The Yin in the Yang by Lee Napolin Chinalai
Kung Fu at age 59
I’d been thrown to the floor by one of the teenage guys, but it was the instructor, the shifu, who held out his hand to pull me up and seize the opportunity to ask, “How old are you?” I was proud to be a 59-year-old woman learning kung fu, so I answered. Mistake. That was the beginning of a subtle change that grew over time, like mold on a moist bathroom wall.
It was okay for a while. At a ceremony to bring our status from students to disciples, he talked about each of us. When it was my turn to stand in front of him, at ease, legs slightly apart, fingers intertwined behind my back, he said, only half joking, that I was the person he wanted to be when he grew up. It was flattering, but as the years passed and I went from white to yellow belt to orange to green to blue, I realized he saw, or looked for, changes I didn’t feel, or I could still manage to ignore: when a twenty-year-old was whaling on the pad I held on my forearm, for example; or the tense forty-year-old going through a divorce who didn’t feel me tapping out of a choke hold. As long as I could, I would.
Meanwhile my husband and I kept working, our kids got married, and then with what seemed like one big whoosh, I was 69 and there were three grandchildren to love, to hold, to babysit. And a purple belt. But it was getting harder and harder, not to learn kung fu, but to get taught. When we practiced self-defense, the instructor would suddenly appear to work with my younger male partner while I stood by and watched. I am sure he thought I was going to break. What might have started as a teaching moment turned me into an outcast. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I would ask to have my partner back. The shifu would compliment me on my perseverance and then in the next class do it all again.
Tai Chi at the Grand Canyon, 2024
Photo: Somporn Intaraprayong
Interspersed with kung fu had been occasional classes of tai chi. It was the forms I loved in kung fu, not so much the sparring, and tai chi, the ultimate martial art, was all form. I had known about tai chi from dating my Thai boyfriend in the late 1960s during the two years before we married. We would go to New York’s Chinatown, buy a packet of dried squid in lieu of popcorn, and head for the theatre where the latest Shaw Brothers kung fu movie was playing. Eventually the hero and the villain would stand face-to-face in horse stance, their hands held forward, palms outward and toward each other but never touching, and the energy fight would begin. The earth would shake and fracture under their feet; the mountains erupt into landslides. That’s how I learned about the movement of chi. I wanted in! But instead, we worked and moved, and moved again, and had three kids, and started a business, and, and, and.
By the time I was 70, kung fu wasn’t fun anymore. Grandchild Number 4 was born, and I decided to be done. Still, I needed to exercise. A local gym offered a bargain for ten sessions with a personal trainer and I jumped on it. When the trainer was surprised by my ability to stand on a balance board, she mentioned a friend who was studying tai chi. Of course I wanted to know where! Now, eight years later, at nearly 79, my feet might not be cracking the earth, but energy, looking like gold dust, sometimes surrounds my fingertips when I do tai chi.
Tai Chi Fan, October 15, 2025
Photo: Dhani Spinola
Bio: Lee Napolin Chinalai and her husband, Vichai, lived and worked in the U.S., Thailand and Bahrain, and own a tribal antiques business together. A number of Lee’s articles on tribal art have appeared in U.S. and Great Britain magazines. Lee wrote about Vichai in a NYT Tiny Love Story and is working on a memoir about cross-cultural marriage. Besides writing (and reading), she loves her family and friends, practicing tai chi and qigong, and occasionally flailing about on the pickleball court. She is grateful to all of her teachers.
