It can be found just about anywhere.
China is its source, but is spread across all corners of the earth. It's a driving force behind a lot of what goes on in the world, in terms of economics, politics, and otherwise.
No, its not the Chinese people—or their cheap manufactured goods—that I'm thinking of, but their concept of 气 or “Qi.” By this day in age, most people have probably heard the word, heard of the Tai Chi (Chi, Ji, Qi, Ki, spell it how you will: all refer to the same character 气 & concept) that it encompasses. But 气, a word with multifarious meanings and manifestations—all referring to things intangible—can be a tough term to grasp. It can mean…
Air, breath, gas, or smell, or something in between (just hopefully not foul-smelling gas). 气’s connotation also extends to concepts like mood, manner, attitude. Even more elusively ethereal, 气, as in Tai Chi, is often translated as “life force” or “energy flow,” the subtle, mysterious, and often unnoticed force that makes us move and moves the world. Japanese culture covers the same concept, except they call it “ki.” Just to illustrate how complex气can be, a linguistic study showed that there were 11,442 known uses of the character in Japanese. Back to China, though: 气 is a key concept within various schools of martial arts and medicine. It's also an important part of Feng Shui, wrapped up in the duality of Yin and Yang. Today, my first day to attend a I began my quest toward a deeper understanding of the concept of气.
That afternoon, I was sitting in the CIEE office chatting with Tang Laoshi, our program director, when she received a phone call from a confused Tai Chi Laoshi teacher: she had been waiting in the lobby to start class, but no students showed up. 'Is no one interested?' she was wondering. ‘Or was there maybe some miscommunication?’The latter turned out to be true: earlier that day, excited about the prospect of beginning my study of Tai Chi, I asked about the class had been assured that the first session wasn't until the following week. It certainly wasn’t that no one was interested: a good 26 out of 33 students showed up to check it out. We worked together, pushing desks and chairs to the edges of the conference hall that was to transform into our Tai Chi classroom. Now to begin.
But wait: all the explanations were in Chinese. Though I've been getting the hang of informal conversation on the streets and with my family, technical Tai Chi terminology was way beyond me. Luckily, though, Tai Chi (philosophy of 气aside) is one of those sets of skills that can be learned by showing and doing. And that was just how the 26 of us—mostly newcomers to the martial art of Tai Chi, like me—learned the series of warm-up exercises and the first set of steps in the Yang-style form. Laoshi demonstrated, we did our best to mirror her movements. And here’s the magical thing about Tai Chi: it looks so simple, mellow, and slow-moving. But, if done right, it can be just what's needed to stir up that inner energy or 气 and regulate its flow.
Call it a new age fad—and maybe that'’s what it has become to a lot of people in the U.S.—but I'm convinced that there's certainly something to it. Our Laoshi is a petite woman who must be approaching her 60's, yet years of doing Tai Chi have kept her in such superior shape that it's not a stretch to say that she has as much or more strength and flexibility than anyone among the crop of students who showed up for her class. We started with some low-key warm up exercises, which left me thinking that we wouldn't be doing anything all that strenuous. Then, out of nowhere, she into a deep squat stretch that I then tried to imagine all the 60-year old ladies I know back home attempting, and that caused my friend Sarah to exclaim, “This one's gonna take some work if we don't want to end up tearing ourselves in half.”
After the strenuous squat stretch, we didn't encounter anything quite so challenging for the rest of the class, which was focused on learning the first few steps in the Chen-style form (there are numerous schools of Tai Chi with different styles and routines: Chen is one of them). But the fact that our elderly teacher could move like that continued to blow me away. Yeah, there indeed must be something to Tai Chi. My thoughts turned to the flocks made up mostly of men and women age 50 & over that filled the public park on Nanjing U's campus every morning, groups practicing Tai Chi or dance—even a few basketball teams that I would estimate all the members to be around 70 or older—that one could encounter during a walk across the park… provided you got up at an early-enough hour.
In Chinese, the general term for this kind of activity is 鍛練身體, or something like “working the body.” It seems to be a fad for the older generations here, a popular way to start the day with both a physical workout and some social time. And the fad isn't just in Nanjing: I've seen such groups and activities in all the cities I've visited here. And, you know what, the elderly population in this country seem to be, generally, in much better shape than I've seen elsewhere around the world. Tai Chi seems to be the most popular morning workout activity. Though the warm-ups and routines people practice tend to look pretty low-key and simple—Tai Chi doesn’t always have to entail contorting the body into crouching tiger position—it truly seems to do the trick. The effectiveness of Tai Chi, as I see it, stems from not necessarily the exercises themselves but the way they cause a person's 气 to flow around the body.
So it all comes back to that concept of 气. But what is this 气, exactly? Hard to pinpoint, you could say, although the many pin points used in acupuncture try to locate and regulate its energy meridians in the body. The question for me is not so much, “What is 气?,” which I can vaguely answer on a theoretical level, but what is this force called 气 on a practical level? How can I feel its flow, not just through my body, but in the world around me? And what can I do to tap into that energy and, like the dozens of elderly men and women that gather in the parks across that country early every morning, make sure its flowing smoothly and evenly to all the right places? Well, I'm not sure how much of that I can truly grasp, but that's my goal for the course of my new Tai Chi class.
