KUNG FU AND MEDITATIONS ON FUNKY CHINA
Back in the year 2000 I did a tour of clubs and schools in Hong Kong as part of my work with the British Council. When the performances were over I was asked if I wanted to go for a day trip into what people called mainland China. How I hate that term. I won’t go on about how the British stole Hong Kong (along with lots of other stuff) and then did a ninety-nine-year deal that was completely unfair to the Chinese. Or how hypocritical the British were in criticising ‘undemocratic’ China while at the same time denying citizens of Chinese origin the right to vote in the British bit of China.
But the reality was there were now two different systems and, whatever you thought of the politics, Hong Kong was more like London than China, so I wanted to go to China. All you had to do was join an organised coach party, leave your passport at the border and pick it up on the way back. I had never travelled with a tourist group in my life – to be honest, I hated the idea – but it was only for one day.
China has fascinated me my whole life: the sound of the language, the history, the size of the place and, of course, the kung fu. As a child I’d sat enthralled by the films of Bruce Lee. I first started training at the age of ten, simply copying the moves from a book. I went to various martial arts schools as a teenager, but this was all very on and off; I never stayed at a school long enough to get into a particular style. But I listened to my various tutors going on about the old masters back in China, and I wanted to find the old masters. This trip wasn’t going to put me in touch with any of them, but at least I would be in the same country, and maybe I’d see one walking down the street, all monk-like.
After a two-hour coach ride from the border, we arrived at a city called Guangzhou and were let out to walk the streets. We went to a museum and then stopped at a restaurant which, from the outside, looked like a pet shop. The front window had live cats in cages that were there to be chosen by customers who would be eating them twenty minutes later.
I never normally go into a restaurant that sells meat, but this time I followed the crowd, partly because it was important that we stick together, but mainly because I wanted to listen to their conversations about how cruel it was to eat cats. To me, eating meat is eating meat, no matter what the species, so every conversation I hear about ‘strange’ people eating exotic animals sounds to me like racism, plus ignorance. Being with a group of tourists from all over the world arguing about what you should or should not eat is interesting. It reminded me of all the reasons I opted out of meat consumption altogether.
We didn’t see any monks, and the trip wasn’t that interesting, but it gave me a taste for the place, so not long afterwards I organised my own trip. I didn’t want it to be a normal holiday, and I certainly didn’t want to be a typical tourist, so with the help of some friends I planned to visit Beijing, and from there I would travel to Henan, in the Northern Central Region, to the Shaolin Temple, to train with the real kung fu masters.
On my return, I quickly realised I loved the place. This was the time when everyone started talking about China’s rapid growth, and I saw it happening right in front of me. The whole city was like a building site. I’ve never seen a country growing so quickly. Before I went to sleep at night I would take a look out of the window because I knew that when I woke up the next day the view would be different.
I met people who by Western standards were middle class, but one generation ago their families were slum dwellers. Everything on the east coast is so new that it’s difficult to find vestiges of the old way of life. But the Chinese are very unromantic about history. They don’t seem to have the same nostalgia as the West. For instance, when they were preparing for the Olympics in 2008, they didn’t think twice about knocking down a temple that was 3,000 years old. The typical Chinese attitude is to say, ‘What’s the problem? We’ll build a new one down the road.’
After partying in the city for a few days, I headed for Henan. Henan Province is regarded as the cradle of Chinese civilisation, and it’s where a lot of martial arts originated, but it also has a reputation as being like the Wild West. If there’s a theft, people in cities outside the province say, ‘Oh, it must be someone from Henan’, similar to how people in the UK used to talk about Liverpudlians as being scallywags.
Although much of what now surrounds the temple was created for tourists, I found a great teacher there who organised something I had always wanted to do – something I had seen only in films. He fixed it so that I spent some time training in the heart of the temple itself. Very few people are privileged to experience this. I documented much of this experience in my book Kung Fu Trip, which Bloomsbury published under the Quick Reads initiative in 2011.
After that first independent visit, I would return to China many times. I was unknown there, and I found it a great place to be creative. I wrote much of my books Gangsta Rap, Teacher’s Dead and Terror Kid there because I was left untroubled. Every day I learned something new about the place. I would go to one area where they ate cats and snakes, then I would go to another part where they were all vegan. One city would look like something from a science fiction film, and a few miles away they would be living as they had for the past hundred years or more.
I love villages the world over. I love walking through them, meeting local people and listening to elders. I love the oral traditions you hear from people in their seventies, eighties and older, who have seen unprecedented changes take place during their lifetime. In these villages I made a point of riding around on a bicycle, so I was pretty easy to spot and was made very welcome. People wanted to sit down with the black man and talk and share food. Some were surprised when I told them I was vegan; then it was my turn to be shocked (and saddened) when I heard accounts of how rural skies, once blue and full of birds, were now polluted and empty. I also started to learn Chinese, because very few people in these villages spoke English and I needed to have conversations with them as well as with funky Beijingers.
In 2008 I discovered a small village in Henan called Chen Jia Gou, where the Chen style of t’ai chi originated. I had begun learning Chen style in Shaolin, but I knew the ‘external’ style of Shaolin kung fu had its limits, so I started to visit Chen Jia Gou, where I found a great teacher, the Grand Master, Chen Zhaosen. The place he taught from was typical of martial arts schools around the country – simple buildings where students could train, with a dining room and upstairs quarters for sleeping. The first thing the master said was ‘Show me your t’ai chi.’ I did about three minutes and then he stopped me and gave me the best lesson ever, explaining what I was doing wrong. I’ve now been visiting Chen Zhaosen for the past seventeen years.
Instead of focusing on external fighting styles, I concentrated on the internal aspects of the practice, learning how to generate power from breathing, balance, meditation and relaxation. With wing chun, instead of blocking punches, you learn to use an opponent’s force by ‘completing the circle’ and never blocking their energy but instead using it against them. Even if it looks peaceful, every movement has a fighting application.
Along with poetry, the discipline of martial arts has been instrumental in turning my life around. It is a fantastic way of teaching you how to control anger and convert that energy into something positive. Some people recommend boxing as a way of keeping young men out of trouble, but I’d always say martial arts is the better way. You have to learn self-control and how to be humble; you can’t just pile in and start throwing punches. It has helped me to stay focused and grounded when the annoyances of the world make themselves apparent.