My First Journey to the Yellow Mountains 黄山
It was 2014 and it was the first time I ever set foot in China. I was lying in a small hotel room in the Hongqiao airport hotel, resting after a series of flights that had seemed endless. I turned on the TV in the room and saw that the movie Painted Skin (Hua Pi 畫皮) was playing, a movie in which Zhou Xun plays a seductive, shape-shifting fox spirit who relies on a steady supply of fresh human hearts to maintain her youthful appearance. Despite the movie playing, I kept thinking about what lay ahead in the coming days.
The next day, I would take a flight down to the Yellow Mountain region in Anhui and meet with a small group to go and see a doctor named Jiang Feng. Dr Jiang practiced a style of Classical Chinese Medicine that had its roots in Shaolin and required the doctors to reach a high-level of self-development, or “gongfu” 功夫, which they achieved by practicing Yijinjing 易筋经 (“tendon changing”) neigong starting at a young age. Their skills developed to the extent in which they possessed seemingly super-human qualities, notably the ability to emit a powerful emission of electric-like qi 氣 from their bodies at will, a skill useful in medical and martial scenarios. This doctor was not only sought out by many celebrities and high-ranking officials for his unique and effective style of treatment (there are pictures of him treating the Queen of Malaysia), but a growing number of neigong enthusiasts, such as those I would be meeting on this trip, had begun to visit him in hopes of learning some of the Yijinjing practices of his lineage.
