global_jd

A tip for finger twirls of a hook-top cane

Took me a long time to figure this out, even though it seems simple in retrospect.

In many finger twirls you're rolling along the back of a finger. This is easiest with a simple stick or baton, because both ends are weighted the same. It's harder if one end has more mass than the other. And it's harder yet with a "tourist" type of cane, with that J-shaped handle, because the mass is concentrated one one side of one end.

The secret is to watch the hook end at the safest part of the twirl, where the cane is within the fingers rather than atop the fingers. If the crook of the cane points up at this part of the cycle, then it will naturally point straight down 180 degrees later, balanced -- it won't roll around on the back of your hand trying to rebalance itself.

For a smooth roll over the back of the fingers, try making sure the hook is pointing straight up when it's within the fingers, because you'll want the weight pulling straight downwards at the tricky time.

Skill Arts, Nanjing & Suzhou

For learning skills of coordinated movement, in Nanjing, I struck out.

While taking the bus in the first day I did see a group in a park near the northwest (hard to tell what they were doing, although group Tai Chi was part of it). Up towards Crowing Rooster Temple there were elders stretching to instructional cassettes, and one woman had a sword, but the only other gear I saw was an accordion. Nearby, towards the City Wall Museum, I heard the whirring roar of Chinese YoYos, and saw three or four players doing the usual tricks nicely. But no sticks, no ropes, and no big party scene as at Beijing's Temple of Heaven.

Part of the scarcity is that I was here three nights, and stayed in late one morning to recoup. The other part is that parks are spread throughout the city, and there are no particularly obvious central gathering places as in other cities. I did some websearches for likely candidates but came up empty.

I don't know if there's an actual difference in the local scene... don't see any reason why there should be, aside from the lack of critical mass and network effects. I definitely haven't given things a fair shot of enough investigation -- the Purple and Gold Mountain area alone is large enough to support much group action, and the only time I've been there has been late in the morning. But even in Shanghai the amount of early-morning physical activity fairly leaps out at you. Here in Nanjing I haven't even picked up a clue.

I've been personally progressing, though. With double-weighted full-height rope I can now do three-beat weaves while turning around in either direction, walking forward, walking backwards. I've started in being able to transition from this to a single-ended swinging, like a small rope dart, with the various straight tosses. I've seen ways to integrate wraps into this, although I haven't yet progressed to a five-beat weave. There's also been room enough to do some work on horizontal planes, but my transitions from plane to plane are still gawky. I'm reserving rope-as-staff work to when I get back home... will need lots of privacy to get the rhythm.

The cane, as always, also progresses when I spend hours a day walking. It's always in motion, particularly when avoiding obstacles in the street... a small swing to the wrong side allows a larger swing to the correct side to avoid a bicycle wheel blocking the sidewalk, a bit of construction debris, the chair and table set up in the walkway. Everything gets a little more graceful when the cane is handled for hours on end.

Best place I may have swung and twirled was probably the great southern Zhonghuamen Gate in Nanjing. It's five or six stories tall, almost broad enough to support a soccer field, expansive views in all directions, and nearly deserted as the autumn sun goes down. I didn't do anything particularly interesting or lengthy there, just enough to pay my respects.


Update: I spent three nights in Nanjing and didn't stumble across anything resembling Beijing's early-morning scene at The Temple of Heaven, but I wish I had had at least a morning or two to check all the different areas at the Purple & Gold Mountains. In Suzhou I had two nights, but no morning excursions to the parks... one morning I had to rest up, and the other I had to pack up, and websearch on "suzhou park tai chi" and such didn't turn up obvious hits. The latter part of this trip was more personal practice than observation.

Terminology of Toys

It's hard to figure a good name for some of these cross-cultural toys. Here's the best I've got so far.

