Month: December 2016

Every once in a while I want to make a post about the martial arts and their relationship with Daoist theory. This particular post is a dissection and reinterpretation of a concept from Yang Banhou’s manual on taijiquan which was given to the Wu family. Whether you believe that this interpretation is accurate or not, I think that the concept holds water theoretically, especially taken in context with the rest of the document which can be seen on the excellent blog www.brennantranslation.wordpress.com

定之方中足有根
ding zhi fang zhong, zu you gen,

stable in the earth’s centre, the feet have root:

定: ding: stable, set, stabilize, be stable.
之: zhi: of, the.
方: fang: square, earth.
中: zhong: centre.
足: zu: feet, enough.
有: you: to have, exist.
根: gen: root, origin.

Different meaning:
定之方中足有根
set in the centre of the square is the way to take root.

Substantiation:
方 fang refers to a square with four corners, representing the four cardinal directions of north, west, east, and south. The four directions are translated as water (north), wood (west), metal (east), fire (south). Each of the corners is a different arrangement of yin and yang with North representing a yin shell with small yang inside (winter solstice, the moon), south a yang shell with a small yin inside(summer solstice, the sun), west young yang (spring time), and east as minor yin (fall).
The centre of the four directions is middle earth, so 方中 fang zhong means the centre of the four directions, or the middle earth. The centre is Taiji and has both yin and yang, made separate from one another.
The earth element also represents the intention mind, which can be directed at varying degrees of concentration. The intention is the thing which ties the other aspects of body and mind together, for instance: intention arises from within consciousness and feeling (fire/south) and can engage with intrinsic physical material (essence/water), and can be controlled by the male (wood/west) and female (metal/east) aspects of the mind.
Root in Taijiquan is a dynamic engagement and is not as simple as standing in one place and not moving. Root requires the body and mind to both have a relationship with the ground and with posture and movement. You must be able to root yourself mentally as well as physically, so making the assumption that root is a simple manifestation of the feet on the earth is a mistake.
The relationship between the centre and the other elements is very complex, but put most simply, the four cardinal directions are all contained within the centre, so if you move forward, forward becomes the centre as soon as your feet have both become solid on the ground. This is the same for every direction. Furthermore, if your intention moves forward, to be truly rooted, it must arrive completely and stabilize after the motion is completed, so the intention and body must move in unison and in harmony.
The propriety classic said: “the centre from which affection, anger, sadness, and joy have not yet emerged is in harmony with each extension of each branch of the centre.”

the centre in this case is silence and stability of mind, but in the physical imperative, it is stable non movement. In the case of each extension being in harmony with the centre, in the mind it means that all emotions should accord with stability, and the mind is anchored. In regard to physical movement, it means that the movements must always accord with the physical and energetic root established before movement. No matter how you move or what emotions express themselves in Taiji form, push hands, or fighting you should always try to maintain calm and an open and rooted awareness in relation to the world and your opponent.

足 zu means foot but it also means enough. Laozi said: “he who knows what is enough will be forever happy,” I would hasten to say “he who knows how much movement is enough will be forever successful in physical interactions.” This theory is deep, don’t take it for granted.
有 you means to have or to be.
根 gen means root or origin. Laozi said “the gate of the mystery goddess is the root of the world,” the gate of the mystery goddess is the open sky, the root of the mind is emptiness, the goddess represents stability and yin energy, and the mystery represents yin and yang mixed chaotically together. the root of the feet on the ground never stays in one place. Being rooted requires you to engage dynamically with the earth whether it is stable or not.

定之方中足有根
ding zhi fang zhong zu you gen.

So I prefer the interpretation “maintaining stability in the centre of the four directions is enough to have a root,” since it accurately reflects how situational change can allow us to be drawn away from our centre and gives us a secret by which to maintain the centre under all circumstances. How good one is at maintaining this centre really comes down to how hard they work and how deeply they understand this principle. It is an inexhuastible principle.

on a recent trip to Xiamen city, Fujian province, I had the occasion to meet with a number of tea hobbiests who helped shed a new light for me on the current realities of tieguanyin tea.
Tieguanyin is a type of Oolong tea coming from the Anxi region of Fujian province, which is just a hop skip and a jump from Xiamen. The whole general area around this region produces various types of tea which are similar to Tieguanyin,
a small list includes:

Tieguanyin: From the high mountain area of Anxi,
Mao Xie Oolong: from the low mountain area between Anxi and Xiamen, as well as Dehua and some other counties.
Ben Shan oolong: grown in many low mountain areas around the region.
Fo Shou Oolong: grown mainly in Chang Chun region.

There are others of course, but these four are the most important.
of them all, Tieguanyin is by far the most popular.
This is due to its excellent taste, sweetness, and physical characteristics such as how it can open up the throat and chest and allow one to feel as though their breathing is improved and their body is more comfortable.
Good Tieguanyin is considered to be among the very highest grade of Oolong teas, sharing that place with the famous Da Hong Pao of wuyi mountain.
Good tieguanyin is quite rare though and before my recent trip, I didn’t know exactly why, but it has become more clear to me since chatting with a few people who really know this tea.

The first fellow I chatted with was a tea hobbiest from Xiamen named Wang. He was introduced by a mutual friend and showed me some of the best tea I’ve ever drank.
He explained that it is often the case that very high quality tea is made in much smaller amounts than cheaper tea, and that to buy the best teas from Anxi, one would generally have to have excellent social contacts in the tea industry. His tea tasted like a wall of sweetness and a lovely herbal aftertaste which is only found in the very best lightly oxidized teas. I lamented that I personally wouldn’t be able to find this grade of green Tieguanyin in China and he laughed at me saying “because they wouldn’t be willing to sell it to you!”

The second person I met was named Chen, he was introduced by the same friend, and is a tea production professional who has been studying coal firing tea for the last twenty years.
Chen told me about how his workshop works and why it is so hard to get high quality baked tieguanyin. i had previously often wondered why the Taiwanese tea producers were so much better at baking tea than the farmers at Anxi, as it turns out, most farmers are Anxi are not concerned with making high quality baked tea, but prefer to sell light green tieguanyin that has not been particularly baked. I remember from a previous visit to a tieguanyin farm that the baking was mainly done in a massive over which would have been quite hard to control and thus often burned the tea.
Mr.Chen explained that baking with coal was very rare in Anxi, but he had personally set up a workshop there. He preferred to do coal baking in Anxi because the price of setting up a workshop in Xiamen was simply too high, and when baking tea, he needed to hire workers to watch the process for twenty four hours a day during the two weeks or processing it takes to make tieguanyin by coal.
He also explained to me that the best green tieguanyin is left partially un-oxidized and as a result goes stale very fast if not refrigerated.
Consider how much green tieguanyin is sold outside of China and shipped overseas in temperature uncontrolled environments, how could this not have an effect on the taste of the end product?
It had previously never been my habit to drink green tieguanyin, except on the very rare occasion that I was offered a semi fermented tea kept in storage by a farmer, or some other special tea, but I always assumed it was just a problem with the leaves. As it turns out, green tieguanyin is very complex and there are many factors that go into it being both one of the best teas in China and being one of the most problematic!!!

I learned many other things this time in Xiamen, and will be making more blog posts about the trip very soon.
From 2017 forward, we will be carrying new coal and machine fired tieguanyin in our store that I got from Mr.Chen. His tea is very high quality and he is an honest person, so I like to deal with him.
More posts to come!!