One of the (damn, wish I could employ a more macho-sounding word) charms of studying the eastern martial arts, is the doorway into the past.  For me, it’s not so much the last few hundred years, which are full of relatively well-recorded information.  So many masters, so many styles, so many families, so much history.  Some people are quite expert in these areas.  Maybe one day I will know more, to study history is good mental exercise.  Especially when the history lives, it is not just a dry recital.

But for now what really gets my juices flowing is peering into the remote past.  Antiquity.  Ancientness.  The roots.  Simple people doing simple things to live and stay alive.  But not so simple people, not so simple things.  But simple.

Like what could be more simple than an ox-tail?  That is the question.  Once in the Philippines I tried kare-kare, that’s oxtail in peanut sauce.  Didn’t like it — and it was the most expensive item on the menu!  My mistake.  The first time I dined with new friends in the Philippines, I just ordered rice.  No one could believe the crazy American.  Just give me rice I said.  I like rice.  Plus my stomach was bad from the airline trip.

But in more recent years, the first time I got my hands on Professor Cheng Man-ching’s teachings, it was quite a discovery.  And what small thing do I seize upon that I haven’t yet let go of?  CMC mentions something about an “ox tail dance” in olden times.  And how part of our taiji is reminiscent of that.  I found that fascinating.

But it’s been hard to follow-up on.  All things in due course, I suppose.  Every so often I take a stab at chasing the ox’s tail, and what do I get for my trouble?  Not much.  Take a look at this link if you want a good laugh.  Actually I don’t mean that.  It’s a translated version of an article on folkways and when I tried to read it I realize the translation maybe not so good!  But it is oddly enjoyable and fun to try to figure out what is being imparted here.  Once I read a long interview with an MA master whose english was not too good and it was real mental exercise to follow what he was explaining.  But I got one phrase out of all that talk that I had never heard anywhere else… it was a big piece of the puzzle.

http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00999/one%20home%20one%20drum1.files/page0008.htm