"Diabolo" is the English word the Chinese translations provide, but I'm not sure it's the best one... in San Francisco we use it to mean a specifically-shaped device, one which I've only seen incidentally in the PRC. So I'm now using "diabolo" for the large symmetrical inverted yo-yo shape we see in the west, "Chinese Top" for something which spins mainly on the ground, and "Chinese YoYo" for the one which spins mainly on the string. Subject to change, and I'll occasionally use "diabolo" for the entire class of devices, but this is the best nomenclature I've been able to figure so far.

I'm going to use "Shooting Stars" to describe the double-weighted rope of height-length or less. With all due respect to Marc MacYoung, "monkeyballs" wasn't cutting it, and I feared it raised lurid thoughts in the minds of westerners. "Shooting Stars" is more poetic, and has historical justification, and is still definitely in the plural, and although it is not common terminology seems to describe the thing better than anything else I've seen. (For the height-and-a-half length of double-weighted rope, "jump rope" will do... never mess with someone carrying a jump rope, or even a dog leash for that matter.... ;-)

Now I'm using "meteor hammer" in the stricter sense of a single-weighted rope of roughly twice-height length or greater... pretty much interchangeably with "rope dart", save as a percussion instrument rather than an edged one.

With that in mind, "swinging poi" means just playing with double-weighted rope in general, whether single or double strands, whatever the length. It's convenient. And "twirling cane" is for any type of manipulation of a half-height stick. 

Hmm, that seems simple enough in retrospect.... ;-)

The Sticks of Chongqing

One of the reasons I was interested in Chongqing was of the large number of porters, the "Bang Bang Men", who carry goods up and down the staircases on sticks across their backs. They're still omnipresent, even with the increase in automobiles, but I'm not yet sure how they use the stick in daily life.

The sticks are different than what I expected. These are thick bamboo or reinforced bamboo, maybe shoulder-height in length, and 2.5 inches in thickness. Some use half-tubes though, sculpted out with shallows on which to hang a rope. There's usually a short rope harness at each end, maybe eight inches long after doubling and quadrupling. Through this is threaded the ropes which are attached to the load -- sometimes a four-point attachment to a woven basked, sometimes a burlap bag, sometimes ropes tied around applicance boxes.

I've seen lots of guys with sticks lounging around, but I haven't seen any of them handle the stick gracefully... it seems too thick, too heavy to manipulate effectively. I still suspect that these are used in streetfights, which I've had the good fortune not to have to witness... if gangs use tire-irons in melees than I'm sure the non-owners of automobiles use any portage rods they have handy. But so far I haven't found anyone simply having fun with having a stick in their hand.

Walking canes are common, split about 50/50 between knob-head or derby handles and crook-topped canes. Many of the latter are those "knobbed bamboo" type of canes you can see occasionally in SF's Chinatown. I'm not sure what type of wood it is. Most lack a rubber tip, which makes me wonder how useful it is on a wet hillside. Haven't seen anyone rip off even a simple twirl yet though.

The most common stick in Chongqing? Seems to be meat skewers. These are about twenty inches long, maybe 3/16th inch thick. Big satay here, folks! They accumulate everywhere on the food streets.

I've been hoping to find a unique perspective on daily life with a stick here. So far I haven't stumbled across one. Still got more miles to walk.... ;-)

Update: One more type of stick I've been seeing around Chongqing is a six-foot length of (what appears to be) hardwood, maybe an inch, inch-and-a-quarter diameter. It has a dual metal prong on the end of it. I've seen some people use it for moving portable electric wiring into position, and others for pulling trash paper off rock hillsides. At first I thought it might be for removing oranges and other fruit from trees (Sichuan's got significant agriculture). Don't know what it is mainly designed for, but they're often sold at streetside hardware stores. 

Skill Arts Roundup

CHONGQING, Oct 23: Unordered notes here on manipulative arts I've seen outside of Beijing, to be updated as the trip progresses....

I was in Xi'an for two nights. The overnight train from Beijing arrived just before 6am, and after considering and rejecting the aggressive cabbies at the Xi'an train station, I managed to walk the six or so long blocks to the Sofitel on Peoples Square (Expedia got me a room for about US$130, which they upgraded to a suite because I came between conventions.) Dropped off the bags and took a walk north two blocks to Revolutionary Park (Genmin Gongyuan).

