Studying with Master Teng - TCM (Part 2)

Basic TCM Theory – Taoist Theory and Yin/Yang

Basic TCM begins with an understanding of the forces of Yin and Yang and the five elements. Much of TCM theory developed out of Taoism, the indigenous religion of China. In Taoism, reality can be understood in this manner:

• Before the before there is 0
• 0 became One
• One became Two
• Two became Three
• Three became the 10,000 myriad things

0 is basically beyond comprehension. Recognize this line?

The Tao that can be spoken is not the Tao

Yeah it’s even way more complicated than that. You might be able to understand it as the Godhead in Christian mysticism, or as Nirvana in Buddhism (literally: No-thing). It is the absolute un-manifest. Regardless, it’s pretty much pointless for me to talk about it as it really can't be explained, only experienced. Anyway, let’s move on.
One is unified reality, the original manifestation that still exists as the un-manifest. Everything is One, One is everything; you figure it out…moving on. Two is the division of the original manifest into the two opposing forces known as Yin and Yang. Many Westerners have at least a basic familiarity with Yin and Yang with the Taiji symbol, which looks a bit like a white fish with a black eye and a black fish with a white eye swirling around in a circle, being a familiar sight in the West. The Yin and Yang are the two primary, original forces of the energetic and physical planes. They express the completely relative nature of our world, as we do not exist in the realities of 0 or One. Everything we perceive is the opposite of something else, Beauty is the opposite of Ugly, Good is the opposite of Bad, Pleasure the opposite of Pain. Each perception also contains the spirit of its opposite (the opposing colored “eye” in the “fish”). As nothing in our reality can be perfect, even the most beautiful piece of artwork still contains come imperfection, and even the most vile of individuals still contains within himself the seeds of redemption.

Note: Taoism is not, contrary to a popular opinion, a philosophy of relativism. It just recognizes that perfection (or the Form, in Platonist thought) doesn’t exist in the material. Obviously it is not completely dualistic, as it wouldn’t talk about 0 or One if it were.

So what is the nature of Yin and Yang exactly?

Yin: dark, passive, feminine, descending, introverted (think of the Moon)

Yang: light, aggressive, masculine, ascending, extroverted (think of the Sun)

Everything in the world expressed can be as either the nature of Ying and Yang, but these are also not absolute constructs, Yin and Yang exist relative to the situation. For example:

Water=Yin nature – Fire=Yang nature

However:

Candle Flame=Yin nature – Bonfire=Yang nature

Or, to put the two together:

A candle flame is Yang relative to a pool of water, but that same candle flame is Yin relative to a bonfire.

So how does this apply to TCM? Well, as a general rule, balance is always best. And when you’re dealing with the two primary, opposing forces of the universe, balance is definitely a good thing, just try to imagine a lopsided Taiji symbol (doesn’t really work does it?) Now, apply this to health. What happens when you are sick, or tired, or weak, or vomiting profusely into your friend’s lap? Do you feel balanced, or harmonious? Obviously not, something has clearly taken you off that neutral point of overall well being. And this doesn’t just apply to pain either; you can have too much energy (caffeine), be way too tense (stress), or even be too happy. TCM doctors would identify these as problems stemming from a Yin/Yang imbalance somewhere in the body.
A good illustration of this is my own chronic lower back pain, which so far no one has been able to diagnose (my posture is fine, and according to the X-rays I don’t have scoliosis). I complained about this to my Qigong teacher, he placed his hand over my lower back, and declared that I had weak kidneys. Since the pain was in the kidney area, it made enough sense as far as I was concerned. Now, the kidneys are a Yin organ, so any weaknesses probably have some relation to a Yin deficiency in the body. The solution? Eat Yin promoting foods, such as fish, and do Yin promoting exercises directed towards the kidney area, such as a Yin Qigong posture. That’s it, no fancy pharmaceuticals, no expensive chiropractic treatments; no pointless exercise machines are needed. Just eat the proper foods, do some Qigong postures, and maybe take some Yin promoting supplements (white ginseng) or get acupuncture if the pain is really bad. And it’s interesting to note how the problem is approached. In the west, it would automatically be assumed that back pain would be the result of some sort of muscle tension or a weakness in the skeletal structure. But TCM tries to look deeper, on the energetic level of the human body to try and discover imbalance is causing the muscle tension or poor skeletal structure that is in turn causing the back pain.

Basic TCM Theory – Five Element Theory

Five-Element theory is another concept central to both Taoist practice and Chinese Medicine. As far as I can understand, the Five-Elements are in the realm of Three, that which comes out of Yin/Yang (Two Becomes Three), and might be described as the gross-elements of nature (something like the laws of physics). Like Yin/Yang, the Five-Elements aren’t absolute constructs but rather describe the properties and behaviors of a subject in question relative to the situation. The Five-Elements and their properties are:

• Fire: controlling
• Metal: adaptive
• Earth: harmonizing
• Water: flowing
• Wood: generating

Again, this concept can be applied in any number of situations. Take your group of friends for example. Chances are you know someone who tends to be a bit more aggressive and wild (Fire), someone who helps the whole group to get along (Earth), and someone who just has a good time no matter what you do (Metal). The Five-Elements also have a specific relationship relative to each other. When forces are balanced, each element generates one element (generating sequence), and restricts another (restricting sequence).

Generating Sequence:

Wood-Fire-Earth-Metal-Water-Wood

Wood is fuel for Fire, Fire reduces to ashes (Earth), Earth produces Metal, Metal transports Water, and Water grows trees (Wood).

Restricting Sequence:

Metal-Wood-Earth-Water-Fire-Metal

Metal cuts Wood, Wood holds Earth, Earth contains Water, Water puts out Fire, and Fire melts Metal.

These principles are then applied to the organs, which are believed to hold the properties of the Five-Elements. The organ sequence fits in like this:

Kidney (Water) – Liver (Wood) – Heart (Fire) – Spleen (Earth) – Lung (Metal) – Kidney

Finally, medical diagnoses are made based on the awareness of the proper balance of the forces of Yin/Yang and Five-Elements in the human body. Thus the approach is completely holistic. Disease of the liver may be the result of the heart organ having too much fire and being too yang, therefore throwing the organ that is directly connected to it, the liver, out of balance. The curative process will then focus on bringing sympathetic organs back into energetic balance, along with the symptomatic organ, instead of just acknowledging only the organ in question.
The use of both Yin/Yang and Five-Element theory allows the TCM doctor to treat the patient on the deeper energetic level, rather than just on the physical level. As stated before, the understanding behind this is that the physical well being is directly controlled by proper energetic balance. Treat the energy body, and the physical body improves necessarily.

