In lieu of my May training update, I’d instead like to share a fun interview between myself and Robbie Coons, a long-time practitioner of the 3 internal arts (taiji, bagua and xingyi) and also a ‘true seeker’ when it comes to Daoist meditation practices, which took place in December 2022.
Although I am certainly a long way from being an expert in any sense of the word, hopefully some readers will find it interesting.
For the old-fashioned amongst you who (like myself) prefer text, a full transcript of the video is reproduced below for convenience. JN = Jon Nicklin, RC = Robbie Coons.
RC: On the podcast today with me is the wonderful and inscrutable Jon Nicklin. Jon is a long-time personal friend of mine we have eaten many a lamb kebab together and Jon is also one of the most experienced and interesting people in the Chinese martial arts expat scene, so I’m sure we’re going to have a wonderful and fascinating conversation today. Hello Jon!
JN: Hey Robbie, actually I wonder what to call you because we’ve called you so many different nicknames over the years, right?
RC: Yeah, you can call me Robbie or Robert, sure whatever the feeling is you at any moment. So you and I have some history and that’s pretty cool, we’ve known each other for how long would you say?
JN: God, it’s got to be close to 10 years, 9 years?
RC: It’s been a while and we’ve had we’ve eaten a few kebabs together and some various Xinjiang food I think. Mostly some escapades…
JN: Some of which is not suitable for public consumption….
RC: Eh, I think typically martial arts escapades are not that bad!
RC: So you are from England originally, but you have spent much time in mainland China and Hong Kong and other places can you tell us a little bit about what took you over there and what made you fascinated in with Chinese martial Arts?
JN: Wow, okay it’s going to be quite long, I take it we’ve got time today. So my background personally is that I mixed, half Singaporean Chinese and half British and so I grew up in the UK not practicing a lot of martial arts, unlike you know some other kids who did Judo or boxing or whatever from a very young age. So I didn’t really get into martial arts until maybe 17 or 18. You know there was all of that stuff (I’m sure the same as everyone else), there was a lot of Karate, Taekwondo and Judo around and Wing Chun. But the thing that actually got me interested when I was a teenager I started getting interested in Asian culture generally, like Buddhism and also the martial arts through a lot of the books that that you would have read at the same time, so you know Robert Smith’s books, Bruce Kumar Frantzis’ books, and that was that was the first stuff that sort of got me interested, “there’s something there”. And then I’m just trying to think of the actual timeline here. I did what they call Wudang or Practical Taichi at University so that’s Dan Docherty’s group, it’s basically an offshoot of Hong Kong [Wu] style. They did a lot of applications and sparring competitions, that kind of stuff. And then there was a long period where…… Sorry, but at this point I didn’t speak Chinese, so straight after university I went to China, learned Chinese in in the north of China and then after that there was 6 years of just working, career stuff. And so martial arts-wise I did try to do a little bit of Xingyi, like Sun style Xingyi or try to do a little bit of Yiquan with a teacher here in the UK but it was all mostly basics, just sort of setting the foundation. And the real actual proper learning of internal stuff only happened in Shanghai. So I moved to Shanghai in 2012 and I met you pretty soon after that I think, right?
RC: Yeah, it wasn’t that long after that, but reflecting on this you must be a real polymath, because I remember that your Chinese linguistic ability was excellent at the time and you certainly weren’t a slouch when it came to martial arts.
JN: For the language part, I have to because I use it for my work, which is totally non-martial arts related. But on the martial arts side I still feel I’ve gotten some experiences with people who do have real skills so at least I know what we’re aiming for and that’s Shanghai…. I mean we met slightly different people in Shanghai but I think you’d probably have the same feeling as me, which is that there’s maybe three or four or five guys who had some real skills.
RC: Yeah, who did you study with in Shanghai?
