Grandmaster
Grandmaster Wang Fu-Lai was born in 1941 in Tsao-tun, Taiwan, in the center of the country. His father, a Taoist vegetarian, greatly admired Wang Shu-chin, a famed martial artist and a spiritual leader who espoused a universalist understanding of Tao principles. From the age of 16, Grandmaster Wang Fu-Lai awoke before dawn and rode his bicycle 40 kilometers in order to practice with Wang Shu-chin at 5 a.m., to learn his system of movement and intention with cultural roots in the Zhong Nan Mountains, almost directly west of Tientsin, the major northern Chinese port city.
“I started when I was young. Grandmaster asked me to practice standing meditation,” he told me. “When I practiced standing meditation, I realized it was more tiring than running. When you practice martial arts, and you keep moving, 30 minutes is O.K. When you practice standing meditation, in two minutes you can’t walk up those steps. It helped me realize the energy in standing. I have lots of stories like this.”
Grandmaster Wang spent 38 years of his life as Wang Shu-chin’s student, traveling with him and becoming his principal conduit of both information and wisdom. Legendary for his size, fighting prowess, and healing arts, Wang Shu-chin was the type of martial artist movies are made of. He bested challengers in open-hand fighting contests across northern China and grew a following of disciples. When the Communist government came to power, Wang Shu-chin was forced to flee the country for his life, settling in Taiwan.
When I asked Grandmaster Wang what the antecedents of the system were, he named his master, and his master’s masters going back a ways. Five or six names. I didn’t catch them. When I pressed for some kind of explanation of its philosophical roots he said simply, “All of our T’ai Chi comes from the I-Ching.”
The Cheng-Ming system, Grandmaster Wang explained, is a system designed to be practiced through life as a source of longevity, healing, and self defense. In Taoist terms, it follows the Middle Way, he said.
The first thing I noticed watching Grandmaster Wang move is that he can move both very slowly and very quickly, and he can switch between the two modes effortlessly. His legs look skinny, and since he is 73, they may be. But he can stand on one and lift the other with the same exactness as he shapes his hand. He has the bearing of a country person, informal and humble, and his limbs appear almost jangly when he practices.
Everyone I had spoken to told me to expect a warm man who smiles easily. He has what some people call a joyful expression in his art. I asked him where that came from.
This is how it came through Monica: “There is an old saying. You don’t try to go to the sky in one step. Confucius says, ‘If you want to go far, you must start from the near. If you want to go high, you must start from down low.’ When you do everything step by step, you are very joyful. If you want to go to the sky in one step, it will be painful.”
When, in 2002, Hiromi learned from one of her kung fu brothers in Tokyo that Grandmaster Wang was coming to the U.S. to visit his daughter, who lives in Dallas, she felt she had to go see him. More than anyone else, he was responsible for preserving the system that had first healed her and later captivated her.
“I called his daughter to make an appointment,” Hiromi said. “But she said her father was no longer accepting students but if I wanted to come down to meet him it would be O.K.”
Hiromi flew to Texas with a one-way ticket and an album containing photographs and calligraphy given to her from Wang Sheng-zhi to show Grandmaster Wang that she was trained by his own kung fu brother.
He asked her to show him the T’ai Chi form.
“I started to do it, but my hands were shaking so badly and I started crying. He said, ‘O.K., why don’t we do it together,’” Hiromi said. “So we did all 100 steps together. It was like a totally different form.”
Hiromi explained that each teacher has a different “flavor” in his practice, and the Grandmaster Wang’s was difficult to learn because of the level of detail in the movement conveyed to him by his teacher.
“After we finished, he said, ‘You know Hiromi-san, you have to become a white sheet of paper if you want to learn from me,’” she said.
So, more than a decade ago, Hiromi started all over again, learning the form from the ground up, at first alongside a group of students who had traveled from Israel to attend a sort of boot camp that met for eight hours a day. The time Hiromi has spent learning her art is important. It is not important to her that she won a silver medal in the weapons form in a 2008 competition in Taiwan.
“I have found in the past that people who took a weekend workshop of T’ai Chi are teaching, which is unthinkable in the traditional way,” Hiromi said. “Because the kung fu you build every day, and then you reach a certain level. You have to have the skill and also the experience in life. T’ai Chi is not just the movement. When we practice together, we come together, and we share our life together and it starts to show who we are.”
Grandmaster Wang told me that a hierarchical understanding of learning can do harm, even when it is intended to convey honor.
“It does not mean there are no levels in our system. There are still levels. But we don’t emphasize this. Some people are not good at expressing themselves, but they are still very good. This kind of person may not go up the hierarchy, but they are actually excellent,” he said.
“Over the long run, this kind of student may become discouraged, and lose interest in the art. We don’t want that. We don’t want to emphasize hierarchy and lose a good student.”
Achievement is measured by recognition from the teacher, and there is no greater recognition than to be asked to help carry the tradition.
“When a student comes to join our group, the teacher starts to observe them and then try to learn what kind of person they are,” Grandmaster Wang said. “We try to observe the student’s attitude, to determine if their attitude is good, their virtue, their personality. Some people are very stiff. Stiff is O.K. But we don’t want a student who will cheat another person.”
I asked whether it was really possible for an American to attain the deepest level of understanding in his art.
“There is no country limitation in martial art. As long as a person is interested in the art and the personality is good, in our system we would never reject anyone,” he said.
When I asked Grandmaster Wang what he thought of Hiromi when she visited him the first time in Texas, he launched into an explanation. He saw her talent and personality immediately. She had already studied with two of his kung fu brothers. I was looking for a first impression. When Monica finished the translation, he added something, and then started laughing.
“And she loves martial arts,” he said.
Hiromi bowed her head and her cheeks flushed.
When Grandmaster Wang finishes a demonstration, he smiles and rocks back on his heels and says, “Go ahead, ask me any question. Don’t be afraid you will offend someone else. We are all family here.”
And I think this is what is both most accessible and so deeply romantic about the Chinese martial arts. Grandmaster Wang teaches an extremely precise and refined set of movements and still postures, taught to him over 40 years by a man part of a human chain stretching back to a mythical time of war and natural mythology. Then he taught Hiromi. And now she teaches it a block from City Hall in Charlottesville.
Hiromi was almost exasperated as she tried to explain to me the importance of the relationship between the teacher and the student. She stopped in mid-sentence once and said she didn’t know where she was going. Then finally, she said this.
“He teaches me the form, so it is my duty to practice until he comes back. That is my gift to him. His gift to me is sharing his knowledge. It was always that way. With his teacher to him and he’s handing down that tradition to me. It’s been going on like that from a long time ago.”
