17 Jun 2007 1042H

KF Week 2

acupuncture.jpg

This is Week 2 of KF. As everyone knows, besides the cultural maintenance stuff I do with the historical society, the pop culture, language, and all that, I study a 300-year-old Southern Chinese martial art tradition called hung kuen (洪拳).

This Friday, as I plan to do each of the next every other Fridays for a while, I spent 2.5 hrs driving out to Rock Vegas to learn something new about myself, and sure enough, I did as usual.

I also started to write down stuff so I could remember it and work on it in the next two weeks.

I’m sure this is why it traditionally took 20 years to produce a skilled well-rounded fighter. People’s power of memory was likely more developed, since there was no technology or literacy, not to mention that things were committed to memory through rote memorization, but still, they were only taught one or two things each class, so that a student could focus on one thing at a time. Now of course we have technology, but the more I do this stuff, perhaps, also, the older I get, there is something about the old way that is important in a way that I can’t articulate well enough yet.

Then there was a new moment.

“Sifu, how come when I got hit in this spot just now, I started to lose feeling in that limb?”
“Oh. Well, that’s Blahblahblah 27, an acupuncture point. If you get struck there, you lose the use of that limb.”
“I see. So. Why do we strike someone in this area which doesn’t seem to have any practical application at all?”
“Oh. Well. That’s Blahblahblah 13. Instantly disabled.”
“I see.” Pause. “Hmm. These seem to be advanced techniques.”
“Of course, we don’t use that these days! These isn’t the revolutionary era, of course.”
“…”

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