JN: Well, so I mean obviously on the Xingyi side, my main practice even nowadays is still xingyi, so it’s it’s my song Style Xingyi teacher Dai Xueqi, who’s a student of the Song family, but at the same time I was still trying to look for decent people. I looked for a very long time for like a Shuai Jiao teacher and various taichi teachers. I did almost a year of Chen, the new frame Chen style but very close to the end of my Shanghai time actually was the time when I found what I thought was a ‘real’ taichi teacher with pretty interesting skills, Jiang Zongbao. He’s really interesting because he studied with (I mean maybe people will doubt this) but he studied with a student of Tian Zhaolin, the Tian branch of Yang Style, then also Feng Zhiqiang of Chen style, and also Hao style like the Wu-Hao style from the representative of the Hao family who lived in Shanghai. So he’s a tiny guy, probably up to my shoulder or whatever, but he can take whatever power you throw at him and not move or not be affected. You can’t affect his center and he has the peng energy or the peng power whenever he wants it, so he’s really good. I think he’s like 70 [years old] now, maybe 65 or 70.
RC: So is his style does he teach all three styles or is it his own synthesis?
JN: So like quite a few other teachers, he views the form as just a vehicle for whatever internal mechanics he’s teaching so he gives them the option of studying Old Yang middle frame or his Chen style, you can choose. I ended up studying with his senior student called Li Xiao-long (like Bruce Lee). When everyone hears their name they’re like….
RC: Bruce Lee, wow he must be pretty good yeah!
JN: Yeah, so his senior student is this Shanghainese guy called Li Xiao-long and also like 50s or 60s in age who before he studied with Jiang his main styles were actually Shuai Jiao and Chang style taiji which is really rare outside of outside of Shanghai. And so he actually just spent like six months throwing me around showing me like all the basic Shuai Jiao throws and also teaching me his own customized form, so I never actually learned the old Yang or the Chen which is a real shame. But in that group they’re more about the skills, so they would you know they would just say “Okay let’s do a bit of that form or whatever or that basic movement and then let’s do the 4 corner push hands” or something like that… Properly, one of the things they said is a lot of people do 4 corners sloppily or wrong or with the wrong mechanics or whatever.
RC: Yeah, well it’s interesting when you meet the old school taichi people, the way that they train usually has an emphasis on cultivating basic skills and the basic skills are understood to be the high level skills right.
JN: Basic body skills, yes.
RC: It’s one of the big advantages to meeting with those people with that older mindset. Now you also have been around to a lot of other places though and to experience martial arts and other places. You spent time up north – have you seen anything up north of interest to you?
JN: Well so, to be honest like my main trip was actually before I moved to China, so I did a trip late 2009 early 2010 where I really tried to go around various people that I’d heard of to see, so on that trip I went to the home of Yang style Taichi, I went to (I mean it’s kind of ironic) so I went to Shanxi and met the head of Song style Song Guanghua but at that time I didn’t know that I would end up studying under his student right so, that was more just trying to understand the style. Then I visited Chen Village, met one Zhaobao teacher and I’m trying to think who else I met on that trip…. Oh yeah, the end of that trip was in Shanghai so I ended up meeting one of the other Xingyi teachers in Shanghai, Wang Senlin who does very nice Hebei style.
RC: It’s a pretty broad and interesting set of teachers that you met!
JN: That was a great trip, it was a really interesting trip I mean…. it probably would have been more useful if I’d had more foundation at that time because you know when you visit them at that time with not really much in the way of root or internal skills you don’t get it because of course they can knock you over…I think if I’d had more skill myself at that time I would have appreciated it more, also with the with the home of Yang style I actually went to the village called Guangfu, but I also went to the nearest city which is Handan and I was pretty impressed with the people in Handan because they’re from Yang Banhou’s grandson I think. They’re 6th generation or whatever but coming down from Yang Banhou’s material.
RC: Were there lots of people practicing taiji out there?
JN: Oh tonnes, Yang style in Handan is like….you can’t turn the corner without bumping into a taichi teacher. It’s not just the Yang style, it’s the Hao style people as well so I could name a couple of dozen teachers quite easily, but I mean obviously with varying levels of skill.
