Morning Qigong Practice

 I haven’t done Qigong for a while. I needed a break for my mind to get back to the physical world from the ethereal. Today is a good day, nice a sunny, the weather finally warm up even for Moss Beach.

After my morning walk, I took a shower. Then I have 23 minutes before we have to leave home at 11 AM, so I announced to Jack that I will do Qigong. This time, because it’s still in the morning, I decided to do Qigong with my eyes closed, to see if I can get the calming feeling that I have had a few years ago.

I stretch out my inhale and exhale into long, smooth, and thin breaths, and move my arms and legs according to my breath. Inhale is generally while my arms moving up, and exhale associating to lowering the arms. Inhale expanding the chest and belly, exhale, contraction. 

With my eyes closed, I normally “see” dark and grey, and occasional white lights/movements. At the beginning of my practice, I “see” in front of me darkness and with a lot of “movement” as if there are all white color “fireworks” in front of me. My mind was wondering about the week’s happenings - at work, at home, with Jack and the dogs; evening walks and tv shows; the fair-well lunch for Sunny and gathering with friends; the Thunder Wonder podcast with many various topics. Once some uneasiness hit me, as something stuck about work. I let it go. 

Breathing long, smooth and steady, moving according to the sequence at the speed of my breath, my mind started to calm down around the middle of the practice. In front of my eyes, I “see” darkness with less and less movements. Eventually the “fireworks” were dissipated, and replaced by stillness. 

At the end of the practice, my “mirror” (as in my mind) is cleaned, and it return to the shiny reflection.

On the drive out of home to the peninsula, Jack said: I moved your car this morning, and changed your car setting. I was like: what do you mean you moved my car, was my car blocking you? 

He said, yes it was blocking me.

I said, why did my car block your car? Did I not part forward enough?

He said, yes, last night you parked on the other side of the fence when you got home (we have a fence around the yard to keep the dogs from running away), and I had to move it this morning, so we can drive out.

I said: oh I totally forgot I left the car there last night. Did I drive to San Francisco yesterday? It felt like ages ago. 

At that time, we are in the beautiful section of Devil’s slide, driving toward Pacifica. The ocean was beautifully blue color, the sky was clear, and the mountain green.

Ah Sichuan - Part 4, Heaven's Pantry

<I started this blog from 2019 with my other Sichuan blogs, only just finished it and published it>

With all of the amazement about Sichuan food and the Giant Pandas, I almost forgot about one of the famous nicknames for the Sichuan Provence - Heaven's Pantry (天府之国), until Victor reminded me with a sense of pride in his voice. He told us, Heaven in this context means the Emperor. In the old days, Chinese believed the Emperor was the Son of the God came to the middle earth to govern people. The reason why it was nicknamed Heaven's Pantry was because Sichuan had been rich in agriculture. There were many rivers flowing through the region to make a fertile land. I asked what kind of food Sichuan produces? Victor said, all kinds of fruits, vegetables, and rice. Also, Sichuan is the proud producer of 8 out of 10 rice wines in China! Our visit just coincided with the Candy and Wine convention in Chengdu.

I thought to myself, how interesting, Cantonese pride ourselves as located in the Food Basket of China, because of the Pearl river delta that makes the fertile land. We just went from one fertile land of China to another! 

With my limited knowledge and bias about Provences of China, any region north of Guangdong I thought it was the Northern China. They speak Mandarin, and we Southerners speak Cantonese. Northern China is not fertile because of the cold weather. Lots of produces and food were farmed and distributed from the south. I was often corrected by people from Shanghai and Sichuan, that Northern China is regions north of the yellow river, which is pretty up north. Alas, that's the limitation of my middle-school-level Chinese education.

The second day we checked out of the nice Buddha hotel in Chengdu and drove to Mt. EMei. Because we left at commuting hours around 9 AM, it took us one hour just to get out of Chengdu, while normally it only took 20 minutes. After we left the city, the ride was pleasant. Nice wide highway connecting farmlands and factories. Indeed, we passed apple orchards, vineyards, strawberry farms, corn fields, and lots of tea farms! We also drove over a few bridges over the rivers that made the land so fertile! I love road trips and the road trip in Sichuan was such a treat!

To me the tea farms were what make the road trip so special. It reminds me of those fiery poppy fields, vineyards and ancient castles by the side of the highways from Paris to Grenoble. Tea is one of the national treasures of China, which defines the ancient country trace back to thousands of years. People drink tea everyday, they trade and collect tea. Almost every township has its specialty tea, and people take pride in their local tea. The tea around this region is called "bamboo leaf green." The tea leaves are skinny and pointy. Victor had this tea in a bottle everyday, and he kept refilling with hot water on the road. Tea farms are what make it a unique road trip experience. The roadtrip also remind me of the trip from San Francisco to Napa vineyards.

