Push Hands Challenge in Taiwan
By
Sifu Alan Hubbard
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In December 1987, Grandmaster Doc-Fai Wong took for the first time, a
team to Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China for the International Tai Chi
Chuan Push Hands Championship. After the opening ceremony, his team
members where warming up for the competition. Grandmaster was wearing
the US team jacket and walking around the competition arena. One local
tournament judge approached him and introduced himself. He told
Grandmaster that push hands in tai chi is very important. He continued
and said, if you practice tai chi and can not do push hands well, then
you don’t know tai chi. He bragged about how well his push hands skill
was and boasted that he had many of his students entered in the
competition. He didn’t quite understand that Grandmaster was the US team
coach, so he tried to recruit him to be his student to represent him in
the US. He was also teaching the Yang style of tai chi; his teacher was
the student of the late Professor Cheng Man-Ching.
Grandmaster just let him do all of the talking and he didn’t say
anything about his own background. Finally, Grandmaster’s student Jane
Hallander, came over and respectfully bowed to Grandmaster and asked him
a technical question about the rules. The local judge (not nice to
mention his name here) who had been bragging to Grandmaster, understood
English. He interrupted and did all of the answering for Grandmaster
which made it seem like Grandmaster didn’t know the rules of the
competition well. In his mind he thought, “how good could their push
hands be, if they don’t even understand the rules“?
The judge asked Grandmaster to do push hands with him and tried to show
that he was more superior than him. Grandmaster had no choice; the judge
had joined his hands to Grandmaster’s hands already. Jane Hallander was
observing the whole event by standing next to them. The push hands judge
did a different push hands pattern than Grandmaster; therefore
Grandmaster couldn’t work out the basic pattern with him. At this point,
he really thought that Grandmaster didn’t know anything about push
hands. Now, he really tried to push Grandmaster over. However, every
time when he tried to push, Grandmaster neutralized all of his pushes.
He tried to push him over for several minutes and attacked with over 30
pushes. He still could not push Grandmaster over. He finally stopped and
asked Grandmaster to push him instead. In the beginning, Grandmaster
just wanted to feel his jing by moving softly and slowly. Grandmaster
hadn’t really tried to push him yet before he shouted at him and said,
“Push me harder, push me harder, quit fooling around and wasting time“.
All of this had not gone unnoticed, a large crowd of people at the side
of the gym had gathered together to watch. Knowing this guy had no idea
with whom he was pushing or what he had just asked for; Grandmaster did
exactly what he was asked to do. Grandmaster found his stiff points and
pressed his arms slightly downward and then lifted upward to push both
of his arms straight out forward. His entire body flew up and out and as
he hit the floor he slid several meters like a ball. He got up and told
the spectators that the floor was slippery. He wanted to continue push
hands with Grandmaster. This time the judge focused on his rooting. His
body was leaning forward. Grandmaster tried to push him a couple of
times and felt that his energy was learning forward, so Grandmaster knew
exactly what to do. Grandmaster pretended to push him forward and felt
his jing was force against force; so instead he pulled him to his right
side immediately, the judge flew forward to Grandmaster’s lower right
side and fell behind him. He got up with an embarrassed expression.
The tournament judge knew his mouth had done the talking while
Grandmaster had let his skill do the talking. Grandmaster spoke to him
and said, “Perhaps, the floor is too slippery, maybe we can practice
again later on a better floor“. Of course, the spectators knew what was
going on. Grandmaster just said that to allow the guy to save face. The
tournament judge got up and said, “Ok, practice with you later“ and
quickly walked away.
In the end, Grandmaster’s team won second place in the international
competition with competitors coming from 17 countries. Taiwan’s team
received the first place. They were also the first American tai chi push
hands team to ever win with the highest scores in the history of Taiwan.