RC: Yeah, of course you know it’s always interesting in the smaller Chinese cities sometimes when you’re walking around you can see a lot of people practicing. Every once in a while you see somebody who’s really good and then most of the time it’s just nice old people practicing in the park.
JN: Yeah, just because it’s China doesn’t mean everyone is a kungfu grandmaster!
RC: Yeah, either that or they’re hiding their ability from you, sometimes it’s hard to know so…..You’ve also done other interesting projects and I’m gonna throw a curveball at you here because I just remembered there was a time when we both hung out in in a cursed internet forum that I won’t name that was for internal martial arts practice and remember that you were you had a bit of notoriety for helping people to translate martial arts documents?
JN: Okay, yeah I did I mean…. because basically I had the time to do it at that time.
RC: Which documents did you translate?
JN: So a long time ago, I translated some articles about Hao style teachers like taichi and then the other big bunch of translations I did was on some Dai style articles.
RC: So when you did that do you feel like the literary part helped to deepen your practice or do you feel another way?
JN: I mean the thing about (maybe other people feel differently) the martial classics for each style, i.e. the ‘Quanjing’ or ‘Quanpu’, they don’t mean much unless you actually do the style. So because every single style, for example Will’s Mantis quanpu or the quanpu for Song style xingyi, which for us would be the Four Internal Classics (Neigong Sijing) right, they don’t mean much unless you actually do the style. Because they’re written in code basically… For example, there’s a Dai style (maybe you would have understood it better than me) ….but you know when I was translating the Dai style material, they have a concept of ‘Overturning Heaven and Earth’ Fan Qian Kun or Tian Di Fan or things like this. And apparently in Dai style that has a very specific meaning. But for me, it didn’t mean anything, so I was just helping to translate.
RC: Well and when they bring the Daoist language into it too of course it’s different from the Daoist interpretation, and it would be different from how if you were doing meditation or cultivation it would be different again. Even the same sentence…. the other problem is that what you said about lineage is so true, if you look at different genres within the martial arts style or within Daoism or with any of those things. Just because you can read one genre doesn’t you mean doesn’t mean you can read every other part of the genre.
JN: Definitely, and also there’s a there’s a thing…. maybe it occurs in xingyi and also in mantis so some of the theory we inherited (might be a controversial point of view) but some of the old Xinyi Liuhe theory doesn’t really apply that well to modern Xingyi.
RC: No, I agree and I’ve met practitioners of Xinyi Liuhe who are very harsh about modern Xingyi. I say to them, I mean our power generation is completely different
JN: Yeah, we have to be honest about what we’re practicing. And I think everyone sort of has to figure it out for themselves. Okay, if you’re going to read those classics, you have to realize a lot of those sayings were written for (some of them still apply) but like some of the sayings….for example, there’s certain jin (powers), I can’t remember the names, at least in our line or around like the specific practice methods…. it’s not a thing in our line of modern Xingyi anymore.
RC: Yeah, exactly. And the other thing is that it’s also always possible that the interpretation of a certain all concept might change throughout the generations, or it could change or it could become you know differently interpreted and so that also alters the lineage perception… So I’ve always felt like if you want to understand the texts for the first couple of years of any particular genre of text it’s really helpful if somebody sits down with you and shows you how to read it. There’s no substitute for the in-person guidance I mean you know I’m sure both of us have met a lot of people who very smart people but you know that you can go on entirely…Zou Huo Ru Mo, you can really end up hurting yourself.
RC: You want to translate that?
JN: Walk on fire, enter the devil? Sorry, that’s a really terrible translation.
RC: Walking on fire and letting a demon in maybe?
JN: Yeah, something like that.
RC: What’s the meaning of that?
