Gweilo gets a fat lip

Well, I said the earlier post would be my last here unless something interesting happened, and it did!

Went out to Victoria Park to have a coffee, smoke and watch the world go by, and stumbled across a group of people practicingn Tai Chi and Qui Gong (pronounced Chi Kung) not in the same way as I witness every morning, but in its form as a combat art. I sat and watched for about 3/4 of an hour fascinated, and when things were winding down got talking to a participant, a West Indian guy called Godfrey. I told him that I understood the concept of Tai Chi as a "soft" martial art and explained that I had trained in Tae Kwon Do and Muay Thai. As it turned out he had also trained in both of these arts well as Shaolin Kung Fu. He asked if I would like him to demonstrate the effectiveness of Tai Chi against "hard" martial arts and I enthusiastically agreed.

First of all he asked me to push him hard...I went to give him a decent shove and with a shrug of his shoulders I ended up about 5 feet behind him. I think at this point I started to understand wu-wei as a concept applied to martial arts - with no effort at all (it wouldn't have been very impressive to watch) he had gone very soft and used his body like a spring to let me pass by him. He pointed out that if he had put his foot out I'd have gone scraping along the tarmac on my face!

Next he asked me to kick him. I put a gentle round kick into the point in the rib cage just under his armpit. I know the damage this can do after my fractured ribs, but after moving into the kick and pulling me round by it he seemed a little disappointed with the degree of effort I was putting in. He asked my to attack like I was really attacking, so I threw in pretty solid TKD offensive: Crescent kick, back kick, front kick, side kick - or thats what I was intending....what I actually got in was a side stepped crescent kick and got sat on my arse halfway through the back kick with no idea how it had happened!

He said to try again, so I thought maybe moving onto some Muay Thai techniques (although I'm a little rusty). I went for a push kick, followed by a jab, cross and uppercut elbow, but this time only got as far as the right cross, when he pulled my arm driving my face towards his outstretched elbow with my own body weight behind it, effectively slamming my face into his extremely solid elbow. At this point his Sifu came over to check I was ok, and pointed out that I was bleeding from the mouth - something that hadn't escaped my attention! I explained I was ok and very impressed by the effectiveness of Tai Chi as a combat art.

Godfrey explained what he had done and explained that similar to Muay Thai, the body is soft, however in Muay Thai the body becomes rigid at the point of impact, wherease in Tai Chi the softness of the body is kept. A block is not a solid effort to stop the opponent, but by movement of the body in line with the attack the energy expended in the attack dissipates and then the attacker is rendered at the mercy of the defender.

Interesting stuff. I exchanged email addresses with Godfrey so I can possibly train with his English speaking Sifu if I come back in the near future.