An American Kung Fu master and Daoist in China
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Today, we meet an American who has been studying Taoism in China since 2010 and ask him about his journey to the East. Welcome to The Bridge, enlightening conversations on world cultures, life, and everything in between. Hey everyone, this is Jason Smith, host of The Bridge podcast from sunny California. If you like the show, don't forget to subscribe. We love The Bridge.

hi everyone my name is jason smith i'm originally from sunny california and now i'm living in beautiful beijing our guest is jake lee pinnick who has been training in martial arts since 2010 when he made his initial voyage to wudang shan china to join in training under master yuan xiao gang i probably got all the tones wrong at the base

of Wudang Mountain. He is now dedicated to daily cultivating his practice and understanding while sharing his experience and preserving the teachers and culture of Wudang Taoism. You can learn more on YouTube at Wudang Wei, his podcast, Tsk.

All right. Thank you very much. That's quite an introduction. Thank you for having me today. I'm delighted. I wanted to tell the story. I tried to meet you. We were both in Fujian at the Conference for American Youth Coming to China. And I was like, oh, my God, this is so cool.

And there was a long line of people trying to talk to you. I was like, oh, I can't wait here an hour because you're some kind of superstar here in China, from what I could tell. Well, I remember when we met because that was during that event for a week in Fujian. And the moment I saw you was we were doing a recording session.

um, kind of showing some of the art forms and things that were happening at the conference. And at the same time, there was also a lot of fans who had seen me, but I don't think I'm like very famous. I think it's just for that specific context in the cultural sphere. There's quite a lot of people who, who know my name because of what I've been doing here in China. So yeah, it's, it's nice, but I do remember meeting you and I wish we would have had more time, but sometimes it gets kind of hectic. Actually, I think you're more well known than you,

than you think you are. Because when I went to Wudangshan one time, I was with my wife, we were taking the high speed rail and she said, "Oh, we're going to Wudangshan, you should meet Jake." I was like, "Who's Jake? What are you talking about?" She's like, "Jake is this American Taoist who lives on the mountain." And I was like, "Oh, let's not bother him."

Because I had no idea who she was talking about. But she clearly knew, as just a random Chinese person in China, that there was a famous American Taoist who lived on Wudangshan. Wow. Wow, yeah. Well, I guess it does get around. But Wudang is a relatively small place. It's beautiful. I went there. I went there to the – I went to see Doumu, one of the goddesses with eight arms –

Because I'm a big fan of this repeating archetype through all kinds of Eastern faiths. This multiple armed goddess who has different names and different incarnations. So I always try to go see any of them that I can find in Asia. So I was on Wudangshan. It's very lovely. Many beautiful temples. It's amazing that you get to live there, actually. It's like living in Yosemite National Park or something. It's been quite the journey. I think I've been here...

for most of the last 15 years. And yeah, it's kind of just feels like my second home now. Well, that's actually what I wanted to ask you about, about your first home. You know, the Westerners watching, Americans watching. Where are you from in the States? So I'm originally from Illinois in the Midwest, from a pretty small town, actually. I don't know if many people have heard of it. I actually, for the first time, right before New Year's, I was in Beijing.

And I met some other Americans and someone was from Chicago and they actually knew my hometown. My hometown is Kewaunee. So it's a pretty small place. I was born and raised there. I didn't travel that much until I was in high school. And I went and did some travel within the States. But coming out of high school and in my first years of college, I really wanted to travel and do something different.

And through like a series of strange events, I ended up choosing to study martial arts in Wudang Mountain. You know, I didn't get to see it. But when I was going to Wudang Shan, we went up the mountain to see all the temples. That's what we usually do. But I understand at the base of the mountain, there is a great deal of Tai Chi practitioners.

Is there more than one martial art going on there? Yeah. So, I mean, I guess a little bit of an introduction for Wudang would be in order because Wudang is kind of like Shaolin in a way. Like we say, you know, the Shaolin style is definitely more developed and popular in the West. Wudang is pretty much unknown for a lot of Westerners. Unless you're already practicing martial arts in China, you've maybe not heard of it in the West.

But Wudang Mountain has a lot of different lineages. So the entire style, all the styles here are just called Wudang style because they're named after the place, much like Shaolin is named after the place. The difference is that within Wudang, there's many different lineages. So I'm part of Samphong Tai, which is the lineage of Zhang Samphong, who's the legendary creator of Tai Chi.

So our focus is maybe a little bit more on martial arts and Taiji practice, but everyone in Wudang also practices Taiji. Just different lineages with maybe slightly different approaches. You've got Dragon Gate, you've got Long Mei Pai, a couple of different ones. Wow. I mean, I want to ask you about all of those, but I feel like it would go over my head.

