Taoist Sanctuary

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We decided to go to Grandmaster Chen Xiaowang’s March 2010 seminar in China after he mentioned this seminar at one of his visits to the states in 2009. While he didn’t push, he clearly hoped we would come to this gathering of his worldwide students and disciples. Bill and I decided to go solo, meaning we weren’t taking a group of students this time. This was different for us, as most of our previous trips to the village have been as group leaders. It was easy to plan, just called the LA travel agent, bought the tickets, made the travel arrangements in China with our travel agent there and sent an email to the village to reserve our dorm room. Boom, it was done, we were committed.

Huh?? Dorm room?

We’ve never stayed IN the village before. On past trips, we stayed in Wenxian, a nearby “city” with a “5 star hotel”. That star rating was always debatable, and became more so in recent years, but it was still a hotel, with a restaurant, (mostly) working bathrooms, and a tv. The village offered standard dorm room accommodations, on site meals in a student cafeteria, and the seminar classes in one paid package. Sounded like a deal. Everyone else was going to stay in the dorms too, so we figured why not? Off we go.

The packing is always fun. You would think after 3 trips, I would have everything I needed. In fact, I made several trips to REI for MORE things, and even had a fabulous visit to the Mother of all REIs in Seattle with my BFF Kim, a fellow traveler on this trip. I’ll mention here that Kim decided to take a group of her students, so she was able to have the joys of leading groups through the rich experience of a trip to China.

Anyway, the packing got done, and we took our usual middle of the night flight from LAX to Beijing, arriving at 5:30am in the middle of one of the biggest sandstorms the country has seen in a while. Great. I didn’t even realize it – I looked out the airport window at the intense brown color of everything and assumed it was pollution. Hah! Turned out we couldn’t even fly on to Zhengzhou because of this storm. Bill said it was like Groundhog Day. We were supposed to leave for Zhengzhou at 7:30am, but that flight was delayed until 9:30. Then 10:30. Then 12:00. We got on the plane, then we got off. We went down the jetway, then back to the waiting area. Once we even got on the plane, took off, flew the hour to Zhengzhou, then turned around IN THE AIR and went back to Beijing because they decided it was too dangerous to land in the sandy winds. After this aborted attempt, we sat somewhere far out on the tarmac for almost 2 hours. I called Lily, our Beijing travel agent, and she said our pilot was going to make another attempt in a couple of hours, and just to sit tight (she knew more than we, since most of the updates were given in Mandarin, and our flight attendants could only say to us “wait a moment”).

So we sat, even as several passengers left the plane and rode a bus to somewhere, presumably to try another route to Zhengzhou. We did in fact make another attempt, this time successful, and arrived at our final destination of Zhengzhou 12 hours after our first attempt. Even our luggage made this final trip! We ran into Ben Milton from England and his crew of 15 at the Zhengzhou airport. We were all staying at the same hotel, but we had arranged for a car, so we went on to the hotel, ate a quick dinner, and hit the bed. Too tired to be social. Kim and her group were at the hotel, but were still out on a tour of Kaifeng, so we didn’t see anyone until the next morning.

The next morning (Sunday) we were scheduled to go to Chen Village. We had arranged for a bus to take ourselves and Kim’s group, and at 8:30 we started the pilgrimage. It’s a short drive – about 2 hours. Everyone was pretty awake and excited, so it was a lively ride. We had a great guide who was very energetic and fun. We arrived around 10am, and Betty Dong was waiting for us at the gate of the school. She had already been there for a week, and had been regularly texting Kim and me with status updates on the conditions in the village (food, plumbing, etc). We found Cui Bing (GM CXX’s daughter in law) and got all checked in.

About the rooms... Fairly new, somewhat austere, potential for improvement present but not yet realized. We had arrived during the sandstorm, remember, so there was brown dust everywhere. The students brought in a ShopVac and blew the dust around as best they could, but it was pretty pervasive. We were on the 2nd floor. We had a king bed, a dresser, and 2 nightstands (note the absence of a chair, this would become significant later when I realized I had not been able to sit in a chair for almost a week). Our view out the back window was of the new Taijiquan Temple, and our front door looked down on the chicken coop containing some hens and 2 lovely roosters that crowed every morning starting around 4am, and sometimes in the night. We had a private bathroom. These are designed as all-in-one rooms, with the toilet, sink and shower all set in a room with a drain in the middle. There was a handheld shower, and you had to hold it the whole time, because if you put it in the holder, it shot water out the doorway of the bathroom, since at this time, the bathroom was missing its door (the door was delivered the day we left). There was a well functioning hot water heater in the bathroom, thank goodness. The hot showers were great. We also had plenty of closet space in this dorm room.

