Rizhao – a little push “on the street”

Hi there,

These days we went to Rizhao to visit a local Taijijquan – competition.
With our little group of 9 Fulltime students from the West and one Chinese friend we went out for supper.
After the meal we had to wait for a while on the street, so I started to practice some circles right on the spot – never thinking about, that this will cause any big additional attraction to the one caused by us just by being the only foreigners there …

Soon somebody did ask me, what I’m doing there. I’m always happy when there are some opportunities to practice and use my little knowledge of Chinese language, so I started to explain that this is Taijiquan, Chenstyle Taijiquan and to be more precise the Practical Method of Hong Junsheng.
Some of the Chinese guys around mentioned something like “That’s not Taiji …”, and because of my limitation of language skills I did not think about going more in detail at that moment.

But our Chinese friend Zheng started to initiate a little demonstration of pushhands at that moment. He did this in a, in my opinion, very friendly manner by pushing me and the Chinese guy towards each other, making a gesticulation meaning something like “Come on, try to push each other !”.
First I hesitated a little bit, but the guy looked not aggressive so I thought why not and we did push.

The other guy was also hesitating a little bit, but then, after one touch everything was clear. I had no problem to reverse his quite stiff power and I pushed him lightly back.
He was quite surprised but seemed also to be happy with the situation, so before saying goodbye he insisted to give me a little gift, the lighter in his pocket, and everything was nice.

Thanks for reading and peace for you all,
Michael