6-26

Well, today was certainly an interesting day.

Wudang turned out to be a fairly small town of about 3rd-world quality of life. Roads and houses and a little electricity and a lot of dirt. The entire town is also permeated with this strong smell that I can only describe as ``vomit.'' Someone hypothesized that it's from the vinegar from all the garbage on the streets fermenting. Sounds like a working theory -- I can't think of a better one, since if anyone gathered that much vomit together into one place, surely it would count as some sort of Crime Against Humanity or some such.

The hotel was how I was worried all our hotels in China would be. Lights were so dim you could barely see, much less read. The ceiling tiles in the bathroom were so collapsed that we didn't want to stand it what passed for a shower. Our room, and apparently many of the others, had this huge gash in the wall below the tub, apparently to promote rat entry and exit. We had to try to plug the hole with our trash can and we made sure we kept the bathroom door shut at night. (There were a lot or rat-related comments flying around after dinner that night, when a fine 15'' specimin interrupted our guide's speech by running along a windowsill and climbing up the curtains before disappearing.)

Meals were poor. Let's leave it at that.

We slept somehow and got up early the next day to head up Wudang mountain. It was an incredible drive up these misty moutain peaks along these narrow winding roads. It was 30 minutes or so up to the monastery. Wudang Mountain is a traditional stronghold of Taoism and Taoist/Internal martial arts. Supposedly Shaolin is regarded as the center of hard martial arts, and Wudang the center of the soft styles.

Anyhow, the monastery is about halfway up the mountain and it's very nice. There are maybe 20 monks or so and a lot of students that are sent there to train. Some of them look as young as 7 or 8 years old. Our group did our demonstration which lasted well over the hour we had planned on. After we finished the Wudang students went, and they were done in maybe 30 minutes. It was really very different. They were very wushu -- quick, light, stylish moves with aluminum weapons and such. Our school is pretty much the opposite -- slower, less flashy forms with more power and (IMHO) practical application. We were all very impressed by their speed and grace, but some of them asked afterwards how they could get the kind of power our folks displayed. This is pretty reassuring in a way, since I sure felt like part of a group of big, clumsy Americans after they finished their demonstration.

Outside of Wudang Monastery. The Inner Temple
Inner Temple Again. Brian Devor,I Chin Ching.
A Dagger Form Marcel Harmon, Kwandao.
David Perry, Chain Whip. A Basic Form
Broadsword Old Man With Staff
Tai Chi Kwandao

Afterwards we drove further up Wudang Mountain to the foot path that leads to the summit. The guide was like, ``They say that if you come all the way to Wudang, you should at least go all the way to the top.'' How could we argue with that? It was about 5 miles each way, uphill. Up some serious hill. We climbed flight after flight of stone staircases for about two hours to get to the top. It was warm and humidity must have been pushing 100%, so after a couple miles we were totally drenched in our own sweat. I mean that quite literally -- my shirt was totally soaked through and my pants too, even. If I had sweat through 5 pounds at West Lake in Hangzhou, I must have gone through 10 or 15 pounds today. It wasn't just me -- everyone who climbed to the top was totally soaked through. Most took off their shirts and tried to wring them out, but it didn't do much good.

Temple on the Mountain. The Ascent.
There were a lot of stairs.

It was hell to get up there and I nearly turned back at one point, but once we got up there it was all worth it. I've tried to recall anything else I've seen in life that was that fucking incredible but haven't come up with anything. It was just like you see in those hanging scrolls, with the rounded peaks jutting up from the banks of clouds and the rivers of flowing mist. The mists that had tormented us on the ascent were now blowing leisurely up these peaks, clearing the summit and then curling back inward upon themselves. Incredible. And we were watching all this from above. I was looking down on the clouds. I used up all my film and could have spent all day up there, but we had to get back.

Looking Down. Looking Out.
Top Of The World, Ma!!

