8 Immortals

Now finally a story from China. I arrived in Beijing and met there with my dear old travel friend Nora, who came from Paris and had also been on the road for some weeks before. We stayed in Beijing for some days, had a lot of wonderful vegetarian food, some old market shopping and tea houses. But not enough time to see most of the main attractions cause we already had to leave for the Wudang mountains. That takes you, at least you are not going by plane, some nice and surprisingly pleasant 22 hours on the train. 10 hours of sleep, some eating, reading, conversation and making fun of the weird habits of the natives, and you arrive in the small town of Wudang Shan, which is just near the mountains and the school at the food of the mountains.
We were picked up by them and brought to the school, and from that on felt very welcomed by this nice people.
Wudang is said to be the birthplace of Tai-Chi and the center of the inner martial arts of China. It has not been opened for long, and it was impossible to learn these arts as an outsider, even for Chinese people, some years ago. During the Cultural Revolution most of the temples on the mountain had been abandoned. Nowadays the Chinese government heavily supports the tourism to Mount Wudang and therefor also the martial arts and the Daoist monks got a boom in the last years. After the Cultural Revolution some old monks teached a new generation of practitioners in the Wudang martial arts, Qi Gong and Daoism. These were the 14th generation of monks after the founding of the San Feng branch of Wudang Daoism. The headcoach of these first generation after the long break in turbulent times of modern Chinese history, now recently started to send out his pupils from the 15th generation to teach their arts to outsiders. They are all trained in the mountain monastery and now teach in various places around Wudang. Two of these brothers from the 15th generation teach in our school here, which is located in and beside an 600 year old temple. We train every day between 5-6 hours depending on how much you want to do. The first time I learned the Wudang longstaff form of the 8 Immortals, who are important figures in the Daoist world. The form depicts and mimics their typical behaviour or appearance and is quite hard to master. It was one of the secret forms of Wudang Kungfu. Only 2 hours of this form are enough to exhaust you completely. After many days of relentless training I learned the basics of the form now. And I‘m told to continue the training on my own in the future. Nora and I are teached Tai-Chi and Qi Gong now, while we still continue doing our forms (she learned the Wudang Tiger Form. Apart from training it is wonderful to go up to the mountains. Sundays are free so you can go for a hike at the weekend. The Wudang mountains are full of old temples and all in all are a great and mystical landscape. The first time we went up there it was misty and most of the tourists just stayed away. It had a very special atmosphere, which was just the way I imagined it to be up there. During Chinese history this place was always known for its seclusion and magical connection to heaven. The Wudang martial arts are just like the landscape and the landscape is like Tai-Chi, it really fits together…

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