methods to help Li Weinan improve his discus-throwing.

A: Which methods would those be then?
C: Apart from teaching him zhan zhuang to solve his own problems, M Yao also got him to repeat his ‘release action’ without a discus as a kind of shi li exercise. If you hold the discus with your right hand, then the left hand needs to be coordinated accordingly, you need to have an awareness of the left hand extending – the ‘distance’ of your intention is crucial. That’s why Yiquan isn’t just standing there or waving your arms around. Just zhan zhuang by itself trains a person on spiritual, physiological and psychological levels. These 3 levels are like a circle, they all feedback onto each other. During this period of research, M Yao really wanted to take this opportunity to infuse Yiquan training methods into those of modern competitive sports in order to help them improve their performance. On the 3rd day of the Chinese New Year in 1981 (M Yao was living at Xiao Guan at that point), when I awoke after my post-lunch nap to hear two officials from the Beijing and National Sports Commissions talking to M Yao. I heard M Yao say “I’ve got no problem with coaching the boxing team, how many gold medals do you want within 3 years? How many gold medals do you want within 5 years? Give me a number. On one condition: I’m to be in charge of their training, I don’t want any zhidao yuan (‘political supervisors’ from the Communist party apparatus).

A: Surely M Yao’s ‘coach comes first’ approach wouldn’t have worked back in those days?
C: That’s why in the end, the issue [of M Yao coaching the boxing team] was dropped. In my experience, we still need zhidao yuan when training people, because it’s the mental work that’s the hardest. Having said that, zhidao yuan need to know their place and not overstep their boundaries.

A: In hindsight, the newness of M Yao’s discoveries, the breadth of his vision and the modernity of his thinking all rode at the forefront of chinese traditional MA.
c: I have vivid memories of M Yao teaching the shooting team. The nature of shooting meant that what was important to them was their front-back line. When aiming for the bullseye, the barrel of the rifle tends to waver around. M Yao told the team to imagine that the muzzle and bullseye were connected by a length of string; the straighter they pulled the string, the more accurately they aimed and the smaller the wavering of the barrel. In Yiquan this is called ‘Enlarging a mental rod’ [jingshen ganggan fangda]. Later on, those shooters [that M Yao had trained] all went on to perform extremely well. M Yao also helped to coach the national football, swimming and weightlifting teams. During that period, apart from training, the research centre would often ask us to write articles about the ‘application of Yiquan to the training of other sports’. The swimming coach of the National Sports Commission, Yu Xian-gui, became interested in Yiquan after attending one of M Yao’s talks and started studying Yiquan with M Yao. He later applied his Yiquan training to swimming. Even to the present day, he hasn’t forgotten M Yao’s guidance. Later on he invited me several times to continue investigating this topic [applying Yiquan to swimming] when I had some free time. He even mentioned Yiquan when he went to the US on an exchange scheme, which was very laudable of him. 

One day, after he had finished training  the football team, M Yao called me to Rongzi’s house. While we were having lunch, M Yao said to me ”In future I won’t be able to train them [the football team] regularly, the two of you should get ready to substitute for me.” Zhang Li-de was once considered the ‘Master Boxer of the North’ (bei quan wang) in Chinese boxing circles. He had a lot of respect for M Yao. During 1980 and 1981, as soon as he got a spare moment at the weekend he would go to the Exhibition Hall looking for M Yao, and also trained with us. Every time he met M Yao he would do a full 90-degree bow out of respect. M Zhang was the real thing, a true fighter, as well as a martial artist who kept up with the latest developments and was continually innovating – he knew who had real gongfu and who didn’t. He used Yiquan’s ‘planting punch’ (zai chui) in his boxing.

A: How did you carry out experiments at the research centre?

C: At the research centre we [M Yao and us students] would do zhan zhuang with many instruments attached to us by wires. When we did zhan zhuang, the trace on the instruments would form a regular wave pattern, but when M Yao did it, the instrument would just display a 3cm-thick flat band – no spikes, no waves. The doctors were exceedingly puzzled at this and would keep looking back and forth between M Yao and their instruments. Even though M Yao’s trace was just a flat band, he was obviously still exerting himself strenuously, as attested to by the beads of sweat on his forehead. While we were training at Xian Nong Tan, one of the athletics coaches, coach He, saw M Yao training with his shirt off: coach He was extremely surprised to see that when not issuing force [fa li], M Yao’s body was completely relaxed, but as soon as he issued force, ’snakes’ of muscle would immediately appear on his back. During our trip to Shanghai with M Yao, we all went to a public baths with him and I saw that his lower abdomen was like a balloon, really round. This is the last of 3 stages [of the abdomen]: the first is ‘relaxed roundness’ [song yuan], the second is ‘normal roundness’ [chang yuan], and the third is ‘firm roundness’ [shi yuan].     

Fong Ha’s Yiquan is characterized by a focus on the ability to listen. A general guideline in our two-person practice of push hands (tui shou) and free hands (san shou) is don’t collide, don’t separate. This kind of skill is another way that our Yiquan is more than a martial art. It is truly an art of life. Ha Sifu says that Yiquan is a small way that can lead to the Way. The ability to listen is especially difficult for strong people to grasp. We can get away with so much just pushing the world around. We don’t have to listen to get what we want – or so we think. Usually, we end up doing so much damage getting what we want that the end result is misery and suffering for us and those around us. Physical strength is great, but, like steel, it is greater when tempered.

When we listen, we can understand. When we understand, we can take appropriate action. Things go well for us when we take the appropriate action. When we can’t listen, we can’t know what to do. We can’t know what the situation requires of us. How many situations in your life would have gone better if you could have stayed connected without colliding?

Another important aspect of our Yiquan training is the focus on developing a soft power. We do this by not struggling. Struggling implies resistance. Resistance means you are going the wrong way. So, what’s the difference between struggling and just working hard? The difference is in the world’s response to your actions. Struggling is when you continue to act despite a negative response. Hard work is action to which the world responds positively. It might be active and dynamic, but the world responds favorably to it. Appropriate action is pulled out of you by the world around you. If your kid is in danger, though you may sweat and grunt to save them, the action is not forced. You feel as though you have no choice with right action. You just do it. You do, of course, have a choice. You always have a choice. But, when Spirit moves us, we just find ourselves acting. Nearly all artists, athletes, etc. describe a sense of whatever it is that they are good at just flowing through them – that’s it. We call it being “in the zone.” Bruce Lee said once that after years of training his hands and feet would move of their own accord – same thing. We must sense our selves, then the world, process that sensation, and act. That is the sequence. If it gets all jumbled up and we are trying to find ourselves while trying to act…we fail.

The more we stand in stillness, the more comfortable we become with ourselves. The more comfortable we can be in our own skin, the more we can focus on the immediate reality before us. When we have to manage all of our insecurities we are distracted. If we feel confident and sure of ourselves, we can respond to our environment from a position of strength rather than weakness.

With our Yiquan practice we are doing more than just cultivating martial power, we cultivate a sense of self that pervades our entire lives. Fong Ha absolutely embodies these principles. It is inspiring to see the benefits of such a practice in such a wonderful person. I have a real problem with know-it-all guru types hawking magical powers. Fong Ha is the exact opposite of this. He, despite his world-class martial pedigree, is always in the “beginner’s mind.” Ha Sifu begins with listening – with a question. When asked a question, he works from the ground up to as high as you want to go. That is power to me – real power. To create from scratch each and every time is adaptability. That is the power to be.

