As I practice Taijiquan, I am constantly surrounded by Chinese words. They appear in books, on school walls, in form names. And at some point, my curiosity took over. So I started learning Chinese. Just a little bit: a beginner course, Duolingo. I take it easy. I don’t have plans to go to China anytime […]
I went to a Tai Chi class recently. We did a lot of applications, the martial side of the practice. I like exploring what each move actually does when practising with a partner. At some point, one of the students said that she doesn’t want to think about an enemy. She doesn’t want to think […]
When I wrote my Tai Chi novel Push Hands*, I started describing all the characters. I did not want to randomly assign names, I wanted them to mean something. And finding the right Chinese names turned out to be quite a joy. A little inside joke, if you will. Chinese names carry a lot of […]
A few months ago, I noticed something unsettling. My Taijiquan practice felt boring. Not occasionally, not only on a tired Monday morning. Just generally, flatly boring. And that worried me, because Taijiquan is something I really love. Or at least, I used to. I noticed this subtle pull away from my practice. Towards my never-ending […]
For years, I have been writing about Taijiquan. A dictionary. Blog posts. Reference articles. All of them non-fiction, all of them trying to get things right. Then an idea hit. An idea for a Tai Chi novel! When I started writing, it was strange at first. To write fictionally. To just go with the flow. […]
