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TAI CHI IN KOREA
Author: Margaret Emerson
I was an oddity in my class for several reasons. I was 48 years old, a female, a Westerner with white hair and blue eyes, and I understood very little of the language. But I was welcomed into the tai chi chuan class by the master and readily accepted by his students. In fact, my tai chi training was the most rewarding part of the two years I spent in South Korea.
PRE-DEPARTURE
I was seeking changeboth as a tai chi practitioner and as a potterwhen I began thinking about travelling to Korea. Soon I was hired by the Korean government to teach English in a girls middle school in Wonju, a city of 250,000 in the nations northeastern Kangwon-do province. The job would make it possible for me to live there for two years, time enough to observe the culture closely and learn from it.
Korea is the source of some of the worlds finest ceramics, and I knew I would find some inspiring works there. As for the martial arts, they are an intrinsic part of Koreas past and present.
Native arts like taekwondo and hapkido are the most popular. But Koreans regard China as a cultural big brother, so the Chinese martial arts are prevalent as well. The ìhardî art of wushu attracts the most students, but tae geuk gweon (the Korean pronunciation of tai chi chuan) is also gaining followers.
My study of tai chi dates back to 1979 in Illinois. Kao Ching-hua, who learned the art as a girl in pre-revolutionary China, taught me a rare variation of the wu style. It emphasizes mental and physical fitness over the martial applications although that aspect is definitely not ignored. I chose it primarily as a form of moving meditation and extended chi kung.
In the eight years prior to my trip east, I took advantage of a wide range of instruction and taught and wrote about tai chi. Once I arrived in Korea, I was looking forward to returning to the role of pure student. I wanted to learn a new form and a new approach.
Even before my classes there commenced, it become evident to me that Koreans are quite regimented and admire diligence and enduranceand the skills gained through themabove all other personal qualities. In line with this national characteristic, I expected my training to be more martially oriented and more athletically demanding than it had been up to then. I was right.
FINDING A SCHOOL
I put off looking for a tai chi teacher until I had a chance to familiarize myself with my teaching duties and the rudiments of the Korean language. Finally, one evening after school, a bilingual Korean friend accompanied me to the dojang (training hall) run by Chi Seong-in. We made arrangements for my study of tai chi. I would learn the short and long combined forms, as well as various other wushu skills and some staff techniques.
My teacher was called kwan jang nima title meaning ìhead of the schoolîby everyone, not just his students.
More than an instructor, or sa beom nim, he was in charge of all three dojang in Wonju where the Chinese martial arts were taught. At 36 years old, he had a degree in physical education from Seoul National University, Koreas most respected school. He was also a sixth dan in wushu and a fifth dan in kung fu. Although he typically acts as a judge at tournaments, while I was in Korea he won the gold medal in tai chi at a tournament in Kangnung, one of Koreas larger cities.
I was astonished by kwan jang nims skills. One evening I caught, out of the corner of my eye, something suspended above the ground. It was my teacher airborne. I have seen plenty of martial arts demos, but I cant remember ever seeing this kind of spring-loaded, perfectly directed energy. He was extremely flexible, and I was impressed by his fast reflexes, acute awareness and unshakability. He was equally accomplished in forms and weaponsincluding the sword, staff, spear and nunchaku.
At first, kwan jang nim seemed severe and humorless, but my opinion changed as I got to know him. He enjoyed the lessons and treated his students with a genuine fondness. Naturally they returned this feeling. He was polite and patient with me. He also had a ready sense of humor and was an adroit mimic. This required some thickness of skin on his students part, but it was hilarious to watch him exaggerate our mistakes.
A COMMON LANGUAGE
The language barrier that existed between kwan jang nim and myself was not a big problem. I studied the language daily and kept a notebook of terms and phrases used in the dojang.