This was filled with people... lots of slow Tai Chi, line dancing, one-off stretching. Only players I saw with props were the Tai Chi Jian (sword) people, and Diabolo/YoYo work. Lots of the latter, mostly hanging out together in the eastern section of the park. This work was beautiful, lots of round-the-body manipulation... would look very cool with ultraviolet or LED or (gulp) Flame Diabolos. The better people were dancing within the sphere they described with the strung yoyo... light on the feet, graceful.

One woman came in with a bag, sat on the bench next to me, and was quickly surrounded by a crowd. From what I could pick up of the conversation she had apparently just gotten back from Hong Kong with some new toys, which she offered for sale. These were plastic Chinese tops, the asymmetrical style of Diabolo, with the larger and less-dense end having the usual air chambers which changed pitch with increasing rotational speed. Some models had friction-free steel bearings to wrap the string around, similar to a sleeper-style US yoyo. She also had a variety of sticks, including some expandable ones, which seemed to be slightly different than the ones the Xi'an players already had. Price for a large top seemed to be about four yuan (US$.50! would probably cost $10 in SF). I had no interaction with the crowd... invisible. (I've tried to use a double-dome diabolo in SF but have no skills, and so had nothing to share.)

The next morning I walked to a much larger park just outside the southeast corner of the city walls... think the name was Longzhamen, but I'd have to dig out a map to be sure. The entrance was through a farmers market... slow and chaotic going. Again there was a crowd of diabolo players, but also a separate crowd playing two-person catch with the tops.

I did see some stick work in Xi'an, but not too much. These seemed to be armpit-height sticks, similar to a Japanese jo, and the movements were mostly of a formal form and its constituent parts. The style reminded me strongly of Xingyi Whip Staff work which I've seen on a DVD, and which I've associated with a coastal heritage near Shanghai. Like the jo there was much use of both ends of the stick, sliding hands.

Sticks were again outnumbered by swords. I did not see the long-tassel swords used by one group in Tiantan in Beijing. Some of the groups had a mix of sword and empty-hand work, both doing the same slow Tai Chi movements... this equivalence of the forms was a surprise to me.

The only use of soft tools was some bullwhip and chainwhip work I saw from afar. In Longzhamen I heard a whip cracking across a lake, and when I got around to that side I saw it on the ground, with the owner apparently preoccupied with a large, heavy, ground-spinning top. Then while walking back I saw two gents with chain whips practicing on the pedestrian walkway between the moat and the city wall, but I did not cross the intersection to get a closer look.

(Speaking of closer looks, none of the whip practioners I saw used any type of eye protection. One guy did wear normal eyeglasses and had some earplugs. Scares the heck out of me... even when snapping a four-foot unweighted rope I'll gear up against accidents... a whip can easily cut through leather, and the cracker can disintegrate at any time... wonder what the occupational damage is for a toy like that. I respect whip people, but it's not my own scene, too scary for me.)

Oddly, I did not see any rope dart or shooting-star work in Xi'an. Legend has it that the rope dart was first used in either the Western Han dynasty about 250BC just northwest of Xi'an, or during the Tang Dynasty 800 years later in Xi'an. Maybe it's the institutional Wushu training in Beijing which has kept that tradition alive there. Still, aside from the three whip guys and loads of Diabolo players, it was a few sticks, a good number of swords and fans, then emptyhands and all outnumbered by dancers. Very pleasant. But Beijing still seems to have a culture all its own.

Wushu Potpourri

BEIJING, Oct15 - I may not have any luggage, and may be short a day or two's worth of sleep, but I had an absolutely awesome time this morning in the Temple of Heaven park. Lemme tell ya about it.... ;-)

Temple of Heaven, or Tiantan, is a large park just southwest of Tiananmen Square. It was used twice a year as the place where the Emperor would commune with Heaven in rites intended to improve the coming harvest. After the end of the monarchy, it became a public area, open year around, and is the largest greenspace in Beijing.