We got all settled in, and realized it was lunchtime. As mentioned, all our meals were provided as part of the package. We went to the cafeteria with some of the others to see what this would be all about. The food was always hot, always filling, and always on time. We had noodles, dumplings, vegetables, soups, and occasional meats. It wasn’t always to my liking, but like I said, there was plenty of it. It took a bit for me to adapt to the change in diet, but I had brought along some protein bars for supplements so I managed just fine. We also carried 2 bottles of Louisiana red hot sauce which added some punch to the food. Sometimes breakfast and dinner were the same meal, so there was some slight lack of variety, but mostly there were no surprises. Well... there was that sweet soup that one day/night - it was icy cold, shockingly pink with a syrupy texture. No idea, had a couple of sips and that was that.

Bill and I ate with the group, saw old friends, met new friends, and and decided to go on a walk to Master Chen Bing's new taiji school to see Kim and her group. They were placed at his school for the duration, because they were staying an extra week to train with him after GM CXW's seminar. We were curious about their accommodations - would they be similar to ours? We heard a rumor that Chen Bing actually had wifi...!!

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Well, the much ballyhoo'd wifi didn't live up to expectations. Chen Bing does have wifi at his school, but only in the NW corner on the 3rd floor while hanging over the rail, or something like that. I took over my Touch but never could get a signal that would last more than a few seconds.

Chen Village is very old. It's been around since the 1600s, in the same spot, and probably hasn't changed much. The buildings are brick and mud, there are only a couple of paved roads, and the people farm the land and the animals. Right now there is some construction going on - Chen Bing's school, and a road to the reservoir - but mostly, it seems stuck in time. There is a main road, with some stores, the Taiji school, and a noodle house, but once you wander off that road, it becomes very quiet, with paths instead of roads, crumbling brick/mud houses, occasional pens of sheep or chickens, and yards that serve as gardens for food. The doors are always decorated in bright colorful ways, like posters of Taoist gods and protectors, or tiles depicting scenes. Clothes hang to dry, kids are being pushed in wooden homemade strollers by parents, people ride bikes, kids run around chasing balls. Elders sit on the "stoop" watching the world go by, smoking cigarettes, or eating noodles. Simple life. But everyone, and I mean everyone, has a cell phone. I think the cell phones came before the town was wired for landlines, and they just skipped over the landline thing altogether.

The taiji seminar started on Monday. This seminar was attended by around 95 people from around the world – Russia, Poland, Germany, Switzerland, Greece, England, USA, Spain, and probably some that I’m forgetting. Many of the people we knew, and some we met for the first time. Most of them are on Facebook, and it was fun connecting with some of them prior to the trip. GM CXW planned to teach Laojia Yi Lu for the first 3 days of the seminar, then he was going to let the group vote on the topic for the next 3 days. We trained in the main hall of the school, and GM Chen did his usual organizing so everyone could see him instructing. He was up on a stage that was made from 2 wooden tables supported from underneath by piles of bricks. We worried the whole time that this structure would collapse with his ferocious stomping, and in fact a few times bricks did tumble down. He simply turned to those of us close to the stage and said “problem, no problem?” and waited patiently for someone to restack the bricks before he continued with the class. And the stomping.

Day 3 of the seminar was also the disciple ceremony. Every year for the last few years, he has been bringing groups of students into the family in an official ceremony called the Baishi ceremony. This is a great honor - it honors the student by giving them family status, and the student in turn honors the family by taking on the responsibility to spread the family's teachings of Taijiquan throughout the world. This event takes place in the Chen family ancestral temple, in front of an altar with a real honest to goodness pig's head on the table. There is also a government temple now on the grounds, and this was open for us to tour, but this is not owned or managed by the Chen family. It's quite striking, but very modern looking, and still under construction. I don't think the Chen family will use it for their business.
This year, GM Chen inducted a group of around 20 new disciples into his family. This event was well covered by the Chinese media and attended by several government officials and visiting dignitaries, including the Governor of Henan Province. It's a traditional ceremony, with kowtowing by current and new disciples, then the new disciples are given a booklet by the family members listing the "rules" of proper behavior as a member of the Chen family. Very Confucian in style. Several people speak, and then the new disciples are led outside for photos.