So when I saw you speak at the conference in Fujian, you sat on a panel of different figures from representing different spiritual parts of China and the world. And you mentioned there's a physical health aspect to what you're doing. So it's not just martial arts. It's about understanding yourself better through movement and being healthier. Could you explain some of that? Yeah. So, I mean, martial arts is a pretty...

big term. It's a pretty generalized term the way it's used today. Of course, you have like part of it is combat, part of it is art, lineage, etiquette. There's a lot of tradition wrapped up in martial arts. But one of the biggest things that's centered around Taijiquan, Taiji practice specifically, is the idea of health cultivation.

The idea is that, you know, we have the martial arts practices to condition the body, but the purpose of that isn't necessarily to always just be at war. The...

Principle of that is actually to be able to take care of your body, protect yourself during combat situations. So there's techniques and but a lot of the Taiji principles are trapping, deflecting, yielding, finding an indirect path of least resistance. And so that principle is something that you don't only use in martial arts like combat.

combative fighting also in just your everyday life whether it's emotional or physical well-being. So there's a way to find the path of least resistance towards a healthier self. And so Wudang style kind of has a principle that can be used in many different ways. And I think that's maybe the biggest focus today is definitely in health because martial arts are

either refined down to a competition level to where they're kind of very, very precise in what's allowed and what's not. And everything's kind of down to a technicality. You know, everything's just refined. Whereas health has a more broad scope and also in the general use of today of how people actually practice martial arts, health has more benefits than competition.

not for the average person well as long as we're on the topic of taoism and tai chi these things are not identical are they or are they because most people that are in the west when they think about taoism they think about lao tzu and the tao tai ching and like maybe the yin yang symbol like probably the yin yang symbol is the only thing most americans actually know is like taoism what is the relationship between tai chi and taoism

Okay, okay. So it's one of my big talking points about the yin yang symbol, what we call in the West, which is literally called the Tai Chi Tu, the Tai Chi diagram. So it's one of the most, probably the most well-known symbol in the entire world, but it's the least understood at the same time. So the principle of it, like we see the Tai Chi symbol, and I talk about this a lot, to where the symbol itself is the yin and yang, you know, the dark and light.

And people see this as a very enigmatic symbol where you see it and you already have an impression of these two things churning and changing. But the principle of that,

is based in the Yin Yang school, but it was absorbed into Taoism, which inspired martial arts, which inspired Taijiquan, which eventually trickled down into samurai code and was reinterpreted into the Jedi in Star Wars. So like it's in everything. It's just one of those symbols that people really misunderstand the original essence of it. So I think if we talk about the differences, we can say Taoism

is a school of thought that came out during the war in states period from Lao Tzu, which is maybe an epitaph, maybe just a title of the old man. There's debatable if he's a real person, but it's essentially a series of phrases and parables and lessons and moral codes to live up to, right? That's the Tao Te Ching that Lao Tzu wrote. Tai Chi is a principle that is kind of

mentioned in the text, very little, but it's a principle that's used throughout Chinese culture and history. So you have these ideas of yin and yang, these polarities of transformation. People like to think of them as opposites, but I don't think they're opposites. One creates the other in the Tao Te Ching. So it's a balancing act of kind of perceiving reality. But by understanding how things change, we can find our balance. This is the idea of Taoism. So by understanding the principles of Tai Chi, of yin-yang,

we can find a balanced way of life for ourselves. Now much, much later in Chinese history, this type of idea is used for many things. For everything from like feng shui, like geomancy, like organizing your room and your house, all the way down to combat and martial arts. So basically I would say Taoism was kind of the cornerstone of thought and philosophy that integrated Taiji, this theory,

But that theory has been implemented in many different ways. One of the ways that it's been, you know, actualized is through Taiji Quan, the martial arts of Taiji. That would maybe be the easiest summary. Otherwise, it's a pretty dense subject. You're listening to The Bridge.

Let's come back to the philosophy a little bit later. I wanted to ask you about your story. So you came in 2010. That was your first time coming to China? That was my first time coming to China and my first time leaving America, first time leaving home. How did that work? Was that during your university period, before, after? How did you know that there was a place called Wudangshan in the first place? I graduated high school in 2008 from

And I had a like a free scholarship to go to the local college. I could get all my prerequisites out of the way. I was pretty undetermined what I wanted to do. I took business management because I want to just get everything out of the way. And I knew I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to be more in control of what my career would be. Personally, I wasn't really interested in a nine to five or like a typical job.

I guess I chose the most untypical life career, but I definitely wasn't really interested in kind of just inheriting my lifestyle. I really wanted to like test myself. And so that series of thoughts kind of led me to, you know, what's the most important thing for me to have growing, like having a life of my own. And I always came back to health being the most important thing because I grew up in

doing a lot of manual labor and helping a lot of my grandparents and elderly people and everyone in the neighborhood. And I just realized that for myself, I'm also very stubborn and not really willing to ask for help. And I can see as people get older, it's hard for them to ask for help to do these jobs or these tasks around the house.