Next Up: Qi and Medical Qigong

Studying with Master Teng - TCM (Part 1)

Note: The following posts are the kind of a summation of much of what I have learned over the past two months. It took me several days to put this all into words, so if anyone is brave enough to attempt to read the entirety of these posts, I would be quite grateful. I also welcome anyone’s comments/criticisms/suggestions.

Over the past couple of weeks Ron, Jose and I have been studying Medical Qigong with Master Teng Ying Bo from Beijing. It has been a very involved experience and has required a lot of discipline on my part to get through the sometimes-difficult training sessions. The benefits of Medical Qigong is not well known in the West, and is even becoming less well known in the East, so I thought that I would take the opportunity to talk about it for a bit.
I first became turned on to Medical Qigong after my meditation teacher at Berklee College of Music, Joe Rogers, showed me the website of Dr. Jerry Alan Johnson, who founded the International Institute of Medical Qigong (IIMQ). I had been developing an interest in eastern medicine for some time, and had expressed as much to my meditation teacher. He found the website while doing some Internet research one day, and strongly encouraged me to take a closer look at Dr. Johnson and the IIMQ. What I discovered was an incredibly developed approach to treating everything from mental problems to cancer. You can find more information on the IIMQ at these websites:

Medicalqigong.org
Qigongmedicine.com

I also had the good fortune to meet with the current head of the IIMQ, Dr. Bernard Shannon, at his home/school/clinic in Palm Desert, CA outside of Los Angeles before I left for China. All of this led to me coming back to Beijing after the Wudang Taoist retreat to find Dr. Teng, who was one of Dr. Jerry Alan Johnson’s primary teachers in China before he founded the IIMQ. He also just happens to be a personal friend of Jesse Lee Parker, my retreat coordinator, and that’s how I ended up getting in contact with Dr. Teng in the first place.
I will do my best to give a pretty basic understanding of both Medical Qigong and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which is the wider field of practice of which Medical Qigong is a part. Please understand that my knowledge on the subject is quite limited, so if anyone finds any mistakes in my description, please do not hesitate to e-mail/leave me a comment/fly over here and give me a good slap in the face if I write anything that is incorrect.

TCM
Traditional Chinese Medicine is a field of study and practice with which many Westerners have become familiar. If I understand correctly, TCM began to develop popularity in the United States after Richard Nixon, during a diplomatic visit to China, received medical treatment where acupuncture was used in place of a chemical anesthetic. Obviously the treatment, and the visit, went quite well, for soon acupuncture, The Great Wall and “Made in China” would become household words in the United States.
TCM is the wider field of study of four very advanced disciplines, which are massage, herbs (Chinese pharmaceuticals), acupuncture and Qigong therapy. Each focuses on bringing the body into proper balance with itself, in order to fight off disease, physical pain and other ailments such as mental instability. Massage uses manual manipulation to open up the body’s energetic channels, fight off tension and stress and even massage internal organs, keeping them young and healthy. Acupuncture uses needles to directly manipulate the body’s meridian points and energetic channels to stem/increase chi flow, remove pools of negative energy contained within the body and in general rebalance the internal forces of Yin and Yang. Herbal medicine uses nutrition and the products of nature (herbs) to rebalance the forces of Yin and Yang, stabilize/increase Qi flow and fight off pathogens. Qigong therapy is method of energy treatment, and can actually be combined with any of the other three, I will soon go into further detail on this practice. In the West, most eastern medicine doctors focus on acupuncture, but you can find a fair bit of cross-training, or even specialization, in one of the other disciplines as well.
In Western medicine, the focus is primarily on the physical body. A patient’s infection was caused by the introduction of bacteria into the body; another patient’s illness was the result of contracting a virus; yet another patient’s back pain was caused by poor posture. And the approach is always very direct, very specific. Keep getting colds? Take more vitamin C and wash your hands take prevent picking up a virus. Have back pain? Go see a chiropractor. Cancer? Get chemotherapy, and pray…a lot. You do have more holistic medical traditions in the West, such as osteopathy and homeopathy, but in general the focus is still on the physical body. Traditional Chinese Medicine, and also other Eastern traditions such as Vedic medicine from India, doesn’t just approach health from a physical perspective. Eastern medicine rather sees the human in this manner:

Form

1. Spiritual Body

2. Energetic Body

3. Physical Body

Rather than just seeing a patient as a machine that needs to be fixed, Eastern medicine recognizes that every person exists on energetic and spiritual levels as well. And these spiritual and energetic components are the key to physical health. Problems that arise on the spiritual and energetic levels ultimately manifest themselves as physical ailments. This is why Taoist practitioners attempt to extend their lives (to the point of immortality) through the use of intense spiritual practices such as meditation and Qigong. By purifying the spiritual body and the energetic body, you purify the physical body as well, making it impervious to outside pathogens. Sound a bit far fetched? Hard to believe I know, and I certainly don’t go for the physical immortal bit either, but I have talked to a number of serious meditation practitioners, such as my own meditation teacher, and they will claim to have been without sickness or other ailments once they became serious about spiritual practice. To a certain degree even Western medicine will recognize this, with studies being done on the power of prayer to cure disease, or how good mental health can lead to good physical health (spiritual and energetic levels respectively).