Tiantan has architecture, sure, but what's really interesting for me is the wild kaleidoscope of physical activity each morning... thousands of people doing Tai Chi, shuttlecocks and hackysack and paddleball, singing and musicians and ballroom dancing, fan and sword and ribbon dancers, people walking their birdcages, many many more.

A few years ago I hurt my knee, started using a cane, and it taught me so much that I still use it on the street. The cane also brought me into the "skill arts" world, which includes juggling, hula hoops, rope work, and similar awareness/dexterity skills. One of the goals of this trip to Beijing was to learn more about the Tiantan culture of physical skills -- last trip I was blown away when I saw my first rope dart practitioner -- and I lucked out on the very first day of this trip.

I heard a cracking sound in the distance, and assumed it was construction work. But the rhythm was off, and then I wondered whether someone was setting off firecrackers. But the rhythm wasn't right here either. Peering through the trees I saw it, and as I drew closer I understood what I was seeing. Someone had a long wooden staff, about as tall as your eyebrows, and on the end was three feet of chain, and tied to this was maybe four feet of rope, and on the end of this was a smaller strip of leather. It was a staff-whip, like a bullwhip with gradually decreasing mass down the length of the instrument. The practitioner would get it moving in a certain direction and then reverse direction. As the change in acceleration migrated down the whip, the parts of lighter mass would increase speed to match. The result was that the leather cracker on the end would be travelling at supersonic speed, breaking the sound barrier with a loud crack.

And that wasn't all, these guys had a bundle of toys! Three-sectional cane (like a three-piece nunchaku, only longer), Nine-Section Whip (a chain of nine sections, about four foot long -- if you saw Jet Li in Fist of Legend, he used Jiu Jian Bian techniques with a leather belt against a katana sword at the climax), rope dart and meteor hammer (fifteen foot rope with a half-pound knife or metal ball on the end, used against armor -- Jackie Chan in Shanghai Noon used a rope and a horseshoe), monkeyballs (like two poi tied together, or a 4-6 foot rope with a light weight on each end), diabolos ("Chinese Top" or "Chinese Yo-Yo", controlled by a string tied between two rods)... each had their own bag full of cheap homemade tools.

They were very approachable too... within 15 minutes we were showing each other moves, which is extra remarkable considering how shy I usually am. I could tell some of them had longterm training from their leg movements, the casual and graceful way they manipulated the tools.

One had an odd momentum move with my cane... he balanced it off-center against the back of his thumb, crook high and foot low, then kept it in dynamic balance through a flowing Figure-Eight motion. It would be a very nice addition to the set of Nate Leipzig "Grips With a Cane" that I'm trying to rediscover, a magnetic effect.

Another move he tried to teach me is spinning a double-weighted rope as a staff... keeping the momentum in each weight balanced enough that the rope is always straight between them. He could do wrist rolls and high-tosses while spinning this way. I've seen it done in some of the "Chinese Acrobatics" videos you can buy in SF's Chinatown, but he gave me some tips on grip and timing that may help me to finally get it, once I put in enough practice.... ;-)

We spent about an hour, stretching, spinning, watching, laughing... I really appreciated their generosity, and hope they won't mind if I come back each day this week.

Elsewhere in the park I saw an instrument that was new to me, a whole group of people doing sword work with a long tassel on the end. The tassel was kept in motion similar to a poi. I know of the tradition with a Horsetail Whisk (used by guards who could not carry blades... a very soft horsehair instrument could neutralize an attack) but this seemed a little different... if the whisk was replaced with a flail you'd have an impact weapon for armor, and also a blade for close-in defense. They used both forward and reverse grips while manipulating the sword, wrapping the tassel around the body for directional changes. Very difficult to keep both the rigid sword and the soft tassel in graceful motion simultaneously.

The whole scene reminded me of a bluegrass festival or music camp, only moreso... over here you had a group of pipa players (double-horned flute with a gourd resonator), over there a half-dozen erhu players (two-string fiddle), sometimes playing the same tune... lots of people playing cards or Chinese Chess... and then all the physical activity too. I've never seen anything to match the Temple of Heaven on any morning of the week.