And I saw myself in that very quickly. And so I just came to figure out that health is definitely the most important thing. It doesn't matter where you go. That's that's the first thing you take care of. It's your first safety, your well-being. And so I thought, you know, I'm not necessarily going to go to a gym or join the army. So what what would I do? You know, everything else seemed competitive based.

you know, like sports. I grew up playing basketball and skateboarding, very competitive. But I thought martial arts was something I was fascinated with as a kid growing up. But I didn't think there would ever actually be a chance to learn that in a small town in Illinois. But if I wanted to do it, now was the chance when I was 20 years old. I was like, I'm not going to get another chance. And I looked into it. And I think just a series of

chances and opportunities arose and I found the school in Wudang.

uh originally just through videos online on youtube that's why i first found the school wow so you went you got a scholarship to come to udang or you you messaged them or i got a scholarship to go to the college uh in my hometown right like in illinois so i was able to do my like university for two years get my associates and i was like okay i think i'll take

a chance and go travel to China because I was looking at it while I was in college, 19 years old. I found the school. The school in Wudang was a master who was recording videos of his training and his students and putting them online. And he was kind of advertising this idea that he had of opening a class for international students from people all over the world. The first time to do that, it would be long term, three to five years.

But I saw at his school, he already had foreigners training there. The teacher, the master could speak English as well. So I started communicating with the school and asking questions. And I don't know, it kind of stuck in my mind. Like when I first found it, I was going to school and looking for work.

I found the martial arts school online in Wudang. I started kind of daydreaming about doing that. Like, what would I do? What would happen if I actually went to China and did this? That'd be kind of crazy. But that daydream kind of turned into a little bit of an obsession. I was watching all the videos. I was kind of thinking about it. And it got to a point where...

I recognized since I was daydreaming and kind of fantasizing about it that much, it definitely meant something to me. And if I didn't take that chance, I might regret it.

So I started planning by myself just quietly. And very quickly, I found I had two jobs. I was able to coordinate them so I didn't have to reschedule anything. And then I was able to take my college classes at the time and turn them into online classes or work from home, which was really not common back then, right? 2009, 2008.

I was able to do it and everything just kind of fit in place. And so it just kind of kept telling me like this could actually happen. So I started connecting to the school more and telling them I want to come and train. What do I do to prepare? And that was like a year and a half of two jobs and trying to do some like activities to prepare myself.

which was just like running, stretching, jump rope, like just doing anything to stay healthy. But I was pretty much just burning full speed the whole time because I would wake up and go to work at five, six in the morning. I'd clock out at two and then clock back in at 2.33 to my second job and then get off at 10, come home and do some homework and go to sleep. And that was my life for like a year and a half before I came to Wadah.

So it just really, you know, everything kind of fell into place. Okay. What about coming to Wudang to study? And then that transitions to now you're here 15 years later. Could you tell us part of that story? It's a big story. So I joined the program in Wudang Mountain in 2010 in the summer. The program I wanted to participate in was already started.

So I was a couple months late. I was like half a year late. So I just started training. And I told Zippo I just wanted to follow that path, like start from the beginning and just build myself up because I had no experience. At first, I thought I was only going to be able to stay for a short time.

So I stayed for six months and I had to go back home to renew visa and things. But by that point, I already kind of figured out that I wanted to do this long term. Like it was pretty hard. I tell people that I came to China at 20 years old, first time leaving my home, you know, leaving everything. And then I stayed in Wudang for six months and then I had to leave there and go back to the States.

And I tell people that leaving Wudang after six months was almost harder than leaving home after 20 years because of just the experience, the kind of change that I had in that six months. So my family saw that passion and I still had money saved up, but they also supported me to continue. So I actually was able to come back, talk directly to the master, and I joined that program that had been going on.

So I joined for the next three and a half, four years. And then I finished that program at the end of 2014. So the program is complete, you know, like the full curriculum. We practice Kung Fu, Tai Chi, weapons, meditation. We study Taoism. I learned Chinese, but that was kind of like a side. You know, not everyone learned Chinese. We did Taoist theory and chanting.

fasting, we did a lot of things. And after that program, I became an inheritor to teach other people. I went back to the States for a couple years, taught, but then I eventually came back to China in 2018 to continue my own studies because there's a lot of things I didn't learn in five years, surprisingly. You know, it's a pretty heavy practice schedule, about eight, nine hours of just martial arts every day.

So there wasn't much time to learn music or to learn calligraphy or to learn about some of the other philosophical, historical things in China. So I came back to teach at the school that I learned and also to continue my own practice.

