In 2005 and 2006, I made several trips to Sri Lanka with a small group of friends to do aid work. Everyone involved was a martial artist or yoga teacher, and one of them was my tai ji teacher. The work there had deep meaning for all. On each one of these trips I felt some major spiritual shifts, and on my last trip there, in the winter of 2006, I decided to make some big life changes - to devote my life to healing, Chinese medicine, and martial arts. Embedded in that commitment was the desire to travel to China to see for myself what was there. In planning my first trip I decided to go with Michael Winn of Healing Dao USA. Winn had been traveling to China since 1983, and had sponsored a number of trips to visit Daoist holy sites and mountains, to practice qigong, and to learn about Chinese culture. I was in!! Visiting China for the first time with someone who had already built relationships was and still is essential.
The Chinese have a word for relationships, guan xi, and without it you will get nowhere in China. It has deep cultural significance implying networking, connections, and favors. There is an inherent trust, and a bit of give and take for all concerned parties. Some people think this just involves cash, and payoffs, and indeed that can be part of it. But it is often more subtle, and can be as simple as lunch or a small token of appreciation from the visitors home country. Whatever form it comes in, developing guan xi takes time. The Chinese are cautious to enter into a relationship with someone they don't know as guan xi also involves responsibility, and the possibility of losing face if something goes wrong.
In the martial arts world, developing these relationships involves showing up more than once or twice. Imagine how many westerners have visited China or Taiwan, learned a couple of forms, and then returned home declaring themselves a master with secret forms they learned from unnamed teachers in Asia. Now imagine you're the Chinese teacher who may have gotten $100 for a weeks worth of training, and receives no credit for the work. It's disrespectful, and goes against Chinese culture which pays immense respect to lineage, and ancestors.
I ended up going to China 3 times with Michael to visit as many Daoist sites as I could with him, and to meet with hermits, monks and nuns. I met several of the abbots who run the main Daoist centers in China, and continued to travel there on my own as often as possible, sometimes 2 or 3 times per year. But really, China opened up for me about 4 years ago. Through friendships I had developed, I started to meet and visit with various teachers, and to gain access to people that I never knew existed or would never have met without the proper introductions.
For example, during my first trip to Nanjing in 2010 I was able to visit a friend's father in the hospital. He was older, about 88, and had had heart valve replacement when he was younger. However, the valves were beginning to leak, and at his age another surgery was too dangerous. At the hospital his chart was split into two sections - on one side was a list of western medications, and on the other was his Chinese herbal formula, as well as acupuncture points. I got to visit him several days in a row and observe his progress, and eventual release from the hospital. Afterward, we played mahjong at his home, and he shared his medicinal wine with me. Known as jiu, his recipe involved ginseng, goji, and red wine. Our time together also included a dissertation on how to choose ginseng, and how to make the tonic for myself. He also tutored me in the reading of the Dao de Jing in Chinese, and we spent time comparing the simplified characters to the traditional and classical Chinese characters, often referencing calligraphy books he used in his own painting.
On my next trip to Nanjing, I was taken to a Chinese medicine clinic run by the students of the Nanjing TCM University. It was setup one weekend a month in an herbal pharmacy off campus. The cool part was that the Chinese TCM students were scouring the countryside to find the older generation of Chinese medicine practitioners, barefoot doctors, who had been trained prior to Mao, and the formulation of TCM. The doctors would see patients, diagnose, and offer herbal prescriptions while the students observed and notated everything these doctors said and did. I was able to observe for the day, ask questions, take notes, and at the end of the day received acupuncture for the first time in China. It was vigorous to say the least, but the effects were long lasting.
And on yet another trip we decided to visit the Daoist temples on Maoshan. On the way there I mentioned what history I knew of the place, and the practices there. When my Chinese friends heard the excitement and interest I had about the mountain they made some quick phone calls, and within 10 minutes had secured meetings with the abbott and some of the top practitioners outside the typical tourist route. Again, guan xi is what made all of these experiences possible.
These are but a few priceless memories, but none are as meaningful as the meeting of my Chinese martial arts teachers detailed earlier in this blog. China can really kick your ass. It's crowded, dirty, and the people often just run you over. Language is a huge issue, and there is definitely a level of distrust for foreigners. But if you keep showing up, remain humble, and work hard you will find that doors open up for you, and with even just a taste of the rich history that China has to offer you will be a better practitioner for it.
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