Lian Gong Shi Ba Fa or Lian Gong 18 Form (練功十八法) is a comprehensive system of Chinese health exercises. It is a set of stretching, breathing, and self-massaging exercises designed to prevent and relieve stress and acute pains around the neck, shoulders, back, hips, legs, joints, and connective tissues. Even though it is relatively new (became popularized only about 40 years ago), it is based on many old Chinese stretching, breathing, and warm-up exercises dating back more than 1,000 years, including the well-known Eight Silk Brocade (八段錦). Since its introduction about 40 years ago, it has spread rapidly from China to other countries (especially to Japan and Brazil), and millions of people are now practicing it. It is fairly easy to learn and practice. The time it takes to do the exercise depends on the number of repetitions, but can be as little as 15 minutes.
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An Introduction to Lian Gong Shi Ba Fa (練功十八法)
February 2011
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View from the Balcony: Tale of Two Cultures and Two Countries – Part III
February 2011
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When my parents and their five children first moved from Canton, China to Hong Kong in mid 1949, we moved into a second floor of an old, two-story house that was rented by my second maternal uncle whose family had been living in Hong Kong for some time. There were many people living in this house, with about twenty people after we moved in. There were eight in my uncle’s family, my maternal grandmother, the widow of my oldest maternal uncle, one or two step-brothers of my uncle, my uncle’s house-helper to help take care of the old, the young, and his large family, plus seven members of my family.
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Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Distortions of WWII History
More than 65 years have passed since the end of WWII. Massive inhuman atrocities were committed by the Japanese military in many countries in Asia during WWII. Because most people, especially people who do not have relatives who lived through that part of history, have no knowledge of what actually occurred, it is very easy for them to be misled by distortions of that part of WWII history. People may think that such distortions occur only inside Japan, they are not aware that such distortions also occur frequently in the U.S., even in academic and scholarly literary circles. This article discusses two examples to illustrate such distortion.
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