by D_Glenn on Sat Sep 30, 2023 11:20 am
This is really cool. I didn’t even know this existed. Can you Repost it on my fb group?
We need to find a way to get you in contact with Jinbao, and set up an interview. One time I was showing him a stack of Bagua Journal magazines and he was looking through them and trying to tell me about people that he knew.
Around 1980 he wanted to test out his skills so he started going around to different schools and challenging them. It was something that hadn’t happened in China since before the communists took over. Everyone one involved didn’t know what they were supposed to do. This is called‘Kicking Down a School’s sign, or plaque’. He said he got past that initial nervous, not knowing what he was getting into, and started figuring out that the Bagua he’d been learning actually worked, and that he had some natural fighting skills, that he then started kicking down whole schools. A lot of them were flabbergasted that he was even trying, so they would go get their old teacher to come out. The old guy came out, asked Jinbao who his teacher was, then told his students that they could try fighting him but he wouldn’t. These old teachers started inviting Jinbao to have tea and were breaking the cultural taboo of not speaking directly to someone who’s younger. They started allowing him to borrow their diaries/ quan pu and introducing him to their friends. He ended up being in correspondence with dozens of masters around China and would spend his weekends taking trains to go visit them. This would go on for many years, until soon he started taking train rides to go to their funerals. He has a massive amount of knowledge about Bagua, but most of these guys studied different styles of martial arts. So having a stack of pictures of Xingyiquan guys might illicit more stories than the Bagua ones.
.
Last edited by
D_Glenn on Sat Sep 30, 2023 11:46 am, edited 1 time in total.