BEIJING (dpa) – As early morning exercisers practised tai qi, sword movements and folk dancing, two middle-aged men stood facing each other around a 20-metre pine tree.
Both kept their eyes closed and held their stiff arms and hands aloft, equidistant from the thick trunk, like crabs about to crush their prey. But they did not pounce, they stood motionless as they tried to draw qi, or vital energy, from the ancient tree in Beijing’s Temple of Heaven Park.
Elsewhere in central Beijing’s largest park, men and women dangle from branches until they are ready to drop. Others pound their shoulders into solid trunks, or massage sore hips and legs on knobs and branches.
Wang Limin, 45, spends up to three hours every morning walking through the park, massaging herself on the most comfortable trees.
“This exercise helps my neck and lungs,” Wang said as she repeatedly hit her back on a huge 300-year-old pine.
In another area of the park, Li Rong balanced for more than one hour on the edges of two house bricks, occasionally reaching out to touch a nearby tree trunk. Li, a retiree in his mid-60s, is a “tree qi gong” adherent.
Qi gong features slow, precise aerobic exercises designed to focus the body’s strength and channel its qi. Some qi gong practitioners believe all living things, from people to plankton, possess transferrable energy.
The longevity and mysterious root systems of trees make them the most attractive plant life for many qi seekers. Others believe they feel the essence and energy of a tree by imitating its still trunk and gently waving branches.
Yet many, like Wang, dismiss the practice of “tree qi gong”. “It’s too easy to lose yourself and forget what you’re doing,” Wang said of the exercises.
Wang also dislikes people who hang from or massage themselves on slender branches, accusing them of damaging the trees. Fences protect many ancient trees in Beijing, and Wang has to climb through railings to reach her favourite pine. “I picked this one because it’s the biggest,” she said.
Beijing municipal government keeps data on some 18,000 trees more than 100 years old, 2,400 of which date back at least 300 years. The city has adopted as official symbols two species renowned for their longevity, the oriental cypress and the scholar tree.
“The stately cypress symbolizes the courage and strength of the Chinese people, their simple and hard working nature, and their defiance in the face of aggression,” the official People’s Daily said, while the scholar tree represents “good fortune, joy and well-being”.
German graphic designer and photographer Kosima Weber Liu has documented dozens of the most ancient and sacred trees in and around Beijing over the last 15 years. Many trees photographed by Weber Liu have acquired famous names, such as the General in White Robes, a 20-metre lacebark pine in Beihai Park. The General is thought to have been planted in the 12th century in an area that was once part of the imperial court of northern China’s Jin dynasty.
Outside Beijing in Miyun county is the giant “Pine with Nine Trunks and 18 Branches”, said to be 1,300 years old.
“With these old ones, of course, it’s much more impressive,” Weber Liu said. “They do give you this feeling that they protect a certain area. They keep a whole system around them intact.”
But age and size age alone do not determine the qi in a tree. “A tree’s energy depends very much on the time of day and the weather,” she said.
Weber Liu recently urged her young son to approach a small tree in a local park, hoping that he would sense its energy. “Very quickly this 3-year-old boy said ‘Wow, it’s really warm’,” she said. “He could really feel it (the tree’s energy).”