Next Up: Part 2-Qi Energy and Yin/Yang theory

Guqin with Teacher Shao

WHAT I DID: Recently spent two days studying with Teacher Shao, a friend of my retreat coordinator, Jesse Parker. Teacher Shao is a Taoist practitioner who is highly skilled in Taoist calligraphy, Wudang style Tai Chi, tea appreciation and the music of guqin. Jesse Parker introduced me to Teacher Shao and suggested that I spend a couple of days with him and further my guqin studies. For those of you who don't know, the guqin is an ancient Chinese instrument that could be described as a seven stringed zither. Here's a youtube video of my friend Stephen Walker performing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTJSfVPPsVA

I began playing the guqin about a year ago after previously trying for several months to find a teacher in Baltimore. I did find an individual in Ellicott City, MD, but he turned me down twice when I had asked to study with him, explaining that he probably wouldn’t consider teaching me before I could speak pretty decent Mandarin and I was well learned in traditional Chinese culture. Of course, two years later I’m still learning to speak Mandarin and I still have a lot to learn about traditional Chinese Culture, so unless I was patient enough to wait another few years to study guqin, I was going to have to find another teacher. Fortunately, I returned to Boston last September, and thanks to two loose associations with former students of guqin and guzheng (another ancient instrument of the Chinese zither family), I found my teacher. The musician who had been recommended to me was a Taiwanese woman by the name of Shin Yi-Yang, or more appropriately, Yang Laoshi (Teacher Yang). She has been teaching the art of guqin and guzheng at her home near Boston College for a number of years and has also been active in spreading traditional Chinese culture in the greater Boston area. You can find her website here:

www.shinyiyang.com

Unlike my previous experience with trying to find a teacher, when I spoke with Yang Laoshi she was very open to teaching me, and I guess it didn’t hurt that I knew two of her former students either. My time studying with here was extremely rewarding. She is a very patient teacher, a very clear teacher, and overall an excellent teacher. Her fee for one-hour weekly lessons is also pretty cheap by American standards, so I was really lucky to find her. I studied with her from the fall of 2007 to the summer of 2008, and hopefully I will have the opportunity to further my music studies with her when I return to the States.
Unfortunately though, I am in China right now, and Yang Laoshi is still living in Boston. Obviously, if I was going to further my Qin studies; it was necessary to find other teachers while I am over here, at least temporarily. When I found out that my retreat coordinator had a friend, Teacher Shao (Shao Laoshi) who had students study guqin with him near his home in Beijing, I became very excited. The problem is, Shao Laoshi doesn’t speak English…at all. But, ignoring better sense, which I tend to do a lot these days, I went ahead and decided to stay at his house for a couple days, partly because Jesse encouraged me to do so but also because I wanted to anyway.
The first night was pretty interesting. I made my way by public transportation out to Xiang Shan (Fragrant Hills) Park, where the school is located. With a day pack on my back and guqin in hand, I arrived at the bus stop in the late afternoon…and had absolutely no idea where I was supposed to go. I couldn’t even find a phone in one of the shops that I could use, and I didn’t have an IP card to use the payphones. Fortune took pity on me fairly quickly though, and I was soon questioned by one of the locals as to what exactly I was carrying in my right hand, which was of course my guqin. Doing my best to communicate that I was a student of guqin and that I was in the area looking for my teacher, I eventually got up the nerve to ask to borrow his phone so that I could call Shao Laoshi directly. What happened next was another one of those great examples of the kindness of strangers. Not only did my new friend call up my teacher on his cell phone, he also figured out the location of the school and escorted me the whole way there. Pretty…freaking’…awesome.
When we had gotten fairly close to the school, a student of my soon-to-be teacher met us and we followed him to the school. Then, without my really understanding what was going on, we entered the school, removed our shoes, and were seated at a table that was complete with tea set. This would be my first introduction to what would best be referred to as Chinese “tea appreciation,” and it was pretty wonderful. The tea flowed like wine, and I slowly relaxed and began to really enjoy my surroundings. Before too long Teacher Shao showed up, along with another student who spoke quite a bit of English, so now I could also engage the others in some form of conversation. So there I was, sitting there drinking tea, relishing the fact that I had finally found some of the spirit of the real China (which didn’t include crap hotels and over developed tourist sites and annoying shop vendors), when Jesse showed up to say hello. We exchanged greetings; he gave me an additional introduction to the others in Mandarin, and then asked me whether or not I had communicated my intentions to Teacher Shao and the other students. Well, obviously I hadn’t because my Mandarin wasn’t good enough to strike up a conversation with Teacher Shao, and that’s really besides the point because I had figured that Jesse had already gone ahead and given proper warning that I was coming over to live and study for a few days. Basically I had been sitting there, in Teacher Shao’s school, for about an hour with the others probably thinking something along the lines of, “why the Hell did this foreigner show up at our school, with a guqin, without even inquiring about music lessons, just so he could drink tea and then not talk to us in Chinese?” Yep, excellent first impression right there, but Jesse cleared that up fairly quickly and I was soon accepted as a student of Teacher Shao’s.
The next few days proved to be quite interesting. That night I slept on the floor of the music room, with plenty of blankets to keep me warm, and woke up the next morning, right in time for breakfast.

Food
The meals at the school where definitely a highlight of my stay, for one thing the meals where home cooked, and thus the food just tasted better, and felt more nourishing. I also didn’t have to worry about the stress of trying to order in Chinese, I just sat down at the dining table, the food was served, and I ate it…awesome. Here’s a bit of a recap of my first day of meals there:

Breakfast: Tofu and Peppers, Snow Peas, Porridge

Lunch: Tofu and Peppers, Snow Peas, Cauliflower

Dinner: Tofu and Pepper, Snow Peas, Cauliflower, Eggs and Tomatoes

It was pretty cool to see that they didn’t waste any food, and it was also pretty good so I did not mind eating some of the same dishes three times in one day. Plus, the addition of one new dish at every meal kept things interesting. Breakfast on the second and third day was also quite amusing. Instead of eating at the school, I would walk with Teacher Shao and his students down the street to a small restaurant and order typical Chinese breakfast, which consists of porridge (Zhou) and steamed vegetable buns (baozi). Since there were five of us eating, and six steamed buns, inevitably there would be one steamed bun left on the table. What would follow was approximately the following conversation between Teacher Shao and one of his students:

Student: Teacher Shao, why don’t you have the last baozi?

Teacher Shao: I was waiting to offer it to Marco.

Marco: (frantically waves hand to express that he does not want the last baozi as he struggles to finish his first baozi)

Student: Please Teacher Shao; you should have the last baozi.

Teacher Shao: Oh no I couldn’t possibly eat another, you can have it.

Student: Thank you, but I don’t think I can eat another one either.

…
…
…

Student: We could each eat half.