JN: Well, my understanding is that you know a lot of these…especially with Chinese certain types of qigongs, certain types of martial arts practice you can do yourself serious damage, not just physical but mental also. There are certain misunderstandings like for example, with the sound that you’re making, it’s a real part of Xinyi Liuhe right, the thunder sound (lei sheng) and some people interpret that to mean holding your breath when you fajin, which is really bad for your overall health.
RC: So you can you can get hurt doing these practices.
JN: Yeah, and some of the other where you’re directing Qi in in certain areas or whatever you know that can I’ve heard that can send people into weird mental states and things.
RC: I have certainly had the opportunity of meeting a few people who have experienced weird mental states from practicing qigong. So, moving on from there, another really fascinating project that you did was you wandered all over China and helped to do a documentary about Xingyi and you met a lot of people and you collaborated together with a person named Will who is running a very cool martial arts social media thing if I’m not mistaken it’s called Monkey Steals the Peach?
JN: Monkey Steals Peach, that’s right, yeah. Will’s a great guy and doing a lot of good work. You know a lot of work goes into that channel actually behind the scenes.
RC: It’s fascinating but what you did because I think I’ll try to hopefully have a chance to talk to him in the future too…. But what you did with him was you went all over China and talked to various Xingyi masters and you did these very good quality interviews with them and helped us to find out more about Xingyi from the holistic perspective. A lot of the time we just look at individual lineages and you know what our particular lineages think, but you talked to a lot of different people and got a lot of different viewpoints and I found that to be fascinating. Do you mind sharing with us a little bit about how that project came to be and what it was like to do it?
JN: Okay, so once again I can’t take too much credit for that because really I was just on my holidays and I love xingyi so it was fun for me. Really Will did a lot of the hard work of funding, filming and editing to produce the final product which was the documentary videos. But in terms of the thinking behind it, Will wanted something to showcase not just a certain lineage but actually the historical development of the style. Because we all know that the historical root of it is Xinyi Liuhe, then you know that turned into Dai style and then the Dai family taught Li Luoneng directly or indirectly (I don’t want to get into historical controversies). And then Li founded modern Xingyi, so we wanted to at least show the Dai style to Xingyi part of that and later on Will managed to do the Xinyi Liuhe as well. He managed to cover the 3 main branches of what you would call Xingyi these days, including some Xinyiba I think. So that was the genesis of it and Will came to me and said well look, if we do this where are the places you think we should go? And then the people we should see? I’m aware of most of the more well-known teachers in the mainland for xingyi anyway and so I made some suggestions and there were some limitations because of the time, we didn’t have much time to do it, I think we only had 9 days or 10 days or something in which everyone was going to be in China at the same time. So we drew up a list of names and contacted the teachers and saw whether they were willing to meet us or not. Most of them said yes, which was nice.
RC: A bit of a whirlwind tour there for 10 days!
JN: Yeah well look, the first thing for xingyi you’ve got to do Tianjin and you know the cradles of xingyi… Maybe the Beijing guys listening to this will be not happy that we didn’t see some of the Beijing crowd, but I think the reason we didn’t do that was because they’re very well-known already. So I had the feeling that for example Li Cunyi is a very famous figure in xingyi history, a lot of the fighting reputation of xingyi is because of Li and his disciples, and yet nowadays you don’t actually hear that much of his grand-students or great-grand students or whatever. So we tried to meet at least 2 different lines coming from him in Tianjin and you know Tianjin has tonnes…. I mean there must be like at least 10 or 11 different sub-branches of Xingyi in Tianjin plus they have Bajiquan plus they have long fist styles and everything as well. I mean, it’s a real martial arts paradise in a way.
RC: Doing martial arts in Tianjin is a memorable experience! When my Chinese wasn’t so good, I went to visit a couple of Masters and one of them was an old gentleman who did Tongbei and he was in his 80s. He showed me his practice and he said “how is it?” and I didn’t realize that “Bu Cuo” doesn’t mean good, it means not bad and it can be kind of just condescending ,it can be a bit dismissive. So I said “Bu Cuo” and he looked at me with a flash of anger which came across his eyes and he was like “Not bad, I’ll show you not bad!”