I asked Korean friends to explain the meanings of words I didnt know. Eventually, I was able to discuss with him changes in the schedule and various times and places I would be picked up for class. (Its customary for students to be ferried back and forth in vans and buses provided by the dojang.) Kwan jang nim surprised me with the amount of English he remembered from school. However, communication was complicated by the fact that many of the words he used were Chinese and particular to wushu. Consequently, my Korean friends could not always help me translate his statements.
One of the things I most appreciated about my teacher was that he slowed his speech for me, repeated things or said them in simpler ways to accommodate my limited Korean. That was unusual. Koreans are not used to talking to foreigners in Korean, nor are they accustomed to comprehending foreigners who speak Korean with an accent. Particularly in cities outside of Seoul, the general population gets no practice with international conversation. Kwan jang nim, however, seemed willing to work with me.
I often thought our inability to freely converse actually had its advantages. I was forced to learn by observing and doing. He corrected me by rearranging my limbs or showing me again. I couldnt explain, complain or make excuses; I just had to do it.
TRAINING AT THE DOJANG
My classes ran from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. I attended three nights a week, but heavy teaching duties and frequent school-related dinners made more workouts impossible. I did, however, manage to practice another three days a week on my own. Camp Long, an American Army base, was only a few minutes walk from my apartment. In the summer, I trained there under the shade of locust trees; in the winter, I used the comfortably heated gym when it wasnt full of basketball players.
I liked that schedule. Practicing by myself every other day gave me a chance to experiment with and get used to unfamiliar movements. When I returned to class, I had made progress and felt I wasnt wasting my teachers time while he watched me stumble through the repetitions necessary to grasp something new.
In the first few months, I practically had private lessons at the dojang as kwan jang nim concentrated on showing me the basics of the 42-step combined form. I felt self-conscious about this special treatment and worried that I was taking too much of his time. That was another good reason to work out only three nights a week while everyone else attended five nights. But as time went on, I was assimilated into the class as an ordinary student and given the same amount of attention.
The other students ranged from 8 to 18 years old and initially all were male. The senior students regularly trained from 7:00 to 10:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Kwan jang nim worked with them separately after the rest of us went home. That was a strenuous schedule for boys who had nine- or 10- hour days in school and a half-day on Saturday. Occasionally a middle-aged man would appear in the class. He was a professor of Chinese at a local university.
He and I, and later another man our age, were the only ones studying tai chi. The others were into wushu. A typical session started with at least 20 minutes of warm-ups led by a senior student. That included jumping jacks, push-ups, sit-ups, stretching and leg- strengthening exercises. Then, under kwan jang nims direction, the class would learn and practice wushu skills such as falls, takedowns, kicks and strikes. After that, we would split up into smaller groups to practice the various forms we were concentrating on.
Kwan jang nim said at the beginning that I would learn the ìoutsideî of the sequence first, then gradually learn the ìinside.î I had been shown and memorized the movements in a couple months, but it wasnt until Id had close to a year of practice that I believed I was comprehending the sequence in any depth. When it came to daily training, kwan jang nim recommended at least 50 repetitions of the individual movements. I repeated some of them 100 times a day. That was necessary to gain an understanding of how the whole body is used and coordinated for a kick, block or strike. Tai chi reveals itself in layers over time.
INDEPENDENT STUDY
I was told to stretch three times a day, but I managed to incorporate only two sessions into my schedulebefore and after school. Im not naturally flexible and wondered many times if, especially at my age, it was a losing battle.
Increasing my flexibility was the biggest hurdle in learning this new form, and the first months were excruciating. But I surprised myself and eventually was able to almost match my instructors full splits. The stretching was no longer so painful or time-consuming.
The dojang was equipped with a TV and VCR, and kwan jang nim used videotapes to help teach the forms. He told me to get a VCR for my home, then gave me tapes to copy. I used them assiduously.
I have an instructional tape for the short combined form and one of the Korean national tai chi coach working with his students. My favorite tape and the most usefulis of the 1996 Asian Games in Pusan, South Korea. I watched it many times and felt it contributed enormously to my understanding of the long form.