And, yeah, 2018, I came back and I've been here ever since. Now I'm teaching my own students, having my own online programs. But my goal is to open a school. I think I'm going to start in China, have a place for other foreigners to come and

My goal is to spread and transmit these practices to more people and hopefully be able to do that more clearly because of the communication. Yeah, that's the shorthand story. What about your family back home? Are they very supportive of you living in China now or does mom miss you all the time? I mean, that's the thing. Like at this point, the hardest part is just missing family, missing the people. I think I've changed so much that I don't really...

find my life really suitable in America anymore. I've just changed so much, like the day-to-day life, the way of living, not too many people understand it in the West anymore.

But for family, that's definitely the hardest part. Luckily, today, we have so many good ways to stay in touch with each other. Like back then, I was going to like internet cafes and like sending emails once a week and putting pictures on Facebook and Flickr, you know, to share. But now, you know, we have groups, we have chat threads, you know, we're able to send pictures and talk to video chat all the time. So it's definitely a lot better. But yeah, that's definitely the hardest part is just...

So now that you're established and you have students, you have Western students at Wudangshan also? Yes, I have Western and Chinese students pretty much from all over the place. Wudang has always been a melting pot of people. So I noticed that you do teach online. What is the preferred channel you would like people to find you? I mean, it's a pretty big program. The easiest way is to just go to my website at waysofwudang.com because I have a couple of different channels. You know, I have

Wu Dang Wei for martial arts, the Tea Talks for philosophy, and Wu Dao Music for bamboo flute instruction. But I think the website is probably the easiest one because that collects everything into one program. You're listening to The Bridge.

I actually want to ask mostly about philosophy, but I'm guessing most of the people watching want to learn more about your perspectives on martial arts. So how would you characterize the difference between Americans' perception of what Tai Chi is versus the martial arts of Tai Chi in actual practice? Yeah, Tai Chi has a very unpopular common consensus because

because I think people often kind of isolate it from its background, from its practice and look at it in just of what is the practicality in a combat situation or in the ring or in UFC, you never see Taiji people. Unfortunately, Taiji is very underdeveloped in this way.

But it's never really been the focal point of Taiji, I think. Taiji has always been the culmination of many years of practicing martial arts, and it's not necessarily the only thing someone practices. So, for example, if we talk about legendary character I mentioned earlier,

Dan Sam Fong, creating Taiji. The story, the legendary story, is that he observed a bird, it could be a crane or a swallow in some cases, but I like the idea of a crane and a snake fighting on the mountainside. And he witnessed this and he noticed that one approaching the fight from like this tranquil but very abrupt striking pattern, and the other one being soft and coiled up, they were evenly matched and they never really...

overcome the other opponent and they fought forever. Eventually the snake and the crane just left. So it was this idea of finding these indirect paths of attack or protection, how to kind of stay away from conflict. And that inspired him as a martial artist already. So he used these ideas of maybe redirecting, absorbing, locking, trapping,

ideas that were already in martial arts, but using them as a way to kind of deescalate or avoid confrontation in many ways. But the key there is that he already had martial arts practice. He was kind of approaching movement in a different way. So I think that that's the thing that people forget now is they want to see like a person who practices Taiji to go fight a boxer or to go fight a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu guy.

But the idea with Taiji is that it's more comprehensive and it's not necessarily about the actual practice of Taiji. It's about the principles that it's talking about, like how to relax the body and avoid being into a locked position or being able to step lightly back and create that space. You know, Taiji trend is all about creating space. You know, we always have these big, wide, open postures, but that's to distribute pressure.

through the limbs, as opposed to being tense and stiff. Because anything that's, you know, if you read the Tao Te Ching, anything that's stiff, that's something that's prone to breaking. So it's this idea of being soft, but being elastically strong. So it's a totally different approach. But I think those principles are in many other systems. It's just that

Oftentimes, we isolate individual movements and put them in extreme situations, which is pretty much what modern competition is. We've refined the punch down to just punch in the face in a specific place, and when you KO them, you'll win. But if you look at any historical...

Fighting situations a lot of people never when you wear gloves and boxing. What is that for a Lot of people say oh, it's to protect the other person and that's completely wrong. It's to protect your hand, right? That's so you can keep hitting them in the face and not hurt your hand, right?

Because essentially, I mean the face is full of all these bones and angles that are gonna cut and break your hands. And if you hit your hand wrong once, then you can't use that hand anymore during the fight. Traditionally. So if you see like old Japanese fighters, they just punch each other in the chest. They very rarely hit the face. While you could get lucky, the general instinct is to duck your head down and present the hardest part of the head to hit.