JN: Never say that!
RC: Yeah it was great I thought I’m being slapped by a very old man and I can do nothing about it so…. Tianjin is a wonderful place if you like martial arts and you’re not afraid of making mistakes and getting slapped around!
JN: Very true, so after we did the series I realized that there’s a Tianjin Shuai Jiao school which is still going really strong and if I go back there I’ll definitely visit the Xingyi teachers as well especially Zhang Jun who has such good skill and a really nice guy too, but the Shuai Jiao school I want to visit as well because you know they have like they have like weekly matches that you can just go in and watch apparently.
RC: And later you went up to Shanxi?
JN: So yeah Shanxi it’s the home of not only Song style but also Che style, the two big Shanxi styles so it’s a slight slightly different method of practice, slightly different body method. In my case, I practice Song style and so that was very easy to arrange. The Che style we sort of relied on…. So what I didn’t realize is that in Taigu a lot of the younger generation, everyone knows each other, so regardless of whether you’re Che style or Song style or whatever actually a lot of them practice together. So one of my kungfu brothers, Sun Qian, he said I know a bunch of great Che style guys who spar regularly, they train hard blah blah, so we said “Oh great”. So we went along and we were introduced to a whole bunch of….. They’re actually from slightly different sub-branches of Che style but the most famous one we met would be Gao Baodong, who I think is called King of Spear in in Chinese magazines or whatever…He’s probably one of the most senior in terms of generations who’s still alive. And the other guys were much younger, so from the generation below or even the generation below that, so it was really interesting because there are slight differences in the way they practice even between themselves. So they were very martial, you know, they were they were practicing on dummies and gloving up and they had like mats and stuff like that.
RC: That’s great, you know I saw some of the schools in in Shanghai starting to do these more mixed-format sparring as well. It’s good that people are people are working at preserving the also the physical and combative parts of the arts, it’s very important. In terms of Che style I’m not very familiar with it, what’s the specialization of Che style, what’s different about Che style from other styles?
JN: Oh wow, I don’t really want to…. because I’m not an expert but just the look of it as a style, it’s a softer style of xingyi. Most of the practice…so when we talk about gang jin (hard power), they [Che style] don’t look hard right? So I would say Che would be an example of soft on the outside, but very strong on the inside. So they look very relaxed and pretty soft in in the way they practice, also the frame is more compact, so they’re not as extended in their postures. Certainly if you compare to someone like Zhang Zhaodong’s xingyi, it is very different like. So Zhang Zhaodong is very extended, the front hand etc. When people look at Che they feel like the hands are very close in. They just [have] very short distances and you know there’s a reason for that, they emphasize more what would you call it like Guo power (wrapping), inward pulling aspects of the stances and the power generation. And arguably they’re slightly closer to how Dai style was. You know the founder of Che style, Che Yizhai he apparently directly studied with the Dai family afterwards…. Because the history of it is that Li Luoneng went back to Hebei, so you know apparently after Li Luoneng went back to Hebei, he said to Che Yizhai, you can just directly study with my teacher. The historical accuracy of that, who knows, but you know I think the evidence is in the way that they practice.
RC: Yeah that’s really interesting, did you have a chance to go to Hebei Province at all?
JN: You mean down to Li Luoneng’s Hometown?
RC: Yeah
JN: Shenzhou? The thing is, I am most interested in a certain branch…. let’s put it another way, so in Li Luoneng’s hometown, the prevailing branch of Xingyi nowadays I’m not that interested in. I am interested in some of the xingyi that was in his home [village]. Some of the other branches like well I mean Guo Yunshen should be around there somewhere and also some of his other….. It’s a bit of a complicated situation because there’s a couple of branches coming from Li Luoneng’s grandson, and one of them I’m interested in and one I’m not. Let’s just leave it at that.