A: We’ve long heard that Yiquan’s penetrating power (chuan tou li) is formidable. Did M Yao set you any ‘rules’ for responding to challenges?
C: At first, there were no rules. Later on, there was one incident that resulted in M Yao setting me some rules. It started like this: in the afternoon of 25th April 1982, there was a San Da competition at Shijingshan Sports Stadium. For that event, there was no-one else in my weight category, so I brought some kungfu brothers to demonstrate Yiquan’s combat ability. After the competition, when pretty much everyone had left, one of the coaches called Yang Yong-de came over and said, “M Cui, someone wants to cross hands with you. Could you accept the challenge?” At this point, a few of the umpires came over and said “M Cui, if you’re going to take him on, don’t go easy on him, this guy has been challenging people leftt right and centre. Even during the competition just now he kept on insisting that he wanted to challenge this master, that master…” As soon as I heard this, I accepted the challenge. When he [the challenger] heard that I had agreed, he requested that we wear gloves. I put on a pair of grapple gloves which were standard in San Da at that time. I said to him, “Hit me with whatever you’ve got, I’ll just use hands, not feet.” At first, the challenger threw lots of empty feints, to which I myself put out an upward feint. In response, he sank down and was about to come up when I hit him with a ’scraping palm’ (xiao zhang) on his collarbone. He was knocked onto his ass and sat on the ground, ashen-faced and breathing heavily, whilst hurriedly trying to take off his gloves. Seeing this, I started scolding him, saying “Oh come on! If you can’t even take that, how come you’re continually wanting to challenge everyone?”, to which he had no reply. A friend of his helped him up. He hadn’t gotten out of the stadium before he collapsed to the ground and had to be carried to the janitor’s room. It took him 4 hours to recover. The next day, I mentioned this incident at Xian Nong Tan, and news of it reached M Yao. M Yao waved his finger at me and scolded: “Ruibin, from now on, you are not permitted to accept challenges without my agreement! What if you’d killed him? I wouldn’t swap 10 of that kind of man for 1 of you!” He was worried that if I kept on acting rashly, sooner or later I would get into trouble and all his years of hard work in training me would be for nothing.

A: People used to say that you were M Yao’s ‘heavy’, didn’t they?
C: Yeah, they did. Certainly I had more opportunities to accept challenges than my Yiquan brothers did. In 1981, Shanghai’s ‘Liberation Daily’ newspaper [Jiefang Ribao] printed an article by a martial arts master surnamed Wang who claimed he had defeated Wang Xiangzhai in 1937 in Yantai. M Yao asked me to take leave from my factory and go with him to Shanghai, which I did. We met with the editor responsible for printing this article, Cheng Kang-xuan. M Yao said, “As far as I know, Wang Xiangzhai never went to Yantai. Since this master Wang says that he beat Wang Xiangzhai, I need to check the details with him. Although I haven’t practiced much in the last decade in the countryside, I could still cross hands with him. If he’s got any students who’d be willing to cross hands, I’ve also brought a student of my own, they could compare skills.” Cheng Kang-xuan said that the original draft of the article had been even more exaggerated than the pne printed, that he had deleted a lot. As for crossing hands, Cheng said that that was fine, he turned round and started calling “Master Wang, Master Wang!” – but master Wang had disappeared. Puzzled, Cheng said “But master Wang was just here, he was certainly here when you came in….”. The chairman of the Shanghai Wushu Association, Gu Liuxin, and the head of the Wushu department of Shanghai Physical College, Cai Longyun, with M Yao’s approval, organised a banquet to which this master Wang was supposed to come and talk things over with M Yao, but he never turned up. We made some inquiries and found out which park this master Wang taught his students at, but on arriving at the park, we couldn’t find them either. Afterwards, in order to bring the incident to a close, the Liberation Daily published an article by Zhang Changxin (another of Wang Xiangzhai’s students) about the stir M Wang Xiangzhai had created when he first started teaching Yiquan in Shanghai. In 1985, after M Yao had passed away, I went to see my kungfu uncle Zhao Daoxin. As soon as I got in the door, M Zhao said “Young Cui, you’ve had a hard time of it.” On hearing this, I knew that M Yao had told M Zhao about our trip to Shanghai to find this master Wang. I said, “M Yao told you?” Zhao said “Yes, I heard the whole thing.” After I had sat down, M Zhao said, “Even before you went to Shanghai your teacher came to Tianjin to discuss this matter with me. At first, I didn’t think that M Yao should go to Shanghai. M Wang has already passed away, what’s the point of taking issue with these people [in Shanghai]?” With a sigh, he continued “But I guess M Yao didn’t have much choice, being standard-bearer and all.”

A: Even now there are people claiming online and in magazines how they beat Wang Xiangzhai.
C: I know. The people who made those claims have all passed away now. In this respect, I agree with M Zhao’s point of view, we should just let this kind of talk wash over us. Actually, I’m not saying that M Wang never lost. Every martial artist can have a bad day, no-one gets born a master. Wang Xiangzhai even recounted to his disciples the times in his youth when and how he lost. But people shouldn’t make stuff up for their own purposes, their stories don’t even stand up to scrutiny.

A: Objectively speaking, even those people who later went on to become great masters had days when they lost through being out of sorts or underestmating their opponent. This kind of thing happens a lot. Many people can’t or won’t accept the fact that their teacher or grand-teacher once lost because they are emotionally invested in an idea. They think that their shifu losing means that their style is no good. In actuality it’s not like that: just because someone loses occasionally, that doesn’t mean that that master has no gongfu or his style is no good.
C: Even Muhammad Ali didn’t win all of his fights, but he’s still acknowledged as one of the greatest boxers of all time. The way to assess the gongfu and achievement of a martial artist is to investigate the material he left behind. My view is, if you’re serious about martial arts, you should put your energy and effort into investigating the material passed down by previous generations as well as training up the next generation. You should help them become capable fighters who can stand the test of real combat, *that’s* the right path.

A: Gongfu isn’t in the mouth.
C: That’s right. Although M Wang Xiangzhai said that ‘combat is the lowest skill’ (jiji nai moji), but in order to become a great master you must at the very least possess this ability. People said that I was M Yao’s ‘heavy’, but later on M Wang Yuxiang (another of Wang Xiangzhai’s disciples) often said “Ruibin isn’t just a fighter, he’s also well versed in the principles of Yiquan”. When shishu (kungfu uncle) Dou (Dou Shiming, a senior disciple of Wang Xiangzhai) and I went to Shenzhen in 1994 to teach Yiquan, Tong Guozao from Argentina and Tang Rukun from Canada both brought groups over. The whole series of seminars was caught on video. This video was passed on to Ivan Fok, head of the Hong Kong Yiquan Association, who gave me a copy. Another copy made its way to me via (Yao Zongxun’s disciple) Bai Xuezheng, who had received it from Han Sihuang (another of Wang Xiangzhai’s disciples). My speeches and demonstrations were all captured on the tape. Later on, after  he had watched the tape, M Han called me over to his house, saying “Ruibin, we didn’t really know you before, in the future we’d love you to come here and help train up [my students] in the combat side of things.”

Yiquan, especially that of Fong Ha, is more than a martial art. The founder of Yiquan, Master Wang Xiang Zhai said: “what cannot lead to comfort, happiness, and gaining strength does not deserve to be called martial art.” This about sums it up. Most martial arts focus on learning techniques and ways of dealing with particular situations. There is nothing wrong with this other than the time you spend doing all of that would be much better spent cultivating your own innate power and ability.  Yiquan is the pursuit of not only great martial prowess, but also a good life. Don’t get me wrong. I know as well as anyone that most arts address this idea. The difference between Yiquan and other arts is that this is the main focus, rather than a side note.

Zhan zhuang (standing) is the main practice of Yiquan. It makes up about 80% of our training. The main benefit of standing practice is much like that of meditation – you get here and now. The way to incredible power is not hidden, nor is it anything mysterious or far away. We aren’t looking for the supernatural. We are trying to leave the subnatural behind. We do this when we cultivate stillness and equilibrium. Only the real remains when we are still. When we are standing still we are soaking ourselves back in. All the energy – mental and physical – that we devote to the memories of the past and the fantasies of the future comes flooding back to us in stillness. This can feel like something magical at first but soon you realize that it is just you. You remember your power and your self. This is the source of Yiquan’s power. It helps us be better people. Not better by some arbitrary standard – better by our own standards. No one can be you better than you so why let someone tell you how to be or how to move or how to think. Yiquan is a way of individual freedom. There is no room for fixed movements.