The seminar resumed in the afternoon. At the start of the session, GM Chen was still with the Governor, and he came running in to ask Bill to start the group with warm ups and then “do standing practice until I come back”. Well…he didn’t come back for an hour! Bill, always the dutiful student, kept the group standing the entire time. Several people left, sat down, mumbled things under their breaths, but amazingly, no one flipped. Bill faced the wall so he wouldn’t have to see the group, and the people who left were very quiet about it. Those of us who know GM Chen weren’t surprised by this turn of events, and we also knew that of all the people in the seminar, Bill was the one who could both tolerate standing for an hour, and could be depended on to follow GM Chen’s instructions to the letter.

After an hour, GM Chen came in and said “Bill Helm, rest!”. He then introduced the Governor of Henan Province, who spoke for a bit on how in China, the name Chen Xiaowang IS Taijiquan. It was great to hear our teacher lauded in this way by this Chinese official. Well deserved!

The seminar continued for the next 3 days. We ended up voting to work on Laojia Er Lu, and the weather was nice enough that we trained outside for the remainder. Training both inside and outside, we drew a crowd. I actually think the crowd was watching GM Chen, not us. It's not often that the villagers and students who live at the school get to see the Grandmaster in action.

On the day of the disciple ceremony, we decided that we needed a night out. It was going to be a few of us, and the group grew to 30 in number. The school helped us arrange for 2 buses to cart us into Wenxian for dinner. Some of the group wanted to experience traditional "street food" and eat at an open air market. When I heard that, all I could think of was the Travel Channel shows and was sure we would be eating grilled cockroaches and scorpions, so Bill and I and 4 others elected to eat at an upscale restaurant called "Delicious Food" (not kidding). We were escorted to a private room, served beer, and given 7-9 dishes to eat. We had fried chicken, pig feet (I didn't), oysters, greens, noodles, vegetables, and loads of other delicious stuff, as the restaurant name promised. We ate lots of meat. We weren't getting much protein in the village, so we were craving it. We stuffed ourselves, then caught cabs back to the village. Our cab driver drove like a maniac, zooming past bikers and herds of sheep in the dark, honking his horn madly all the way. It was delightful.

The school arranged to have some tuina practitioners brought in from the neighboring town of Wenxian to give massages in the evenings. Bill and I both had one, and it was really great. The guy came to our room, and worked on us on the bed. It was wonderful - traditional Chinese massage, lots of rubbing, oscillating, vibrating. What a treat - I wish I had done it every night.

People started leaving on the last day of the seminar. The English group left after lunch. Our Swiss friends left around 2. Bill and I and Betty Dong left together at 6pm, before dinner (which was fine, believe me). We were driven back to Zhengzhou, to the 5 star Sofitel Hotel, with a fairly fluffy bed, shiny bathroom, and a mini-bar. We walked to a Brazilian BBQ restaurant we knew and ate meat off skewers, served to us by Chinese vaqueros armed with huge knives. Heaven. We slept like logs, excited for the next part of our adventure, a tour for just the two of us.

It was sad to leave the village. Knowing these buildings have stood in this place for so many years, with so many generations of the Chen family doing taiji in this very dirt, gives me such a strong feeling of home and kinship that I think I surely must have lived this in another life. As much as I complain about the conditions, I get such a strong sense of nourishment from this village that I cannot help but return, again and again, because after all, this is the source of one of my greatest joys, Taijiquan.

When we left the village, we embarked on a tour that involved only me and Bill, an English speaking guide, and a driver. We elected to go to Kaifeng and Xian, and only spend a couple of free days in Beijing, since we've been there several times.

Kaifeng is about 45 kms from Zhengzhou by car. It's an older city, site of the Iron Pagoda and Dragon Pavilion Park. Normally it would take about 45 minutes to get there, but the day we went was the day of a big marathon run, and the main road was closed. We had to take a detour that upped the mileage to 70 (!) and took much longer. The traffic was amazing, blocked in every direction. There is supposed to be a new law in the urban areas that makes it illegal to honk, but that was obviously not happening here. Honking doesn't help, but it must make the drivers feel better.