RC: You know it’s fascinating. I was in Hengshui in 2011 and I met with a lot of the representatives there, we got invited to participate in the discipleship ceremony of one of the masters there and the thing that I noticed about their practice is that even though it’s based on the 5 elements of 12 animals I mean like the Li Luoneng style, though right it is heavily, heavily influenced by Dai style so it’s got a very cool dantian rotation method.
JN: Obvious Dantian rotation?
RC: Yeah, obvious dantian rotation, the power emission, it looks like a cross between the Song style, where it shakes kind of because of the dantian. They’ve got that but then they also have a Hebei-style shape and they have the squatting.
JN: You mean monkey squatting, Dun Hou Zhuang?
RC: Yeah, they have something like monkey squatting when they do the movements there’s an obvious drawing in of the back bow, it’s like you pull in the dantian and it sinks down and pulls in and then when it emits, it pops out. It’s obvious dantian like really old school dantian gong that you can tell comes through the Muslim lineage and then goes up through Dai style into Xingyiquan.
JN: Can you remember which branch this was?
RC: There were two main masters that I met one was Cui Jieli and he was probably showing more stuff because he was doing the discipleship ceremony. So him and his students were practicing and then the other one was actual family descendant of Li Luoneng, called Li Zhijun something I think.
JN: Okay, I think I know of Cui Jieli and I’m aware of [Li], that’s really interesting. I’ll have to visit those guys on another trip. I’ll be honest, I didn’t realize they had that.
RC: Yeah, it’s really neat, so this is the thing that I thought would be interesting for Song style people or Shanxi style people is to go back to especially Hengshui where there’s a lot of masters. The problem is you can see everything right because there’s also Yang style and Fu Jianqiu’s [xingyi] you know and so on. So you know it’s a mixed bag and you’d have to dig around for a while but next time you go I do encourage you to go.
JN: I mean the thing you know as Will sort of alluded to…. I think Will’s done a separate video about this, because of the problems with getting into China from the last two and a half years or whatever he’s kind of shifted his focus to Indonesia in like in 2023 right so….Tthere was a plan to to do Cangzhou, so in Cangzhou we would be covering ideally we would be covering like Bajiquan, Piguazhang…Cangzhou has so many styles, even Liuhe Quan, so we would try and cover like 4 or 5 styles I mean that’s a lot to do in one trip or one video. Maybe it would have to be split up into like four or five videos but I mean you know Cangzhou is such a like a martial arts hotbed.
RC: Well we’ll all get back into China soon enough and then well….
JN: I’m actually moving back to China next month so….
RC: Are you moving into the mainland?
JN: Yeah it’s for work reasons, my boss thinks it’s better for work development so I’m moving to Beijing.
RC: Beijing, wow you’re going to be right in the middle of it all, that’s exciting!
JN: My wife is not happy, but you know it’ll only be for a year or so.
RC: You can take her with you, you can drop over the Tianjin once in a while and have Gou Bu Li (baozi)
JN: She’s a southern girl, she don’t like the north!
RC: I see, well I gotta say the weather is nicer in the south.
JN: Yeah exactly it’s still 18 degrees around there right.
RC: I mean, you know you’re English and so you’re used to crappy weather and I’m Canadian so I mean anything….
JN: Anything is an improvement on the UK weather quite frankly. Well, not right now [pointing out the window], this is like…
RC: So what do you think the future is? I know this is a big question but what do you think the future is of xingyi?
JN: That’s a huge question, oh God…. Within China or outside of China?
