JessinChina

Hi all, does anyone know where I can get an audio version of the dao de jing in mandarin? I'd appreciate any help. Dao blessings, Jess

Glad you like them Stig. Great time. What an adventure. My best to you and yours, Happy New Year of the Tiger. JessinChina

It's everywhere as you say, on both sides. Hopefully, we rise above it. My best to you all. Jessinchina

Hi All, Part III of the Beijing Daoism Conference has been posted on my blog. If you're interested you can read it here: http://jessgoestochina.spaces.live.com/default.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0&sa=454538386 I'd cut and paste, but then you'd not see the pix - some are nice. This entry is about our trip through Henan with the other delegates. Happy New Year of the Tiger. Warm Regards, Jessinchina

Sorry to say, it was an academic conference and I believe the xing shen zhuang in my presentation was the only 'demonstration' on the agenda. There were hundreds of practicing Daoists from different sects at the conference. I heard one from Spain give a talk, but he offered no demonstrations of techniques. He spoke about the temple he had created in Spain and the need for more temples around the world. So, other than XSZ -- there were no demonstrations I saw, at least not in B conference room.... JessinChina You can see what Brock is up to on linkedin here: http://www.linkedin.com/profile? Search for his name and you will see he is ceo of a consultancy for startups in Asia. PS. Just read your issue of Journal of Chinese Martial Arts. I enjoyed it very much. Best of luck in the new year. JessinChina

Thank you for your help. These are great leads I will follow up as soon as I finish the term here. I teach at a University in Hangzhou and it's exam time. Thanks again. Best wishes for the new year. JessinChina

No I have not heard of BK Frantizi's Bend the Bow spinal Chi Gung. Please tell me more or direct me to those that can. Any books? Research? Contact for BK Krantizi? I would love to interview the teacher or anyone with direct transmission and experience of the form. Thank you for enlightening me. I appreciate your help. Sincerely, JessinChina

