This first weekend in August, I was fortunate enough to participate in the first ever Qing Ping Sword seminar by Grandmaster Lu-Junhai. Grandmaster Lu is a 6th generation disciple of the Mizong System and a 9th generation disciple of the Qing Ping Sword. Both of my sifu’s are disciples of Grandmaster Lu. If you ever get a chance to see him perform live, his Chinese swordplay is exquisite — there are no other words to describe it.
This was my first real exposure to this weapon, and it is already my favorite. I think I like the intricacies involved in mastering the jian (chinese for sword) — plus, it just looks cool.
There are 6 routines in the Qing Ping system. He taught us the first routine called “Blue Duckweed Sword”. I’m assured by Alice who’s fluent that the name sounds much better in Chinese. There are 62 moves in the entire routine, and we learned them all in a day and a half. You may have seen in kung fu movies where individual movements each have a poetic name… and this form is one of those which has a name for each movement. Names like “rainbow flies across the river” or “cold spike penetrates heaven”. Again, Alice assures me they sound so much better in Chinese. These names (all 62 of them) were created to help one remember the movement… and although I’m currently learning based on the English translations, I have to say that it does indeed help. My ultimate goal will be to learn not only the form and the names, but also the names in Chinese. It may be a little while before I get to that point, however… I’m still trying to learn the entire form itself.
The footwork in this form is much more complex than I’m used to… it’s a Northern form and I usually practice Jow Ga which is a Southern form. Still, this is pretty cool.
Here’s a YouTube video of Grandmaster Lu performing some segments of his forms (not this particular one). These videos were probably taken 15 or 20 years ago, so you can imagine how much more fluid he is now and how far I’ve got to go before looking even 10% as good as this. And believe it or not, that’s why I love learning this stuff…
He was asked at one point what he thought of our group of students learning this, and how well were we doing considering we were learning it in such a short amount of time. His response was an analogy, which I’ll attempt to paraphrase… A chef can teach another person to cook, but it doesn’t mean that person’s food will taste good. Now we know how to cook. (I guess we have a lot of work to do!)
At any rate, thank you Grandmaster Lu for sharing your knowledge with us and the opportunity to study with you – even if it was only for a weekend.
