“In moving, be like water; In stillness be like a mirror.”

I’m not expert about the far Eastern concept of Qi or Chi, or the sometimes compared Indian notion of prana. Nor do I wish to be. That’s why I want to give just a simple narration of my own experiences with these things from the point of view of a pure novice, using incidents taken from various points in my life. At the same time, I wish to try and disentangle these ideas from any spiritual or metaphysical framweworks they are often contextualized within, preferring here to look merely at the sensory aspects of the experiences.

Kunming, China, early August 1990

I was going to ask Huang Bikang to accompany me; he’s an excellent and thoughtful translator. But I knew he was busy with other duties and my relationship with Zhenyi had become more personal. She would be happy to do it. Plus she carried her own curiosity. Madame Wang had circulated a questionnaire to each member of our small American ‘delegation’ asking whether there were any specific aspects of Chinese culture we’d personally like to deepen our acquaintance with during the free time in our stay. Most treated this as a polite formality and requested nothing additional, our schedules being already quite full. But I was on a mission — how often does one spend a summer deep in China’s interior while having access to every sort of expert or student or tutor? I had written down indigenous music, acupuncture, and a meeting with a Qi Gong master. And the Chinese, being extremely conscientious hosts, managed to accomodate me on all three. Today, I was to meet the Qi master.

Zhenyi knew the city by heart, so we hopped on bicycles for a fifteen minute ride to a different quarter, where the Qi master was to receive us at his own apartment. You must visualize that this was the 20th century and private cars were a distinct rarity in China. The complex labyrinth of roads in the city were filled with small trucks transporting every imaginable commodity, some rickshaws, and thousands of citizens of every age on bicycles. There were also multitudes of pedestrians to avoid colliding with and old ladies wheeling ducklings in handmade bamboo cages atop wagons. Or perhaps piles of woven fabric weighed down by enormous squashes. We fell to chatting about a book I’d read before leaving home concerning a young Westerner’s year teaching English and studying with a somewhat famous Qi Gong master. The author, Mark, had far more devotion to the topic than I expected to, but one repeated theme which intrigued me in his account shone out. His teacher bore what one might easily think of as a jealousy streak. His master was kindly, strict, benevolent, and diligent in his efforts to bridge the cultural gap with his pupil. But whenever Mark evinced the slightest curiosity about other schools of Qi Gong thought, or other master’s training emphases or classes, his original master would fly into a competitive rage, warning that whoever delved into these ‘other’ approaches would lose whatever chi he had painstakingly accumulated. Chi was a mysterious intangible thing. It pervaded the world and life everywhere as a kind of universal. And yet it could be individually harnessed and collected. And the master’s chi carried a special stamp which was recognizable, to those who could sense these things, and which flavored the pupil’s young new chi. Master chi assisted and cultivated pupil chi — a truth which was held to persist over great distances as though space had no importance.

We arrived at a small cluster of apartments each with their own balconies overflowing with flowers or birdcages and drying herbs. We stood our bikes in the always present visitor racks, and walked down a tunneled corridor to a stairway leading up to the correct door, and politely knocked. A woman answered, her face immediately registering that she knew who we were and why we were here. She ushered us into a small room with seats and a table, and went to bring us the obligatory tea, calling a name out to an adjacent room which I could not decipher.

A fairly slight middle-aged man emerged from an adjacent room, maybe 5 foot 7 or so. He had a serious mien, projecting respect and social decorum, and had the air of one who rapidly assessed the people and situation in a room. Still, his greetings were not without kindness. Motioning to us to sit, he shook Zhenyi’s hands, immediately grasping that she was a translator and that I was the principal. They chatted a moment, establishing some sort of protocol between them, then Zhenyi introduced me. Behaving as non-westernly as I could, I nodded to him, conveying thanks and earnestness. Zhenyi and I had the translation game down pat by now; we had known each other some weeks. I would express a concise idea in no more than three sentences or so, then pause, allowing her time to reformulate my words. When she spoke, the Master listened intently while making sure to look at me instead of her. Our eye contact would then scan for mutual comprehension. Sometimes I threw in a clarifying phrase or even a Chinese word I happened to know. I explained that I was in Kunming as part of a group of Americans with wide interests, and that I alone came to him for a better understanding of Qi Gong. I also mentioned that I had briefly studied traditional Chinese medicine in outline, and how the acupuncture meridiens in the human organism worked and cooperated. He nodded, never failing to give the uncanny impression that he was at the same time evaluating my inner condition and energy patterns. Non-invasively. Finally at one point, seeming to diagnose that I was at least worthy of an extended audience with him, he asked me a question, via Zhenyi.