Teacher Shao: (slight pause) Okay.

The two of them would then tear into their respective halves of baozi and devour them before I even had a chance to finish my first one. And the best part is that pretty much the same conversation happened both mornings, which leads me to believe that they go through a similar routine every breakfast.

Lessons
I was able to gain a surprising amount from the two lessons that I had with Teacher Shao, given that we were unable to communicate through language, and had to rely almost entirely on the instrument. The first day he showed me a few new techniques, and gave me a new piece to learn, which was actually a more developed version of a piece that I had already learned under Teacher Yang. That first lesson also gave my new teacher the opportunity to get a better understanding of how I played the guqin, which is pretty much like everything else that I do: way too tense and without much inner energy. So, before the next lesson he had his English speaking student explain to me that while he, Teacher Shao, felt that I had good technique in my playing, I lacked the flowing internal energy that was necessary to really express the beauty of the guqin. To Teacher Shao, playing guqin is much like doing Tai Chi; it’s your Qi (internal energy) that moves you through the form, and not the form that moves the Qi. Without Qi, your performance is nothing more than a shell. This is exactly what we worked on in my next lesson. I had learned the piece from the day before, and we practiced it until I began to grasp the concept of flowing through the music, rather than just playing the notes off the page. I also started to learn how play guqin as if I were actually doing Tai Chi or some form of Qigong, with my hands floating and dancing over the Qin, taking in the energy from the instrument itself along with its vibrations. And that’s what it’s like to study with Teacher Shao, whether it be Calligraphy, Tai Chi, Tea or Guqin, everything is an exercise in internal development. Everything is Tai Chi, or Qigong. It was really a very enlightening approach to the instrument, and helped me to relate guqin to my other studies in Chinese internal development such as Alchemy practice and Qigong.

The School
Living at the school was unfortunately the least enjoyable part of my time there. The school itself is really beautiful and has great energy, with guqin and calligraphy displayed on its walls, and the students themselves are really wonderful people. But, the simple fact is that there is virtually no privacy in the place. The room where I would practice Qin was connected to the room where the tea table was, and there would be people coming over for tea constantly. I would be trying practice, which is the sort of thing that one tends to do when living at a music school, and people would come in and start having conversations, or start watching movies on the computer that was in the practice room, or even start practicing guqin themselves. Now, I have enough trouble performing in front of people, the last thing that I want to be doing is practicing in front of people. I also like to have some alone time in my day, and have the opportunity to sit by myself in a room. But, that really wasn’t such a big deal because I could always take a walk if I needed. However, it’s a real bitch to try and practice, or study or in particular, meditate, when you always have people around you talking and making noise or whatever else. Not to say that these were rude people, they weren’t, but if you don’t have a separate space to really focus on your studies in peace, then even the nicest of people become quite tiresome.
My other issue with the school is that there isn’t much of a daily structure. Coming from the West, I’m sort of used to have a plan in my day. Meals at this time, class at that time, a lesson somewhere in between, that sort of thing. But I basically had no idea what I was expected to do while I was staying there, so I wasted a lot of time just wandering around the place not being able to practice because it was too noisy, but not feeling comfortable enough to just go off and do something on my own. There’s a lot to learn at the school, and I would have liked to do some work with Calligraphy or Wudang Tai Chi along with my guqin. I think it might have made the whole experience much more complete and satisfying.
Teacher Shao has a really great school, and it is a bit of a treasure. I think that he could even attract students from the West, but before I would recommend the school to any of my friends, I really think that there should be more focus on the learning experience. Keep the music room for just that, music. Let visitors know that this is a place for learning, and not for social gathering. I think with that change in attitude Teacher Shao’s school could be an excellent place to immerse oneself in traditional Chinese culture. That being said, I really valued my time there, and I even think that I will go back again for at least a few days to continue my studies, and maybe even learn some tea appreciation.

Leaving Xiang Shan...Thank God

Off to north of Ba Da Ling (most popular part of Great Wall) to study medical qigong for another five days. Xiang Shan park was noisy, and filled with rude Chinese. We would be doing meditation in the park and groups of people would actually come right up to us and loudly talk about how we were "doing Tai Chi...or Qigong, maybe it's Qigong, yeah that's it, and look, this one has a bag from Wudang mountain...take a picture of them!" And then they would proceed to take pictures of us. It was like we were zoo animals to them. It really is strange that traditional Chinese culture is sometimes more of a novelty to the Chinese than it is to foreigners. Really annoying...

Training is going okay. We have a really good hearted teacher and hopefully in a more peaceful environment we will all progress much faster. Probably won't have internet where we are going though, so maybe it will be a few days before I can post again. I'll write again on my experience training in the near future.

UPDATE

Currently in Xiang Shan Park outside of Beijing studying medical Qigong with Ron and Jose under a Qigong master from Beijing. It's a ten day course that includes learning twenty qigong postures for personal health which is pretty exciting. The only thing is that the location is just awful. The park is noisy, filled with people, many of whom are quite rude, and it's just not a proper place to practice at all. Our teacher said that we should find a quiet place with few distractions and lots good Chi energy to have really good practice. This place is definitely NOT it. Sigh...

