We spent
six days training Chen style Tai Chi at the Long Tou Shan Martial Arts
School in Yangshuo, China. When you see old people doing this in the
park, it looks very relaxing and not at all like a particularly strenuous work
out. However, this simply is not true. It is actually very challenging and doing it
every day for a week left us both with numb legs.
Basically
the school was of the all inclusive variety.
We paid 1100 RMB each to stay and train for a week, including all
meals. We both thought that this was
great value. The rooms were very simple
and the food perhaps not so varied (we had hotpot for lunch and dinner everyday
for the entire week) – but it was absolutely delicious and clearly very
healthy. Training was two times a day, two hours per session, with two trainers
on 4 students (there were two other student’s there as well – of which one was
a Swede, small world!) so very good indeed.
The
teachers at the school were also the best thing about it. Master Mei, Master
Yong and Jackie (he also has a Chinese name, but Jackie was easier for us
laoweis to remember), did everything to improve our skills and to make us feel
at home. When we left, having both
trained with them and shared meals with them every day for a week, it was like
leaving your family.
This below is a link to YouTube showing Master Mei demonstrating the form that they taught us (or tried to
teach us maybe – we still need some more practise to perfect it…).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yO5Mulm-KQ
Jackie is
Master Mei’s 20 year old son and was responsible for training us. He had a great sense of humour and was very,
very patient. Numerous were the times
when he looked at me after I had attempted some move, just smiled a little bit
(surely laughing inside) and said “maybe we do this one, one more time”. I hope to have the opportunity to come back
and train with them again sometime.
All the
best,
Lars