Most of the problems people have as individuals and as societies can be traced back to the inability of people to know themselves. People come up with laws and rules out of fear. We are afraid that we won’t be able to handle what comes up so we try to make rules to anticipate our reality. Laws and rules can serve the purpose of clarifying things as stop signs do for traffic. They can also come to be tools of oppression and interference like “hate laws.” The Dao De Jing tells us that foreknowledge is tinsel decorating the Dao and is the first sign of ignorance. In Yiquan we don’t rely on our ability to anticipate future realities. Rather, we cultivate our ability to sense and engage the world right here and now. To do this, we strip away rather than add. We strip away all the useless crap we’ve told ourselves over the years to reveal what is. Again this is a very Daoist principle. The Dao De Jing says the Dao is a process of stripping away day by day while learning is a process of accumulation day by day.

“Don’t move the body – you train your Qi. Don’t move your mind – you train your Spirit.”

This is a proverbial saying that Fong Ha brings up at his workshops (in Austin anyway). It is simple and to the point. I’m not entirely sure where the quote is from. It may be from Wang Xiang Zhai, I don’t know. I like it because it captures the essence of years of training and wisdom in just a few lines, as do all great and enduring proverbs. The idea in Yiquan is that in stillness we can achieve the greatest cultivation, Da Cheng another name for Yiquan is Dachengquan, which translates to the way (quan) of great achievement, or perfection (dacheng).

There is a lot of confusion regarding the concept of Qi in Yiquan. Wang made many comments critical of the mystification of the martial arts using concepts like Qi. He also, however, made many comments using Qi. I have seen no quotes of Wang’s where he says Qi doesn’t exist or that it is a useless idea as many of his descendants seem to imply. Qi is simply the understanding of the fact that the world we live in is a connected whole. It is a continuous field of energy. This is what we know today in physics. Now, this theory has and continues to be used to promote all kinds of stupid ideas and delusions. You have to be able to sort out the good from the bad, which is what I believe Wang was telling us. Any theory that isn’t readily demonstrable and observable is weak. Chinese endeavors are guided by the notion of Dao, the Way. The Dao is the commonest of denominators. This means that the more powerful your theory, the more prevalent and obvious it is. We have the same idea in the west. A major part of our scientific method is that experiments should be repeatable and clearly demonstrate the accuracy of our theories. Yiquan follows the notion of Dao. Wang simply asked us not to focus on the rote memorization of forms and theories. He cited many exaggerations and misuses of traditional theories to warn us of what happens when we get lost in our ideas and forget about the immediate reality before us.

Stillness allows us to achieve great skill because it is in stillness that Qi gathers. In this sense we could look at Qi as potential energy. As we stand in postures only moving enough to keep upright, the system is very quiet. The activity of the mind and body are turned down to level that we can comprehend. We can observe the interaction of mind and body when we are still. The interaction of mind and body is the definition of Qi for a person. So we’re literally cultivating this energy in its potential form by standing still. Likewise, when our mind is still we aren’t adding any thoughts to the ones naturally bubbling up and our Spirit can be calm and grow stronger. When our system is idling it can repair itself – much like when we are sleeping.

Remember – Yiquan is the art of  “doing nothing and achieving everything”

A: Some people say that M Yao was conservative, that he didn’t teach openly, how would you respond to this?
C: It wasn’t like that. A lot of people learnt Yiquan from M Yao, both on the health and martial sides. Sometimes everyone was standing around M Yao asking questions about this and that. M Yao would answer all the ones he could divulge.

A: What kind of things could he not divulge?
C: Let me give you an example. There was a stretch of time when a bunch of friends trained martial arts with me. M Yao knew that I was a straightforward guy, if someone asked me something I’d be sure to tell them. M Yao told me a story: Once upon a time, there were two people who had been friends since childhood. Later on, one of them became a provincial magistrate and the other became a rich man. The rich man, who was a pigeon fancier, kept lots of expensive, rare pigeons in his house. One day the rich man bumped into the magistrate in the street, and not having seen each other for a long time, the rich man invited him to go over to his house. When the magistrate saw that the rich man kept so many pigeons in his house, he was lavish in his praise. After the magistrate had left, the rich man, thinking that his friend was also a pigeon-fancier, sent over two of his finest pigeons to the magistrate’s house. Not long afterwards, the magistrate paid the rich man another visit. As they got to chatting, the rich man asked the magistrate for his opinion of the two pigeons he had given him. To his consternation, the magistrate said “They tasted great!” – the magistrate had eaten the rich man’s prize pigeons! M Yao intention in telling me this parable was that if you give something good to someone who doesn’t need it or hasn’t reached the level where he can appreciate it, either he will abandon it or not cherish it. The end result is the same, that good thing becomes devalued or ruined. M Yao often said to me “Teaching someone martial arts is about character, it’s not like treating a friend to a meal. Say one of my friends was broke, of course I would lend him money; but martial arts is not something I would teach lightly.” It wasn’t that he was conservative, he was just misunderstood. As he said to me, “When people buy gifts for me, that’s just an expression of friendship. But, if that person asks me to teach him, and today he’s at ‘level one’, then tomorrow he will still be at ‘level one’. The problem is, tomorrow, he will want to ask me about ‘level two’, and then the day after that it will be ‘level five’. I really want to teach him, if he’s at level one then I can only teach him level one material, gongfu is something you have to achieve in your body, not your head. I can’t tell him too much, it would just confuse him. I’ve found that the really inquisitive ones are always the ones who practice the least. Even if I explained it to them they would not understand. He admonished me, saying “If you really want to train up a student, you have to always give him material just slightly beyond his current level. If he doesn’t ‘get’ it, you can’t keep on teaching him more stuff, that’s what a real teacher does, that’s how you really help someone ‘grow’ in the martial arts. In the years that I trained with M Yao, from 1972 onwards, you had to ‘digest’ what he taught you and ‘get’ it before he would move on to the next point. For example, there are a lot of variations in Yiquan’s ‘3 fists’, and it took me until 1975 before I really grasped them. The moment I did, M Yao stopped mentioning them. That was his teaching style, he would never talk about things you had already grasped, rather he would always talk about the ‘gaps’ in your Yiquan. He always wanted to turn your weakenesses into your strengths, that’s how he viewed progress. Take hunyuan li as an example: we should be able to express hunyuan li forwards and backwards, upwards and downwards, and to the left and right. Everyone will have one ’strong’ direction and a ‘weak’ one.

As a student, you should focus on and strengthen the direction in which you are weakest. Unfortunately, it’s always the case that people focus on their strong side, and their Yiquan ends up polarised. The entire idea of hunyuan li is that it is a balanced power that can be expressed in any direction, if you can only express it in one direction how is that hunyuan li? It’s like when I was practicing ‘Advancing palm change’, I practiced it for a while until I thought it was OK, then started to want to practice something else – but M Yao just kept quiet. I ended up practicing ‘Advancing single palm’ for 6 months, by the end it had gotten to the point where I was sick of ‘Advancing palm change’, I had to force myself to practice it. One day, when M Yao finally said ‘That’s enough’, I felt so relieved! It was only later, when I was accepting challenges at home and abroad, that I realised the importance of the skills developed by ‘Advancing palm change’ in real combat. It was M Yao’s strictness that really hit home. He didn’t want you to just ‘learn’ a technique, he wanted you to practice material until it became unconscious, automatic.

A: A lot of people ask why, if it only took M Yao 3 years to be able to fight with Yiquan, why did it take the third generation of masters much longer?
C: M Yao actually discussed this with me, he said “Ruibin, you can’t compare this generation with our generation. When I was young, all I did all day except eat and sleep was practice Yiquan. I didn’t think about anything else, I certainly never thought about money. Nowadays, if you don’t find work you won’t even have the money to eat. As an adult, you can’t keep on relying on your parents to provide for you. If you have a full-time job as well as having to practice Yiquan, then of course the process will more drawn out. It took me 3 years, so I’d say it will maybe take you 6 years or so, maybe a little bit longer. That’s why in this art your willpower and determination are so important, if you can’t grit your teeth and stick it out, then you’ll never make it.