1,000 Year Old Eggs-1, Marco-0

So I was finally defeated by a food strange enough that I couldn’t physically consume it. I consider myself to be a very adventurous, even daring, eater. I have eaten cow intestines, scorpions and other various animal organ meats with no problem at all. But I just could not stomach what I unintentionally ordered the other day at lunch: 1,000 year old, or preserved, eggs. Basically, 1,000-year-old eggs look exactly as how the name suggests: like really freaking old, and ultimately rotten, eggs. I used to see them everywhere in the Muslim district of Xian, and I have spotted them a few times in outside produce markets in Beijing. They’re easy to find because the shells of the eggs have turned blue and they are encrusted with some kind of weird brown stuff that kind of reminds me of horse feed mixed with dirt. When you crack open the shell of one of these things, what was formerly the “white “ of the egg has turned into a dark blue color, and what was formerly the yellow yolk of the egg has turned almost completely black. I’ve even seen some pictures of preserved eggs in restaurant menus where the color of the whole egg is black.
This incredibly disgusting food product is precisely what I ordered for lunch. I examined the English menu that was provided for my benefit and that of Jose’s, and found two tofu dishes. The first tofu dish was tofu and chives: easy, safe and familiar. The name of the second dish was something like “ha mua tofu.” There was no picture, no description, no indication at all as to what this dish could possibly have been. Now, which tofu dish do you think I chose? Obviously it wasn’t the safe, easy, reliable option, because that would have been the intelligent decision. Nope, I instead chose to be daring, probably because I wanted more material for my blog. So, about ten minutes after ordering (wait times are usually pretty minimal at Chinese restaurants), the waitress set down a plate filled with cold and wet silken style tofu covered with gelatin coated blue nastiness. I’m not entirely sure where the gelatin comes from, but even ignoring this rather unpalatable addition my stomach still turned at the sight of the preserved eggs, which I had recognized almost immediately. I had been avoiding preserved eggs up until that time, and for good reason: they’re gross.
Now, we as rational, intelligent human beings have certain ingrained instincts that allow us determine whether or not certain questionable items are edible. So, instinctively of course, I did an in depth analysis to try to establish if this “food” would cause me future harm. Here is a summation of that analysis:
1. They look like rotten eggs.
2. They look like rotten eggs.
3. They look like rotten eggs.
Obviously, if it looks like a rotten egg, looks like a rotten egg and looks like a rotten egg, it must be a rotten egg. However, even though this was the case, I could not go without at least trying one bite full, especially after Jose began attacking the plate with the resolve of recently bankrupt contestant on Fear Factor. Yep, I tried it, and do you know what? Yeah you know exactly what, it was disgusting. It didn’t taste quite rotten, but it was incredibly salty and had a very strange taste to it that only hinted of egg, and in that context the egginess just made the whole experience even worse. And the rest of the dish wasn’t much better. The tofu was slimy, a bit gooey and, having no real flavor of its own, picked up the taste of the only other real ingredient in the dish, which was the preserved egg. So, I threw in the towel after the second bite. I’ve been learning to listen my body, and not push beyond what it can comfortably handle, and my stomach definitely could not comfortably handle any more of that preserved egg. I called it quits. Jose however, did not call it quits. The better man among the two of us, he kept going, and ate almost the entire plate. His stomach paid him back real good later on though.

Maybe You Can Buy Happiness...

So the other day I went to a Muslim restaurant with my friend Jose. Being a bit parched, I of course decided that a nice refreshing drink was fully necessary to enjoy my meal. When I turned to the drinks page of the menu, I found your old Chinese standards such as tea, Tsingtao, bottled water, but I also discovered something that went by this rather auspicious name:

TO BE POSSIBLY EXTREMELY HAPPY (in small, .33 L, .5 L and 1 L size)

Well, now I do like to engage in the possibility of being extremely happy so obviously I ordered it (in a small, one can't be too careful about these things now can we?). And do you know what it was? It was a coke, a freaking coke! With a name like "to be possibly extremely happy" I was clearly expecting the secrets of the universe to be delivered to my table in a porcelain tea cup, but instead the waitress set down a red aluminum can with Chinese characters all over it that probably said something to the effect of "drink coca-cola!" or "drink this artificial fizzy beverage and your ancestors will come back alive...twice!".

So, did my choice of beverage bring me the possibility of EXTREME happiness? To be honest I think I was laughing so hard when the waitress set down that can of soda that I really can't argue with the name. It didn't really taste like American coke though, it was a bit fizzier and had sort of a watery aftertaste. And my ancestors didn't come back alive either...not even once.

Vegetarian in China

After years and years of consuming crap Chinese food throughout my life, I cannot express how excited I was to finally get to this country an indulge in the real thing. What I wasn't expecting however, is that I would basically be vegetarian by the time that I arrived here, and for the most part I wouldn't even be able to try the "real thing."

One of the requirements of my meditation practice right now is a restricted diet. Here's an idea of what my diet is supposed to be like:

• no meat of any kind
• no dairy if possible
• no spicy foods
• no alcohol

and if you really want to get anal:

• no salty foods
• no sweet foods
• no MSG (in China!?)
• no oily foods
• no heavily acidic foods like garlic and onion

Eggplant, tomatoes and mushrooms apparently aren't recommended either, apparently about the only thing you can eat is white rice and steamed cabbage.

Basically, the more advanced you get into your practice, the more you begin to be aware of the effects of different substances on your body. Meat restricts your chi flow. Spicy foods put too much fire in your body. Alcohol...well I think we all know what alcohol does. Now, I'm not going to kid myself by claiming that I'm at such a level that I would actually be highly sensitive to any of these foods. In fact I still like spicy food on occasion, I still LOVE garlic, and I still have the occasional beer or cocktail. What I am aware of though is how my stomach feels after eating the food here. Typically it doesn't feel right if I eat too much oil, too many doughy foods, too much meat, or too much spice. And if my stomach doesn't feel right, meditation is pretty much pointless.

The food here, in the overwhelming majority of circumstances, pretty much falls into at least one category that I listed above. Chinese food, REAL Chinese food, is very oily, full of MSG, frequently prepared with garlic and hot peppers, and usually contains meat or prepared with some kind of animal product (fat, broth, etc.). All of this makes finding healthy, nourishing food around here somewhat of a challenge. I usually feel pretty bloated after eating a typical meal here.

Currently, I'm not yet a full blown vegetarian. I still eat fish on occasion, I may still indulge in chicken in the future, and I would be a fool to not have Peking Duck while I'm in Beijing. But for the most part, I've been sticking to vegetables. I ate pork and beef steamed buns once at a dumpling house, after an attempt to get vegetarian buns failed, and my stomach felt so awful that it pretty much killed any future desire to eat heavier meats. Of course, most of the really interesting Chinese dishes have meat, so my diet for the last month has been reduced to pretty much this:

• egg fried rice
• a tofu dish of some kind
• some sort of stir fried vegetable
• plenty of mushrooms and edible fungus

That's about all that I can locate on a typical Chinese menu. My options are even worse if I get a menu with no English on it. All of this really makes me wonder if I shouldn't have gone to India instead, where I would be eating lentils, chickpeas, paneer and all sorts of well spiced vegetables.
But instead I chose to go to China, where the mentality is, " if you can afford to eat meat, than why not eat meat?" To aggravate matters even further, they love pork here, and for me, eating pork right now would be somewhat akin to swallowing a lit cherry bomb and then chasing it down with a liter of lighter fluid.

