Stay Hungry

                In mid December, after nearly 48 hours of travel and half a planet worth of time zones, I arrived safely in Hanoi, Vietnam. As part of a research team collaborating with professors at Vietnam National University on an agriculture project, I would be in the country for a month, and was excited to begin my research—not to mention for a chance to sample Vietnamese martial arts.

                After a grueling first semester of my Ph. D, I felt drained, exhausted, and weary. My training had taken a severe hit as time went on and my workload increased; I was training in Aikido only around once per week, sometimes not at all, and attending MMA club practices about as often, yet still losing sleep to my bottomless school assignments. My body felt weak and heavy when I practiced, and the stress of 10-12 hour days working had robbed me of the true spirit of my training. I was losing my motivation for learning and progress; the intensity of graduate school sapped me of my energy.

                Hanoi was, despite the coal fires and nonexistent emissions standards, a figurative breath of fresh air; in a new setting, literally across the world from my old responsibilities, surrounded by new people, new sights and smells and tastes, I felt refreshed and finally had the time to rest (often at bizarre hours from severe jet-lag), recuperate, and gain some perspective on the whirlwind of the past few months.

                Weeks went by in Hanoi. We met with professors at the university, taught a seminar on biodiversity conservation, traveled 30 hours by train to our study site and carried out field research, and returned again a week later. All the while, we were constantly being fed and pampered, always more tea, another course of dinner, on and on. Though I was regaining some of my energy, I couldn’t help but feel weak, complacent, lazy and spoiled. When we returned to Hanoi, I resolved to start training on my own; all my attempts at finding martial arts schools had come up dry, and I resigned myself to practicing on my own in a park not far from our hotel.

                Every morning, I walked out to the park—about an acre of open space lodged between the mess of tall apartment buildings in the heart of the city—and strolled along the concrete path which surrounded the pond in it’s center. I would find a patch of unoccupied grass, then spend some time on warmup and stretching exercises, trying to gradually work my body back towards the type of shape it was in before graduate school had begun to affect my training. Little by little, I would work myself up to more and more athletic techniques, starting with slow blocking and parrying exercises from my time practicing Wing Chun, to light footwork and shadowboxing, then karate and Tang Soo Do forms and finally full-speed combinations, hopping and spin kicks, etc. In the first few days I would have to rest often, my heart pounding, as I cursed myself inwardly for letting myself slip so far. Recovery was fast, though, and I was soon able to keep up these workouts for about an hour, and return to the hotel feeling refreshed and a bit less ashamed to accept another invitation for a massive lunch of dog or cobra meat.

                Kicks and punches began to sing the way they used to; I could feel the snap of my sleeves with a well thrown backfist or the great momentum of a spinning hook kick tempered by a solid center of balance. I was really enjoying these personal training sessions, even if I was getting an embarrassing amount of attention from fellow parkgoers, who had come mostly to chat, play mah jong, walk their dogs, meditate, or attend an aerobics class which usually started as I arrived at about sunrise. People occasionally stopped, and speaking what little English they could, managed to ask if I practiced Kung Fu or Karate, etc. Given our proximity to Thailand, I was unsurprised that many recognized the kicks and elbows I was practicing as Muay Thai, which precipitated a lot of thumbs up and impressed exclamations I couldn’t understand. If anything could be said about Vietnam, it was one of the friendliest countries I have ever visited, and I received little negative attention.

                One group in particular, though, raised my suspicions. Perhaps my second morning in the park, I began to notice a couple men, always wearing the same track suits and sneakers, working out across the pond. I could never see their faces; they must have been some of the dozens of people who passed by me on the nearby path while I practiced, but I was never able to recognize them… they always seemed to appear in that spot after I had been training for a while, and I never could see where they came from. I would see them doing a number of leg stretches against a nearby wall, and occasionally engaged in exercises that resembled Tai Chi’s push-hands or other free-form trapping exercises. At one point, I even saw a few Kung-Fu looking forms practiced. I watched the men discretely the first day and the next, and was quick to notice I was being watched the same way; I would catch a sidelong glance here and there, veiled usually by some other action, maybe checking a watch or a cell-phone, but I was being monitored steadily and continuously.

                I open myself for criticism as a believer in potential mumbo-jumbo, but I believe martial artists (not exclusively) tend to develop an acuity of perception through their training that lets them recognize others with similar mindsets and abilities; for lack of a less-dramatic word, they can sense, in a way, “their own kind”. Whether I was throwing kicks or not, these men seemed keenly aware of me, I could almost feel it, though they were perfectly discrete about it. My increasing inklings that they were martial artists were increased as they days progressed, and I saw them engaged in more and more training; from attack-defense kata to kicking and punching trees. I knew I had to make contact.

