As Jax became used to temple life, his old life with family and school seemed to fade into the distance. He didn’t miss home like he thought he would. It was as if he had wrapped up all the old parts of himself and put them away for a while. The monastery was his whole world now.
Days passed and the Abbot and the monks taught Jax how to stand – completely relaxed – in the gongfu ready posture, but with an inner core of upright strength. Then how to walk, softly and quietly, but with an unbreakable connection to the ground, which meant he could not be easily pushed over. Only after he was able to do all these things well did they begin to teach him how to punch and kick and leap and turn.
Yu Yu had explained it to him, ‘You must be able to stand before you can walk, and solid walking is your foundation. You have learned much more quickly than I did. I stood for months, doing nothing else.’ She laughed. ‘The Abbot wanted me to practise standing relaxed, but without slouching or drooping. That allows you to draw energy from the earth itself, and makes you strong inside. Then you learn to walk without losing that connection to the energy so that when you punch or kick, it has power.’
Jax would practise a single movement one thousand times, a punch or a kick, until it felt as normal as taking a step. His balance was perfect and if Lao Bing tried to push him over it was as if he had roots growing out of the soles of his feet. He was immovable. Sometimes Yu Yu would creep up from behind and then, as if he had eyes in the back of his head, he would spin around and block her punch. Or she would try to kick him, but he would leap away like a cat. Then they would laugh and laugh.
He loved to watch Yu Yu practise. She had trained since she was three years old and was especially good at Flying Star – a metal tear-drop on a long chain. She could punch and kick and spin around with the ball and chain hidden in her hand. Then, as she came out of a cartwheel, the chain would fly out three metres to strike her target, a tiny peanut sitting on Lao Bing’s palm. Quickly drawing it back, she would send the chain flying up and over her shoulder, then twist it around her neck, circling smaller and smaller, then larger and larger until suddenly, it would leap out to strike a small bell hanging in the gingko tree. With a sharp flick of her wrist, the chain would spring back to fold up neatly, making the tear-drop land in her hand.
But to Jax, the most amazing of all was how quickly he was learning the art of gongfu. All his life he had felt distracted, confused and muddled. There was always a noise in his head, like when you listen to the radio and it’s not quite tuned to the right station. The Abbot said that learning in a classroom was not always the best way for everyone. ‘A caged cricket will never sing as sweetly as one that is free,’ he had once told Jax.
Jax’s eyesight had also improved so that now he could see in the dark almost as well as he could see in daylight. It was as if he was seeing everything clearly for the first time, the world was in such sharp focus. There was only one thing Yu Yu could still beat him at: a strange game they called tuishou – push hands. They would stand facing each other, one leg forward, and hold each other very lightly on the arms. The rules said that you could not tighten your grip and use strength to push the other person: you only lightly touched arms and moved them in circles. Time after time, Jax found himself suddenly off-balance, without Yu Yu pushing him at all!
‘This exercise shows you where you are not relaxed,’ she said. ‘I feel those tense spots through your arms, and gently move until your posture is so contorted you can’t stand up any more.’
The Abbot walked up as she was speaking. ‘She is right, Mingzi,’ he said. ‘And there is one thing you have not relaxed yet: your idea of yourself. Let go, and don’t mind too much if you look stupid. To learn, here, you must lose and lose, and by losing, learn to win.’
Jax found that almost the hardest thing of all. He still cared what he looked like in front of people, especially Yu Yu.
During the times when he wasn’t training, Jax would sit on the terrace with Yu Yu, their backs warm against the sundrenched wall and she would ask him questions about the world outside. Jax would try to answer them as best he could, but it was as if his mind was filled with fog and now he could see only vague images of streets and people and buildings. Deep down, Jax knew that he would go back there again one day, but for now, he was perfectly happy to be where he was, in Whispering Cloud Monastery.