Jenny, this is for you.

A few years ago, Jenny had a small fascination with the great ancient Chinese Tai Chi 太极拳(tai ji quan).  I had essentially forgotten this, and I hadn't really given Tai Chi much thought since arriving in China, because people of my generation simply don't waste their time with that.  Tai Chi is an old people thing.  They ideal Tai Chi body is becomes rounded, hunched over, with a big gut, so its not even appealing as exercise.  Everymorning (chi is the strongest at dawn) Shanghai's parks become flooded with the elderly, practicing their goofy looking routines.  They move very such speed, its amazing to me that such slow, seemingly effortless movement can be achieved.  My grandpa says Tai Chi is for the very sick people who aren't strong like my family.  So its understandable that I forgot about the Tai Chi that my sister was obsessed with, the KAPOW bing kill kill whack Tai Chi.

Until today that is.  My Chinese culture teacher woke us up really early this morning to go to a park, meet his friend (an Aussie who moved to China ten years ago to found a yoga school, then later moved to the woods/mountains/countryside to practice yoga but then discovered Tai Chi and studied it in a temple for several years then studied in Beijing and then moved to Shanghai) who would introduce us to the fundamentals.

His myths about Tai Chi (they might not be common myths for those outside of China)

Tai Chi is easy

Tai Chi is for really old people

Tai Chi can't be used for fighting

My biggest shock was the last myth.  Hear, Tai Chi practictioners sort of just move there hands around like butterflies to some ancient-sounding Chinese music blasting from a scratched up boom box.  Some of them even hold fans, which appears to be the most civil and un bloodly martial art ever.  (but actually the fans used to have daggers in them and in ancient China concubines were also trained political assasins)  

All of Tai Chi is about killing.  The moments are essentially stoomping on your opponent, pulling him down, pushing him over, stabbing him, etc.  Its about the Yin and Yang, the constant flow of energy.  If a person uses too much energy (Yang) you can go all Yin (relaxy) and absorb his energy and he fails.  One man, who evidently knew the most about fighting and stealing chi pushed me over just by standing still.  Its sort of incredible.

What really made me fall in love, however, is the intensity and the beauty at the same time.  Your body is solid, like earth, but your hands are like silk scarves.  When you move your hands, they simply follow the path of the universe dictated by your body and create wind, energy, chi.  My explaination does the art no justice, really.  I can't even define Tai Chi.  Tai means too big, too immense, but Chi means the smallest point of the horizon.  Too much of the smallest.  I guess.

Oh, also, a while ago I was talking about how the Chinese believe that if you eat salt you will get sick, so here is either the cause or effect of that belief.  感冒 means to get sick, and if you look at the first character（感）, it has a 咸 on top.  咸 means salt.  The thing on the bottom（心）means heart.  So the salt gets into your heart and make you sick so the ancient Chinese made a character too reflect that, or since the character meaning getting sick that was created by the all knowing ancient Chinese has salt afflicting the heart, it must be so.  Both are interesting.