China is its source, but is spread across all corners of the earth. It's a driving force behind a lot of what goes on in the world, in terms of economics, politics, and otherwise.
No, its not the Chinese people—or their cheap manufactured goods—that I'm thinking of, but their concept of 气 or “Qi.” By this day in age, most people have probably heard the word, heard of the Tai Chi (Chi, Ji, Qi, Ki, spell it how you will: all refer to the same character 气 & concept) that it encompasses. But 气, a word with multifarious meanings and manifestations—all referring to things intangible—can be a tough term to grasp. It can mean…
Air, breath, gas, or smell, or something in between (just hopefully not foul-smelling gas). 气’s connotation also extends to concepts like mood, manner, attitude. Even more elusively ethereal, 气, as in Tai Chi, is often translated as “life force” or “energy flow,” the subtle, mysterious, and often unnoticed force that makes us move and moves the world. Japanese culture covers the same concept, except they call it “ki.” Just to illustrate how complex气can be, a linguistic study showed that there were 11,442 known uses of the character in Japanese. Back to China, though: 气 is a key concept within various schools of martial arts and medicine. It's also an important part of Feng Shui, wrapped up in the duality of Yin and Yang. Today, my first day to attend a I began my quest toward a deeper understanding of the concept of气.
That afternoon, I was sitting in the CIEE office chatting with Tang Laoshi, our program director, when she received a phone call from a confused Tai Chi Laoshi teacher: she had been waiting in the lobby to start class, but no students showed up. 'Is no one interested?' she was wondering. ‘Or was there maybe some miscommunication?’The latter turned out to be true: earlier that day, excited about the prospect of beginning my study of Tai Chi, I asked about the class had been assured that the first session wasn't until the following week. It certainly wasn’t that no one was interested: a good 26 out of 33 students showed up to check it out. We worked together, pushing desks and chairs to the edges of the conference hall that was to transform into our Tai Chi classroom. Now to begin.
But wait: all the explanations were in Chinese. Though I've been getting the hang of informal conversation on the streets and with my family, technical Tai Chi terminology was way beyond me. Luckily, though, Tai Chi (philosophy of 气aside) is one of those sets of skills that can be learned by showing and doing. And that was just how the 26 of us—mostly newcomers to the martial art of Tai Chi, like me—learned the series of warm-up exercises and the first set of steps in the Yang-style form. Laoshi demonstrated, we did our best to mirror her movements. And here’s the magical thing about Tai Chi: it looks so simple, mellow, and slow-moving. But, if done right, it can be just what's needed to stir up that inner energy or 气 and regulate its flow.
Call it a new age fad—and maybe that'’s what it has become to a lot of people in the U.S.—but I'm convinced that there's certainly something to it. Our Laoshi is a petite woman who must be approaching her 60's, yet years of doing Tai Chi have kept her in such superior shape that it's not a stretch to say that she has as much or more strength and flexibility than anyone among the crop of students who showed up for her class. We started with some low-key warm up exercises, which left me thinking that we wouldn't be doing anything all that strenuous. Then, out of nowhere, she into a deep squat stretch that I then tried to imagine all the 60-year old ladies I know back home attempting, and that caused my friend Sarah to exclaim, “This one's gonna take some work if we don't want to end up tearing ourselves in half.”
After the strenuous squat stretch, we didn't encounter anything quite so challenging for the rest of the class, which was focused on learning the first few steps in the Chen-style form (there are numerous schools of Tai Chi with different styles and routines: Chen is one of them). But the fact that our elderly teacher could move like that continued to blow me away. Yeah, there indeed must be something to Tai Chi. My thoughts turned to the flocks made up mostly of men and women age 50 & over that filled the public park on Nanjing U's campus every morning, groups practicing Tai Chi or dance—even a few basketball teams that I would estimate all the members to be around 70 or older—that one could encounter during a walk across the park… provided you got up at an early-enough hour.
In Chinese, the general term for this kind of activity is 鍛練身體, or something like “working the body.” It seems to be a fad for the older generations here, a popular way to start the day with both a physical workout and some social time. And the fad isn't just in Nanjing: I've seen such groups and activities in all the cities I've visited here. And, you know what, the elderly population in this country seem to be, generally, in much better shape than I've seen elsewhere around the world. Tai Chi seems to be the most popular morning workout activity. Though the warm-ups and routines people practice tend to look pretty low-key and simple—Tai Chi doesn’t always have to entail contorting the body into crouching tiger position—it truly seems to do the trick. The effectiveness of Tai Chi, as I see it, stems from not necessarily the exercises themselves but the way they cause a person's 气 to flow around the body.
So it all comes back to that concept of 气. But what is this 气, exactly? Hard to pinpoint, you could say, although the many pin points used in acupuncture try to locate and regulate its energy meridians in the body. The question for me is not so much, “What is 气?,” which I can vaguely answer on a theoretical level, but what is this force called 气 on a practical level? How can I feel its flow, not just through my body, but in the world around me? And what can I do to tap into that energy and, like the dozens of elderly men and women that gather in the parks across that country early every morning, make sure its flowing smoothly and evenly to all the right places? Well, I'm not sure how much of that I can truly grasp, but that's my goal for the course of my new Tai Chi class.
1 comment:
Good luck! Hopefully when you come back here you can strike me to the ground with your "气".
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