                To continue with generalizations, another observation. Martial artists are like dogs (or just about any other animal, for that matter). When they meet one another, there is potential for violence. Only by following very strict behavioral protocols (for traditional artists, these can be very strict) are they able to establish mutual respect and the grounds for communication and understanding. I decided I should be conscientious about how I went about establishing contact.

                I wrote a Vietnamese friend of mine an e-mail, asking her to translate a letter I had written to the men, which explained who I was, what I was doing in Vietnam, that I was interested in studying Vietnamese martial arts, and asking if they would be willing to teach me. Within a day, I had a response, and a member of our research team (with better handwriting than my own) had copied it on paper for me. The next morning, I awoke even earlier than before, around 5:30, and rushed to the park in spitting rain; I wasn’t going to miss a chance to catch these men in action, and deliver them my note. I reached the park to find it empty, and started warming up on my own. Half an hour passed. Still no one.
                My heart was sinking as I moved on to practicing alternating finger-jabs and lead side-kicks, when suddenly I noticed a few figures moving across the pond. There they were again; the same men, the same track suits… somehow they had passed by me once again without my noticing! Like before, I was being watched covertly.

                Heart pounding, I ditched my routine, walked back to the path, and took it around the pond toward them. One of the men was stretching with his leg propped up on the wall around the pond, the other was throwing loose high kicks in a slow, deliberate manner. I stopped on the path and looked toward him, gesturing with an open hand toward his kicks. “Kung fu?” I asked, using what seemed to be people’s general term for martial arts (I had tried to pronounce the word for martial art as my friend had taught me a few days before, but couldn’t tell the difference between that and the word for “wife”, and I wanted to take no chances of confusing the situation or offending anyone). “Vang, vang.” (“Yes, yes”) the fellow responded, and I approached him with a friendly and polite smile, pulling out my messily folded note and offering it as unthreateningly as possible with both hands.

                He was a short, stout fellow with a shaved head shining like a cue ball, a strong chin, and mean, dark eyes. In a Mafioso-style 80’s track suit and stark white sneakers, he looked like someone involved in some brand of violent organized crime. I prayed I wasn't making a horrible mistake.

               Hee took the letter and read it over sternly, nodding faintly a few times, and abruptly called out to the other nearby. I nearly leapt out of my skin, realizing I had hardly breathed the last minute or so. “Anh uy!” he barked, then, looking to me, gestured to his approaching companion. “Sifu,” he muttered. My eyes turned to the other.       

                A taller, slenderer man, about my height, with a dark complexion and a squarish face approached us and asked cue-ball something in a voice that came powerfully from the back of his throat. He had almond-shaped brown eyes which shone with an acuity that kept me at a distance, and straight black hair combed like a schoolboy's. A sparse, dark moustache hugged his upper lip, and stretched with a brief and toothy smile as the Mafioso read him my letter. “Okay.” He said in a quick, quacking tone before he had ever even looked at me, turning away to walk further into the grassy clearing and motioning me to follow. I couldn’t believe it; it was happening. I fumbled to remove my fleece, extracted my cellular phone and buried it inside, then hung them both from the branch of a nearby tree.

                “Okay okay.” Said Sifu as cueball continued his stretching kicks nearby.  I was realizing this was probably about as far as either of their English went. I decided it was best to show them my Vietnamese went a bit further. “My name is Charles.” I said in my best, probably atrocious Vietnamese. The two paused for a moment, then seemed to pick up on what I was trying to say. “Chah,” Cueball nodded solemnly, sure he had pronounced the name perfectly, then, pointing to himself. “Quang.” He gestured to sifu. “Duc.” I repeated both names with a curt bow and an excited smile; my heart was pounding. “Chu” (Uncle), said Quang next, pointing to both he and Sifu Duc. In Vietnamese, everyone is referred to be an age- and (sometimes also sex-specific) pronoun, and these are a prerequisite to social interaction. Because the two men were more than a decade my senior and presumably younger than my parents, I was to address them as “uncle”; I stuck to addressing Duc as Sifu. He didn’t mind.

                “Okay okay okay.” Sifu erupted again with a look of mock exasperation, waking me from my excited stupor and idiotic grin by smacking a small tree beside him hard with his palm. He waved me over to stand with him beneath it's spindly branches. Quang came too, and faced off with Sifu in a horse stance. The two alternately brought their forearms together in an inward-sweeping block, once on each side, then collided again with a lower inward-sweeping block, clashing the other sides of each forearm together. Right against right, left against left. This continued for a few seconds, and I cringed at the loud impacts of bone on bone. Neither seemed to notice, and kept right on going with a sort of mechanical precision, not to mention power. The blows got successively stronger, and not an eyelid was batted. “Okay.” Sifu murmured and waved me over. I took a deep breath, hurried into a horse stance, and started the exercise with him.