Hi all, just posted Part II on the Conference with pictures -- which didn't show up in the cut and paste here. If you want to read it in the blog, with photos go to: http://jessgoestochina.spaces.live.com/default.aspx Happy New Year... January 03 Part II Daoism Conference East/West Divide The First International Summit on Laozi and Daoist Culture held Nov. 5-7 at the China World Hotel in Beijing launched Daoism as an official native religion of China. More than 600 Daoist academics and clergy from all over the world attended and presented. See November 30, 2009 entry, Part I PRC Embraces Daoism, below. photo In the Great Hall of the People, Beijing. Following our luncheon at the Great Hall of the People we were shuttled back to the hotel for the beginning presentations. The conference was categorized into three groups: A, B & C. The "foreign group" for Western scholars was ascribed to Group B. We had instant translation via headsets for both Chinese and English presentations. As it was already late in the day, there were only two panels presenting and then a few moments to spare before a banquet in the evening. Some notable presentations that afternoon were from Mary Bockover of Humboldt State who spoke on Desire in the DaoDeJing, Kimberly Powers, a doctoral student at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes on The Shamanic Influence on Early Daoism and Huang Zhi'an of the Chinese Taoist Association who spoke on Daoist Culture and Human Civilization in the 21st Century. The banquet afterwards was classical Chinese food, interspersed with a few speeches by conference organizers and most of us went off to bed as early as possible. I had a bath. My first real bath in China [since I moved here in 2008.] Day 2 of our conference dawned. I woke early and looked out the hotel window to see... nothing. Smog? Dust storm? At nearly 6 am, downtown Beijing visibility was practically zero. I had heard that smog was a problem in Beijing, but the day before had been clear and sunny and cold. Today, the air was a sickly yellow and almost completely opaque. I had thought to practice Taiji outside before my morning presentation. I spied one lone Daoist in full dress strolling outside as day broke, but declined to risk it myself. Instead I went downstairs to the hotel gym and found a room to practice in. Afterwards, a delicious breakfast -- the hotel's food was fresh, amazing in its variety and had many Western appointments including silverware and coffee. photo China World Hotel Dining Room My panel, Daoist Conception of Body, Health and Medicine was presenting at 9:50 am. There were six of us and we each had about 15 minutes to present. Most had PowerPoints and the hotel's tech gurus managed it all easily. Donald Davis of Old Dominion [whom I had met at the Wudangshan Daoism Conference this summer] moderated and Rey Tiquia of University of Melbourne, Australia opened. We had a lively panel with lots of humor. Tiquia cleverly mixed tongue-in-cheek with academic rigor and focused on whether the Dao has a physical 'body.' Next up, the keen-minded Deborah Sommer, from Gettysburg College, on Concepts of the Body in the Zhuang zi. Vincenzo di Ieso, president of the Taoist Association of Italy, presented thereafter new research on Daoist Qi gong with a demonstration of his abilities to read energy in a room and then I presented Xing Shen Zhuang Fa: A Daoyin to Liberate the Spine. Here is an excerpt: photo ...During the presentation... This presentation gives a brief overview of xing shen zhuang fa形神庄法 , a rare Daoyin form seldom presented in public that seeks to open the body and the mind by stretching and releasing muscles, nerves and fascia along the spine. It is the only Daoyin form that focuses exclusively on the spine and the entire spinal column. Xing shen zhuang fa opens and releases the spine through a series of slow, gentle movements that begin at the cervicals and finish with the tailbone. Regular practice of these standing postures has been known to strengthen internal organs, heal disease and clear subtle and physical obstructions in the spine and elsewhere. The series of simple exercises also awakens sensitivity and promotes health, strength, flexibility, lightness and suppleness originating from the spine and extending to the limbs. The movements, like many Daoyin forms, are not strenuous and can be done by most anyone regardless of athletic ability. The ultimate achievement from the xing shen zhuang practice however is song送 , that elusive state of total awareness and relaxation that is the key to Daoist longevity and ascension practices. photo Donald Davis with microphone, me demonstrating one of the form's movements. The full academic paper was submitted to the conference and is to be published in a collection in the following months. My presentation over, I sat down to listen to author and scholar Livia Kohn of Boston University speak on Daoist Body Cultivation and Behavioral Kinesiology and Healing Dao senior instructor and prolific Daoist alchemy author Michael Winn speaking on The Role of qi gong and Inner Alchemy in the West's Emerging Science of Consciousness. After Winn finished, I got a cup of tea and ran into several colleagues who complained they had been turned away from Conference room A where the Chinese scholars were giving their presentations. My colleagues are Western scholars, fluent in Mandarin and the others had headsets. We wondered why we were separated. I left my friends in the hall and plucked myself up and out and walked the short distance to Conference room A. Sure enough, two suited hotel staff with earphones and walkie talkies stood at the entrance of the glass doors and denied me entry. They pointed to my badge which says Group B [meaning I belong in Conference room B] and turned me away. I shrugged, puzzled. On my way back, I ran into Winn. Both of us former journalists, we didn't take well to being herded. Winn suggested we instead try Conference room C--if we could sneak in--and see what was going on there. Winn and I, headsets in hand, slipped into the back of room C. We sat down and listened as a very strident sounding woman spoke in Mandarin. After a second the translation in English began: ...The West thinks that China is telling lies...Why don't they believe us? The West, when powerful it will invade. We have a lot of harmony. We have power and yet we do not attack. Religion is integrated in China. Our religions live in peace and harmony. But in the West they are not mixable and the religions contradict. They believe in religious conflict. We believe they are inclusive and can meld together. Also, some differences: in the West, people are evil there is original sin, into material things and are self-centered. They use forks and knives to cut their food. In the East, we believe people are good natured, we believe in the collective, we use chopsticks to eat our food. In the West, knowledge is power. In the East, we learn and be good natured with the idea that you are serving people. Knowledge is not equal to wisdom. Wisdom is coming from knowledge. In the West they believe in games: checks and balances, geographical and geopolitical boundaries. In the East, we believe in harmony, achieved through the distribution of power and using resources for harmonious living.... Wise Winn, he nodded off. Me, with my mouth agape, I took notes. The experience in Conference room C set me to looking for the excerpts from Conference room A papers published in brief in the conference materials. Here is what I found, of those that were translated into English [errors in the original]... The Interpretation of TaoTeChing in The Vision of Comparative Culture, Zheng Hailing, Institute of Comparative Culture and Translation, School of Foreign Language and Literature, BNU... Hegel's misreading and misinterpretation for Confucius and Lao Tse works...highlighting the inevitable linguistic obstacles in the internationalization of Taoism. Language translation, which functions as one of the important means for cross-culture communications, inevitably result in some barriers. [Title and Author in Mandarin only; excerpt in English]...Philosophy is the soul of a nation...However, since May the Fourth Movement, total Westernization has mislead China in to the mud of western philosophical ideas and thus the effort of nearly hundred years has turned into nothing. Based on Taoist ideas this article tries to clarify matters and get to the bottom of things and to lay a solid foundation for the revitalization of great Chinese civilization. The philosophic category and rhetoric the writer uses are fully that of western philosophy. This is what is called as 'taking foreign advantages to control foreigners' or cutting through his shield with his spear. [No title] Gong Butan, School of Law, Wuhan University...In the process of cultural globalization, local culture is straightly facing the impact and pressure of western strong culture, which becomes the internal motivation of Chinese traditional culture's rejuvenation. DaoDeJing is increasingly and broadly applied into many fields such as politics, business, science, etc. in contemporary China, as a newly emerging group in China's market economy, Daoist businessman plays a main role as enterprise manager and carries a heavy duty of rejuvenating the traditional Daoist culture nowadays. I first wrote about the differences between the West and the East and the divisions, barriers and challenges between our cultures and Daoism after my first Daoism conference in China at Wudangshan in June of 2009. That article was submitted to the Beijing Review and was due to run the week of November 2 -- concurrent with this conference in Beijing. It was pulled at the last minute from publication as 'unsuitable' over the protestations of my editor who has published my work before. That article is posted in this blog under Dao Assembly: East Meets West in Mt. Wudang, November 21, 2009. Part III on the Beijing conference where the organizers take over 100 foreign scholars on a wild bus trip through Henan province to see the 'birthplace' of Laozi and the Longmen Grottos, with pictures, will follow in a few days.

