The Gong Fu Master

We queue for a bus in the biting cold, well, queue is not exactly the right word, more stand about until one comes then make a mad dash for it, no women and children first in this place, and especially in this weather. The bus is packed, perhaps thirty or forty punters crammed onto it, elbows knees and feet everywhere. I have no idea how the other teachers knew at which stop to get off, as the windows were frozen on the outside, steamed-up on the inside, and there were so many people on the bus you couldn't see out anyway.

The gong fu hall is down a back street off Zhong Yang Da Jie, a little room with creaky bare wooden floorboards and an open brazier in the corner to keep The Master warm while he watches his students' forms. Arrayed on one wall of the hall are grainy photographs, in faded colour and also stark black and white, of The Master as a young man, clothed in white, bare-footed, competing in tournaments in different cities around China. On the opposite wall, floor to ceiling, hang the weapons: bamboo sticks, spears, swords, cutlasses, scimitars, lances, daggers, chains, cudgels, metal poles, num-chucks, ropes; a militaristic fetishist's wet dream. As we enter the hall, a group of children of no more than eight years old are finishing their lessons for the evening. Each of them has to perform their graceful, flexible, fantastical form for The Master before they are allowed to leave. He tuts and corrects them sternly. When they're done they have to bow to him and shout: 'Thank you, Master!' in their high-pitched voices, before running out of the hall, anxious mothers in pursuit brandishing down jackets.

The Master is in his sixties. He moves slowly, gracefully, with the air of experience that suggests: 'It's not how fast you do it, it's how well you do it. Look and learn.' He's a small man, with an age-worn wrinkled face and thick black-rimmed glasses. If you didn't know he was a renowned gong-fu expert, you'd think him completely harmless. But I pity the mugger that dares confront this little old man. When he goes through a form in demonstration it's like watching with the slow-mo turned on. When Jared or Peter tried to do it and made a mistake in posture, he landed them flat on their arse.

Gong fu is all about the forms. I didn't see any hand-to-hand, or foot-to-face, fighting at all. Apparently you need to train for at least three years before you can actually fight. The forms are intricate shadowboxing dances meant to reflect animal movement, and look impossible to remember. Every time one of the teachers gets a movement wrong, even if it's just a foot or hand at slightly the wrong angle, The Master stops them. For the more experienced trainees, he moves in and fells them, to show them that in some way, by adopting the wrong posture, their defences were down; for us beginners he 'PA'S!' into us but doesn't knock us down. Not yet, anyway.

The first half hour of the night is taken up by stretching. I am nowhere near flexible enough for this just yet. J got his foot up on to the wall bars way above his head, touching his forehead to his knee. I hardly had my leg straight at right angles to my body. After that, The Master makes us do various posture-strengthening exercises. For example, when he shouts 'MAAAA BU!' (Horse Stance), you have to bend your knees, keep your back straight, bend your elbows at a forty-five degree angle to your body, ball your fists at about waist height, and hold this pose for what seems an eternity. Your legs start trembling, then shaking, then downright wobbling, and, just as you think you can't stand it a minute longer, he shouts at you to relax.

Then, each teacher has a turn at completing the part of the form they learned last time and, if it's to The Master’s satisfaction - 'YES! YEEEES! GOOD-UH GOOD-UH!' - he teaches you the next bit; if it's not up to scratch - 'NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO!' - you have to correct your mistakes before he'll let you continue. This seems an excruciatingly slow process but I can understand it: if you can't correctly perform the last part of the sequence that you learned, then you shouldn't progress to the next part.

Peter, who teaches at another university in Harbin, and is friends with some of the Rising Moon teachers, seems the self-appointed foreign leader. He goes first, using the whole length and width of the hall, face going bright red as he huffs, puffs and 'A-YAH!'s his way through his form. Then next up it's J, who makes less noise but is far more fluid and dangerous-looking than Paul. J is The Master’s star pupil. Then it's the turn of Patrick, Alan, Ken, Anita, in a descending order of experience (and skill) right down to the feckless beginners, Tam, Danuka and I. Tam looked quite good, half bare-knuckle boxer, half Bruce Lee. Danuka was all elbows but could kick quite high. I was just plain rubbish.

As we were warming down, a small brown mouse scuttled comically out into the middle of the floor where it sat, looking at us inquisitively. Anita 'aaaaawed!' in girlie fashion, 'Look at the little mouse!' The Master picked up a bamboo broom from behind his brazier, crossed the floor stealthily, and whacked the little rodent on the head. The mouse, stunned, raised a tiny beseeching paw, just as The Master lifted one slippered foot, brought it down hard, and broke its back with an audible crunch. We watched, stunned. This was the closest we had got to real combat tonight and we didn't like it. Someone giggled nervously. The Master grinned at us with a satisfied, 'Who The Man?' expression, picked up the lifeless ball of fur and bones by the tail, and chucked it headfirst into the brazier, which, as the flames sprang and sparked, became the wee mouse's crematorium.

If ever we'd been in doubt, and really we hadn't, we knew now not to mess with The Master.