There is hope however. Right now I'm in Beijing, and Beijing is a very metropolitan, international city. This means, if you're willing to pay for it, plenty of western food and international cuisine. So far my travel buddies and I have had Japanese food, Thai food, Pizza, Sushi, western-style breakfast and we have plans to go to an Indian buffet for lunch. But why on earth would I have come all the way over here if I wasn't going to eat the local cuisine? For this, Beijing has provided three solutions, and they are all within a half block of the Lama Temple (YongHeGong). There is a vegetarian restaurant with an amazing buffet, another restaurant (aptly named, The Lama Temple Restaurant) that has an all vegetarian menu, and a Tibetan restaurant that has several delicious vegetarian options. The buffet at the first place is nothing short of tremendous. It costs 68 RMB (about $10 US, expensive by Chinese standards, I can eat for 5-15 RMB usually), but you get to sample from about 40 or 50 different soups and dishes, around 10 to 15 deserts and a selection of excellent fresh fruit. All of the dishes are vegetarian, and the chefs use a Buddhist style of cooking that specializes in making faux meat from ingredients such as wheat gluten and tofu. The "duck" is particularly impressive, it looks and and tastes a lot like, well...duck, but my favorite dish was the kung pao "chicken." The Lama Temple Restaurant isn't nearly as good, but it still has a varied selection of vegetarian dishes (including ones with faux meat) and they make a really delicious plum drink in house. The biggest surprise though, was the Tibetan restaurant. The food tastes fresh and nourishing, it has lots of flavor and there are many unique dishes on the menu that you probably can't find anywhere else (they cook a lot of yak in particular, and we're talking ALL parts of the yak). I even ordered yak milk butter tea when I was there...this wasn't so good, it was really salty, a little astringent and tasted just a bit odd. The restaurant also has a really great atmosphere to it, there is an incredibly good looking waitress who works there and the night I went there for dinner they had live Tibetan music (I think) which was just beautiful.

So, the moral of this story is: If you're in Beijing, and you're vegetarian, and you still want to eat Chinese food...head straight for the Lama Temple.

Photos Now On Picasa

I've uploaded some of my photos on Picasa (it's like Flickr only it's run by Google). Right now I have my pictures from my first few days in Beijing, and my first two days in Xi'an. My camera broke right before we left for Mt. Wudang (I dropped it on the floor after I had finished getting a two hour massage, that's right you read that correctly), so most of the pictures listed were actually taken by my friends.

http://picasaweb.google.com/marco.brundelre

I'm slowly getting the rest up as well, and of course there will be more to come in the future.

And Now for Something Completely Different...

DURIAN:

So have you ever been to the fruit section of an Asian market, and seen a very large spiky brown fruit thing, that is of questionable edibility? That is a durian, a fruit that I have heard described as having a delicious taste with an intensely awful odor. Well, thanks to my travel buddy Jose, this morning I had my first opportunity to try this exotic fruit.

The Smell:

It sort of tastes smells like...actually I think Jose probably had the best description: "like garlic, onion armpit." And that my friends, is probably the most apt description that one could come up with. It's not that it smells bad per say, in fact, if someone was sauteing onions and garlic in olive oil, I would find the smell to be quite to delicious. It's just that, when a similar smell is coming from a great big brown, fruit-like thing, it's a bit odd.

The Appearance:

The whole things is kind of a shame because the durian is actually an incredibly well designed fruit. When you cut open the durian, you'll find neatly divided sections of large portions of yellow flesh that pull easily away from the pulp of the fruit. It's almost as if each section of the fruit becomes it's own single serving bowl of durian, perfectly portioned to feed one hungry, albeit somewhat daring, individual. The texture of the fruit is very soft, and somewhat gooey, almost like overripe banana. Incredibly easy to eat, you need merely to arm yourself with a spoon, and dig in to your heart's content. Of course, that assumes that your heart is content with garlic-onion-armpit smelling fruit.

The Taste:

Well, I can't say that I wasn't warned about eating durian. It's just that the experience of eating the fruit was completely different from what I had imagined. Based on previous descriptions, I was expecting something that smelled of rotting meat or vegetables, but had an intense, sweet, tropical fruit taste. Smell: bad, taste: good. Instead, it tasted like slightly sweet onion-garlic-armpit overripe banana. You can hold your nose, you can breath out when you take in a spoonful, but there's no getting past the fact that the smell is pervasive, and that we taste with our noses as well as our tongues. Add to this the soft, gooey, slippery texture, and you have a less than desirable dining experience. Granted, the one we ate may have been a little under ripe, but my other travel mate, Chris, described a ripe durian as having a sweeter taste, but at the trade off of smelling like rotten vegetables. Yech...

Good News, Bad News

Visa update: So our visas were submitted for extension today and yesterday. The good news is: our applications were accepted with virtually no trouble whatsoever (except for my friend Jose, his PSB agent made him go all the way back to our Hostel and pay for an additional night just to get a Temporary Residence Permit that was less then 24 hours old). The bad news is: they won't have our visas processed until Oct. 6, which means we don't get our passports back until Oct. 6, and we can't stray too far away from Beijing until we pick up our new visas. On top of this, they grant the 30 day extension from the day you submit your application, which means my visa is only valid until Oct. 24. This gives me 18 days to figure out where I want to settle in China (which definitely won't be in Beijing). Right now my plan is to go Chengdu. So, if I get there, and I decide that Chengdu isn't the place for me, I'll have maybe a week of breathing room to find a better place to settle before I have to resubmit for another extension. The whole thing is just a tremendous pain in the ass, and more likely than not I'm going to find myself in Hong Kong at the end of the month (where I can stay for 90 days without a visa) so that I have more time to consider what my next steo will be.

Anyway, that's about it for my boring life right now. I promise that I will try to start writing more about China and less about myself in the future.

Screw the Olympics

Okay, so back to the present. Right now I'm in Beijing with my new friends Chris, Ron and Jose, all of whom I met on my meditation retreat. The four of us have been here for about five days now trying to get our visa extended for another month, and it's been a complete bitch trying to get this done. Let's go through what the lovely municipality of Beijing requires for a visa extension shall we?