“I would like to approach you more closely and examine your internal constitution and vitality. Would this be okay for you? It will need only two minutes.”

I agreed straight away and he got up and stood near me. While still stting, he passed his hands a few inches above my thighs, letting them float as though sensing their integrity. He also looked at my torso and made a slight polite adjustment to my seated posture, guiding me into position. Then he repeated the floating assessment around my heart and lungs and chest. At one point he tried pushing towards me a little bit with some invisible force from his open palms but without quite touching me. Then he asked that I stand erect. I got a bit self-conscious by now, not failing to have taken in that by some measure, though I far from considered myself a distracted person, his natural grace and posture easily exceeded mine. His relationship to the ground seemed more deliberate and aware than mine was. Zhenyi had a little of this quality as well. Was it just an Asian thing? He performed a similar examination of my energy or inner force, only once lightly touching my shoulders as he passed behind my back.

Then it was over and we were seated once more, sharing hot tea. Even on the warmest summer days, the tea in Kunming was served scalding hot. He revealed nothing about his post-examination impressions of me. He spoke in general for ten minutes or so about the origins of Qi Gong, and how in present-day China there were both many charlatans posing as masters as well as bonafide serious practitioners. He said that in the West little is understood about the life force energy which circulates everywhere and between everything as well as within all living creatures. He told, as I more or less already knew, that the science of Qi involved attuning one’s sensitivity to this force and learning how to grow, purify, and apply it. He hinted that a conscientious ethical dimension existed around these practices, and that it was quite important not to permit any form of moral degradation enter into one’s cultivation work. Otherwise it would be far better for one if he had never set out in the first place.

Zhenyi asked whether females were also welcome in the practice and he answered that yes, there were several advanced students he had known who were women in his time. He mentioned that his age was 51. He looked a good five years younger. Before we ended, the master engaged Zhenyi in a private discussion for about five minutes, their Chinese being too rapid and dense for me to gather anything. But she told me on the bike ride home that the master told her he could tell that I had done my daily tai chi exercises, which our hosts thoughtfully provided a tutor for each morning, with more intention and result than the average westerner. And he asked about our delegation and said he wanted to remain in contact and perhaps arrange a brief introductory lecture and demonstration to our group. This was arranged, and did come to pass a week later. The master mentioned lots of interesting tidbits about the energy of different parts of the room where members of our group were seated. He kept his eyes on me at times as our group tried a few simple exercises he had suggested. It became palpable for me: that in China the finding of a teacher had very much to do with whether or not a teacher found you!

Late August, a few weeks later

It had come to pass that our group’s stay in enchanting Kunming was ending, and in typical Chinese fashion a grand banquet was organized to commemorate this occasion. Besides the fifteen members of our group from all over the U.S., all the admins and translators, and teachers and various experts who could make it were in attendance. At least 40 people, including my Qi Gong teacher. There were several speeches by Chinese functionaries lauding the merits and value of our cross-cultural undertaking, and thanking us for showing an interest in their ways of life and willingness to study and learn. We also were each asked to give a brief few sentences describing our impressions of Kunming and China in general. This formality is very common in China, and we’d all become versed in it. Then the food! Many, many courses, with some attention given to what was noticed over the past months to have been personal favorite dishes among our group. The variety and quality was amazing. We all sat at a kind of head table, and the various tutors and experts were at other smaller tables of six or so on the other side of the room. The food was delicious and beautiful, and I cannot say much more to describe it. As usual in fond company, many people wandered about visiting other tables and sitting a moment to offer greetings and reminisce about something funny in the first weeks. I always enjoyed these unpretentious banquets, and miss them to this day.