UPDATE - The above was written after my first day here. I was in Beijing five mornings, and managed to make it to Tiantan four of those days. Always hung out with the same group of folks, it was quite collegial.

On one of the weekends we were joined by two 20-somethings, a guy with very precise and powerful throws with a ten-foot rope dart, and a woman who worked with one and two leather bullwhips. She tried to learn the Meteor Hammers at one point, using a metal set, and conked herself in the head, before switching to a practice set with rope and weighted rubber balls.

Speaking of which, what is the name? I asked them, and she wrote it down for me... I don't have Chinese input on this machine yet, but the Pinyin was Shuang Liu Xing, or Double Wandering/Flow Star. We often translate this as "Meteor", but I think I like "Shooting Star" better. The Shuang signifies a doubly-weighted rope. After doing some searches that night I think one of my teachers, coincidentally named Mr. Liu, may have been captured onto YouTube doing some demonstrations... once I get beyond The Great Firewall I'll be able to see if it's him.

The same day two Israeli tourists stopped by. One of them had done some Poi work, and had never thought of using a single rope. She did some Butterfly and Behind-the-Head Butterfly that the others soon attempted. She was all butt and boobs and bellybutton and was the star of the show, but the Whip Lady smiled as she watched her too.

They all got a kick out of the set I had improvised, a few small silk bags, filled with small bars of hotel soap, tied shut around a hole-in-the-center coin at each end of a six-foot cord. It's lighter than even their practice sets, takes a little more trouble to handle cleanly.

Big thing I came away with from the week was that I have to work on my footwork more. Many of the Ba Gua Zhang videos I've watched have emphasized the palms (upper body) combining with the stances (lower body). These folks were dancing within the rope spheres they threw.

Later I wondered at the difference between their single-weight & long cord work ("rope dart") vs their double-weight and short cord work ("meteor")... in the first they focused on wraps and sudden releases, always working in a straight line, forward and back. With the double weights they did fewer wraps (reasonably enough) but also did a lot more horizontal orbits, with the weight shooting forth at a variety of angles. Maybe it's due to competition technique, where the dart's wraps and releases are complex enough that they strip away the extra melee-type swinging. The Japanese Kusarifundo techniques (aka manriki) use an even shorter double-weighted chain, and also seem to work at a variety of angles. Then again, I didn't see any of the "fast tying" (hayainawa? sp) techniques of Maasaki Hatsumi, where he would tangle an attacker up in a 10-15' unweighted rope and winch the limbs together. Each tradition seems to have its own emphases.

One morning I saw someone doing Ba Gua Zhang whirling circles with a pair of Deer Horn Knives... these are wicked curved blades, points and edges everywhere, scary. He also had a rope dart, but didn't use it while I was watching... wonder how he would have moved when combining circular techniques with rope.

Another oddity is the hula hoop. I saw these for sale on the streets of Beijing, but never saw anyone using them in the park. Later, in Xi'an, I saw teenage girls using them, in the straight around-the-waist techniques, probably for improved self-image. I didnt see any of the more advanced hooping popular in San Francisco, at least not yet.

There's a park in one of the oldest sections of town that seems dedicated to the Diabolo.  ("Diabolo" is the English name given to the Chinese Top family... one version is like a large Yo-Yo with the two halves turned around to make it concave in the middle... you play it with two thin sticks with a string tied to the ends.) This is in Xuanwu, south of the city wall, west of Qianmen. I had chosen it for the cabbie's convenience when finally escaping Beijing West Station. There are many friezes on the wall surrounding the park, showing someone in Qing dress doing Diabolo tricks. There's also a dedicated "Diabolo Area" in the park. That's all I know about it. Pretty cool, though.

Long entry. I'll put notes from other towns in a separate entry. But I was very happy to be able to partake of the whole riotous Tiantan scene for a few mornings, and to be accepted by a nice bunch of folks specializing in rope work.