Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: Lunar New Year

Lunar New Year martial arts demo, part two

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In yesterday’s post, I was talking about the Lunar New Year’s demo that my teacher’s teacher’s school had done for Lunar New Year. They do it every year, and I’ve attended more years than not in the past fifteen years. I particularly remember the one in 2020 because it was right before the pandemic hit–and it was in this demo that my teacher’s classmate did the Double Saber Form.

Side note: This classmate started roughly the same time I did, and she’s the one I always compare myself to. She might have started a bit earlier, but I’m pretty sure it’s roughly the same time. And she is so much further than I am in terms of forms learned. She loves the weapons as much as I do, so I have thought about asking if she teaches. I don’t think she does, and I don’t know if it would be weird for me to learn weapons from her.

I dok know that my teacher does not care about the weapons the way I do. She hid it well for many years, but when I saated taking a real interest in the weapons, she had to come clean that they were not her baliwick.

It was a relief to find out. Well, not a relief, but instructive. I loved the Sword Form, but did not love the Saber Form. I have come to respect it, but it’s not my favorite. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I came across a video of my teacher’s teacher doing the Cane Form…with a saber. It blew my fucking mind. Once I watched it, it made sense (I have included the video below), but it wasn’t something I would think of on my own.

This is one of my limitations–I don’t just think I can make up a form just because. Come to think of it, it’s mostly the male students who think they can do this–for better and for worse. My teacher had a student who decided to make up a…I want to say Sword Form(?) after a year or so of studying. And that he could teach a friend how to do the Sword Form. He did the Sword Form at the demo and it was…not great.

It’s that culturalization thing again. AFAB ppeople are taught to be modest and not show-offy. The trouble is that show-offy often means drawing any attention to oneself when people from on AFAB people doing it.


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Lunar New Year martial arts demo

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Today (Sunday) was the day my teacher’s home school had their Lunar New Year demo. It was broken up into three parts–the Taiji section followed by the Xingyi chunk and lastly, Bagua. I was watching on Zoom.

The demo started with everyone who wanted to participate doing the first two sections of the Solo (Long) Form.. It is always interesting to watch a group of people do it because of course, no one is going to do it exactly the same. They only do the first two sections because the third section is longer than the first wo sections put together, and there ain’t no time for that. The audience, I mean–not the students. My teacher’s teacher has learned over time that people get really restless after two sections.

Yes, Taiji is about patience and being chill, but we’re still Americans under it all. What with the TikToks, the Instagrams, and all the other short forms of entertainment, no one is going to sit for nearly twenty minutes of very slow movements.

They did the Sword Form, and I was pleased to see that I would have been fine doing it with them. I know many of them have studied as long as I have if not longer. I have seen several of them at many of the demos.

I was drawn to one short guy with a mohawk because of how beautiful his form was. I thought it was a certain person I had seen do different weapons in past demos, and I knew he loved the weapons as much, nay, more than I did. He guest-taught for my teacher once about a decade ago, and I was so intimidated by his prowess that I flubbed up a simple sword movement in front of him. He was the kindest guy ever, but something about how good he was with the weapons flustered me.

I found out it was him because the next demo was him doing something he had designed himself. IHe was drawn to sheathing and unsheathing a katana. He asked his teacher (also my teacher’s teacher) about doing that with a Chinese sword, and his teacher said that he (the student) would obviously have to design one and do it for the next demo. Which he, the student, did.

And it was fucking incredible. He demonstrated with two other students, and I was instantly struck with how regal and lethal it looked. It’s not what I’m mainly interested in, but it was really cool. There’s one that is based on an escort mission, and I wanted to learn that one. They were not all Taiji sword movements, which made it even more interesting.

I love Taiji. I will always love Taiji. I am happy to be adding Bagua to it, and I could see adding other martial arts at some point as well. My teacher is currently learning XingYi (she demonstrated the Sword Form at the demo), which is based on animal movements.

Every time I watch the demo, I want to learn every weapon form I see. I started the Double Saber Form because one of my teacher’s classmates did it at the demo right before the pandemic hit. That really ignited my passion for weapons, and I just can’t get enough of them.


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Happy Lunar New Year + taiji demo

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Happy Year of the Ox, everyone! I’m not a huge celebrator of holidays, but I’m more into Lunar New Year than the alternative because, well, just because. That doesn’t mean I do much about it, but I at least acknowledge it–mostly because my family celebrates it.

One thing that comes with the Lunar New Year is the demo at my taiji teacher’s home studio. Last year was right before the pandemic really hit and it was both great (saw the Double Sabre Form) and terrible (car wouldn’t start afterwards because of the bitter cold). This year, there was question whether there would even be one given the pandemic, but they decided to do it on Zoom.

My teacher was in charge of it as she does all the online Zoom classes, but this was the first time she’d done an event of this magnitude. We had twenty-five or so people, which was more than I expected for a Zoom event.

The way it was handled was that my teacher had roughly twenty slots for demos. Solo demos, which was the only way it made sense. It was limited to 2-3 minutes per demonstrator. Hm. Not a good word. Presenter.

It would have been better in person, of course, but there were a few benefits to it being online. One, we’re in the middle of a wind chill advisory and it might get down to -45. Two, for me, it was nice to be able to sit in the comfort in my own home and not have to worry about my physical energy levels. Also, while I enjoy watching the group presentations, it’s easier to focus on the details with single presenters.

One thing that blew my mind was that two of the women who demoed did their routines to rap/hip hop, one being a Beastie Boys song. I had never thought about doing a routine to music, let alone hip hop/rap, and it was the most amazing thing. One was the Dancing Wu-Li Form and the other was a mixture of sabre forms.

At first, I was taken aback with the two of these being brought together. But, watching the first demo, I immediately got into it and thought, “Why the hell not?” Then, I was besotted by it and by the end of the demo, I was thinking of which forms I could unite with which rap songs.


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