“Like the Hindus believe.”
“It won’t be belief. It will be knowledge, perception. All that is necessary is for a certain mass of people to join their energies toward this evolution and then the effects will ripple outward.”
“And then we’ll all be part of the sixth race?”
“No, some will refuse to join and will remain stuck in the lower level of consciousness.”
“And what will happen to them?”
“They will disappear.”
“Right. So will this be immediate, like a reverse Rapture? Or slowly, like the Neanderthals?”
“It will be like the laws of evolution,” he said. “When I came to China, my connection was in Japan. As we were flying over that country, I felt this very negative energy. Most of the Japanese will disappear.”
“Okay, so anyone else not going to make the great leap forward?”
“The Germans, they give off the same black energy.”
“I see.”
I’d given up hope that he was joking, having resigned myself to the fact that he was the latest, albeit the most nutty, of the truth-seekers. But his piercing stare and pose of tranquility bothered me. With your average crazy person, you get a darting gaze and unconscious twitching of the face and hands, as though they’re extremely uncomfortable inside their own bodies. But Mikael was acting like he was explaining a simple mathematical proof to an extremely dull student. It was causing the hair on the back of my neck to rise. My kungfu training kicked in. I took in his size, measured the distance between us, and visualized a series of attacks.
“Well, it’s nice of you to come over and tell me about all of this,” I said. “So you’re going to begin your kungfu training tomorrow?”
“I came to Shaolin to recruit people to join their energies to the cause of the sixth race.”
“Well, good luck. The Chinese are pretty focused on their economic evolution.”
“I knew this was where I had to be after what happened on the train ride from Beijing to Zheng Zhou,” he continued. “I was meditating and went to this deep place. And the train car opened up around me. The clouds parted and Odin and Thor descended into my cabin. Do you know them?”
Somehow I managed to keep a straight face.
“Not personally, no,” I said.
“Odin is the one-eyed leader of the Norse pantheon. Thor is the god of thunder.”
“Right, I played Dungeons & Dragons as a kid.”
“I told them about the sixth race that is coming. And they thought it was really important, so they agreed to join their energies to the project.”
“You told them about the sixth race and then recruited them? Odin and Thor?”
“Yes.”
“I realize that Odin and Thor are sort of has-been, B-list deities who have been out of favor for a long time, but you’re telling me they didn’t know about this sixth race thing?”
“You don’t believe me?” he asked, his face finally betraying some emotion. His eyes narrowed with annoyance. Having finally cracked the all-knowing guru facade, I pressed forward.
“I’m a religion major. I’ve read about too many mystical occurrences to think they don’t happen. But all of them had one element in common: The human was overwhelmed by the experience. I’ve never heard any encounter with a deity being turned into a recruitment meeting.”
“You were a religion major?” he asked, leaning forward, his green eyes even more piercing than before.
“Yes.”
“So you read about other people’s experiences. It is different when you have your own.”
“Yes, I know.”
“It is different to believe something is true than to know it is true. How can you know the truth if all you do is read about other people’s beliefs?”
I stared at him. He comes into my house and challenges me? Only after an intense internal struggle was I able to check myself.
The knowers do not say; the sayers do not know.
“Okay, Mikael, you’re right. I guess I can’t know the truth,” I said, swallowing the bitter aftertaste of pride’s backwash. “I guess all I have is my questions and my theories.”
“But don’t you want to know the truth?”
“Sure, who doesn’t?” I said, losing the battle against my ego. “Maybe now that Odin and Thor are on board, you can send them over to my room so they can tell me about the sixth race.”
He didn’t reply. We stared at each other in silence until I said, “Well, I should get to bed early. I’ve got practice tomorrow.”
He agreed he should as well. We shook hands and promised to meet up again, and basically said all the things you say when you are trying to make nice after a pissing contest.
I figured that was the last I’d see of Mikael. Over the week, various Shaolin monks asked me about him. Mikael had shaved his head and was wandering around town in monk robes, which would normally be considered presumptuous for someone who was not a monk. But the monks, who were inclined to search for a more forgiving explanation, asked me, “Is he a little bit crazy?”
“More than a little bit,” I said.
Mikael came to see me in the second week of his visit while I was training. After class was over, he approached me. He’d not forgotten our discussion or given up on recruiting me to the sixth-race movement.
“Last night, I was meditating and Jesus came to see me,” he said.
“He seems to visit Shaolin quite often,” I said.
“I told him about the sixth race, and he was very excited about it and promised to join his energies to the cause.”
“That’s great, Mikael. You must be very pleased. Now that you’ve signed a bankable star, no doubt your project will be green-lighted. I hope your kungfu training is going well. I should get back to my workout.”
I was certain that would be it, but Mikael was relentless. But this time when he came back to the Wushu Center a week later, he was slightly shaken. His relationship with his Shaolin instructor had taken a bad turn. He explained that while in Beijing he had developed the “perfect attack.” He’d come to Shaolin to test its perfection. He and his master had been lightly sparring in the Shaolin Temple when Mikael decided to unveil his “indefensible” technique. And according to Mikael, it had worked, only too well. His master’s failure to overcome it had enraged him and he had attacked Mikael will full force and fury. Mikael showed me the bruises on his arm and chest as proof of this battle in the halls of Shaolin.
