Interview with Jarek Szymanski – Part 7

PART 7

Jarek’s Tongbei studies

Jarek: Heyi Tongbei is originally a style from Tianjin. It was brought to the Shanghai area by Ren Heshan, who originally studied with Liu Yuchun. Due to his MA skills, Ren was employed by the Green Gang (Qing Bang) which not only dominated criminal activities like drugs and prostitution but also controlled the inland shipping along the Grand Canal (Da Yunhe). Ren fast became a powerful figure within Qing Bang ranks, and Liu Yuchun sent Liu Jingyun, his relative and system inheritor, to pass the complete system of Heyi Tongbei to Ren. Ren hosted Liu Jingyun in his home for many years, studying the methods at nights only, afraid that someone would see and “steal” it. When Ren got older  he passed the system to Bao Guanyuan, my teacher. Yang Shangeng from Suzhou, one of Bao Guanyuan’s disciples, wrote a series of articles about Heyi Tongbei in one of the Chinese MA magazines, claiming that Heyi Tongbei was still dan chuan i.e. the full system was only passed down to one person in each generation. One of the proofs of this is passing the quanpu (boxing manual) holding the ‘secrets’ of the style, to one inheritor. As far as I know nobody in Duliu county has the quanpu, while Mr Bao received not only quanpu, but also gongpu, a manual of the training methods.

Bao laoshi’s approach was very scientific. To be honest, I was not that interested in Tongbei until I heard my Xinyi Liuhe shixiong mention that Wu Maogui (a Tongbei teacher in Shanghai) was very good at fighting.

Wu Maogui demonstrating a Tongbei technique (source: StudyMartialArts.org)

Wu Maogui had learnt some push hands from Chu Guiting because his teacher, Bao Guanyuan, was good friends with Chu and had great respect for Chu’s skill and character. Bao considered Chu to be one of the best internal masters in Shanghai. The Chinese describe this kind of relationship as yi shi yi you “both a teacher and a friend”. Bao also had great respect for Sun Cunzhou (Sun Lutang’s son) but said that Chu’s gongfu was better than Sun’s.

Bao’s teacher Ren Heshan, was a boss of Hongmen in the Qing Bang, not just a bodyguard. From a modern perspective he would just be considered a gangster, but you have to remember that the Qing Bang had strong ties to Chinese politics, in particular Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang. For example the Qing Bang shared its profits from opium with the Kuomintang after the formation of the Opium suppression bureau. Because of his position in the Qing Bang, Bao’s teacher Ren was thrown into prison after liberation. When he emerged penniless several years later, it was Bao who took him into his home and cared for him. Bao even took care of the arrangements for Ren’s funeral after he passed away. Bao very rarely took part in MA events or societies – in that respect he was the polar opposite of my Xinyi Liuhe teacher Li Zunsi, who was very sociable and cultivated disciples (tudi) from all sectors of society.

Li Zunsi had several students who were rich and/or government officials. Li told me once that in the old days it was known that you had several different kinds of disciples: ones with a lot of physical talent who you intended to carry on the art and develop skill, rich ones who could support the shifu and/or the development of the school, those with good memory who would remember all the material, names, etc.

Bao was the complete opposite – it was almost impossible to invite him to dinner. If you look at Qian Zhaohong, the famous Shanghainese teacher of Xinyi Liuhe and Tongbei, his practice was heavily influenced by the Heyi Tongbei he learnt from Bao.

Qian Zhaohong demonstrating the Single Seizing (Dan Ba) technique from Xinyi Liuhe

With Bao laoshi there were a lot of little details, fine tuning which often changed your understanding of the technique. For example, with a straight punch he first said that the main target is a spot just below your opponent’s nose (the renzhong acupoint). Later he said that a straight punch should be on the central line – similar to wing chun – and the shoulders should not move. Then we would work on moving the shoulder blades and “separating” them from the rest of the back. He also required that we use a certain intent – for example with the straight punch (cheng) the intent should go beyond the striking point, i.e. through the opponent.

The first step of training is Ding Bu (fixed step), where you stand in a relatively natural stance. For this training you are explicitly not supposed to move the hips or shoulders. This was to the increase the range of movements in the arms / hands. It was very awkward for me, as it was against my previous neijia training, where all parts are supposed to move together. The next step is Yuan Bu (in-place step), where the whole body turns and feet “drill” into the ground along with the strike – for example if you are striking with the right hand, the left foot and hip are fixed but the pelvis does move. It is very similar to the way Jack Dempsey explains old school boxing technique, where the right hip moves with the left hip as an axis.

Then there was Huo Bu (active/alive stepping), combining the striking with stepping, emphasising range of motion in the hips and shoulder. Heyi Tongbei is quite unlike other Tongbei styles such as Qi or Shi family Tongbei in that it does not emphasise the extreme elasticity of the shoulders and back of those styles, where for example in the basic exercises the arm should be flung behind the back so that the hand touches your buttocks.