                I’ve done a bit of work here and there to condition my forearms, but nothing could have prepared me for this. It started off innocently enough, just relaxed and loose, as he taught me to put my body weight behind the strike/block, relax, and just let it fly. The movements got faster, the collisions harder; I could feel my forearms throbbing with the type of pain one gets accidentally meeting shins while sparring in karate or Tae Kwon Do. The man’s arms felt like steel.

                The movements increased to such a pace I was having trouble keeping up; it felt like my arms would break before he stopped. Fortunately for me, one of us (probably me) got their next strike out of order, and, missing contact, we stopped. “Okay okay.” Sifu said, and he gave another quick, reserved smile as I chuckled as good-humoredly as I could, rubbing my stinging forearms. They were already raw and bright pink.

                “Okay.” Said Sifu, and pointed to the nearby tree. Quang walked over, squared off beside it, and began doing the same exercise with the tree; his forearms smacked loudly against the smooth bark, and dewdrops fell around us with each impact. I clenched my jaw and tried to keep the color from draining from my face. I lined myself up across from Uncle Quang and began crashing my smarting forearms against the tree. Each impact felt like I was hitting a three day old bruise. Quang increased his pace and forcefulness, shaking the tree infront of me, as the dew drops fell wet and merciful on my sweating forehead. I grit my teeth as he motioned for me to strike harder, and did so despite my body’s every indication that this was the worst idea ever conceived. So it continued; I was concentrating so hard on striking ever faster and ever harder, on managing the pain, I hardly heard Sifu’s next “Okay!” until he had repeated it a

 few times. He gave a boyish laugh at the expression on my face as I turned back toward him.

                He motioned to Quang again, who, by this point, was smacking the sides of his hands against the tree in an overhead chop, hardening what the Japanese call “tekatana” or the hand-blade, the outer surface of the hand on the pinky side. With the same resounding smack, he drove his hands against the tree alternately from above his head. I did the same.

                “Ba cham!” said sifu Duc. “Vang,” I replied hesitantly, assuming I had misheard him. He couldn’t have meant three hundred, right? He probably meant ba muoi, thirty. I cranked out thirty of the hardest overhead strikes I could, shaking the tree and feeling the impacts ringing through my hands. I stopped and turned toward him expectantly, shaking my hands in the air. “Ba cham, ba cham!” he repeated, and Uncle Quang skipped over, then drew the numbers “3 0 0” in the dirt with a stick, repeating “Ba cham.” Matter-of-factly. My heart sank. I had overdone my first few strikes, and would pay for as my last 270 led on. My hands were red and swollen by the time I had finished.

                “Okay okay!”. Sifu lined up with Quang again. This time, Quang threw four punches; two to the face, two to the groin. Sifu blocked these easily with the forearm blocking routine from before. “Okay.” He said again, then turned and walked away two paces, pointing behind his back for me to take his place. I did. This was going to hurt.
                The punches came fast, and without thinking I blocked them as crisply and strongly as I could. I could hear the harsh smack of bone against bone. Even worse, seconds later I could feel it. Punch after punch, block after block, it continued. As before, the pace and impact quickened, and my arms were trembling with pain; I knew I had to continued through it, though. These men were going far out of their way to teach me, and to quit now would be a great offense and breed bad spirit between us.

                I persisted, until at last I managed to completely whiff a block, losing my place in the sequence, and a rush of air hit my nose as Quang’s compact, rock-like fist stopped a centimeter or two from my nose. It would have taken my head off. “Okay okay.” Sifu called from a few feet away. I bowed to Quang and turned, only to see sifu in a puffy black jacket, pulling a black beanie onto his head and lighting a cigarette.
                “Tra cay si, tra cay si.” He repeated, which I understood to mean something about tea and something about a tree. He motioned out toward the street nearby. Quang had left my side and was putting on his jacket too. I rubbed, wincing, at my forearms as I pieced together that we were going out for tea. I thanked Sifu Duc and Uncle Quang profusely for teaching me, and they responded with typically taciturn nods, faces a grim, fatherly sort of expressionless. They were both now dragging contentedly at thin cigarettes and waiting for me to get my things. I sprinted over to the nearby tree and grabbed my fleece, but couldn’t dream of putting it on; my heart was still pounding, my face dripping with sweat. Even in the cool of a Hanoi winter, I was burning up.