Thanks so much Stig. I'm thrilled to have the photo. yes, Livia Kohn invited me to attend at the June conference to teach XSZ in a two hour session, said she might get me some stippend. I will try to go. Livia is hard to resist. Also, Wang Tin Jun has passed away, he was a master of taiji and of course xing shen zhuang, so I feel more and more I should get out and teach the forms as best I can. I did not study with him, and was dearly hoping to interview him for my book on the form, but that's not to be now. My teacher studied with Wang tin Jun and of course David V. did as well. Lots of love to you and Carol. You both look great in the pix.

Stig, you are the man! How did you get this pix? Thanks so much for posting it. May I copy it to my blog? They were selling the photo at the conference for 600Y and I didn't want to spend the kuai. Let me know if it's okay for me to use it. My best to you and yours in the New Year. JessinChina

Hi Michael, thanks for this response. I hadn't read it until today. Part II on the summit will be posted this weekend for the new year and part III about our trip to Laozi's 'birthplace' shortly thereafter. You are correct there are sects that consider Laozi a 'God' and an 'immortal' depending on the translation. We visited a temple dedicated to Laozi on the trip. I also agree, definitely not my call to make on whether Laozi existed or not and certainly wouldn't tell someone their belief system was 'superstition.'' Instead I deferred to the experts and reporterd what one Chinese expert and one Western expert at the conference told me: the Chinese prof said yes and the Western prof said no. Thanks again for reading the posts. JessinChina

Thanks Stigweard. I also posted a link to part one from the Beijing Daoism conference I wrote for my blog on the thread you started. Don't know if that was the right place to do so. Part II is coming this weekend.... Lots of love to you and yours, Happy Solstice JessinChina

Hi Stig and TaoBums, Part I on the Daoist Summit is now live on my blog. Please see http://jessgoestochina.spaces.live.com/default.aspx. Meant to file sooner, but dysentary brought me down for two weeks post summit. Parts II and III coming up. JessinChina

Gracious, can you imagine a Taoist editor? Don't go looking for the story, let it come to you....return, return, return, there is nothing out there you need to find...on second thought, it would clear up a whole lotta problems in journalism if there were Taoist editors....Nah, couldn't work. But a nice thought... JessinChina

My editor would not be amused, nor would my bank account.... JessinChina

My sentiments exactly. What a lot of discussion about what cannot be named....but here I am going there to try to write about the impact of what cannot be named on China and the West...now that's an interesting challenge... JessinChina

A twitter friend pointed me to this forum, although I've stumbled upon it before doing research. I'm not much for intros, but would like to say I'm glad to be here. I am heading to Wudangshan for the Fifth Int'l Conference on Daoism, June 18, commissioned to write two short articles for the Beijing Review on related topics. I will need some help. These are big topics to cover in a small space. I like to reach broad and deep for information and understanding -- perhaps there are some here who can help me avoid pitfalls -- overgeneralization, western bias, ignorance. I've been studying Tao for over 14 years, with various teachers from different paths. Some serious some not so serious, you all know who they are. For the last three years have seriously been practicing tai chi chuan and learning neigong and healing arts. I am searching for authentic women's internal arts practices; hoping to get some training at Kundao if they will have me. I am also going to Rome in August to study some foundational practices with a disciple of Master Wang Liping. Additionally, have been invited to attend another Dao conference in Beijing in November. I am grateful to be able to write and try to live these practices as best I can. I hope to be a contributing member to the group some day as well. Sincerely, JessinChina

