I didn't sleep well yesterday. The heat is still getting to me. I abhor aircon, but I keep waking up and having to run it periodically just to cool down. This is annoying since I could probably operate the remote control in my sleep but I need to get up and close the window first. Whatever happened to ceiling fans?
Anyway, I woke up just after dawn, with salt-encrusted sweat stains on my pyjamas. There was no point in trying to go back to sleep so I decided to go to the local park for a cigarette. People were already out in the streets, loading up bicycles and scooters, sitting outside reading the papers or embarking on early-morning cleaning rounds.
The approach to the park was busy. I'm used to seeing people exercising outside, while there were no card players or musicians out yet, a gathering was taking place on a little cobbled square ahead of me. Sunlight gleamed on a sword. Blood-red fans flashed open in unison. Bodies contorted in slow motion, crouching impossibly low to the ground.
The kung fu masters were back!
What they were doing was not tai chi. It was something more ancient, and possibly peculiar to this neighbourhood.
I stood and stared for a while, my cigarette quite forgotten. It wasn't long before the man in the white silk uniform, whom I had seen on Sunday, paused and waved me over. He smiled and and bowed slightly to a plain elderly woman in a striped T-shirt who stepped up next to him. Before I knew what was going on, she had positioned me in a painfull stance and applied gentle pressure on my shoulders.
Lower. The message was quite clear. Lower!
The next morning I got up later and they were gone. The square was packed with people dressed in tracksuit bottoms and short-sleeved T-shirts practicing tai chi to gentle music, but the spirit was no longer there. I lingered for a while, but it didn't feel right to join in. I slunk off home, my thigh muscles still complaining and reminding me that it had not all been a dream.
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