BEYOND THE PAIN
During the entire time I studied tai chi, I lived with muscle aches either from the strengthening exercises or from the stretching. It was important to me to do the push-ups and sit-ups and hold the low stances as well as most of the other students did. One evening when we were doing forward splits, kwan jang nim walked around and hooked his foot under the ankle of a student before raising his leg off the ground, forcing him a little lower. The boy groaned in pain. I was thinking to myself that he certainly wouldnt do that to meIm an adult woman, a teacher, a guest in his country. But soon he was standing beside me and lifting my leg, too. At least he did it with his hand and was gentler about it.
Koreas hot summers and cold winters winters contributed to the strenuousness of the training especially since there was no air conditioning or central heating. I could generate enough internal heat to stay warm in the frigid months; the humid, 90-degree heat of July and the surrounding months was the most difficult to work through.
Koreans dont believe in taking time off for sickness. Students and teachers will attend school no matter how ill they are. They may be half-asleep with medication or barely able to stand through a class, but they are expected to show up, and they do. I had several severe bouts with cold and flu viruses and contracted conjunctivitis twiceonce from a public bathhouse and once from a swimming pool. The eye infection required antibiotics that enervated me, decreased my appetite and caused me to lose weight. Sometimes I would get home from school, take a shower to revive myself and then go to the dojang.
A few times, especially when I had the eye infections, I skipped class. Dojang discipline was enforced with various sorts of punishment that were meted out by the teacher or senior students.
(Korea is a very hierarchical society, and rank has its privileges.) Sometimes students were required to hold a position for a long timelike supporting themselves on their hands while their feet were resting on the window sill. Other times, extra repetitions of some of the killer leg-strengthening warm-ups would be demanded. There was also the big stick. Most teachers in Korean schools carry sticks to class.
They vary in thickness, length and stiffness, but they are all intended for hitting students on the palms, the backs of the legs and occasionally the head. Kwan jang nim had the biggest stick I saw in Korea. I cringed whenever it appeared even though I knew that, as an adult, I was exempt. I was relieved to see that it was used and received with a certain amount of humor. Still, I heard the crack now and then, and I knew it hurt.
FEELING THE KI
Kwan jang nim said my intense practice would increase the flow of ki (internal energy). He said I should expect certain symptoms such as hot and cold sensations and itching wrists. I almost laughed when he mentioned the wriststhat was a new one. Then I remembered that I had already experienced that phenomenon while practicing at the army base. I kept scratching my right wrist, and it became very red.
I thought something had bitten me. Then my left wrist started itching, although not as severely. I couldnt find any bites there, either. The itching and redness disappeared as quickly as they had appeared. I continue to experience this phenomenon from time to time, including when Im not doing tai chi.
The cold flashes happened for the first time in the midst of summer. I was practicing one of the most difficult and complex movements in the art: ìcover with hand and punch with fist.î Kwan jang nim was in front of me, modeling the movement. I was sweating profusely when I felt what seemed like a strong current of cold air envelop me for several seconds. It has happened to me only a few times since, and it has always been equally startling and mysterious.
Toward the end of my time in Korea, all three wushu dojang in Wonju participated in a martial arts demonstration on Childrens Day. I was scheduled to do the 42-step combined form by myself, and the stage fright I have always dealt with when ìperformingî tai chi for an audience was kicking in.
But when I met kwan jang nim and the other students about two hours before the demonstration, he handed me a white uniform to match his own and informed me that he and I would do the sequence together. We would also be accompanied by music. We practiced two or three times with a boom box outdoors while a tape played a powerful cut of Korean music that sped up the pace considerably. Following this brief preparation, we went into the gymnasium. The boys in my dojang performed impressive exhibitions of forms, sword and staff. The routine involving kwan jang nim and me also came off well, with the addition of music transforming the sequence into an exhilarating artistic performance that left me feeling euphoric.
A TEACHERS ROLE IS REALIZED
After two years of living abroad, I was ready to return to my own country. Kwan jang nim had ...
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