So it's very easy to break your hand when you hit someone in the head. So a lot of techniques are more about throws and takedowns and traps and pushes and things like this. So Taiji is this kind of approach. I think it's still utilized today. But the second problem for that situation is that a lot of people think the form is the focus. And so people who learn Taiji as a practice think they know how to fight. And that's the second problem.

It'd be the same like learning a boxing pattern on the speed bag and thinking you know how to fight. We know that that's a practice, not the actual spar, right? The difference is when people see Taiji as a form and they want to claim it as a fighting form, they practice the form, but they don't actually spar. That's what I mean when I say Taiji training is underdeveloped. A lot of people just practice it like this.

That's why it's mainly understood as a health practice. A lot of older people do it. But I think that's part of it. It's not the whole truth. I have actually a bunch of comments and questions because, you know, I think in a younger generation, I think you're around in mid 30s. I'm about 50. For me and my generation, we grew up thinking Tai Chi was Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse and

And so for us, it was this romantic and beautiful, exotic form of movement. And then obviously in the movie, he's kind of a badass. So you think, oh, wow, people in my generation, people think Tai Chi equates to being a badass. So I think maybe it's a generational difference there. But, you know, when I talk to Chinese people, people who are not bad,

martial artists, and I mentioned Tai Chi to them, they say, oh, that's for old people. So what's your comment about that? That's definitely the generational thing. I think the newer perspective on Tai Chi is definitely, oh, that's what old people do in the park. That's not just in China, it's in the West now too.

I think a lot of that has to do with just, again, the idea of Taiji being simplified down to just a health practice. I think that's one of the most valuable parts. But I think because you don't see it in the Western competitive sphere, then you kind of get left with this remainder of people just practicing for health and enjoyment and doing the soft exercise. I think that's definitely useful. But...

I think it gets overlooked quite a lot as a practice because of that assumption. The kind of thing you say about people thinking Taiji is like the exotic form where the masters learn it in the East, that's definitely still prevalent, but I think that does just as much damage because then people have that high expectation, but then they don't really understand the Taiji practice itself. They're still looking through it. They're still looking at it through a specific perspective.

lens, you know, and that that's maybe the hardest thing. Taiji is like lineage and tradition and history etiquette. You see old people practicing it because young people have lost the interest to learn. That's not just with Taiji in China either. That's a lot of traditional practices. Because they take a long time to learn, like exponentially more difficult to find students because

people say, how long does it take me to learn? And as soon as they ask that question, you have to add time because they have to let go of that assumption. You know, that's the big issue, I think. My conceptions are still developing on this topic, but my wife said she was going to take some Tai Chi classes and she needed me to drop her off at the park here in Beijing. I assumed she was going to learn Tai

Just the slow movements that the old people do. Cutting the watermelon in half joke, right? But she actually would just practice sparring with some master and was one-on-one. And she was just learning to like...

It was very scary when she got home and she wanted to try to show me because I couldn't do anything. But she was not just learning the movements of the people in the park, which I think are still resplendent here in Beijing. For people who don't know and they're watching from America, you know, you can look out your window and 6 a.m. There are just little groups of people doing Tai Chi, sometimes with swords.

all over in different cities in China, which is really, I think is remarkable. What do you enjoy about teaching? Because you said you've transitioned from student to teacher. For me, teaching has always been a really big passion because I love the perspective that I get as a teacher from each new student.

A lot of times you have to kind of like figure out how to teach each person. And that can be a pretty welcome challenge. I think one of the biggest things that drove me to come to China originally as like a personality quirk is that I really enjoy investigating things and asking questions and like looking at things from different perspectives. That's kind of what led me to try in the first place. So when I get to teach a student, I get to kind of see it through their eyes and find the best way to teach them.

And that's like another puzzle. It's like another way for me to learn, you know? So yeah, I mean, teaching, it was never really my goal when I first came here, but it's one of those things that happened very organically. I'm very honored to be able to help people. And when they have that moment where they get something or they learn something new, or they maybe even they figured something out that I never thought of before. Like that for me is what keeps me interested because it's like,

I can see them growing or maybe going through something I went through. There's a camaraderie and a community to that. Can we talk about China just briefly? So you obviously, you live in China. What is your life like in China? How is it? Maybe not how is it just different from America, but as a practitioner of Taoism,

How is it different from other people in China, too? I mean, my life is pretty I think it's pretty unique at this point. I mean, I can't say that. I think here in Wudang specifically for these last 15 years, I've found a way to maybe be a little bit more natural in my everyday life.

Of course, there's still pressure. People kind of imagine that you live in the mountain, it's kind of a fairy tale, exotic, misty mountain in the morning and still modern life. There's still pressures. There's still like hopes and anxiety about the future.

There's still all of this, but I think in general, I definitely get to choose more of what I personally want to do. I find that very, very valuable. For me, being able to study, being able to continue my own practice, that's the most important thing. It's very unique.