Morning walk and hummingbird

Today is 4th of July, and we have a day off. I got up late (before 8), had a lazy breakfast with breakfast sandwich and coffee that Jack made, watched some local news. We went take the dogs out for our morning walk in the neighborhood. The weather is beautiful, sunny and dry, which is rare in this part of the world. 

We went to the church parking lot behind our house as usual as our first stop. I saw a hummingbird flying around our cypress tree, I was thinking: hmm, I don’t remember seeing hummingbirds fly so high. It was close to the hight of our roof. I enjoyed watching its translucent wings flopping, it reminded me of the golden snitch in Harry Potter. I also showed Jack where the hummingbird was, he was looking at the other side. I thought, beautiful things are easy to be missed.

As the hummingbird flew past me and toward the tree in the back of the parking lot, I felt some moisture. Secretly I was hoping I didn’t get hit by hummingbird droppings. 

The rest of the walk was uneventful. The roses were still unapologetically beautiful, and flowers blooming.

Romeo and Juliet vs. Butterfly Lovers

Last week Jack and I binged on the British drama, The Split. It was a recent show about some prominent London lawyers practicing family law. It was a very good drama with a good cast. It talks about the heartache and fights people have to deal with in divorce. It was dramatic not only for the clients, but also the lawyers themselves have intertwined relationships, friends, husband and wife, mother and daughters, sisters. To me, it was a penultimate British Drama. After finishing all three seasons in 3 days, I was so emotionally drained. My conclusion? I can do without dramas. 

It got me to think about Shakespeare, who could probably be crowned the grandmaster of British drama. His classic romantic tragedy - Romeo and Juliet, is well-known around the world. There is a similar story in Chinese folklore called: “Butterfly Lovers.” That story was from 266-420 AD, the Jin Dynasty in China. The story is pretty similar to Romeo and Juliet: the son and daughter of two rival families in business fell in love with each other. But they were not allowed to be together because of the generational family fuel, and after much struggles, they eventually commit suicide together. And after they were dead, they became butterflies, and flew away together. It symbolize the two lovers eventually get together after death. 

I told Jack this story, and he said: “oh, but butterflies only live two weeks. They will die after two weeks.”

I told my coaching partner Numi from San Diego the above story, she said: I was thinking the same thing, Butterflies only live two weeks, then they will die.

My friend Laurent had a good answer, he said: even though it’s two weeks for humans, as butterflies, they got to spend their whole lives together.

Here’s my favorite “Butterfly Lovers” Erhu Concerto. Erhu is a two string Chinese musical instrument.

  

What To Do in a Rainy Sunday Before Election Tuesday?

It’s June 5th, 2022, and we are graced by unseasonal pouring rain. We rejoice with gratitude. We went to Main Street to have breakfast, then got a delicious vanilla latte from the nearby bakery to make up for the lackluster breakfast, and they drove home. 

We pulled out the voting material, whose envelope said: “Don’t delay, vote today!” We’ve been doing this every weekend before Election Day for the last 15 years, it always remind me of group study homework in school. 

This time is significantly easier because we only have to read about the candidates and there is no propositions for San Mateo County. We got it done within an hour.

What to do when you are on Kauai?

Nothing much. Just relax.

What do tourists do on the island? They roam around at stores, beaches, coastline, eateries and sites. The more industrious ones might go for a boat ride, hikes, and camping trips, take Yoga lessons, or even get certified scuba. 

If you try to be smart and productive, like looking for certain trekking pole replacement tips, you might drive around the island from the south to the east, walked up and down, in and around the Marriott to the back of the famous Duke’s restaurant and find this small outdoor store called Da Life, but came out empty handed. You might take the suggestion to look in ACE Hardware then Target and Walmart, and you would wait for 10 minutes to show the store clerks the items on your phone from their online store, and the nice clerks probably wish you would to go away, because: “we don’t ship to the store, but we can ship it to your home.” 

Eventually, you would accept that you wouldn’t find the item on the island, and just give up trying.

Still en-route Maui, note to self #2

 I like wearing this floppy straw hat on the flight. It doesn’t give me a headache, which most hats do; it gives me some illusion of psychological safety from the air that we share on the flight; and it also gives me a sense of privacy especially combined with mask. I feel … low profile, invisible.