Once in Kaifeng, first order of business was finding me a bathroom. Since I would die of a burst bladder rather than use a public bathroom on the street, we had to actually buy tickets and go into the Dragon Pavilion Park to find a toilet, which I would class as a 1 star toilet. Better to say no more about that.

The park was great. We also saw the Iron Pagoda, which was really interesting - you can climb to the top, entering through a little short door, and the spiral staircase is really narrow and steep. I didn't do this. My friend Kim did it and she can tell me about it. I'm way too claustrophobic and scared of heights to have tried this myself. We also saw the Grand Chancellor's Temple, which was nice (another temple, they all start to look alike). We had lunch at a hotel. A word about these lunches on the guided tours. While nice, they are certainly not meant to provide any local flavor. They are often in private rooms, with a set menu of nothing too strange or odd and enough food for 10 people, and if you see other people eating, they are most always Westerners. Bill and I would usually prefer to eat locally, but I think our travel agent gets really stressed out when we push this issue. We got our local meal later in the tour, not by her design, so we were happy.

That night, back at the hotel, I got another tuina massage. This time, they took me to a room with a bed and gave me a plate of watermelon slices, a glass of hot water, and space heater and a pair of white and pink pjs to wear. A girl came in wearing a business suit (blazer and pencil skirt), and proceeded to take off her pumps, climb on the bed, straddle me, and work me over. It was so great. It cost about $23 US for over an hour. Wonderful.

The next morning we took the bullet train from Zhengzhou to Xian. What a ride! Top speed was 317 kms/hr and the landscape was a big blur. Took 2 1/2 hours (regular train is 7 hrs). Loved it. In Xian, we stayed at the 5 star Sofitel Hotel, which was luxury personified. Marble and granite everywhere in the room, fluffy bed, big tv, fabulous place to be. We toured the sights of Xian that afternoon, including the City Wall and the Big Goose Pagoda. We had a traditional dumpling dinner at a place where Bill Clinton has eaten, then Bill and I went shopping at the local mall for another suitcase to take home (since we had too much stuff of course). Found one for $15 US.

Tuesday we went to see the Terracotta Warriors. This is production on such a grand scale it brought tears to my eyes. The Emperor was not a nice person, and ordered his people to make these soldiers to guard him after his death, but wow, the abilities of the Chinese people are mind blowing given the times. We also visited the Huaqing Hot Springs, where the Emperor and his concubines "took the waters", and a neolithic village that was unearthed some years ago from a matriarchal society. That night we had hot pot for dinner and attended a Tang Dynasty show. It was ok - kind of fun, in a theater filled again with Westerners. Enough said.

The next day was one of the high points of the trip for me. Our friend Jan Silberstorff had told us about an old Taoist Temple near Xian, and we asked our travel agent to arrange a day trip to this temple. She didn't know about it, and so neither did our guide. It was a 2 hour drive from the city, and for some reason, they felt compelled to combine it with a visit to a wildlife rescue center, which I found so completely depressing that I didn't even post those pictures. I'm just not convinced that life isolated in an iron and concrete cage is a better alternative than dying in the wild, you know what I mean??

Anyway, on to the temple. This temple is one of the oldest Taoist temples known. It's still a working monastery. Jan knows the Abbot, but unfortunately we didn't get to see anyone while we were there, and as I said, our guide didn't know anything about the temple, so we just walked around and looked. It was raining, so it was all misty and mystical looking. Lots of steps up to the actual temple...here we found an old tree that was supposedly a 1000 year old cypress that looks like an old man. Very cool. I also found a couple of scrolls in the little shop, one of which I have wanted for years - the Neijing Tu. It depicts the body as a landscape. So that was a big score for me, to buy this rubbing from the original stone carving, in a Taoist temple in China. Wow.