A: You previously talked about how you came to study under M Yao in general. Could you go into a little bit more detail about how he taught pushing hands (Tuishou) and sparring?
C: Back in the day, apart from training with M Yao I also sparred with a bunch of people from my factory. One time, M Yao was watching me spar with another student at his house, when he said “What’s with all the flashy stuff? Just stick to the basic structure…”Later on, after he considered that I had the basics down pat, he let me experiment a bit. At the time, he said “At first, you’ve got to be resolute. If you see that you can hit him, go for it; worry about not hitting him when it happens. As for the details, they can come later, when your basics are solid enough.”

A: What exactly are the details he was talking about?
C: The details he was referring to were feints and ‘tells’ – both with the hands and feet, and mentally too. Of course, there’s also shen guang long zhao (‘enveloping aura’?). When you have these elements at your command things get more detailed, richer and fuller. M Yao taught me how to spar under different circumstances: what to do when you’ve got a lot of room, when you’re cramped, when your opponent comes at you full throttle, or how to force him to make a move if he hangs back. Before 1981, M Yao pushed and sparred with me a lot. After 1981, every so often, he would push or spar with me, then explain what was going on inside. There was a period when, in order to train my footwork, shenfa and ability to spot attacking opportunities, M Yao decreed that, in sparring, I was only allowed to launch 3 punches in each 3-minute round.

A: When M Yao pushed and sparred with you, were you really trying to beat him?
C: Yes. As soon as I detected an opportunity, I would fa li, hoping to launch the old guy for once (chuckles). The folly of youth, I guess. As I launched my attack, M Yao would contract, leading me to feel as if I had crushed something really heavy. The moment I had this feeling, it was replaced by a feeling of that ‘thing’ having been blown away by the wind. I guess that’s why they say ‘Power like the sea overflowing, body moving like a mountain in flight’(li zhang ru hai yi, shen dong si shan fei). His control over tension, motion and fullness was a marvel to behold. And in sparring as well, I gave it my best shot, but I still couldn’t hit him! Many times, I would feel as if my fist had already made contact, but it was like my fist just brushed him, there was nowhere to apply my force. The strange thing is that he didn’t even have to move very fast, but his two big hands were always in front of your face. It didn’t matter how had you tried to duck and dive, it was as if he was psychic, his two big hands would always be there waiting for you.

A: [Wang Xiangzhai's disciple, now deceased] Ao Shi-peng once told me an anecdote that took place while China was in the thrall of ‘Qigong mania’ [in the 80s]. Ao asked M Yao about the ‘fa gong’ [external release of qi], and asked whether Yiquan could produce this kind of ability too. At first, M Yao was reluctant to talk about this kind of thing, but eventually, seeing that Ao wasn’t going to drop it, sighed and raised his hand. Bear in mind that Ao and M Yao were separated by a dining table at this point. M Yao lifted his hand and made a very small fa li motion towards Ao’s face. Ao felt as if a large mass of paper had hit his forehead, it scared him witless. Have you ever come across this ability?

C: M Yao was always reluctant to talk about this kind of thing, even in his books he denied it existed in Yiquan. His intent was not to lead Yiquan students astray. Actually, the practice of Yiquan can develop this ability. M Yao told me about it in 1978. That year, in order to study Yiquan with M Yao, I took sick leave dozens of times. I gave up a lot of other things to practice Yiquan.

A: Later on, you quit your job to train full-time, didn’t you?
C: That happened in 1981. At that point in time, none of us could have imagined that we would be able to make a living from teaching Yiquan. M Yao taught me fa gong so that I would have another way to make a living (besides teaching martial arts). As he said ‘It’s alright for you to fight now that you’re young, but do you still want to be fighting when you’re 60?’And so he told me that fa gong could help cure people’s illnesses. I had already come across this before. At that time there was a woman in my factory called Zhang Qingchun who had gastroptosis (prolapsed stomach). I said to her, Ms Zhang, let me try and heal you: so she stood there while I did fa gong for her. At first,I hadn’t mastered the changes inside. I used a very high frequency, and after 5 minutes she started to sweat and her legs started to buckle. After I asked her to sit on a sofa and slowed down my frequency, she felt much better. At the moment I have several friends who have illnesses that I have tried to cure with fa gong, so far the results have been very good.

A: You’ve mentioned that M Yao was extremely strict, did M Yao ever bawl you out?
C: Yes. There was one time when I was sparring with Guangzi (Yao Cheng-guang) at Xian Nong Tan stadium, M Yao was watching from inside the room. As we were sparring, M Yao pushed open the window and shouted  “Ruibin! What the hell are you doing?!”As soon as I heard him shout, I stopped sparring – I couldn’t understand why M Yao was angry with me. M Yao walked out of the building and scolded Guangzi. Guangzi tried to make excuses, but that only made M Yao more angry, so he said “If Ruibin won’t beat you, then I will!” Later, M Yao agitatedly said to me, “Ruibin, do you want to see Guangzi get beaten in the future?” From this, one can see M Yao’s strictness, not only towards his students but even towards his own son. Actually, he was strict with Guangzi exactly because he felt responsible for his future. During those years that I studied Yiquan with M Yao, even though he didn’t scold me very often, every time he scolded his  sons, I treated it as if he was scolding me: I instinctively understood that M Yao didn’t want to have to correct the same mistake a second time, that I could not allow myself to make the same mistakes as Guangzi. In 1982, after an intensive at Xian Nong Tan, M Yao said to me, “Ruibin, come back to my house with me.” I said that I had stuff to do. M Yao said “It can wait till tomorrow!” As soon as I heard that, I knew that M Yao had something to tell me, and went back with M Yao. At that point, M Yao had moved to Ma Dian. As we were eating dinner, M Yao mentioned a few people who practiced Yiquan with me. He knew that I was a straight-up guy, if someone else asked me about something, I’d be sure to tell him. But from M Yao’s point of view, those people talked the talk but didn’t walk the walk, they didn’t put in the effort, so I shouldn’t tell them everything. He said ‘You’d better toe the line! [re: not telling people everything]“. Following which, we moved on to the training at Xian Nong Tan, at which point he raised his voice and said “From now on, you’re in charge of the training at Xian Nong Tan!” I said ‘But you’re there…” M Yao said “If anyone tries to get uppity, just say that it came from me!” And so, from then on, I was in charge of leading the training at Xian Nong Tan. Later, M Yao went to Henan; before he left, he said “Ruibin, after I leave you’ll be in charge here. You’re the one I expect to accept any challenges that come our way.” As M Yao expected, after he left, a boxer came to Xian Nong Tan and issued a challenge. That day Bo Jiacong (another of Yao Zongxun’s disciples) was present, and acted as the referee. Because the boxer was pretty skilled, I hit him pretty hard. Unfortunately, this resulted in Hou Zhihua (from the Yiquan Research Group) criticising me; he said “You shouldn’t have hit him so hard, he’s still lying in the infirmary you know!” What can I say, I was young and reckless, back then challenges were commonplace.

A: You mentioned punchbag work just now. Is there a process to this too, or did students just start straightaway?
C: There’s a sequence to everything. M Yao divided our punchbag training into several stages. First we hit small cotton balls, then next small punchbags, until we finally started training on heavy bags. For the cotton ball training, small cotton balls were suspended from a piece of string. Students would stand at a distance where they could open up their shoulders and their guard hand could come completely round. We would then punch at the ball so that your fist only just made contact with the ball . At this point you still had to relax, you couldn’t use force; if you used physical force the cotton ball would fly away. But at the moment when your fist touched the cotton ball, you had to clench your fist, the cotton ball couldn’t be allowed to fly away.