Every day we get to go buy fresh vegetables and we get to be on the side of the mountain and explore and continue your own practice and kind of promote this and share more. I think it's very hard to relate to because there's very few bubbles like that in the world left where you can kind of live simple. You know what I mean? Like you live in Beijing, you know, it's very, very busy.

It's a whole different world. It's amazing how traveling throughout China, you can take a train for two hours and you can be in a completely different place. You know, the customs, lifestyle, even sometimes the way the dialect, the way people speak can

can be different i think that's one of the most colorful things about living in china it's one of the greatest things like being able to go everywhere and have different types of food and all these you know all these experiences is definitely to this day still interesting you know there's so many places i haven't been in china i have the same experience even the places i have been i've only been there for a week and i just feel like that was just touching you know people i'm i saw a comment today

Oh, the new transit visa for Americans to come to China visa-free is only for 10 days. I need at least a month. And I'm thinking, man, I need a year in every province. Like everything is so different everywhere. It's just so much to take in, you know. You're listening to The Bridge.

I wanted to ask about the philosophy really quickly, because there's a religious aspect that seems different from some of the philosophy that I seem to read. Maybe I'm misinterpreting it. For example, there is a temple here in Beijing called Baiyunguan or White Cloud Temple, and in it is full of gods, all kinds of different gods. And there's tons of Chinese people there praying mostly to Caishen, the god of money, but to all of the other gods as well. What is the relationship between...

spiritual aspect and the philosophical aspect of Taoism? This is a subject that comes up quite a lot, of course, in what I do. One of the things that I found is very hard to express, but I think it's a good point to start on, is that describing Taoism or Chinese culture in general as religion is already very difficult to do because the word religion doesn't really encapsulate the practices in China. I think the kind of Abrahamic like

Western intonation of religion is much more organized, much more observant or obedient even, where there's like a higher power. Where in Chinese practices, specifically in Daoism, there are gods, there are spirits, there are otherworldly things. But the difference I think is that when you go to a temple, it's more of a show of respect

Or it's more of a mutual thing where there's like a, there's a petition to a God that's in the form of a prayer. But it's still, it's very hard to describe it being a religion because it's more of a practice. It's more of maybe a way to express this feeling. But I don't think that

there's as much emphasis on godly powers and this organized Western religion. It is hard to describe. It's very hard to describe. But I think if you think about spirituality, you think about philosophy,

The idea is that you have these practices or these kinds of ways of thinking. So in Wudang, for example, we have the water god, Xuanwu, the deified form, Zhenwu. And this is a character who achieved enlightenment, like a person in Wudang that achieved enlightenment. So a lot of the temples are dedicated to his journey.

of becoming this higher power. Now, when it gets into the kind of godly legendary spiritual aspects, a lot of that can be more abstract and it can be more kind of self-perspective, what those stories really mean. But the idea when you're going to the temple and you're visiting these gods is that you're showing respect for the journey that they took.

Because you want to be on a similar journey. There's a lot of incorporated stuff later on with fertility gods and earth gods and money gods. But those are, I think, just expressions and aspirations of the people. You know what I mean? It's more of a mutual showing of care or respect. Intention. Yes, exactly. I wanted to talk about the mountain itself because...

All of the famous mountains in China have long, elaborate, complex stories and their own myths and ethos. Could you tell us a little bit about Wudangshan itself? So Wudang Mountain is... The temples here have a little bit over 600 years of history, but it's many, many years before that it's always been a place of pilgrimage. The earliest temple is the Five Dragon Temple, which is not part of the main tourist...

Like if you go to Wudang Mountain and you go through the bus and you take your ride to the summit, you won't actually see Five Dragon Temple. It's on another part of the mountain range that's separate from the main area. This is where there was the classic story of someone coming to cultivate and find the Tao and find their balance and find their way. And when they came to this location, they saw five dragons in the sky. There's a lot of these like very, very grand legends.

A lot of the ideas behind those are just like, you know, this idea of finding a place that has all of the right balances between the elements, between fire and water and earth. And having this like really, really balanced location that you could live in and you could cultivate yourself morally, health, mentally, all ways.

And so Wudang became a place for people to come and do this Xiu Lian, do this cultivation. So over the years you have all these different temples. There's some palaces that are connected. Actually, the Yushu Gong at the base of the mountain, one of the largest temple complexes that are still preserved, is a

architectural replica of the of gugong of the forbidden city in beijing wow so they're they're made with like similar architect architecture like standards and in the same time period um of course yushugong was made at like a 30 percent

size ratio, so it's like one to three because you can't be larger than the capital, you can't be larger than the Forbidden City itself, but it was supposed to be connected to the palace in that way. So we only have the center courtyard that's still preserved of the main complex. So that was at the base of the mountain. Then if you go up, you have all these different mountains and starting from the bottom, you have the returning dragon temple

You have the Granging Needle Temple. You have the Carefree Valley. You have the study, the Tai Tzu Po, the Prince Temple. And then you have Nanyan. You have the Southern Cliffside Temple. All of these are kind of telling that story that I mentioned about Xuan Wu. All these different stories of him, you know, traveling up and meeting different characters who inspired him to continue his self-cultivation. So the whole mountain is dedicated to this idea of refining oneself.