Lunch was our taste of local that I referenced earlier. Because our travel agent and guide didn't know about this temple, they weren't able to arrange a set lunch for us with other Westerners (because we were the only Westerners we saw the whole day, this place wasn't on the tourist list). After driving past a couple of places that were deserted, our driver remembered a local place that he thought would be ok. The place was packed with cars, always a good sign. When we went in, every person in the place stopped eating and looked at us. Clearly not frequented by foreigners... this was the one time our guide and driver ate with us at the same table. They ordered the food, and I have to say it was one of the best meals I ate on this trip. I did secretly clean the chopsticks with Purell under the table, because they were wooden and they had washed them and put them back into an open package, but once I did that, I ate with gusto. The coolest dish was an egg dish with "toons", new sprouts from a tree that appear only in early spring. They have a slight pungent taste to them, and that dish was delicious. We had pork ribs that fell off the bone, stir fried vegetables loaded with garlic, and spicy minced pork noodles. Fabulous meal.

We finished up our trip with a stop at a small temple to the God of Wealth, and right down the street was a Catholic church built in 1897, same original building, no reconstruction done. It was really beautiful, lots of color, frescoes on the wall of angels and heaven. There was a little Chinese lady in the front who yelled at Bill for taking photos. She told him he should pray instead of take pictures - I was cracking up, which made her even madder. Tourists we are. The drive back to Xian was lovely. We were in fruit tree country, and all the trees were blazing with color - white pear trees, pink peach trees, pink plum trees. Mile after mile of blooming trees.

Back at the grand 5 star Sofitel that evening, we had a nice light dinner of Moroccan food and turned in. It was on to Beijing the next day, almost the end of our trip. I have to say I was about ready to go home. I needed to gear up for the Pearl Market and the Silk Market, as I had things I was determined to purchase.

 

Looking through Jim Healy's pictures made me homesick for Chen Village, believe it or not! In the midst of the trip, when the toilet wasn't working, the food was, well, the food, and I was cold and hungry and sore, I swore I wouldn't go back, that I would do taiji trips to beautiful destinations in Europe instead. Now I am already planning my next trip (and my husband's, and our students who I'm sure will go with us this time). Chen Village is changing, China is changing, and now is the time to grab this experience while it's available. I'm a little worried that Chen Village is going to move in the direction of the Shaolin Temple, which has become like Disneyland for martial arts, and I hope that the village can hold its center through this evolution. I don't know that it's entirely bad, the people would benefit from an influx of money into their village, and the Chen family more than deserves the recognition for their contribution to martial arts, but it will bring challenges, certainly.

Bill and I spent our last 2 days in Beijing, mostly to unwind. We did a little shopping at the markets (I sucked it up and actually bargained). I wanted a silk blanket. I got one a few years back at the Beijing airport (paid top dollar of course), and my cat, who we now know has kidney disease, peed on it. It ruined it, the cleaners wouldn't touch it, and when I washed it in cold water as a last resort, the silk balled up. So I was determined to get another one, since Baobao is being treated for his kidney problem and hasn't wet the bed in a few years. I found just what I wanted at a better price at the Silk Market, and wasn't too traumatized by the experience (boy are they grabby!). We took quite a few walks, ate at Pizza Hut, had coffee at Starbucks, and rested in the hotel room. Bill caught a little cold, and the wind was howling the first day we were there, so we tried to stay mostly inside. We didn't see any of the usual sights because we've seen all that before, several times.

We took a trip to the American Embassy with Chen Zi Qiang to try to help him get an American visa. The embassy personnel wouldn't let us go in with CZQ, so we ended up just leaving him there. They told us it would take 2-3 hours for his interview. He ended up getting his visa, a short 9 day vacation visa, but at least he can come over here this summer and visit Master Ren Guangyi, his good friend and Chen style brother in NYC.

Our flight home was almost glitch free. We were supposed to fly into SFO then straight home, but we got rerouted and had to make an extra stop in LAX. That was ok, just got home a little later than planned. This time it took me 6 days to get over the jet lag.

In looking back, it's not hard for me to explain my draw to this village in China. It's the source of Taijiquan, which I love. It's the home of my adopted family, the Chens. It's where I see my friends from all over the world. More than that, there is a spiritual completeness that I feel when I'm there, something from the ground, the dirt, the qi of the place. It nourishes me, and that's why no matter how difficult the trip is for me, how much it challenges my need for cleanliness, quiet and order, I will always want to return to Chen Village to see my people and feed my soul.

Who's going with me next time??