At that time, apart from zhan zhuang, all I practiced was shi li, mo ca bu,shadow-boxing and punchbag training. I started practicing shi sheng (Yiquan’s ’voice testing’) in 1975; it was M Yao who practiced tuishou and sparring with me. In 1976, in readiness for a staff-fighting competition organised by our factory militia, I started learning the long pole (ganzi) . I had never practiced with a staff before, but was very keen to enter the competition, so I mentioned it to M Yao. He said “That’s easy, you’ve already got the foundation, all I need to do is to explain it [the staff] to you”. Because of the conditions in the countryside at that time, naturally there were no standard kungfu poles. In order that I’d have something to practice with, M Yao fashioned 2 poles from 2 wooden staffs just over a metre long. Wouldn’t you know it, I won all of my 10 or so matches using those makeshift poles in the competition and was named champion! A lot of the other competitors were ex-soldiers who had been allocated to our factory upon demobilisation, so they had received army-style lance training, but they couldn’t stand up to my Yiquan staff. There was one person who was an obvious choice who hadn’t entered the competition – the vice-head of our Armoured division.  In the army, he had been a top pole-fighter within the Beijing region, who had achieved top honours in the competition organised by Luo Ruiqing. Many people at the time were urging him to take me on, but he refused, because he had seen me hit an opponent’s protective wire helmet so hard that the metal mesh bent inwards, cutting the opponent’s face in the process. What we actually used in the competitions were actually wooden spears with the spear tips removed and replaced with rubber ones. He realised that I was using different footwork to the other competitors.

Han Xingyuan (Han Xingqiao's brother) practicing Yiquan's long pole

A:What footwork did you use?
C: It was just the footwork from jiji zhuang (attacking pose). Many times in the competition, my opponent would lunge at me, only for me to dodge and then all it took for me to send him flying was a straightening of my pole.

A: Does Yiquan have any other weapons besides the long pole?
C: Yiquan has the ‘double grip sabre’ (shuang ba dao)

A: What’s that?

C: The shuang ba dao is a broadsword gripped with both hands. In this way, the body is balanced in combat and and one can release hunyuan li. I learnt my shuang ba dao from M Yao when he was still in the countryside. The characteristic of the shuang ba dao is that the sharp edge of the sabre faces the wielder, while the blunt ‘back’ of the blade faces the opponent. Whether the opponent attacks with a hack or a stab, you intercept with the back of the blade and then counterattack by whole-body spiralling.

A: You mentioned that after M Yao was allowed to return to Beijing in 1970 the group was allowed to practice semi-publicly. Where did you practice?
C: After M Yao was allowed to move back to Beijing, we practiced in Tucheng and the city parks. M Yao would spend half a day there. It was then that more people started to study under M Yao. Apart from myself and the Yao brothers (Yao Chengrong and Yao Chengguang), there was also Liu Pulei, Wu Xiaonan, Jia Xiaoying, Li Hongjin and Bai Xuezheng. In fact, Liu Pulei started studying with M Yao while he was still in the countryside, we had accidentally met once before. Most of the time, M Yao’s wife would cook for us; sometimes, when the mood took him, M Yao would do the coooking. We would usually practice in Tucheng, but on Sundays we would practice in the small wooded area next to the exhibition centre. For the two years of 1980 and 1981 we practiced there; I heard that later they fenced it off.

A: So when were you finally allowed to practice in public?
C:  Later on when we started practicing in the small public gardens on Nan Li Shi Rd, we didn’t have to worry any more, because from about early 1982 to September 1984, we had the support of the heads of the Beijing Sports Research Institute. By then our training ground had moved to the Xian Nong Tan sports ground, where M Yao trained us intensively. At the same time, he conducted research into Yiquan. M Yao also applied Yiquan’s training methods to the national athletics, swimming, weightlifting, football and shooting teams.

A: Your mention of Xian Nong Tan reminded me that there has long been veiled criticism in the kungfu community of M Yao’s use of boxing gloves and headgear.
C: Actually, M Yao had already started using protective gear and kickpads in Yiquan training in the 30s and 40s. In this respect, M Yao was ahead of the curve. The protective gear meant that, firstly, there was more protection for students, and secondly, it allowed for sparring that was closer to actual fighting. Nowadays there are a lot of people saying, I can’t spar with gloves, because they limit the moves I can use. This is also true. What I’ve heard from M Yao’s contemporaries is that in friendly contests, he would allow his opponents to attack barefist, but that he himself would wear gloves. Even so, his challengers all left in awe of M Yao.

A: As someone who followed M Yao for 13 years, you must have witnessed his gongfu.
C: Let me tell you a couple of anecdotes to illustrate. There was one time when I went to visit M Yao in the countryside. As we were eating after training, M Yao said “Rui-bin, who knew that our Yiquan could be used against horses too!” Baffled, I said “What has Yiquan got to do with horses?” M Yao replied “A few days ago I was in a commune meeting when a startled draught-horse threw its reins and charged at the crowd. Seeing the oncoming horse, I grabbed its halter and yanked hard, which caused it to rear up. As it reared up, I drew it around in a circle and it just fell over. All the onlookers were amazed.” Think about how much strength a startled horse has. One day in 1980, after we had spent the whole morning training next to the exhibition hall, I had lunch with M Yao. After lunch, M Yao said “Come back to my house, you can have a siesta and then train again in the afternoon.” And so, M Yao and I were lying on his bed when he said “Experience this, my lad”. I had no idea what M Yao was talking about, so I said “We’re just about to go to sleep, what am I supposed to experience?” Just as I finished my sentence the bed that we were on starting shaking, gently and slowly at first, but then the shaking got faster and faster, stronger and stronger. I exclaimed “M Yao, what’s going on?” He laughed and said “Try and get to sleep!” I looked over to M Yao to see him lying on his side with his legs curled up – he hadn’t moved. I realised that M Yao was practicing his gongfu. One time, M Yao took me visit Zhou Ziyan (another student of Wang Xiangzhai). While M Zhou and I were discussing martial arts, M Yao was chatting and standing in zhan zhuang at the same time. M Zhou suddenly turned his head and said “Young Cui, look at M Yao, now that’s what I call real gongfu!” I looked over to see M Yao standing in zhan zhuang. His body was motionless, but the edges of his jacket were ruffling as if being blown by an unseen breeze. M Zhou said to me, “Young Cui, you must practice hard. Your teacher has real gongfu. All the things I’ve been talking about are tricks really, they’re fake.”

A: How do you explain this phenomenon?
C: M Yao’s internal movements caused the body to produce high-frequency vibrations, which is what caused his jacket to start ‘ruffling’ at the edges.

A: Can you replicate this feat?
C: (laughing) I wouldn’t dare to say I had reached M Yao’s level yet, but you can feel for yourself. (Cui Ruibin stood up into an ‘even stance’ (ping bu zhuang) and rolled his trousers up to his knees. I saw high-frequency vibrations starting form his calves.)

A: How does this kind of vibration apply to real-life combat?
C: Let me reply to that with another anecdote. Everyone I tell it to thinks it’s incredible. One day back in 1982, I was doing punchbag work at the Xian Nong Tan sports ground. M Yao was attending a meeting held by some of the experts from the Beijing Sports Research Institute. After the meeting was over, a baseball coach named Fan Tingyu (we called him ‘uncle Fan’) gestured for me to come over to him, saying “Young Cui, come over here.”I said I was busy with training. Uncle Fan said “Just get over here.”And so I walked over and asked him what was the matter. Uncle Fan said, “Young Cui, you’d better learn all you can from M Yao, his gongfu is amazing!” I said I knew that already. Uncle Fan, displeased, said “What do *you* know?” From his tone of voice, I knew something was up, so I said “Well, tell me then.” Uncle Fan said, “Just now during the meeting, someone brought up the topic of wushu. Suddenly, there was a thud as the windows and tables of the meeting room juddered violently. It might sound exaggerated, but it was like a small earthquake. The attendees all got up and looked outside in alarm, asking what had happened. I noticed that out of all the attendees only M Yao had stayed seated. I also noticed that, just before the ‘earthquake’, M Yao had raised his hands slightly and ’shivered’ slightly. Seeing that M Yao had stayed seated with a faint smile on his face while everyone else had jumped up in alarm, I knew that it must have been your teacher’s doing.”