I remember there was a Chinese documentary featuring a Cangzhou teacher called Wang Zhihai who comes from Guo Ruixiang’s branch (famous Pigua / Tongbei teacher).

Wang Zhihai demonstrating Miao Dao (2-handed saber)

In the documentary, Wang mainly demonstrated Pigua, but when showing the applications they were mainly from Heyi Tongbei, and he noted ‘These are just for fighting’. Heyi Tongbei is an example of ti yong he yi (form and usage are combined into one) where the way you train is the way you fight. Every single little detail you learn in the single movements has implications for fighting; however the name ‘Heyi’ in Heyi Tongbei doesn’t come from this saying but instead refers to combining the 6 harmonies into one (liu he).

To be honest, in my opinion a lot of the common taiji practiced these days – particularly Yang and Chen style –  is large frame (da jia), with very long, low stances which historically is for training gongfu, not directly for fighting (gong da yu yong). Small framed versions are more fighting oriented. For example, in the Zhaobao taiji routine I study the distance between the hands should only be that between the elbow and the hand. Hence in Zhaobao taiji we talk about ‘measuring’ someone. Also in Zhaobao there lots of little steps which are actually hidden kicks (an tui), which of course is quite common to many CMA systems, although not always really trained.

When I asked Bao laoshi about dantian development, he said the concept of dantian being a prerequisite to have internal power was nonsense. Of course, he admitted that you must breathe in the correct way. Heyi Tongbei as I learned it was almost a pure striking style, very little emphasis on neutralising (hua) the opponent. The concept in Heyi Tongbei is that your body is like a virgin girl’s, you don’t allow anyone to put their hands on you.

It is not about thinking that we would never get hit – of course if you fight you will get hit. The point was to cultivate reactions to avoid and escape from attempts to grab or lock you. In fact Bao laoshi emphasised conditioning as a pre-requisite for fighting. We used a type of old-fashioned wooden club to toughen our arms. Bao’s thinking was that with toughened forearms, even if your opponent manages to block your attack your forearm will hurt his and make him think twice. Hitting the opponent’s  striking arm and/or kicking his kicking leg was the first line of defence.

In Xinyi Liuhe we were taught to try to control the opponent by going for the ‘root’ (gen jie) of the limb, i.e. the part of the arm or leg attached to the torso, and also to use our own gen jie (shoulders etc) to strike. Because of this, Xinyi Liuhe is a short range fighting art that emphasises getting in close to the opponent – as the saying goes, ‘close enough to kiss’ (da ren ru qin zui). By comparison, Tongbei is a long-distance striking art – it does also use shoulder strikes but it is much more balanced in terms of fighting range than Xinyi Liuhe.

What makes Heyi Tongbei an efficient fighting system is that it is not a form-oriented style, in fact as far as I know it only has one form – Taizu Changquan. The core practice is 24 single movements (dan cao) which are trained separately, then are combined into various sequences, and can be linked up freely later on.

Example of application illustration for one of the 24 techniques, Heng Zhuai

The Tongbei practiced by Guo Ruixiang’s line in Cangzhou is also Heyi Tongbei, from the same eventual source (Liu Yuchun). Heyi Tongbei only started to get a reputation and popularity in the Yangtze region after Cao Yanhai – a disciple of Guo Changsheng who was Guo Ruixiang’s father and master of Tongbei and Pigua – placed fourth in the 1929 national Leitai competition held in Hangzhou. Cao had a famous match against a Shanghai iron palm master called Liu Gaosheng, where Cao won despite realising he could not endure more than a few of Liu’s blows.

Jon: Did the training with Mr Bao include sparring?

Jarek: No, with Bao laoshi we didn’t do any free sparring. It was different with Li Zunsi, where we had a lot of two-man drills and application practice. Bao laoshi’s idea was that you train your gongfu until you reach a level called ‘meng da’ (dream hitting) where it is completely reflex. Personally I don’t agree with the idea that you shouldn’t spar, but the method Bao Laoshi used apparently worked for him, as he was known to deal efficiently with attackers in many fights.

Actually, getting accepted to train with Bao laoshi was an arduous process – he only taught disciples, was very careful in choosing ones, and I think over his life he only accepted 7 or 8 disciples in total. It took my friend (who was his disciple for half a century) half a year to convince Bao to even meet me. Bao was very wealthy, and his son was the vice chief of Xuhui district in Shanghai, so he had no need to teach kungfu from a financial perspective – and he never charged for teaching, instead demanding his students to be dilligent and study hard, and those who did not follow his requirements would simply not learn new material or get corrections. Bao laoshi insisted that all teaching was one-to-one – there were never any other students present when I went to his house. The first time I went to his house was with one of my very close kungfu brothers, a Hui (Chinese muslim) from Shanghai. After that first meeting, Bao said to me “You can come again – but next time, come alone.” Bao did also not encourage his students to compare notes.

(To be continued..)