Hi erdweir, Don't know about pollution and Xi'an. I have a friend there teaching, he would fill you in much better. Not a Tao bum, but a nice fellow who is also into MA. He's on my FB account. Do you FB? I can connect you directly then. Let me know and I'll invite you. Since I live here now, I no longer apprentice with my sifu. I miss studying and practicing with him. But the conference has some healing panels and I ought to be able to learn something there. I will see my sifu in July for corrections to my tai chi form and to discuss my nei gong. All the best, JessinChina

Dear LongHuShan, you must be right, there are no taoists living in caves on Huangshan. My mistake. Yes, I have walked around Xihu after it has rained. I don't know what you are talking about -- seal-engraving temple, Hongyi Dashi, feel free to educate me and I wll look into what you are suggesting. JessinChina

Hi LongHu Shan, There are still Taoists living on Huangshan--in caves. I have dependable sources who visited last year and made the acqaintence of several of them, were given demonstrations, etc. The tradition lives. JessinChina

Thank you for this. Hangzhou is beautiful. It is amazing to me that a city this size can have so much beauty cultivated amidst the hussle and bustle of a major metropolis. If you come, do let me know I will make every effort to be a good host. Although I've only been in HZ for a little over four months [i was in Fuyang for my first term teaching] I have learned a few things about the city and its environs. For Taoists, the Baopu Temple for one is amazing, with a glorious view over Xihu [West Lake]. It is an active temple that honors Ge Hong, or Ke Hong or Baopuzi depending on what you like to call him. A wonderous man, a healer and internal alchemist [as well as creating some powerful dan [pills] I've heard as well] advocating simplicity in everything. I am still looking for an English version of his book, but in CN haven't found one. Baopu is also the home of the Zhejiang/Hangzhou Taoist Association, but I haven't had anyone return my email from there yet. It is probably my poor Mandarin that is causing the communication snafu, certainly no fault of their's I am sure. I have studied 14 years, but many different Taoist practices--primarily Healing Tao and Dahn from South Korea. Dragongate I only heard about last year. I have friends that study with Jeffrey Yuan, a priest of the Jade Purity Sect, an acupunturist with phenomenal wisdom. So I have absorbed some of his teachings and have his tapes and lectures for my own understanding of the energy system. I was an apprentice to an acupuncturist for over a year who studied with Yuan and learned very much. I apprenticed to understand TCM, my energy body and because I have been studying healing arts including Western herbology for many years. It was a very gratifying experience--the art of acupunture is deep and profound and a lifetime of study wouldn't be enough. It has been exceptional for my tai chi as well. Connecting the meridian pathways while moving through the postures has deepened and strengthened my daily practice considerably. Of course without my tai chi teacher, I would never had understood this at all. Where would we be without sifus! I have some vicarious understand of Longmenpai--I have been taught some dao yin, the meditation of the thunderpath, and some other practices learned from those who have studied with DV. So my language will not be nearly as good as yours. I am a student on the path and am willing to do what is necessary to commit to longterm practices. I am at a place in my life where I have no household responsibilties and can come and go as I please. So I have been looking at places I can spend two, three years or longer to practice and cultivate. I am sure the Tao will lead me to the right place and teachers. I am grateful for your offer of help with my writing. It is very much appreciated. I have very little space to write [the eternal challenge of journalism] and so must condense and simplify and refine. Another pair of eyes, with experience will be most appreciated. I am pleased to make your acquaintence and look forward to our future conversations. JessinChina

How sweet. Our cups are neighbors. I have not had the chance to taste Keemun. I love black tea, but as you probably know I'm in the land of Long Jin, Dragon Well, and green tea [lu cha] is de rigueur. I sneak some oolong for myself though and don't mention it. Most people, especially my students, turn their noses up at the mere mention of oolong. Even if I tell them it's from taiwan. What can I say, to each her or his own! Feel free to tell me about Anhui. I have students from there and friends who have been to Huangshan. I've only been to HZ so far and Fuyang and briefly to Shanghai. School has kept me grounded until recently. Thanks for your compliment as well. But I am only a student, no disingenuosity intended. I have much to learn. However, whatever I do learn/discovery I am happy to share. Best, JessinChina Thanks LongHu Shan, I'll do my best for you to answer these questions. Your name means Dragon Tiger Mountain, which LongHu Shan are you named after, may I ask? I love the UK, haven't been there in years. Went to university there back ages ago. Haven't returned since. But I dream of a trip back some day. Best, JessinChina