A: This all sounds a bit incredible.
C: I’m telling you, in physics this is called resonance. Every object has its own resonant frequency. At that moment, M Yao was sitting on a folding chair. M Yao’s momentary ’shiver’ generated high frequency vibrations which caused the surrounding objects to resonate. You asked just now what kind of use this could have in real combat. When these high-frequency vibrations are applied in an instant on an opponent, the feeling is like being struck by lightning. This is what  M Wang Xiangzhai was referring to when he discussed ’super-speed movement’. Around the time of Spring Festival in 1973, Han Xingqiao (another well-known student of Wang Xiangzhai, who we called uncle Han) wrote a letter to Premier Zhou Enlai about sports psychology and physiology and how Yiquan training methods could help, which was passed to Premier Zhou by the then military commander of Xinjiang, Pei Zhouyu. Because of this letter, Premier Zhou wrote a memorandum to the National Sports Commission. And so, the Commission invited Han Xingqiao to come from Xinjiang, and also invited M Yao from the countryside. At that time, whenever M Yao came into Beijing he and I would stay at the house of my shixiong (kungfu brother) Zhang Hongcheng. In the evening, Bai Jinjia shixiong as well a group of students from Baoding would come to seek instruction from M Yao. During the meeting between M Yao, uncle Han and the Sports Commission, in order to ‘test out’ Yiquan, one of the boxing coaches asked if he could have a bout with M Yao. As he aimed a straight jab at M Yao, M Yao applied ‘Dragonfly touches the water’ to the coach’s forearm, sending him flying. When he got up, he couldn’t understand how M Yao had sent him flying, so he tried again, but with the same result.

Han Xingqiao, another of Wang Xiangzhai's main disciples

A: Did M Han take part in these ‘tests’?
C: Uncle Han said to the young coaches “You can test me out, on one condition: you’re not allowed to run out of this room. I’m a 70-year old man, if you start running outside I won’t be able to catch you. As long as you stay in this room, I can make you fall down whichever way I wish.”

Yao Zongxun in Cheng Bao Zhuang ('Hugging a Tree' posture)

“A: Just now, you said that there was quite a difference between the teachings of M Yao and M Li. Could you go into a bit more detail?
C: When M Yao started teaching me from Cheng Bao Zhuang (‘hugging a tree’ posture), he noted that I wasn’t holding my hands quite right. His requirements were very detailed, down to the exact position of each finger whilst holding the posture. When I got home, I would do zhan zhuang for as long as it took until I ‘found the feeling’, sometimes spending hours in one posture. After I had found it, I would tell M Yao, whereupon he would move on to the next step. Learning it this way really helps improve your gongfu. Nowadays, there’s a lot of people teaching Yiquan, but what they teach is mostly the same. The difference between M Yao and these other people was in the details, I think these details are very important, because they affect the internal changes going on in your body. Take the process of ‘qiu jin’ (looking for power), for example: when I was studying under M Li, we were just told to imagine we were hugging and shaking a tree. For M Yao, on the other hand, there were several stages of ‘qiu jin’. First, you should imagine yourself pulling at the tree. Then, there is a stage where you’re pulling the tree but you can’t move it. Once you’ve reached this feeling in your zhan zhuang, it’s time to imagine the tree pulling at you. And what if, once it’s pulling you, you start pulling at it….? Later on, I realised that this way of teaching ‘qiu jin’ is actually a way of training your reflexes.

Every time I went to see M Yao, I would faithfully report any new experiences or sensations encountered in my practice. One day in 1980 I was practicing Ti An Shi Li (Lifting-Pressing Testing Power) near the lake in Tao Ran Ting Park. I must have practiced for about an hour solid when I suddenly felt that not only was there a front-to-back horizontal force, but also a vertical force, as well as a left-to-right horizontal force within this shi li exercise. At that moment, it was like I was a man who had been blind for years suddenly regaining his sight. What was even more interesting was that as I used less and less muscle and more and more intent, the feeling got even stronger. When I reported these feelings to M Yao, he was really happy, saying “Keep practicing, my boy!” The same thing happened later on when I first felt as if my body was going to fly away in zhan zhuang, M Yao said “Young lad, this is what we call ‘Ba Di Yu Fei![Lit. leave the ground, wishing to fly]!”

A: In Yiquan, zhan zhuang isn’t just about training strength, there’s a lot to it. Are all of these things connected to actual combat?
C: In my experience (and according to M Yao), the sensations and abilities you exhibit in zhan zhuang should carry over into shi li and real combat. Take ‘jingshen fangda’ (magnifying the spirit), for example: it’s no good if you can do it in zhan zhuang but not in shi li or combat. Zhan zhuang is trying to control internal movements when your exterior is motionless; when your limbs are moving (in shi li), can you maintain the same feeling, project the same force? And what about under actual combat conditions? The converse is also true: only when you can maintain all of these qualities and sensations in combat can you approach the condition in Yiquan’s ‘Jian Wu’ (health dance).

A: Speaking of Jian Wu, when is student ready to practice it?
C: You should only practice Jian Wu after you’ve reached the stage of ‘body solid like iron cast (ti zheng ru zhu), limbs as if filled with lead (shen ru guan qian), flesh and skin as one (ji rou ruo yi), body hairs like lances (mao fa ru ji)’, then and only then will you exhibit the right ‘flavour’. Think about it, if you can’t even maintain your connection to the outside world during shi li, is your ‘Jian Wu’ really Jian Wu? As well as the 4 requirements I said above,you must have also developed the sensation of ‘zhi guo liu hen‘[lit. fingers leave traces as they pass by]. As GM Wang said, if you don’t have that jin, that power, all you’re doing is waving your arms in the air.  My personal advice to Yiquan enthusiasts is that you can still ‘try out’ stuff that you experience in zhan zhuang or shi li, to see if you can still maintain that sensation whilst moving in a freeform way. If the sensation becomes weak, then you should go back to your zhan zhuang and shi li to strengthen it.

A: You mentioned that M Yao was very detailed in his teaching to you. Was he this way with all his students?
C: His teaching methods depended on the person’s aptitude, it was very much a gradual, elicitive approach. It’s true that I did receive some ’special treatment’, mainly in the sense that M Yao would  tell me the whys and wherefores of each posture. For example, although M Yao started teaching me from Cheng Bao Zhuang, he explained that actually the sequence should go: Ti Cha Zhuang – Tuo Bao Zhuang – Fu An Zhuang – Cheng Bao Zhuang. He added that Ti Cha Zhuang is about practicing vertical power. Each posture is about practicing different ‘jins’[forces].It was just like when I was in the first grade at school: M Yao would continually teach me something just a little bit higher than my level at that point, and explain the process, the sequence to it. To most other people he would just teach them what they needed to know at their particular stage, and not go into the sequence of learning.

Yao Zongxun in Ti Cha Zhuang

I think the critical quality in a teacher is that he should not only teach you the requirements of a posture, but also the underlying logic of training. I remember whenever I used to go to M Yao’s house, I used to practice until midnight, sometimes even till 1am. And then, after I’d finished practicing, M Yao would talk to me in depth about Yiquan (as well as other things) until 3 in the morning. The next morning, I would wake up at 5am to find M Yao already there practicing zhan zhuang.

A: What postures did he practice?
C: He practiced Fu An Zhuang in front of the mirror on his cupboard. Fu An Zhuang is a particularly ‘rich’ posture, there’s a lot to it. Actually, there’s a lot to each one of the postures, there’s a lot of ‘layers’ to them. The main thing is which ‘layer’ you’re on. When I saw M Yao already practicing, I got up. Seeing me in the mirror, he told me to go back to sleep.

Yao Zongxun in Fu An Zhuang

A: Didn’t GM Wang admonish students to not practice while looking in the mirror?
C: That’s true. But when you get to a certain level, you can ‘face the mirror but forget your shape’ (dui jing er xi er wang qi xing). This is talking about the connection between the outward form and your spirit.