RC: Both
JN: Okay let’s do within China because I’m more clear about what’s actually going to happen so…You’re aware that there’s 3 streams in China? Like there’s the academia (xueyuan pai) right, so what’s called sports wushu, the sports wushu movement. That will just keep on going probably down its own road… But that’s just forms, there’s not much martial content being trained there. Then you’ve got the big cities where most of the people interested in Xingyi, there’s no young kids. Certainly in my group in Shanghai there were no kids, it’s a hobby thing. And the age group as well, the age group is a problem because the age group of people who are taking up Xingyiquan now is people who are already in their 30s or 40s, often with no martial arts background or foundation. So it makes things very difficult… My sifu had had these problems [as well]. But then in the countryside, the small towns actually that’s where people have the time and the inclination to train the martial stuff, so this is why often some of the best performances you see, like best martial performances are from like some town in the middle of nowhere or some you know taxi driver wearing a Muslim cap or whatever right
RC: Because the television hasn’t gotten to them to the same extent yeah?
JN: Because they don’t have so many distractions and you know the pressure is not as bad living in a third-tier city, you know the cost of living, the pace of life, all this kind of stuff
RC: Being in the third tier city is nice!
JN: [laughs] Okay my wife would disagree, but I like going to the small towns, if you can deal with it I often hear the people in the in the smaller town say “hey we’re retirement cities”.
JN: Yeah I guess I would I have to leave my wife in a big city and then just see her occasionally…..
RC: Yeah well, she can be the rabbit girl on the moon and you can be the Archer.
JN: Ah good reference nice, yes I’d love to do that!
RC: Create that Magpie Bridge and meet up once in a while….
JN: Good reference! Okay so that’s the inside China part of it, then outside China I genuinely think actually there’s a lot of interest nowadays outside of China. People are more and more interested…. I’m getting (I’m sure you’re getting the same) people are just saying “Hey do you know a good Xingyi teacher somewhere in Germany, or somewhere in France or somewhere in the US or Canada or whatever?” I mean in Canada’s case they just go to you or your teacher right?
RC: Boy, well certainly go to my teacher! I wish it was the case I don’t know why in Toronto I’ve never even mentioned the word Xingyi in Toronto for some reason, but we can psychologize me on a different day. But yeah, I hear you, people are looking for Xingyi practice. If you know anybody in Toronto you think are serious send them my way, I’d love to have one or two serious friends that I practice with. But the idea of opening a big school is not a …..
JN: I just don’t think Xingyi is suitable for big schools to be honest. It’s never going to be like the 10,000 students in Taekwondo school, there’s just no way, the art just doesn’t lend itself to that. But yeah, I do think there is a lot of interest outside of China and actually I think for maintaining the full curriculum the situation overseas is there are not as many fully ‘qualified’ teachers but in terms of…. I think there is an opportunity there to keep the full curriculum, syllabus and ability, perhaps even better than the situation in China because I think there’s a better training atmosphere.
RC: Yeah, it’s interesting like what you said about the Chinese countryside and the Chinese cities really speaks to me because when you go to the cities the training atmosphere really isn’t that good, there’s a lot of people hanging out smoking cigarettes and drinking chrysanthemum tea and then they discuss yin yang philosophy chatting..
JN: Yeah, exactly.
RC: And it’s sort of an expression or expansion of their interest in Neoconfucianism but in the small towns, boy some of those people are pretty serious!
RC: They’re pretty serious man, I am impressed and they’re the future in China.
JN: Definitely for the real skill…You can talk theory until you’re blue in the face, but they don’t care… Have you got the shenfa (body method) or not?
RC: Yeah, exactly and you can verify it, that’s the beautiful part, the verification.
JN: Well, you get beaten up a few times but yeah.
RC: I mean, that’s that’s how you find out right!
JN: Yeah I know that’s how you put it to the test. Overseas I think there is actually quite a good….because you know in China there are a lot of these problems with like holding back, conservatism, infighting even within the same like sub style, all these like martial arts politics. And I’m not saying there isn’t that such a thing in the US or Canada or whatever, but I think it’s not as bad, not as severe by any stretch.
RC: But you know I think that’s really interesting and do you think that Xingyi will go in a different direction overseas?
