Jet Li sets up business to promote Tai Chi

MOVIE STAR JET LI TEAMS UP WITH IT ENTREPENEUR TO PROMOTE TAI CHI

KUNG Fu movie start Jet Li has teamed up with a Chinese internet entrepeneur to promote Tai Chi.

Li, star of "Hero" and "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor", joined forces with Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, the world's biggest retailer.

Ma recently stepped down as the CEO of the company, saying he wanted to concentrate his energies in education and the environment.

Like Li, Ma is a long time follower of Tai Chi and has used its teachings in his business strategies and his former company.

The duo have opened a school in Hangzhou, Zheijiang Province, eastern China.

A statement from the company said the school would teach Tai Chi and other martial arts under the tutalege of a well-known master.

In keeping with Ma's environmental beliefs, the school is part of a larger building which also houses commercial services. The park is in wetlands.

Story taken from www.martialnews.co.uk

Long live meatspace!

Most mornings, when I am enduring the tram ride to work, I notice that the vast majority of my fellow commuters* are somehow 'tuned out' of what is going on around them.  Either they are tickling their smartphones, their ears are plugged into some music device or they are lost in an e-reader.

Somehow, as a people, we seem to have lost the desire or ability to connect to the environment immediately around us.  Preferring instead to talk to someone miles away who isn't even a good enough friend to be with them in person.  Personally, I would prefer to witness and react appropriately to what is going on around me.  The driver's announcement being a convenient case in point this morning.  The line was down for a while.  Not that most of my fellow passengers would realise, as it was back up again fairly soon.

This doesn't just happen in the mornings, either.  At any time of day, the number of people around me either literally or figuratively 'plugged in' to some electronic device, draining their attention, is considerable.

I read something on a lifting site that said, "If you've got time to Facebook, then you've got time to train...".  This paraphrasing my earlier sentiments that I would now rather train than watch something I don't particularly like on tv.

What do each of us actually get from spending more time online?  The illusion of a social life?  How social are you if you hardly ever actually see your friends?  If I train, it might not be very rock and roll, repeating the same action again and again ad nauseam.  But I do get something at the end of it all - eventually.

That's why I'm shifting more and more of my endeavours into 'meatspace' (and why I'm posting on here less and less - sorry!)