They had these porters on the mountain with chairs on big bamboo poles that they would haul around on their shoulders, up or down the hill. Someone checked fairly early and was quoted 550 RMB (about $70) to be taken to the top. You could bargain them down of course, but this seemed a ridiculously high amount so we laughed at them and went on. As we got higher and higher it started seeming like a better and better deal. Some folks who had problems with the climb hired them to bring them down -- one of them described it as the scariest experience of his life. You face backwards, up the hill, and those guys RUN down the steps. I followed some for a while on the way down, and I had to go as fast as I could just to keep up. And I wasn't even carrying 1/2 or 1/4 of someone's weight on my shoulders! There was probably not an ounce of fat on these guys (how could there be? they'd sweat it off in the first day or two of running up and down that mountain), and if you get in a fight with one of them, for god's sake don't let them kick you.

Anyhow, we straggle down off the mountain coated with sweat, then back on the bus and off to dinner. Then before we can go back to the hotel for a shower, we stopped at this other Wudang martial arts school down at the foot of mountain. We head to the back training ground and their head abbott explains how they teach the Chen style of Taichi and accept foreign students and all. They gave a couple demonstration forms which were very nice. Unlike the typical wushu stuff we saw earlier in the day (some of which looked maddeningly familiar -- I'm assuming there are standardized forms that most everyone learns), these were real taichi forms. Very, very smooth and fluid. Quite impressive. They took some volunteers from our school and tried some push hands with their senior student. He was very good at it, obviously, and sent one of our guys flying a couple of times.

Then one of our students wanted to try it as well. Dave is maybe 6'6'' or 6'8'' or so, and burly like a bear. The senior student asked him to grab his index finger and bend it straight back, which Dave did -- the other guy let it bend back a while and then just stopped it. Dave couldn't bend it back any further -- pretty impressive. The senior student tried it back on Dave, but Dave just twisted his wrist to relieve the pressure on the finger. Taichi Guy does a finger strike to Dave's eyes to try to startle him, which Dave blocks. Dave goes for a leg sweep, which he saw the other guy do on our student earlier. Tai Chi guy avoids and slaps Dave in the face, hard. Which didn't do anything to Dave other than surprise him a bit, but at that point the guides and some of the other students jumped in to move everyone away. Everyone was crowded around to try and see what was going on -- Dave still wanted to play. I think the senior student must have been a bit worried to face someone so large, so he interpreted the sweep as a hard-style kick. I don't quite know why he struck back if he thought it was turning into a hard bout -- Dave would have taken the guy apart. He's studied tai chi for 8 or 9 years so I think he could have held his own in that respect.

Our head instructor got in the act and started to try to talk the other school down. The abbott apologized over and over, but our instructor wanted to get them to go again. ``We think we understand the rules now... let's go.'' Naturally, they wouldn't. Finally we let it go and headed back to the hotel. Looked for a while like we might have a fight starting but it's just as well -- there were 60 of us and 15 of them and most of them looked to be fairly junior students, probably with no experience in using the techniques on unwilling opponents. Odds would not have been good for them.

I knew halfway through their demonstration that they had arranged it just as a PR event -- they had almost as many cameras filming the event as we did. Probably they just wanted to try to encourage foreign students to come study there and bring in them foreign dollars. They saw it happen at the schools at Shaolin and figured they wanted some of that money. So they probably overreacted when it looked like they were losing control of the situation. Oh well. Now they probably have a bunch of video tape that, with some creative editting, they can use to say, ``these foreign students came here and wanted to fight and we kicked their asses... so come study here!'' Oh well.

Afterwards, back to the hotel and off to the train. Caught a ``hard'' sleeper train back to Wuhan. The sleeper trains just have cars with rows and rows of triple bunks. So we slept on those bunks with a thin pad and rough old towels instead of blankets. I guess blankets would have been too useful and would have been stolen so they chose something deliberately not very useful for anything. Not particularly pleasant, but we were all so exhausted after our Wudang Mountain that we slept like logs. We got back to Wuhan in pouring rain. Did a little ``sightseeing'', mostly driving around in the rain in our busses, then finally we were able to check into our hotel in the afternoon. Ah, civilization again! Air conditioning and hot showers (which we desperately needed). After a shower I felt about 300% better. It's still so humid that if I walk up the street at a brisk pace I break out in a sweat, though.