JN: Well, let’s take a look at the southern arts because they’ve been out of China for a much longer time in a much more established. So I remember seeing some documentaries about Hung Gar or Hung Kuen, and that’s very well established in New York and in Spain and all this kind of stuff. And they are managing to have classes of 20 or 30 people training the forms but also training the 2-man drills, training the weapons, going out in some cases and competing in like open formats. I really, really hope that’s the direction we’re going with Xingyi.
JN: I think it’s entirely possible, I just think it needs some cooperation and some effort with the official organizations and things but it also needs you know the people to…. I mean in in the UK, there haven’t been many new teachers of Xingyi for many years, so I do think there needs to be either people coming back from China to teach back at home or hopefully we’ll get some more new good teachers. Because one of the problems is people leaving China with sports wushu backgrounds and then saying “Oh I’m teaching xingyi or bagua or whatever”. I mean that is such a tiny fragment of the real system that I don’t really think….if it was just that, I wouldn’t bother studying it.
RC: Yeah I hear you, I’m gonna maintain my opinion-al anonymity [sic] but I appreciate that statement. So now here’s the question for you (I think we’re gonna wrap it up pretty soon) but is it okay if people try to come find you and if they try to come find you what should they talk to you about?
JN: It’s totally fine when people come by me I mean you know my email is public, I have a blog. People can just contact me through the blog
RC: What are the details of the blog?
JN: It’s called Masters of the IMA (hopefully it’s not down at the moment).
RC: IMA or internal martial arts?
JN: It’s just called IMA because I think internal martial arts was taken or something
JN: So it’s Masters of the IMA and the web address is www.wulingmingshi.com. Anyway so I’m contactable, and I’m perfectly happy to help people out. You know over the years I have tried to point people in the right direction to various you know Xingyi or Taichi or Bajiquan teachers or whatever. The whole reason I set that up was that I hoped more and more people would just go to China and learn authentic traditions. The full system is incredibly comprehensive: single movements, circle walking, the neigong, the weapons like all this kind of stuff and I still don’t think that enough of that has made it to the West, even now. A lot of it is just forms.
RC: Yeah I mean, it’s like I say a form or forms don’t really give you much….
JN: I was just looking at one of the Bagua branches, one of the Yin substyles and you know they were saying that a lot of the attributes that you get from training it are from training the basic movements in the correct way. It’s not anything to do with these 100 movement forms or whatever and but then when you look at the requirements for their circle walking or whatever it’s incredibly…. most people couldn’t do it!
RC: Yeah it can be strict.
JN: Yes, strict circuit walking not just holding your hands up in the air.
RC: Yeah there’s a lot to it there really is a lot to the footwork.
JN: Apparently because doing it right builds up huge leg strength, your body connection etc.
RC: Your hips get flexible, that’s for sure.
JN: Yeah I’m sure your kua is much better than mine eh?
RC: You know, again we can psychologise… maybe one day you can interview me for your blog and we can psychologize me.
JN: That day’ll be X-rated!
RC: No, why would it be X-rated? I mean, there might be some funny stories about some times we went to various push hands groups and stuff where I embarrassed myself but that’s not that bad!
JN: I don’t remember it like that. I don’t remember it like that at all, I remember you handling yourself very well.
RC: Anyway Jon this has been wonderfu.l So your blog is Wulingminshi, right?
JN: Yeah
RC: We’ll link it anyway in the in the description and the article and stuff so we’ll know where to find you and what you’re doing is wonderful work. I’m looking forward to seeing more of it, and perhaps the kebabs and Qingdao [beer] can be revived one day!
JN: Yeah man, I’ll be in Beijing, so if you do do any China trips because it is reopening, I would love to buy you a beer
RC: Well I’d love to buy you a lamb kebab.
JN: Now that’s that’s what we’re talking about !
RC: Yeah, right on. Thanks Jon, I’ll be in touch by messenger and I really appreciate this. We will talk again soon, thank you and take care.
JN: Take care Robbie, best of luck. [Music]