They call soccer "the beautiful game". Of course there are many types of games, but in many respects martial arts is the most complex of them all. It is a game of violence, of pain and of beauty, but not in equal measure. A volatile game that can trick you, seduce you and even destroy you. It's an old game and it'll still be there after these ramblings of mine are forgotten. I call it the long game.
People usually come into the long game when they are young and fresh. We don't need to go into details as to why they first want to play, those reasons change over the years. In a world that lacks belief in politicians, in religion, in education and even in the future, the long game is something that can offer reality and truth or money and power - sometimes all of these things at the same time. Many players of the long game come to desire these things more than anything else.
By the time this is published, I'll be 40. Yes, truly; maybe Dorian Gray wasn't the only one to have his portrait painted. In the 23 years I've played the long game, my old karate teacher and my Tai Chi master have both retired. They played the long game as best they could and put into it more than they took out. I believe that they both could and should have achieved more than they did, but someone will say the same about me one day.
The people who've played it with me ? Some of my old Glasgow karate classmates of more than 20 years ago are still practicing - Terry Connal, who used to go for a Turkish bath with me every Saturday after training, is a 5th Dan now, but his jokes haven't improved. I kind of envy Terry because many of the people we used to train with are still his friends and have now become his students. I don't have many of those left, old friends I mean. Even my old Tai Chi training partner, Tong Chi-kin has got married and moved to Guatemala.
Sooner or later in the long game most people need to decide whether to become a teacher or to stop playing. I remember Ian Cameron telling me that he had decided to teach Tai Chi in Edinburgh so that he would have people to work with to bring on his own standard. After twenty years I think he's still teaching for the same reasons as when he started. Few can say the same.
I left Hong Kong and moved to London 10 years ago to teach Tai Chi partly for the same reason as Ian, partly because there was nothing I'd rather do than teach and practice Tai Chi Chuan and actually get paid for it.
I thought with my matchless technique and boyish charm that I'd be an overnight success. I was wrong - about the overnight success; it took almost two years before I started to make half decent profits. It takes time to build up a school, to produce good students, to establish branches in other cities and other countries, to put my main competitors out of the long game.
A number of the full time Tai Chi and Kung Fu gyms have had to close, the recent recession being the last straw. Like the dinosaurs with small brains and large lumbering frames they couldn't adapt and so became extinct. So it's not enough just to become a teacher to succeed in the long game. You need marketing skills, financial acumen, political skills. You need to become part mafia don, part entrepreneur.
This is what makes me an admirer of Danny Connor, a man who has changed with the times and has often been the vanguard in introducing new teachers and styles to Britain. Danny told me recently that I had a long and dusty trail ahead of me, but that for him it was the last round-up. Maybe it was his way of saying that at heart we're just a couple of cowboys.
Many times over the years, when things got bad I thought about getting a day job, but each time I kept on because I felt that I could only really become a Tai Chi master if I devoted myself full time to the long game. That's not an easy thing to do.
I remember a couple of years ago talking to Nigel Sutton of ZhongDing Tai Chi Chuan, asking him if he still saw himself as being a full time Tai Chi instructor in ten years time. He told me he hoped not and moved to Malaysia more than a year ago where I hear he's very happy practicing and researching martial arts.
Nigel, who is doing a PH.D., said that telling people that you taught martial arts for a living didn't have a very positive impact. In a way it's strange that this is so. "Respected professionals" such as lawyers and accountants are essentially parasites; doctors often aren't any better, with little tolerance for patients with martial arts injuries, prescribing drugs they know are little better than placebos.
But in teaching Tai Chi Chuan you can improve the health of students, enable them to defend themselves, to have self respect and engender in them an interest in Chinese martial arts and culture that can change their whole lives. And yet few Tai Chi instructors are in the same earnings league as lawyers and accountants.
To play the long game with success, you need an iron constitution, to be able to sleep anywhere and to eat anything and always to be ready; ready for trouble and ready to change. More than anything else survival is the key to success.
For a style to survive in the long game it requires commitment and sacrifice. We don't train just for our own sakes but so that we can develop sufficiently to pass on what the Chinese term "Zhen Chuan", true transmission.
The character "Zhen" has a special connotation and "Zhen Ren" is one who has transformed himself in the eyes of others through Taoistic practice. Only a Zhen Ren is capable of Zhen Chuan. Zhen Chuan is inside the door training and covers many matters not to be found in books and not explained in classes.
The Six Secret Words of Tai Chi Chuan are an example of Zhen Chuan. There are writings such as the so-called Five Word Secret of Li Yi-yu which is not a secret and does not consist of Five Words, but the Six Secret Words are six practical fighting concepts, almost useless to anyone who does not have a foundation in the art. My teacher taught me these many years ago. I don't know if he ever taught them to anyone else, but I've never heard anyone else talk of them.
Many people playing the long game harbour great ambitions. I know a fierce Chinese lady who remarked to me in Hong Kong recently that she wondered, after his death, who would sit in our teacher's chair, she said perhaps it would be me. That's what she said, but I don't think it's what she was thinking. I don't want my teacher's chair; I have my own.
I heard recently that a Chinese Tai Chi instructor in Reading was predicting my imminent demise, while another predicted that I would soon retire as I'd already made my fortune teaching Tai Chi Chuan.
Well, I'm worry to disappoint them, only the good die young and I won't retire till I've made my second million. In the meantime I'll continue to play the long game with you all.