An hour in, and by the fifth or sixth course, I began to feel an inevitable bloating sensation. For not only was everything scrumptious, but there seemed to be infinite amounts of it. Once or twice during the afternoon I had noticed the Master making eye contact with me from across the room briefly. In this contact was expressed something. Several things. First, I was under scrutiny. Not necessarily a judging one, but a non-casual one just the same. Also some kindness. And finally, an unmistakeable feeling that was being conveyed to me — that I alone in this room was his primary concern and that I was invited to be his pupil, regardless of where I went or which continent I happened to reside in. This might sound like a pretty verbose feeling, but that was what it was. I felt an increasing discomfort from being too full and too engaged in digestion to normally socialize with the people around me. I sat back a moment and tried to rest and collect myself. The master immediately let me know he was looking at me and knew what I felt, and left his table to come over to me. His visit was not noticed as anything peculiar under the circumstances as many throughout the room were doing the same thing with much gaeity and noise. He moved a vacant chair beside me, and spoke in broken English.

“Let me, I show you. When you feel this way, do this.”

He took the balls of two fingertips and applied them to opposite sides of my right knee. He felt and searched briefly for the exact points, but knew what he was looking for. A fleshy, sensitive area on either side of my knee. Then he pressed moderately, maybe adding the slightest rolling motion. It lasted four or five seconds; he was quite discreet. I doubt another person was even aware of it. Then he moved his hands away and looked at me briefly, making sure it had worked. The effect was magical. Not only was the discomfort gone but a wave of warmish well being washed over my torso and spread upwards. I only ate lightly from that point onwards. At banquet’s end he presented me with a tiny clear plastic vial of dark red spherical pills with a plastic twist-off cap.

“For same condition, When you not know how to find right points. But try. It is best way… You smell now, to know. Yunnan herbs.”

He unscrewed the cap and removed three little globules, and placed the vial near my nostrils. A distinctive, unusual, somehow pleasing earthy smell. Like soil, but from an unknown place. I took the offered pills with a tiny gulp of tea. The feeling of relief from this was more gradual, but unmistakable. Similar to taking Swedish Bitters, if you’re familiar, but a little quicker. I thanked him, and he gave me a look, as if to say, I am honored a Westerner has expressed interest in my discipline. We said our goodbyes, and there were numerous other goodbyes. Next morning, airport day, I rushed out from the hotel to an outdoor market stall apothecary I knew on a little nearby side street and showed the proprietor my vial. He recognized it at once and I quickly purchased half a dozen identical vials to bring home to New Jersey. At an absurdly negligible price.

Afterthoughts

In case it is not obvious, I did not become a long-distance student of the Qi Gong master. But this does not mean he did not make a considerable impression upon me. The most basic item of interest to stress is that it was absolutely clear and beyond question to me that this person had an ability to effect healing, or positive, changes within my body, remotely. Without touching me. Further, when he did choose to touch, it was in a manner such that the resulting effects were surprisingly perceptible and seemed to be very mysteriously related to what actions he was performing. Clearly, he had knowledge of a system. an energy healing system, which was very different and alien to our scientific understanding. I was able to get a decent overview of this sort of system by continuing to study traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and acupuncture meridiens. I used a couple of pretty classic books for this, popularly known in western circles during the 90s. It also seemed to be the case, unless this master was a fabulous liar, that he could perceive certain qualities about my inner constitution from a distance. And he had been careful to wrap his entire undertaking and practice in a web of respectful ethics and social graces. Put elsewise, he seemed to associate moral energy with life force energy, at least to the extent that these two things could affect one another.

The master/pupil paradigm, or the guru/chela model, was not something which particularly appealed to me around matters of spiritual study — spiritual in this sense simply designating something which was supra-physical. Even less so when ethics and morality entered in. While I did not get the impression that this was an intial problem with this master, I did not go very far at all in terms of depth with his instruction. This is an east-west contrast in my view. The West, being Christianity-colored (regardless of how both athiests and fundamentalists distort this influence), instils a strong sense of individuality and conscience within serious explorations of any sort, and once one is an adult at least, the operating protocol is not “obedience” but “personal judgement”. Other things, somewhat adjacent, came to arouse my interest and energies and thus I left this Qi business at a pretty incipient stage. No regrets there. Nor any about the actual explorations I did perform. What do –you– think?

_______RS

Image : still shot pose from a performance of a Tai Chi long form “dance”.

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