Temple and Cemetery of Confucius (Photograph by kjmagnuson, Flickr)
Five other students, Eyrna, and I share a taxi van to town. The road is jammed with mopeds, overburdened trucks, and every imaginable type of claptrap car, all honking. A few shiny sedans with tinted windows speed past. Roadside stalls sell fruits and vegetables, of which only watermelon looks familiar.
Confucius lived 500 years before Christ; his philosophies, formed during a time of political turmoil, have shaped Chinese culture and thought for more than two millennia. Confucianism is based on ren, a principle of self-discipline and loving others while striving to better one’s mind and body. Paramount is developing a clear head, devoid of anxious thought. Nothing could sound better right now.
We begin our explorations at what some consider the end: the Cemetery of Confucius, outside Qufu’s ancient city wall. A walk on a cypress-lined avenue, filled with excited Chinese visitors, brings us through a blue gate filigreed with gold Chinese script.
We have entered a World Heritage area where, for more than 2,400 years, Confucius’s descendants—some 100,000 so far—have been interred with the pomp accorded the most honored heads of state. My eyes take in burial mounds and stone stelae as plentiful as the cypress and pine trees that form a vast green parasol (one tree is planted for every grave). Statues of officials and animals stand guard. Only the buzz of cicadas and electric tour buses ****zing by disturbs the silence.
Following the surging crowd, we arrive at Confucius’s tomb, a large burial mound covered with flowers and offerings, and fronted by an incense burner and a stela carved with Chinese characters. A feeling of reverence, as I have in cathedrals, floats with the incense smoke on the still air. I watch a Chinese man bow over and over. I imagine he, like me, has aspirations to overcome adversity with a lucid Confucian mind.
The Confucian golden rule states that one must never impose on others what one would not impose on oneself. This gives me pause: I’ve been imposing harsh judgments and demands on myself that I would never impose upon others. Except, maybe, I demand too much of my daughter. I buy a stick of incense and light it. Please help me give myself and Eyrna a break.
A break of sorts comes one morning when my shifu, Shi Xing Lin, tells me—through his translator, Cindy—that I’m doing well for my age. So well that he allows me to skip “power training” to study bagua with Master Wu.
An “internal” style of kung fu, bagua is softer on the joints and can be practiced into old age. Wu Shifu, 69, is a baguazhang master. I respond that I have no intention of skipping anything. My shifu smiles. In that moment I realize he understands I aim to do my very best and know my only enemy is myself.
What he doesn’t know is I’m here for a powerful reason: to come to terms with mistakes I’ve made, the most important of which now is my daughter being without her father.
The minute my daughter was born, I vowed to give her a safe and consistent childhood, perhaps to compensate for my own. My parents were huge drinkers; most nights, it seemed, they were out at a party or brought the party to our house. They probably should not have had children, though I know my father was thrilled when I came along. Still, having grown up during the Great Depression, he didn’t believe in coddling. He did offer help and advice when I asked for it, but that didn’t happen often because he was so busy writing.
There was one thing he enjoyed teaching me, beginning when I was five: how to box. Jab, cross, hook. Jab, cross, hook. He was pleased with my hand-eye coordination. When I took up kickboxing decades later, his instructions came right back to me.
In a way, I’ve brought Eyrna here to learn her own version of jab, cross, hook—as survival skills. It doesn’t escape me that, in Eastern cultures, one’s children are an extension of oneself. In taking on this difficult, ancient martial art, she and I are shaking our fists at recent events in our family life.
Two weeks have passed, and I’ve learned only the first four moves of the tai chi 24-step form, another kung fu discipline. A fundamental move—circling my arms in the correct direction—eludes me. Every morning when I wake, I consider quitting. This must be showing.
“Shifu says when he was a boy, he was very angry to have tai chi practice because it was so slow and boring,” Cindy tells me. “But it became very helpful to him.”
I confide I don’t know why tai chi is so difficult for me.
“Shifu says don’t think, just focus on your qi. Stay only with the first moves,” she advises.
I used to believe “qi,” or life force, was a myth, some kind of legerdemain. But last week, I watched my shifu press the tip of a sharpened spear to the soft space between his collarbones and push his entire weight against it, forcing the wooden shaft to bow to the ground. The spear did not penetrate his skin.
I start my form over, doing my best to empty my mind—which right now is reminding me to get some new running shoes—and think only about breathing into my lower abdomen. I step out with my left leg, bend my knees, bend my arms, circling, not thinking. The movements flow like water. I feel no fear, no regret, no shame, no guilt. I am practicing tai chi. I am here.
“Yeessss,” my shifu says to me in English. I break into a smile and bow to him.
Ancient pine trees tower above the Temple of Confucius, a complex of courtyards and red-walled buildings near Qufu’s center constituting the oldest and largest site dedicated to the thinker. Eyrna and I, nearing the end of our time in China, have come to connect with the man as he was when he was alive.
We make our way through three courtyards to Dacheng Hall, the central edifice, where towering sticks of incense burn in a gigantic cauldron. The pagoda-style roofs glint with touches of gilt. Visitors, mostly Chinese, mill around taking pictures, bowing heads, lighting incense, praying to their ancestors.
My thoughts return to my father, who died before I grew up. What would he have thought of my failures? I know he would have been proud that he raised a fighter.
During my last training session, my shifu instructed each of us students to find a corner in the garden and practice qigong movements. I did, and with time left, stood in a breathing meditation, my palms pressed to my abdomen. Slowly, inexorably, something rose within me, then broke loose. Sobs wracked my being. I was struggling to compose myself—I wasn’t sure what this was about—when I saw the shifu approach with Cindy.
“Shifu says,” Cindy warned me gently, “that you must not go straight from qigong to static meditation. Next time, you must try active meditation. Hold the ball of energy in your hands. Shifu says in a few minutes you will be all right.”
That was grief, I wanted to tell him. But mindful of the need for self-discipline, I didn’t say a word, thanked him, and bowed. Grief—undisciplined, unbalancing—is not the kind of thing you share with your shifu.
Now Eyrna and I sit silently across from Dacheng Hall, on the steps of a building lined with red pillars. A hot breeze whispers past, and red prayer tablets near us jingle like wind chimes.
“I want to come back next summer,” Eyrna says quietly.
I choke up for some reason, and tell her I’m proud of her.
She has had a good time on this journey. She was treated as an adult, pushed to her limits, and judged only on her practice. No one knew about our calamity. Here, she was free.
“You should come back, too,” she says.
“Hmmm.” I want to tell her I understand now why people sell their belongings and join ashrams and monasteries; a life of extreme exercise and meditation looks good to me. I’ve never been in better shape. But in the quiet of this moment, I realize I no longer wish I’d handled anything in the past year differently, or had a different year. My work here, toward Shaolin strength and Confucian calm, is, for now at least, done. I no longer need those running shoes, because I no longer need to run.
Kaylie Jones is the author of several books, including the novel The Anger Meridian. This feature appeared in the August/September 2015 issue of Traveler magazine
> Read It, Do It:
The Qufu Shaolin Kung Fu School located in Shimen Forest National Park 20 miles north of Qufu city—known for its Temple and Cemetery of Confucius World Heritage sites—offers courses in martial arts.
Another good option: the new Heze Traditional Shaolin Kung Fu School, where shifu Shi Xing Lin now teaches, a hundred miles west of Qufu.
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