And the journey to the top, to the Golden Summit, at the top of the mountain, is this big pilgrimage to, you know, reach towards that, to, you know, the closer you are to heaven, the closer you are towards reaching immortality. That's why the Chinese character for immortal is a character for people, and then the character for mountain. So you have Xian, you have immortality.

And the idea is that that cultivation is through this journey up the mountain. That's kind of maybe the main concept of it. Wow, that's beautiful. I hope that we are encouraging more people to go see it and maybe meet you as well. I wanted to ask, because there are so many aspects of Taoism, you know, we keep coming back to it. What about this? What about that? What about medicine? Because in Taoism, there is a very special relationship of not just –

traditional Chinese medicine, but also like, oh, it's this particular year, maybe you need to have silver on your body or be wearing black or red and so on and so forth. Could you discuss the special relationship of medicine with Taoism?

Like I said, with Taoism, it's one of those things that's just full of principles and concepts applied in many, many different ways. Divination, geomancy, martial arts, and then of course, medicine. Medicine is definitely a really big part of practice because it's the part of the main pillars.

You know, you have to have your martial arts practice to keep yourself healthy from the way in. But you have this medical practice, you know, identifying herbs and different things to use for treatment and care of yourself that you can have from the outside. So all of these things are also tied to your health, your well-being. So you have a lot of Taoist medicine.

practitioners that are, I mean, the same as a Chinese medical practitioner who would do acupuncture, moxibustion, cupping, massage, all of these things are included as well. But with a Taoist medical practitioner, you also have things like magical talismans, you have these shamanic things. You also have feng shui, you have divination.

You have consulting the I Ching, which is the eldest text in Chinese history. So you have some of these other aspects that are tied to your spiritual practice as well, kind of included within Chinese medicine.

But the interesting thing I would say about medicine and Taoism is that even if you're studying just acupuncture in a more modern school, you have to learn these principles of Taiji. You have to learn the principles of Wuxing, of the five phases. You have to learn these aspects of the Bagua, of the I Ching, these kind of trigrams that surround Taiji.

the Taiji symbol. That's all philosophical stuff. But the same terminology is what they use in the medical stuff. Because like I said earlier, Taiji is a concept that you can apply to all practices. So like I said, one of the things I say to my students all the time is it's very hard to describe where Taoism ends and where Chinese culture begins or where medicine begins because they're all tied together.

It's part of a very big umbrella. A lot of people say that they don't practice faith in China, but I think it's really not accurate because around Chinese New Year, you see Taishan everywhere. So it's like, well, you know, there's definitely Chinese culture is much more complex than I think that people realize. And the links to Taoism and to the history of Taoism in China are so myriad that people don't even see them anymore because they're just everywhere.

I wanted to talk about Bagua quickly, but I don't want to talk about it because I don't understand it. Even though I have many books on it, I've read many books on it, I still don't understand it.

I wanted to ask you about specifically the yin-yang symbol. When we see it, we often see a very specific set of symbols around the yin-yang symbol. And I wanted to ask, are those always the same hexagram symbols or are they different? And if they are the same, what does that specific configuration mean?

imply or mean? This is a really, really dense subject. Yijing is like the most classic text in Chinese history. The earliest recorded text or script in China is the jiagouwen, is bone script, which was engravings found on ox scapula and horns and turtle shells. Um,

That was basically people divinating through the yijing, through the book of changes is how we translate that. And kind of seeing if this year would be a good harvest or kind of fortune telling in a way. But this word does a little bit of injustice to what consulting yijing is. It's more about finding patterns and then interpreting them or deciphering them or understanding them better so you can know the best plan of action, right?

When you see the Bagua symbols, you're referring to the Taiji symbol, the yin and yang in the center. And then you have these sets of three lines. There's eight patterns that go around it of broken and unbroken lines, right? What that's referring to is you have yin and yang represented each one of those lines.

The yang lines are full and unbroken, and the yin lines are broken and they have a gap in them. And then you have every pattern of that, of those trigrams, repeating around. So each one has a specific symbol. Easily, if you think about the main cardinal directions, you have your higher one, which is heaven, which is three solid yang lines. So that's like full potential energy. Yang energy is just in the air.

then yin is broken energy. It's been solidified. It's become something. Earth. And so if you see those three broken lines at the bottom, that's earth, right? And then on east and west, you have fire and water. Water is very cool because water is very similar to the actual character of water today. It's an unbroken line in the middle and then two broken lines on the sides. That shows that it looks like a yin. It looks like a soft thing from the outside.