By this point, I’d decided to treat Mikael like a wacky cousin. It was hard to hold a grudge against the only other person in a thousand-mile radius who could speak English.
“Well, you shouldn’t worry,” I said. “It sounds like you don’t need to train with him if you have the perfect technique.”
“This is true. Would you like to see it?”
One of the things I had learned in Shaolin was that martial artists love to demonstrate their techniques. Unlike martial artists of the past, they feel the need to prove the value of what they’ve learned. I’d also learned that if you agreed to participate in a demonstration, you invariably ended up bruised and battered and wishing you hadn’t. But I knew every attack has a counter, so I was curious to see the crazy Finn’s “perfect” attack.
Mikael stood with his dominant right side forward. His right fist was partially extended. His left palm was in front of his face for protection. With his right arm the spear and his left hand the shield, he looked like an unarmed version of an ancient Greek hoplite.
I shifted into a sanda stance, my body loose and resting mostly on my back right leg. “So I’m going half-speed,” I said as a warning so he wouldn’t overreact. I shifted my weight to my left foot in order to bring my right leg around in a roundhouse kick. Halfway through my attack, he stepped toward me, his right foot pinning my left foot to the ground and his right fist jabbing forward the short distance between where it started to the tip of my nose.
“That’s your perfect attack?”
>
“It’s all in the timing. See, I have hit you before your kick could land.”
“And you created it?”
“It came to me when I was meditating one night in Beijing.”
I just stared at him. My geekiness had been offended. He obviously didn’t think I was enough of a nerd to have read Bruce Lee’s Tao of Jeet Kune Do. The attack Mikael had just done was the first technique described by Lee, and the foundation of his style. The jab is the fastest technique because it is the shortest, a straight line from the forward fist to the opponent’s head. Boxers normally put their weak side forward and use the jab to set up their cross, which is a more powerful punch.
Bruce Lee’s idea was to put the dominant side forward, because a jab is faster and you could make up for its inferior power by using the stronger side of the body. It was a compromise, a clever one certainly, and by all accounts, Lee was able to generate a tremendous amount of power from his dominant side jab, but it wasn’t a perfect, no-defense-possible technique. And Mikael certainly didn’t think it up.
“Mikael, by any chance when you were meditating that night in Beijing, did Bruce Lee visit you and, in exchange for your insight into the whole sixth-race thing, show you this technique?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You should, because you didn’t create this technique. Bruce Lee did. It’s in his book.”
“I never read his book,” he said.
“It’s also in all of his movies. He’s always using it. He stands like this,” I said, imitating his sideways style, “Bounces on his toes, and as soon as his opponent moves he jumps in and hits him with his right. Now, your punch is more of a straight jab, and his was more of a backhand. But it’s the same technique.”
“It’s not the same. Bruce Lee didn’t step on his opponent’s foot to pin it down.”
“Oh, so now you’re saying you created a modification to Bruce Lee’s main technique.”
“It’s perfect.”
“No, it’s not.”
“There is no way to stop it.”
“Okay, well then let me show you something.”
I stepped back, took a running start, ducked my head, bent at the waist, and tackled him like a football dummy. As my arms were reaching around him, his punch glanced off the back of my head. He ended on his back with me on his chest.
As I stood up, I said, “There are no perfect techniques. All attacks have counters, and all counterattacks have counter-counterattacks. A jab is a high punch, so I ducked low. As a counter to my move, you should have brought your knee up against my face when I was tackling you, because it was unprotected. And by the way, if you’re going to shave your head, don’t wear the monk’s robes. You’re not a monk, and the Chinese find it rude. And because we are the only laowai here, what you do reflects on me.”
Mikael didn’t say anything, and he left the Wushu Center that day.
A week later, Mikael had decided to move back to Beijing. He had survived less than a month. It tickled my dark heart that he had survived less than a month.
“Shaolin’s energy is bad,” he told me as he departed, leaving his piano behind.
“Well, I guess we’re shit out of luck when the sixth race comes around,” I said. “Give my best to Thor.”
That was not, however, the last I saw of Mikael. Once when I was in Beijing, I bumped into him in the lobby of the Great Wall Sheraton. He was flying back from Paris. He’d found some angel investors willing to set him up in his own kungfu/meditation academy in France.
When he told me this, it suddenly all made sense. As the Chinese say, “Not all pilgrims come to worship God.” Mikael was crazy. Crazy like a fox. He hadn’t come to Shaolin searching for the truth. He’d come to pad his New Age résumé.
5
DIRTY JOKES AND BEER
“Bao Mosi, you should come to the performance hall,” Little Tiger told me one night as I was writing a letter to my mother. “Long Spear is back.”
“Who is Long Spear?”
“He was part of the performance team. He went to Wuhan
Sports University. He’s a national champion in spear and straight-sword form. He’s the best.”