A: Yiquan is a very combat-oriented art; when did you first get a taste of M Yao’s fighting skills?
C: Because I had previously practiced shuai jiao (chinese wrestling) and boxing, and had also studied with M Li for 4 years, I already had a decent foundation in pushing hands and sparring before I started studying with M Yao. After I started studying under him, all we did was practice zhan zhuang, shi li or footwork, we never did any sparring, so I wanted to ‘test out’ M Yao. And so, one day, I brought a pair of boxing gloves to M Yao’s house. As soon as M Yao saw the gloves, he said “There’s no need for gloves, if you want to hit me, just hit me. Don’t hold back!” As he said it, I was thinking ‘What if I actually hurt him? Isn’t that a bit disrespectful (to M Yao)?” These misgivings notwithstandng, I still hit him with about 80% of my full strength.
A: Was this in a pushing hands situation (i.e.arms in contact)?
C: No, I opened up some distance between me and M Yao, feinted a couple of times, and then attacked. M Yao used his lead hand to block my guard hand. As his guard hand connected with my fist, I suddenly felt as if the sky had gone dark (it was about 3 in the afternoon at that point). My mind went totally blank. After a while, the sun came back. It was only when the ‘lights’ came back on that I realised that he had hit me. It was like when you slam on the brakes in a car really hard, everything in the car lurches forward and it goes dark.

Funnily enough, I didn’t feel afraid at the time, just a bit out of it. Later on M Yao said to me “If you want to nourish talent, you can’t beat someone’s spirit out of him. If you destroy his spirit, you destroy him. Plus, it takes a very long time for someone’s spirit to recover. All I wanted to do was show you that Yiquan is a good martial art” From this, we can see that M Yao really valued talented people. When he was boxing with me, the strength he used was under exquisite control. There’s a fundamental difference between this and all-out sparring or combat. When I sparred with people while I was teaching seminars in England, I saw that, as they were suddenly thrown to the ground, there was an expression of fear on their faces. Every time I crossed hands with someone, I asked the translator to take photos of the encounter. But every time, instead of taking pictures he just stood there, slack-jawed. I wish we’d managed to get some photos of those encounters.

A: During that period in the countryside, apart from discussing martial arts, didn’t you talk about other things with M Yao?
C: M Yao also talked about his life and background, all the way from when he was 4 years old to when he was ’sent down’ to Changping. He also talked about how he came to learn Yiquan from M Wang. He said that when M Wang was teaching people, he would explain the various forces in a posture and then tell them to practice, he didn’t go into that much detail at first. M Wang was a bit of an odd bird: if you’d ‘found’ the feeling in a posture, he would give you a ferocious scolding as to where your posture was still wrong; if your posture was ‘empty’, he wouldn’t say anything, just turn on his heel and walk off. Of course, this led to misunderstandings amongst his students. Those who had actually got it right thought they’d done something wrong, whilst the ones who were way off base thought they were doing OK. Of course, this wasn’t the case: to M Wang’s way of thinking, it was only students who actually displayed signs of ‘getting it’ who were worth scolding. During that period, he used to avoid M Wang when practicing; if M Wang was in the front yard, M Yao would scoot round to the back to practice, and vice versa. In zhan zhuang, M Yao first sought ‘up and down’ [force], then front and back, then right and left. It was this step-by-step practice that led to M Yao developing those skills.

Wang Xiangzhai practicing Du Li Shou Shen Zhuang (single-leg post)

Actually, you could say it’s the same for any process, really, you can’t expect overnight results. Take making a machine as an example: first, you have to produce all of the various components, then assemble the machine from them. That’s why, although several of M Wang’s disciples developed great skill, only M Yao really passed on and built on M Wang’s true teachings. M Yao became M Wang’s disciple in autumn of 1937 and started teaching students and accepting challenges on behalf of M Wang only 3 years later, in 1940. Before studying under M Wang, M Yao was already a well-known figure, as he had studied Tantui, Xingyiquan and Hongquan [Flood boxing - a Shaolin style] with M Hong Lianshun. M Yao once showed me his Tantui: barefooted, he could kick the corners off a brick at will. In his university days M Yao was a pretty good basketball player and middle-distance runner. Apart from telling me about how he had learnt Yiquan from M Wang, we also talked about M Wang’s experiences in coming to develop Yiquan. It was the same for M Wang: he had to develop one idea or skill before he could move on to the next stage, it was a step-by-step process.You have to really learn something inside out before you move on to the next step. I had the same experience learning shuai jiao: you have to really master one throw first, then when you move on to the second throw, you can freely interchange the two throws at will: this ability to change comes only from true mastery. One of M Wang’s common sayings, “Hard and soft, empty and full, movement and stillness, tension and relaxation, they all simultaneously interact”, is talking about exactly this principle. This idea (of the ability to change coming from mastering material in stages) is a scientifically sound learning method, it’s an objective fact, it’s not as if M Wang just made it up on a whim. It’s a product of years of training, application and investigation. The only way to get good at Yiquan is if you follow and understand the reasoning behind this approach. It doesn’t just apply to Yiquan, either: the learning process in any field of endeavour is like this. It’s as M Yao used to say: “The tao is unchanging (dao nai wan yi), although the expressions of it are myriad, there is only one unifying principle behind them”.

A: Just now, you mentioned that in order to develop hunyuan li (normally translated as ‘omni-directional power’), you have to train each aspect one step at a time. Is there a way to develop hunyuan li in one go?
C: There is, but you have to have the right foundation. I remember, one Sunday in 1981, I went to a small park near Li Shi Rd South to practice zhan zhuang by myself. I was standing in ping bu cheng bao zhuang (‘hugging a tree’ stance). Later on, I saw M Yao walking towards me from some distance away. When he reached me, he said: “What’s going on inside you?”. I knew then that he’d been observing me for a while. It was on that day that he told me the way to develop hunyuan li in one go.

A: For as long as Yiquan has been around, people have been saying that Yiquan was created because Wang Xiangzhai hadn’t properly mastered and understood Xingyiquan. Some people I know even say that Yiquan is basically zhan zhuang plus half of ‘hu pu’ (pouncing tiger stance). Other people say that Da Cheng Quan is just zhan zhuang plus boxing, or that Yiquan has no kicks.

C: Sometimes ignorance is bliss, isn’t it? People wouldn’t say these things if they just came to my training centre and experienced what we have to offer. As for Yiquan’s kicks, M Yao taught me GM Wang’s ‘Yi shi San Tui’ (3 kicks in 1 posture): the kicks are divided into lower, middle and upper. The first kick is aimed at the opponent’s kneecap, the second is aimed at the heart, and the third targets the throat. The speed of the three kicks should be the same as the time it takes to do 3 jabs. As Wang’s gongfu reached Hua Jin, he used kicks less and less, but that doesn’t mean that Yiquan has no kicks. I remember one time Guangzi and I were practicing advancing fists in Tucheng, we must have punched our way from Tucheng all the way westwards almost to Ma Dian. When we got to the back of the police academy we turned round and started punching our way back to Tucheng. It was a long way between the two places. As Guangzi got tired, his guard fist started dropping downwards. M Yao scolded him twice, telling him to pay attention to his guard. Guangzi started quibbling with M Yao, saying it was because he was tired. All I saw was M Yao raise his leg, he didn’t move much at all, M Yao had kicked Guangzi so hard he almost somersaulted before he hit the ground.

A: It must have been tough, training in the countryside.
C: It was. One time, I saw Guangzi eat something white before starting hitting the punchbag. I asked Guangzi what he was eating. Guangzi said it was lard. I asked him why he was eating it. Guangzi said, “Dad said that we need to replenish the salt and fats in our bodies lost through all the punchbag training we do. Because we can’t get any meat here, the next best thing is to eat lard. ” At mealtimes, I always used to eat with M Yao, whilst M Yao’s wife as well as Yao Chengrong and Yao Chengguang used to eat outside. Every time I visited M Yao I would buy him 5 kg of gua mian (a kind of noodles) and, knowing that M Yao liked to drink, two bottles of er guo tou (a famous brand of chinese liquor). As well as teaching me Yiquan, M Yao taught me how to be a decent person; for this I can never repay him. I felt that these small things weren’t even enough to repay M Yao for letting me stay at his house for 3 days! After I saw Guangzi eating that lard, I made a point of buying some fatty pork for them too.”