But if you stick your hand in water, it actually has force. There's a current underneath. So it has pressure. So there's a yang that's hidden within yin. And then fire is the opposite of that. Fire is, it looks like it's solid. It looks, it has heat. It feels like there's something very tangible there. But if you stick your hand in it, it's just air. There's nothing to grab onto. Don't burn yourself. So it has that yang, but it's actually yin on the inside. So these fire and water are actually maybe like the...

worldly interpretations of yin and yang, right? And then you have some other variations of that between fire, like thunder and air, thunder and wind, and mountain and lake. But altogether, it's a process of transformation and change. So it gets very, very dense. Wow. I think, you know, there are books on this, but based on your ability to explicate this, you might want to consider making your own. For the people who are interested, that is a very beautiful and interesting topic.

What is Chinese tea culture? The simple, simple version. The simple version. I'm trying to think of how to simplify it because the thing is that all these things are like their entire worlds to themselves. You know, like tea is a culture. It's just a way of people coming together. And I have a tea table in my house. We have a tea room that I meet people at. And that's kind of like the the

the living area. Like I much prefer that culture of people coming over and the guest and host, right? And you set up that environment to be welcoming. It has a much, much different connotation compared to the West of like maybe living room being TV and couches all facing that way. So maybe tea ceremony is a culture unto itself at the very first, right? It's also a microcosm of all these theories that we're talking about. So a tea house,

essentially in history would be this place of hosting people to come. So already you have this Confucian etiquette being represented. You have this idea of treating guests a specific way and how you pour the tea out, how you serve. All of that stuff has ritual built around it. But even the tea table itself is part of this

worldly perspective. Now we talk about five phases. I'll simplify this, but we have these five phases. We have your wood, fire, earth, metal, water. And this is a state of transformation. But the idea is that nothing is absolute. Everything's in this series of change, right? Much like the yin yang symbol, the Tai Chi tool. The tea ceremony itself utilizes all five phases. You know, you need to have the wood, you need to have the tea.

the fire to boil the water that you steep the tea in. You have the metal plates and bowls and cups and kettles. You have the earth to support it all. And so these all come together in like a very simple way to have people come together, right?

A bigger idea of Taoism is that you have three stages. You have heaven and earth and mankind in the center. And the idea, the philosophy of mankind is connecting heaven and earth. And so a tea ceremony, while it sounds very grand in that way, is a way of directly balancing yourself in nature. That way you can have people come together on this level in society. So a lot of culture, a lot of

etiquette and ritual built around tea ceremony. It's hard to filter down to a small part, but that gives you some idea of kind of the depth. Actually, I'm getting the idea that the amount of questions they prepared is completely inappropriate because each one of these topics is so much larger than we have time for. I have many more questions, but I think we only have time for one. So I'm going to

I'm going to ask, because I think this is important. Do you think Taoism or any aspects of Taoism have potential to bring the East and the West together in our modern world? This is a very big talking point these last couple of years. This, I think, is maybe the most valuable part of Taoism, of tradition in China in any shape and form, because all of the practices have to be done through people.

you know one of the things my master says a lot is that you know transmission or or heritage ends if people stop communicating you know and that that's the most important thing that's why

He opened the class up to foreigners, why we were able to come here and learn to share it and take it back with us. So I think that ability to communicate is the most important thing. In Taoism, the very first line that everyone learns to take everything back to the roots is that the destination, the Tao, the thing that we always talk about, the thing that we're trying to cultivate as Taoists, we have to understand that that thing is just a name that we've given it.

The Tao that we talk about is not the true Tao. It's just the one that we're experiencing. It's the name I've given it. That way I can share that idea with you. And then later on, another philosopher expounds on this and he says, words are traps for ideas.

And once you understand the idea, you can forget the words. And I think that through these kind of practices, it's one way for us to learn how to communicate better and harmonize with each other in many ways. And then once we have that, we don't need to worry about the process of doing it. We can just exist in this global community. And so I think that Taoism has this natural grounded way of approaching that idea.

And I see people learn from it all the time. It doesn't matter where you're from. Taoism doesn't really require belief. It's just sharing patterns and understanding.

So, yeah, I think that's the most valuable thing with Taoism is bringing people together. Thank you so much for your time, Jake Pinnock. For people who want to continue this conversation, they can go to wudangwei.com. Is that correct? Ways of Wudang. WaysofWudang.com or you can find him on YouTube at Wudang Wei or you can find his podcast, Tea Talk. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.

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