1. Your passport - easy enough
2. A temporary residence permit - In the best case scenario, these just means that we need proof that we stayed in a hostel the night before. In the worst case scenario, we need records of where we have stayed the whole time that we have been here.
3. An active account at Bank of China, and a current Certificate of Deposit (CD) demonstrating that you have the equivalent of $3000 US being held at said bank. - Really? I suppose that this is to demonstrate that you have enough funds to survive in the country for 30 days, but do you have any idea how long you can survive in China with 21,000 RMB?

After this is all sorted it out, and it is for two of us, we then have to go to the Public Security Bureau (PSB) and then maybe, just maybe, if they're in a good mood at the visa office, they won't kick us out of the country immediately. If we're incredibly lucky they might even grant us our 30 day extension. More likely than not however, they'll ask us for additional paperwork and we'll spend the next few days trying to get this sorted out. Either way this won't be resolved before our current visas expire, and if things get really messy we'll have to try and catch a train to Hong Kong, (where we can stay for up to 90 days without a visa) and then try to get our visas renewed there.

So what have I done all this time that I've been in Beijing? I saw the Lama temple with Ron for about 45 minutes, the four of us strolled through Temple of Heaven park for about 90 minutes, and we all paid a couple of visits to the Wangfujing shopping district. What happened with the rest of the five days that we have been here? Well...

Day 1: Arrived, found a place to stay, slowly became aware of the horrible pain we would have to endure in dealing with our visas, went to bed.

Day 2: Our first attempt at trying to find the PSB. We got lost on the way there, we were yelled at by some cleaning lady for strolling through a public park, and then we arrived just after the place closed at 4:30. On a lighter note, we did go to an amazing vegetarian buffet restaurant located near Lama Temple. I ate enough to make even my family in Naples proud.

Day 3: After determining that day 3 was definitely Saturday, we arrived back at the PSB to discover that day 3 was in fact Sunday. The PSB is closed on Sunday.

Day 4: Did some stuff, found out about more pain, can't really remember, memories seem to be melting together at this point...opened up our accounts at Bank of China. The two girls working there were extremely helpful, they spoke pretty goood English, and they remained quite cheerful given all the crap they had to put up with while trying to get all of our papers in order. By the end of it one of the girls was biting her lip pretty hard though. That night we went to see the Mummy 3 at a theatre in Wangfujing. The movie probably isn't great in the first place, but it was made far worse after it had been dubbed into Chinese, and we had to spend the whole movie reading English subtitles. The younger Chinese actress in the movie is stunning however (Isabella Leong). If anyone has her number please e-mail it to me.

Day 5: Went back to the Bank of China, put the girls there through a solid dose of additional pain, and then headed over to an office to pick up Temporary Residence Permits. Upon arrival, we discovered that our contact couldn't actually help us out unless we produced records documenting all of our activities in China. Obviously, this wasn't going to happen. Fed up with the whole business, Ron and I took a taxi over to the Lama Temple, and the two of us basked in the irony of a Tibetan Buddhist temple being located in the middle of Beijing. We then returned to the Qianmen area south of Tianenman, and booked ourselves in a hostel nearby that could actually provide us with a Temporary Residence Permit.

So, nearly a week in Beijing, with a lot of money spent, and we've accomplished almost nothing. There was a time when all you needed to do to get your visa renewed here was walk into a PSB with a valid passport and a bit of cash on hand. Now, thanks to the Olympics, China has become extremely strict about who is allowed into the country and for how long. A lot of people around here think that things should loosen up a lot once the Olympics and Paralympics fade into memory, but for now at least visa renewals are an enormous hassle. To add insult to injury, because I have an American passport, I actually have to pay much more for a visa in China than if I held a passport from Europe. This is thanks to US policy screwing over Chinese citizens when they come to visit the US, and making it much more expensive for them to enter the country, so the Chinese are retaliating by making visas much more costly for Americans. So stupid...

Muslim Districts Are Awesome

Sep. 1: I arrived in Xi'an. After losing my papers that I needed to find my way to the hotel and contact my meditation group, I was essentially lost in the city. Fortunately, there are Starbucks over here, they have WiFi, and I had my computer. I spent two days in the city initially, before leaving with my meditation group to go to Mt. Wudang, and then another three days there after finishing the retreat.

Xi'an

So, what did I do after returning to Xi'an? Did I go to see the Terra Cotta warriors? No. Did I check out the Wild Goose Pagoda or the Bell Tower? No. Did I do anything else even remotely related to Chinese history? No, so what exactly did I do with the time that I was in Xi'an? I hung out, with my new found friends, in the muslim district. Why? Because the muslim district is awesome. Basically the whole area is active from morning until late night, and the main streets and alleyways are filled with fun little shops, great restaurants and street peddlers. Tons of some of the most amazing dried fruit is available for sale pretty much everywhere, and really great street food and delicious sweets entice you wherever you walk. Plus, the locals in this area are particularly open minded and friendly, and you'll find a fair bit of English spoken here as well (although when the allyway sellers start using it to bargain, it's a little unnerving, as you no longer have the advantage of being able to discuss with your friends in private). Now that I'm in Beijing, I'm suffering from a bit of Muslim District withdrawal, because the Wangfujing street market area is much smaller and no where near as cool. Hopefully I'll find myself back in Xi'an before too long.

zen mind, zen mind

So, for those of you who have bothered to check my blog, you might have noticed that my postings have been few, save for one short post about my monkey incident. For these last couple of weeks I had been involved in an intensive Taoist meditation retreat on Mt. Wudang in central China. My experience was an amazing one (although at times disappointing), I spent my time with about 28 or so of the most wonderful people one could hope to meet, and I learned much about myself and my practice. Over the next week or so I will try to recount as much of my experience, mostly for my own benefit but also for those who might take interest in this somewhat bizarre life that I am leading right now.