Note that all of the photos of M Yao on this translation have come from Yao Chengguang’s website at www.yiquan.com, a great resource for Yiquan enthusiasts.

I　have been interested in Yiquan (‘intention boxing’), also known as Dachengquan (Great Achievement Boxing), the chinese martial art famous for its focus on the practice of ‘zhan zhuang’ (stake standing) as a training method for a while now. I came across an interview ( here ) with Cui Ruibin (grandstudent of Wang Xiangzhai, Yiquan’s founder, through his senior student Yao Zongxun), which is interesting both for its historical insights and advice for practice. As it is very long, I have only translated a part below:

Yao Zongxun practicing Fa Li

“On the 11th of January 1985, Yao Zongxun, one of the foremost masters of Yiquan of his generation, passed away. In the 20 years since his passing, from inauspicious beginnings, having initially been decried as not a ‘real’ martial art, today Yiquan is thriving, attracting martial arts devotees both at home and abroad with its unique style and content. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of M Yao’s passing, I interviewed one of M Yao’s senior disciples, Cui Ruibin at Beijing International Yiquan Training Centre, located in Taolin village, Xingshou town in the Changping district of Beijing. In the airy, spacious office of the training centre, I asked M Cui to share with us his experience of studying with M Yao and discuss M Yao’s accomplishments in martial arts. As soon as I mentioned M Yao, M Cui, at that time already over 50, couldn’t help but being engulfed by memories of past times. His affection and nostalgia for M Yao was evident in every word.

Cui Ruibin's International Yiquan Training Centre

Author (henceforth A): When did you start studying Yiquan with Mr Yao?
Cui Ruibin (henceforth C): I first came into contact with Yiquan in 1968, but at first I wasn’t studying with M Yao. I originally studied with Li Zhiliang (Li Yongzong’s elder brother, who was originally called Li Yongliang), who I had met through a classmate of mine at the technical college I was studying at. They (the Lis) had trained with Wang Xiangzhai and had stayed over at M Yao’s house. I must have studied with M Li for close to 4 years.

Cui Ruibin practicing Du Li Zhuang (Single Leg Pose)

A: What did you practice under M Li?
C: Under M Li, we practiced lots of things, as well as xingyi’s five fists (Pi, Beng, Zuan, Pao, Heng), right up till 1972, when I started work. In 1972, I went to Dalian for training. Normally I would practice zhan zhuang, but the zhan zhuang I was practicing then was very different from what I practiced under GM Yao. Some time later, I returned to Beijing from Dalian. A few days after I got back, my classmate Zhang Xiangheng phoned me, saying that he had found a good teacher for us. And so, Zhang Xiangheng, Zhang Hongcheng (one of GM Yao’s disciples from the 60s) and I rode our bikes to Cuicun in Changping district to see GM Yao. Upon seeing M Yao I was shocked – apart from being clean-shaven, he looked the spitting image of my ‘dream’ master! I wanted to go through the traditional baishi (which involves 3 full kowtows). GM Yao said “No need to kowtow, 3 bows will be fine.” M Yao was living in Cuicun because he had been ’sent down’ from the city, he was still under observation.

A: After you became M Yao’s disciple, did you tell M Li?
C: M Li was pretty displeased that I started studying with M Yao. When GM Yao found out, he wrote M Li a letter, telling him that he had formally accepted me as his disciple, so there was no point in getting upset. Every year after that I would visit M Li at Chinese New Year. Because M Li’s wife, Hong Pinzhen was the daughter of Hong Lianshun (a Beijing master of Xingyiquan and Tantui who later became Wang Xiangzhai’s disciple), I called her shigu (my martial arts ‘auntie’).

A: How long did you study with M Yao?
C: I started studying with him in 1972 when he had been sent down to the countryside, and continued studying with him right up until his passing in 1985. During those 13 years, I went through 4 phases. In the first phase, I had to study from M Yao in the countryside in secret; in the second phase, M Yao had returned to the city and classes were semi-public; in the third, classes in Beijing became truly public; and the fourth phase was when M Yao held a training intensive at Nongtan Sports Stadium with the support of the Research Insitute of the Beijing Physical Education Commission.

A: What was it like, practicing in the countryside?
C: After our first meeting with M Yao, he told me that from then on I should come by myself. At that time, to get from Fengtai district where I lived to Changping took 4 hours on bicycle, it was probably a 70km round trip. I changed shifts so that I could take 3 days off together each month. From then on I would go to GM Yao’s house once a month, and stay there for 3 days each time. Later on, I felt that cycling such long distances was tiring me out and affecting my practice, so I started taking the bus instead. Every time I visited M Yao I would have to get a bus just after 5am from Fengtai to Deshengmen, then wait for the next bus to Changping. The buses back then weren’t as frequent as they are now, there was only a bus from Deshengmen to Changping once every couple of hours. Then, on reaching Changping I’d have to get another bus to Cuicun. By the time I’d walked to M Yao’s house from the bus stop it was usually past 1pm. Getting there and back was a real hassle. When I got there, I’d eat lunch, then practice right up until dinnertime. After dinner we’d practice some more. At the time, whenever I came, M Yao would take leave from his production unit. He would always get Guangzi (as M Cui calls Yao Chengguang) to take the leave slip to his unit, saying he had guests over to stay and that he needed 2 days’ leave.

A: Practicing under those conditions must have been very tough.
C: Yes, it was. The environment in those days was really bad. GM Yao always used to admonish me, saying: “If someone asks you why you’ve come to Cuicun, just say you’re sick and have come here for treatment. Never say you’ve come to practice martial arts!” To be honest, I only joined the Communist Youth League because M Yao told me to. He said, “We’re living in modern times now, you’ve got to climb the ladder, in both your working and private lives. If you don’t, our Yiquan will still be kept down. If you do go up in the world, practicing yiquan will benefit you. What I mean to say is, Yiquan is a real gem, I don’t want other factors [i.e. political reasons] to hinder your training.” At that time, whenever I went to Cuicun, people would often ask me “Why have you come here? Who are you looking for? What do you do? What’s your political background?” After M had that talk with me, when I went back to the factory where I worked I applied to join the Youth League. It turned out that because my work performance and general attitude were pretty good, I was already entitled to join. After I joined, I became a commissioner (?) for my local CYL. After that, I was much more assured in my response when people asked me why I was going to Cuicun, not furtive like before.

A: Who else practiced with you during that period?
C: In the mornings and evenings Rongzi (Yao Chengrong) and Guangzi (Yao Chengguang) would practice with me, but during the day they had to work in the fields to earn credits. As a result, during the day it was normally just me and M Yao.

A: You must feel very fortunate to have had that privilege, studying one-on-one with M Yao.
C: Later on, when the Unit Secretary’s son started studying with M Yao, things started to change. The stopped sending him out in the fields to work. Instead, they gave him the much easier task of looking after a horse, which earned exactly the same number of credits. From then on, M Yao didn’t need to request leave each time I came to see him. We would bring the horse up into the hills or to some other place with no people around. As soon as the horse was securely tethered and started grazing, M Yao would start to teach me. M Yao was living in a small house with 3 north-facing rooms and smaller east-facing one. Conditions back then were pretty cramped – out of the 3 north-facing rooms only one was a bedroom, so every time I came to visit Rongzi had to sleep at a nieghbour’s house. The four of us (M Yao, his wife, M Cui and Yao Chengguang) all slept on one kang. Guangzi and I slept under one blanket, with one’s feet facing the other’s head. For the 7 years until M Yao returned to the city in 1979, Guangzi and I slept under the same blanket.

A: You two must be really close.
C: Yes, we are. [...to be continued...]“

I will translate the other sections when I get the time. Note: I have used M as an abbreviation for Master.