Workshop with Grandmaster William C. C. Chen

The weekend of August (Friday the) 13th saw me in Davenport, Iowa attending Grandmaster Chen’s three day workshop. I arrived Friday night just as a monsoon level rain storm descended upon the Quad Cities. The workshop was held in a large “multi-purpose room” at the YMCA, which was reached by following strategically placed directional signs along a labyrinth path up stairs and through narrow corridors filled with the smell of chlorine and heavy with humidity. Luckily, the room was nicely air-conditioned, bright and even had some wall mirrors. About forty or fifty people were present, at times swinging swords but extremely friendly and welcoming to the three of us from Wisconsin.

Grandmaster Chen, now 75, was born in China and became the youngest student of Professor Cheng Man-Ching. He has taught in Asia and the US since 1952 and established his own school in New York City in 1965. He has many devotees and his certified instructors include my sword teacher, Jody Curley. His ease of movement through the form suggests a much younger man. It is easy to feel the inspiration he imparts to his followers.

“You do like this… not like this,” he says, demonstrating a turn or a move. The distinction between the ‘this” and the “not this” is so subtle that I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be seeing. After a few more demos I begin to understand that this is an internal transfer of energy rather than one of muscle force. His descriptions are poetic: “like a bird about to take flight,”  ” go to sleep… wake up.” During a run through of the Short Form I am privileged to have a couple of corrections from the master.  I’ve brought the baggage of eight years of practice with a straight back and bent legs rather than a bend at the hips. “Not pushing from the legs… wake up!”  There is much to learn here.

He talks about connections between the fingers, the toes and the inside thigh muscles. The thighs don’t work alone during a turn: the fingers direct (index finger yang, pinky finger yin) and the toes implement. He shows us the design he has made for next year’s tee shirt. It includes a Tai Chi symbol (yin yang circle) with two foot prints superimposed. The feet illustrate the “three nails,” which are the contact points that root the body to the earth. They are the big toe, the ball and heel.  In his treatise, “The Mechanics of the Three Nails,” Master Chen says:

My studies of body mechanics indicate that the three active nails actually control the thigh, which controls the body. In the early 1960's, I sensed the turning of the waist was controlled by the thigh muscles. At that time, I thought the thigh was in command. As I practiced the slow movements, it appears that the thigh muscles helped make possible the turns and moves. Not until in middle 1980’s that I began to realize that the thigh itself has no ability to make any moves or turns without the help of the foot which is rooted firmly on the ground. Therefore, the rooted foot, and specifically the “three active nails” are in control and energized; the fingers to move palms and fists, and body follows.

How different to have instruction with analysis based in personal research! Most of us can only parrot what we have read or been taught to think. To feel what works and then to articulate it is a high form of learning we can only strive for. Like Jung’s “bringing the unconscious into the conscious,” it requires practice and awareness. To learn the form exactly as Cheng Man Ching did it, or as one of the fifty different versions taught by his many students, means nothing by itself. There must come a point when the student becomes the teacher for him/herself. But for now, I am the student and William C. C. Chen and his student, Jody Curley, are my teachers.

When he wants to make a point he stops us and goes to a student who has come close to performing some movement correctly. He puts the student through the movement, modifying the shifting of their weight or the turning of their foot. I am not receiving any corrections now that we are in the second half of the form. Obviously, I am not close enough to the correct form to offer him a chance to demonstrate with me. Later in the sword session I get a correction: I am not grasping the sword with my ring and pinky fingers at the second “three rings around the moon.” How he even sees this at fifteen feet away is amazing.

There is a session in Tai Chi Sword Fencing. This is my first experience with Tai Chi fencing. All the locals have put away their metal swords and are pulling out their wooden ones, putting on heavy gloves and safety glasses. Oops! Will they even let me participate with my carbon steel Adam Hsu Cas Hanwei? Jody and Mark and I are the other non-woodies. It goes well, though, and I even get to fence for a few minutes with Grandmaster Chen. Tai Chi fencing is sort of like push hands with swords. We try to “stick” to each other’s sword with wrist movements similar to “dragonfly strikes the water” in the Sword Form. The others are wearing gloves because in sparring, the goal is to make a strike at the sword hand.  Unlike European style foil fencing, there is not a lot of padding.

It has been quite an experience: one I will remember and absorb into my quest for the perfect form.