                Quang hopped on his motorbike and went on ahead of us. I think Sifu Duc explained that to me, but I haven’t a clue what he said. Through my broken Vietnamese and a lot of martial art charades, Sifu Duc and I worked out that I had studied other martial arts in the past as I followed him up to where we would have tea. I told him I had studied Karate and Aikido. He asked if I had studied Muay Thai, and made a motion like the elbows I had been practicing most of last week. I nodded, and repeated “Muay Thai.” He nodded solemnly and took another drag from his cigarette, returning his hands to the pockets of his voluminous coat. It took me a moment to realize, but Sifu Duc, in his cursory examinations of my technique from across the pond, had figured out precisely what other art I had studied, and probably knew a good deal about my training than I did.

Right to Left:  A Student of Sifu, Uncle Quang, Sifu Duc, 

and myself at the shrine near our tea stand

                We met up with Quang at a streetside tea stand (a set of small stools around a teakettle and giant thermos) and paid about 10 cents each to sit or squat and drink the scalding, robustly-brewed green tea. Quang and Duc were excitedly interrogated by the other tea-drinkers on their new (and so blatantly white) companion; they were apparently regulars and conversed readily with them. With a lot of pointing to me, I suppose they explained my situation; I heard “Aikido”, “Karate” and “Muay Thai” at least once, and our new acquaintances laughed and smiled, either patting me firmly on the back or pointing and offering a thumbs up in a friendly, if half-mocking show of admiration. "Number one!" a man in his mid-thirties said with a gap-toothed grin, pointing my way. I shook my head. "Khong" ("No"), I said as diplomatically as possible, pointing instead to sifu Duc. "Number 1! Sifu!" There was a lot of hearty laughter; obviously more at my general goofiness than my stunning Vietnamese humor. I continued sweating profusely as the glass of steaming tea scalded my palms, but the sting was lost in the noise of the rawness from a few hundred impacts against a smooth-barked tree.

                Quang showed me a few exercises to keep my wrists from locking up as my forearms swelled from the training, and some ways of slapping and striking certain pressure points to get muscles to relax around the shoulders and neck. I conversed as best I could with my limited Vietnamese, though in about an hour’s time we had established only that I was twenty-four years old, had practiced Aikido for 8 years, and that yes, I agreed that Vietnamese women were very pretty.

                After some time, another student of Sifu Duc arrived; one who spoke English. Linh was a tour guide, a few years my senior, with a round face and heavy brows, a serious demeanor which broke easily into a kind smile. He spoke with a strong Australian accent, which he explained he picked up from his English teacher and from the tourists he tended to work with. He relayed Sifu’s questions to me and translated my answers, and helped the discussion along considerably.
                “Sifu says it’s alright if you want to train with him. You’re alright.” said Linh, “he got to work with you on the basics, and your arms and legs are good, but inside, something is weak.” I felt stung by the comment at first, but was honored at the honesty and brusqueness of it. It was at this point I knew I wasn’t being patronized or led along; these men weren’t going to sugarcoat anything for me. That was just how I wanted it.
                “He will train with you every morning in the park.” Linh continued with daunting certainty, “So he will see you tomorrow. Thursday, you will come train with the formal class at Lenin park." It was around this time that I realized I was going to be running late for a visit to the University, and still hadn't collected my things or eaten breakfast. I explained this to Linh, and, using his favorite catchphrase, he told me dismissively that it was alright. I expressed my thanks as thoroughly as possible, shaking Sifu’s and Quang’s hands at least three times, then gulped down the rest of my 4^th glass of tea and took off back toward the Hotel.

                My head was spinning as I hurried along the busy Hanoi street; it was almost rush hour, and the roar of the motorbikes was becoming deafening. I felt elated, energized, almost trembling with intensity. This was at least partially due to several glasses of potent tea on an empty stomach, but there was more. I felt all at once a sort of return to the intensity and passion which has motivated me in my training for years, and which got me involved in the first place. I had re-ignited some spark of ambition, of need, of… hunger to learn and practice the martial arts. My mind didn’t feel clouded or sluggish or weak, but inspired, like I had found my purpose again, reattached to the foundation of my training. I was eager to spring forth once more and continue my journey in the martial arts.

                Any martial artist who has practiced for more than a few years knows that inspiration and personal drive can at times be dampened by other obligations, personal and emotional issues, and so forth, leading to a lull or plateau where progress seems to stop and training feels stagnant. A key part of mastery, I think, is not the ability to avoid such occasional pitfalls altogether—this may not be humanly possible—but to persist through them and overcome them time and time again. I feel unbelievably fortunate to have met Sifu Duc and his students at Ho Giam park; they helped me rediscover that inspiration and get my training back on track. I hope my fellow martial artists can have similar experiences when they feel they have hit a wall in their training. Always remember: stay hungry.