Bad Joke

There's a T-shirt that says "Got qi?"  My Y style TJ teacher and her husband are wearing this T-shirt in a header photo on their Web site.

Last Wednesday, my other TJ teacher got lost in the fog and arrived an hour late to class.  Then he sat on the bench with a smile and watched as Tiger and Ir ran the class and another student tried to help out.  I took a rest and ended up talking to him for a while about all sorts of random stuff while thinking, "uh... shouldn't you be teaching class...?"

"His wife call me W."
(Wife?)  "Who was the teacher you guys were talking about... got divorced and has a girlfriend in every country?  Was that CXW or someone else?"
(Funny pause.) "Yeah, that's CXW."
"Oh, but he has a wife?"
(Silent mmm...)  "He has wife and girlfriend..."
"Oh..."
"But it's ok, he got a lot of qi."
Trying not to laugh, while wondering why his wife would want to be his wife.
"My sifu not like that.  He's very traditional.  No girlfriend."
Wondering about the definition of "traditional" since having mistresses is as old as the institution of marriage.

I could tell from the pictures, the little stories he told about his sifu, how he has said before that he's "very traditional", and from my teacher's personality.  I can assume that... like sifu, like disciple.  If someone can commit to a sifu and lineage for life, I guess he can also commit to a wife and marriage.  Although in other cases, not so....

"What's the difference between a sifu and teacher?"
...
"So you can only have one sifu?"
...
"But you can learn from any other teachers?"
"It just so happened that my situation allowed me to do this."
...
"I could be his disciple... but... I'm not..."

He didn't exactly explain that point but I'm guessing it has something to do with the person and personal relationship more than the TJ alone.

The unintentional parallel conversation, substitute "wife" for "sifu" and "mistress/concubine" for "teacher".