BEIJING

Alright, so a bit of a recap on my trip starting from flying into Beijing on Aug. 29. Based on my previous posts, I'm sure that some might come to conclusion that I sent myself into some sort of far eastern nightmare, and that I'm having a miserable time right now. In fact, I even had a few friends and family send me e-mails (which I really appreciated) expressing concern that my time here has so far been last then postive. Actually, my time in Beijing wasn't entirely all that bad, although it was certainly a trying experience. Here's a brief summation of my time there:

• Flew into Beijing, everything was going great until I attempted to find a hotel; this did not go well.
• After an awful night at a really crappy hotel, I spent my morning visting Tianenmen Sq. and strolling around Sun-Yatsen park.
• Got lost trying to find my way back to the really crappy hotel.
  
• Had an incredibly fortuitous run in with an artist and his wife in one of the hutongs south of Tianenmen Sq. They struck up a conversation with me in English, and soon asked if I would like to stay in one of their bedrooms above their teashop for a very reasonable 100 yuan/night (about $15). I immediately moved out of aforementioned really crappy hotel and situated myself in a very comfortable hutong bedroom complete with working internet and shower.
• Had an enormous lunch (my only meal for the first 48 hours in country). My new hosts tried to help me out by writing out the name of a local dish on a slip of paper and instructing me to find a busy restaurant and hand the note to a waitress. Unfortunately, what I thought they had given me was the name of the restaurant itself and I spent about 30 minutes walking around town, asking people if they knew where "spicy chicken peanut cucumber...thing" was.
  
• Woke up very early the next morning, took a stroll around the few remaining hutongs of Beijing, and found myself feeling much better about being in China. After breakfast I headed over to the Forbidden City, where I met a guy wearing a Natty Boh shirt who was visiting China with some friends from Baltimore, and got swindled by an "art student" in the imperial gardens.
• Had an amazing meal at a hotpot restaurant at Xidan "cultural" Sq. (basically an enormous underground shopping mall that goes down about four floors) and passed out soon afterwards back at my hutong suite (I had seriously jet lag, China is 13 hours ahead of EST).
• Left early the next morning to catch my flight to Xi'an. My host helped me carry my bags and made sure that the taxi driver knew where to take me. Thank God for the kindness of strangers.

So, perhaps this might not have been the most exciting trip to Beijing, but it did provide me with a very necessary learning experience. I will actually be returning there shortly with a couple of new friends from the meditation retreat, and this excursion should prove to be much more fruitful.

Don't Carry Peanuts on Mt. Wudang

Was attacked by a monkey today, but I am otherwise fine. F*$%ing vermin.

FAIL!!!!

Got to Xi'an, lost the papers that I needed to meet up with the retreat group in this city. Thank God they a Starbucks here with wireless, and thank God my friends talked me into bringing my computer (I believe that was Basil and Amelia). I've been here for four days and I already almost got myself lost in a city. Oh boy...

Three Big Fat Days of Failure

Okay, first off whoever reads these please send me an e-mail at marco.brundelre@gmail.com. For whatever reason I am unable to access my mises.com account, which just happens to be the one e-mail account that I actually needed. Actually this pretty much sets the tone for my post:

accessing e-mail: FAIL

So it's been three long, hard days in Beijing. I'll do a quick recap of the last 60 hours or so -

Day 1 -

tried to find a hotel: EPIC FAIL (this one is too embarrassing to even talk about)

Day 2 -

tried to order lunch: FAIL (I just wanted a simple lunch, I ended up with a mountain of food that included one half of a roasted duck, and a whole plate of spicy chicken peanut cucumber...stuff)

tried to make an international phone call: EPIC FAIL (tried to call home, instead I called a rather unpleasant woman in Florida...twice)

tried to do anything at all: EPIC FAIL (apparently I only had enough energy to find a new place to sleep, because I passed out soon after I got there, around 2:00 PM)

Day 3 - This day was actually going much better until about halfway through my trip to the Forbidden City -

tried to get through the forbidden city without getting swindled: EPIC FAIL (you know those idiots at popular tourist destinations who will fall for anything? you know, the really, really stupid ones? yeah, that was me)


Okay, so this trip so far has been less of a vacation, and more of a very painful learning experience. Being in a foreign country alone, when you can only engage in the most basic communication, has a tendency to expose your worst personality traits, and then multiply them by about ten. The first night I spent in Beijing may have been the most most terrifying of my life. I was completely alone, and completely helpless. Fortunately, I got through the first day, and then the second day, which still sucked, only it sucked a little bit less. And the third day was... not so bad. I'm going to trust that this trend will continue, and that I will be failing and generally sucking at life at little bit less each day as my travels continue. I'll leave this post with just the negatives, so that I can save all the positives for my next post, which I will write before I leave for Xi'an. Hopefully I won't fail again before I write that one.

Goodbye LA, Hello + Goodbye San Francisco

Tomorrow I leave for China. I will be away for close to a year, and I still don't know exactly what I will be doing past the end of September. This will be a trip of many firsts, among them:

first time traveling alone, ever
first time to China, ever
first time away from family for more than two months, ever
first time I won't be able to just go home if things go terribly, terribly wrong, ever

As excited as I am right now, and as confident as I am that China is where I need to be (and in some ways, where I already am), I'm still a little nervous.

Currently I'm in San Francisco with my cousin Galen. I spent about 10 days visiting my sister in LA prior to this, and so far I am enjoying my travels immensely. Let's just take a quick look at some of things I did over this past week that I won't have the opportunity to do again for some time:

spend time with family - I stayed with my sister in Westwood, our brother came to visit for a weekend, and we even spent a day eating Nonno sandwiches (created by our grandfather of course) with all of our cousins from the west coast.

see close friends - this has recently become very easy for me to do in LA

go salsa dancing - actually I might have the opportunity to enjoy this after all, apparently salsa is getting quite popular in some Chinese cities

enjoy a decent slice of pizza - D'Amore's in LA is fantastic

speak English - God willing, I will have very little opportunity to use my native language while I am over there

Of course there is much more to be missed, but in reality all else pales in comparison to spending time with close family and good friends. In fact, if all you losers would have just come to China with me, I might have not had any problems at all.

Anyway, enough of this slightly self-indulgent post. Bowls of ramen in San Francisco's Japantown call to me, and I will try to post again while I am in Beijing. Also. if any who read this feel so inspired, you can always send me an e-mail at marco.brundelre@mises.com. I should be able to access the internet every week or every other week, so I can be in touch that way as well.