“Better than Deqing?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not possible!”
I assumed this was simply Little Tiger’s bias. Spear and straight sword tended to be performed by long-limbed and lithe martial artists, because the forms had a number of elegant twists and turns. Staff and machete forms were for broad, muscular stylists, because they emphasized power and acrobatics. Little Tiger was a spear specialist. Deqing was broad and muscular.
I arrived at the performance hall to find Long Spear—spiky hair, angular features, slight frame—performing his spear form. The only other person watching was Deqing, who looked none too happy to have his rival back. As far as technique was concerned, Little Tiger was right. Long Spear executed his form with technical perfection. It was smooth and silky. The best I’d ever seen. He didn’t have Deqing’s explosive power or leaping ability. But then, no one did.
“You’ve improved,” Deqing said, grudgingly. “I’ve added some moves to the staff form. Take a look.”
Deqing proceeded to power through the form, his leaps slightly higher than normal, his strikes more forceful. But after watching Long Spear, I could detect the slight flaws in his technique, the minor imperfections.
After the challenge match was over, Long Spear said, “Powerful, but it’s not regulation.”
“We don’t do regulation forms here.”
“I know.”
Then each of them continued working on moves while surreptitiously watching the other. Finally, Deqing dropped his staff and walked out without saying anything to me. He wasn’t used to defeat.
Little Tiger introduced me to Long Spear. I invited him to dinner. I wanted to collect some intel. Wuhan Sports University was renowned for having the best kickboxing team in the country. The reigning 70 kg. national champion was at Wuhan, and I expected him to be one of my opponents at the Zheng Zhou tournament in the fall.
After discovering the reasons for my interest, Long Spear offered to take me back with him to Wuhan, show me around his university, and introduce me to the Champ.
“Do you think he’ll mind?” I asked.
“Why should he mind? He’s the best in the world. He doesn’t have anything to worry about.”
“I’m sorry to say that’s probably true.”
After Long Spear had spent a couple of days meeting all his old friends, I arranged for a car to take us to Zheng Zhou, where we caught a train to Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province. Zheng Zhou was built on the Yellow River, Wuhan on the Yangtze about 400 miles directly south. Wuhan is an industrial city. I could see the smokestacks from the train. It has a subtropical monsoon climate, and it was now the height of summer. The humidity had a fetid, dank feel. I could almost see the soot from the factories hanging in the air. If you’re worried about global warming and inclined to despair, you don’t want to visit Wuhan.
Long Spear shared a room with seven of his wushu teammates. They were a small, yappy, high-energy lot. Introductions were succinct. They needed to brief Long Spear, who was obviously their leader in the latest political machinations. Apparently, a boxer and a wrestler had a disagreement involving one of the young ladies from the women’s wushu team. This argument had escalated when the entire boxing team decided to challenge the wrestlers’ position as the most influential squad in the university. A fight had been scheduled but was canceled once a coach got wind of it. The boxers were appealing to the wushu boys for backup.
“The wrestlers are stronger, we’ll need to bring weapons,” a teammate with a moon face said.
“But the dull ones, not the sharp. We don’t want anyone getting killed,” the teammate fiddling with a performance sword said.
“The boxers won’t fight if we don’t back them up,” Moonface replied.
“They could go to the kickboxers.�
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“They never get involved. They think they are above all this.”
Long Spear contemplated the situation for a minute before delivering his verdict.
“We will wait until after the fight to see who wins and then pick sides.”
The matter settled, they turned their attention to me. They were extremely polite and friendly. I was their leader’s new pal. Moonface offered me his bed during my stay.
“Where will you sleep?” I asked. The floors were concrete and filthy.
“I can sleep next to one of the other guys.”
“No, no, no, thank you, thank you, thank you,” I said. “You are too polite. But I’ve already rented a bed at the local hotel.”
Long Spear stood up and said, “I want to take you to meet someone.”
We walked down a hallway past the eight-bunk rooms filled with the gear of various sports—basketball, boxing, soccer. At the end of the hall, Long Spear knocked on a door. A sparkplug of a man opened it. I quickly pegged him for the lieutenant, because sitting in a desk chair was Wrestler #1, who I’d soon discover was the prince of the school. He had the entire room to himself. He was a big bully of guy with a bashed-in face and a ready sneer. He’d clearly chosen fear as his leadership style.
“Ah, Long Spear, you’re back from Shaolin? What do you want?”
“I brought someone to meet you, Big Brother,” Long Spear said in a supplicant’s tone of voice.
“Eh, what, a laowai? So what?”
“He’s an American. He is training kungfu at Shaolin. He’s very talented. He even speaks Chinese.”
It was at this moment that I realized why Long Spear had invited me to Wuhan. I’d been in similar situations before. In a country closed off to travel, having a laowai friend was a sign of worldliness. Long Spear was the cold, calculating type. He was displaying me to increase his perceived value to Wrestler #1. In return for the favor of introducing me to the Champ, it was my job to impress Wrestler #1.
American Shaolin Page 24