The Middle Kingdom (Pictures)

The map I grew up with.



The way the world looks in China.

Which is better: Anglo-centrism or Sino-centrism?

The first map is from http://geology.com/world/. The second is a photograph of the map in my living room.

Competing for 气 (Qi) in Rural China

OR THE 101 REASONS TO STUDY 太极拳 (TAI CHI)

They asked me if I wanted to compete. I took it as a compliment. But in a land where competitions don't measure skill, union leaders keep their job by changing nothing-ness, and tai chi is used to politically pacify; I had much to learn. Not knowing any of this, I accepted the offer. This is the story.

Since May 2010, I have spent my mornings at the track near my house, affectionately known as the "little playground", though there is no playground in sight. I have progressed from 24 form. I have since learned 49 form, and 3 forms of tai chi sword. Every day, I end my workout with a steaming bowl of wonton soup or sugary porridge and some lao bing, a flat bread, full of egg and green onions.

One day, in early fall, our leader asked, "Would you compete in Nong Da's schoolwide tai chi competition?"

Of course! How could I not? I was honored. They made me promise to come every day. The leader of our tai chi group made me promise. A coordinator from the Foreign Affairs Office, the department where I work, made me promise. My friend, the woman who translated for me sometimes, made me promise. This competition seemed quite serious.

Soon, morning practice turned into morning rehearsal. Our morning group of 20 or 30 swelled to 50 or 60. We took over the entire field, breaking up into groups, repeating 24 form over and over, holding this pose or that. At first it felt good. Then I started looking around. These newbies, these greenhorns, these grown men and women, were falling over themselves! We weren't bringing together the campus's wide array of tai chi practitioners. Oh, no. We were asking people with seemingly no experience to compete. (Later I was told that all Chinese learn tai chi in school.) Turns out we would be competing in 24 form, the simplest form, only. It has a very small number of poses. It's sans accessories. None of this made sense.

So, I started asking questions.

How would you define "competition"? Turns out, I was not ready to hear the answer. We were not here to show off our skills. Everyone knew that most of the participants didn't play tai chi in their daily lives. "Why then? WHY?" I wanted my first competition to mean something. What could it all mean? "Well, it is all about the workers' union, actually," said my translator.

The workers' union? Why? What does recreational tai chi have to do with unions? Oh, ye of little faith. The connections between everything and everyone are tight and tightly felt in a Chinese community.

Our competition was meant to prove that one guy on our campus was doing his job. Hundreds of Nong Da employees were forced to spend many hours on training just so the leader of the workers' union looked good.

Fucking A.

It all started with Mr. Duan. He leads the workers' union. A workers' union? In China? Oh, yes. But don't get too excited just yet. What does Mr. Duan do? Well, he doesn't attempt to change the intense redundancy and inefficiency rampant at our school. He certainly doesn't bother trying to fix the near constant infrastructure issues (water, electricity, heating, internet fail biweekly). Oh, no. He does his job by changing nothing. Well, nothing-ness to be exact. If he really did nothing, he would be fired. So he makes petty changes, and (I'm sure) some party member places a gold star next his name in some folder in some back office somewhere. It's just that simple.

Mr. Duan leads the morning tai chi group. Mr. Duan has found Nong Da's biggest problem. Mr. Duan will fix it.

What Nong Da needs, he thinks to himself, is fitness. Higher quality of life. "I will bring tai chi and all of its health benefits to all the workers of Nong Da."

Everyone agrees, a stronger focus on exercise is truly what the teachers' of Nong Da need.

Fast forward. Welcome to the preparations for the tai chi competition. A competition where every department must send a certain percentage of its members, or get fined. I was asked to compete merely to fill a quota. To save some office employee, who barely sees the light of day, let alone a field full of tai chi practitioners at 6:30 in the morning, from forcing their untrained body through the slow twists and turns.


A compliment, huh?

Soon, in addition to morning practice, we had afternoon practice too. We practiced in different groups, department by department. I was put into a special interdepartmental group. I was part of the administration! (I and the other American teachers have no connection to the English department whatsoever. I have never found a satisfactory answer as to why.) We did 24 form, at best a 5-minute routine, as many times as possible, for an hour. Daily. Week after week. People were falling around me. The high kicks were hard. The balancing was hard. The instructions were hard. For them. Since I had been able to do 24 form for months already, this whole thing seemed like a joke that no one was laughing at, except me. Now, I took the time to memorize every music cue, to perfect every stance, to do anything during these rehearsals that would stop them from being complete wastes of time. Sometimes I would just close my eyes, feeling the flow, ignoring the commotion around me.


Funny thing was, no one else seemed to care about flow. We were saving the face of Mr. Duan. That was the point of learning tai chi, right?

The day of the competition came. Carl, my American boss, as he is affectionately known to my Chinese friends, was coincidentally visiting Taigu that weekend. (I have no doubt the "coincidence" was purposeful.) All the teams got together to warm up with 24 form. The foreign teachers and Carl, along with a small Nong Da and Taigu audience looked on. Together, we then watched some hired professionals do 24 form. They wowed us with the depth of their bends, the sureness of their stances. They pulled out a couple other routines, and then it was our turn to shine. Two teams competed at once. The music for 24 form repeated itself indefinitely as the 20 or so teams cycled through.

What do you call a competition where the worst team wins? My team, the one with the highest number of greenhorns, tied for first with 2 other teams. We had only marginally improved with our daily rehearsals. I wasn't watching, but I would not have been surprised if some of our members had fallen over during the competition.

I stopped going to tai chi after that. It was now November. The weather was nippy. Our group practices outside all winter. (No heated gym for me! At best we have an unheated, covered room. At worst, we keep playing outside in the darkness before winter's dawn.) It took me a few months to regain any desire to perform 24 form, or even hear the music.

Things have changed. I can finally hear 24 form music without flinching. I have won the respect of Mr. Duan and the other regulars. The admin people love me, and tell me so on a regular basis.

And I have a reputation. Forever after, I will be that "tai chi (competition) foreigner". Carl tells me this will probably stick for life. I can come back in 20 years and I will still be introduced with this description.

People will recognize it.

And probably, remember.

A Note On the Multimedia. The video is from May 2011. The pictures range from May 2011 to March 2012. To see pictures from the competition, click here (http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2966481361001.2127739.1230660239&type=3&l=1b680f30d6). The competition took place on October 23rd, 2012.