CHILDLIKE FREEDOM

An i n t e r v ie w w ith Gao Ke, fo u n de r o f t he Be iji ng Park ou r C om mu nity

像孩子一樣自由—— 采訪北京跑酷公社創(chuàng)始人高科

YOU ARE THE FOUNDER OF BEIJING PARKOUR COMMUNITY, BUT YOU PREFER TO REFER TO YOURSELF SIMPLY AS “A TRAINER”. WHY IS THAT?

My job is just to teach people how to train themselves, and calling myself“a trainer” makes things easy and clear. When I refer to myself as the founder of something, it creates a distance between me and others that I don’t want.

CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT THE BEIJING PARKOUR COMMUNITY?

Right now, the community is semi-professional—by that I mean about half of the people in the community are professional traceurs (parkour practitioners). I never did anything to try to change the community for the better or impose any rules on our members, but in the past few years I’ve been really impressed by how it has grown and transformed on its own. Everyone on the team is maturing and bettering themselves, and everyone has taken to the community as a family. This is because, in the process of training, the members can feel a profound interaction, something we built between one another. As a result, the community started to run itself on a good system quite naturally. The community is not commercial in any way; it’s just home to people who are having fun doing parkour, and we are quite independent with our own work. I’ve received a lot of commercial proposals from running this community, but I’d rather keep it as it is. We won’t go commercial unless our members fi nd some common goals and are willing to partner up. The only thing that matters is that everyone in this community is happy. Other than that, it doesn’t need any management to guarantee its vitality and future growth.

WHY DID YOU START DOING PARKOUR?

I started working out in a gym in 2001. However, gradually I discovered that the gym was not my thing. It didn’t solve my problems. My understanding of being strong is to be agile, natural, and relaxed. I got big by working out, but my body became stiff and unbalanced, and my life felt in con fl ict, both inside and outside. When I fi rst saw a video of parkour, I regretted not knowing about it earlier. For me, it embodies the childlike freedom I sought after in my subconscious.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY“CHILDLIKE”, A WORD YOU FREQUENTLY USE IN YOUR BLOGS? WHAT CHILDLIKE QUALITIES DO YOU THINK ADULTS SHOULD LEARN?

A child does not have ideas about right or wrong, nor does a child know what should be done and what shouldn’t. A child only feels, knows, and accepts; children don’t discriminate or overly attach themselves to things. This is what I call childlike. Adults, on the other hand, suffer pain and confusion of the mind as a result of their discriminations and obsessions. I believe one’s physical movements are re fl ections of one’s inner world. If an adult is sensitive to their own movements and the minor things happening in one’s everyday life, one will wake and better understand the obsessions that have been causing pain to the body and mind. By becoming aware of these obsessions and learning to let them go, an adult will return to the state of a child again. If we cannot return to that state, it just means we are way too confused.

IN YOUR BOOK THE CITY IS A GYM: PARKOUR AND BODYWEIGHT TRAINING (《城市就是健身房》), YOU MENTIONED THAT YOUR TRAINING METHODS CAME FROM STUDYING THE MOVEMENTS OF YOUR INFANT SON. HOW SO?

Yes, in my training I borrowed a lotfrom the baby’s movements. When I first started parkour training, I realized that a lot of people cannot even stand properly, and that’s because they cannot sit properly, and in the end, I found that they cannot even crawl properly. It is effective to mend their bodies’imbalances and improve agility by teaching them how to crawl again.

YOU HAVE WRITTEN IN YOUR BLOG:“PARKOUR IS MY FAITH, OR TO BE MORE EXACT, I TAKE THE BUDDHIST AND TAOIST PRINCIPLES BEHIND PARKOUR AS MY FAITH.” CAN YOU EXPAND ON THAT?

The essence of parkour is to flow like water. That is a very Taoist thing—nothing stays and everything flows. If one’s psychological world is too burdened with attachments, then one’s life will also be full of obstacles, one’s body will become imbalanced, and one’s movement would be in some way awkward. I’m stating this as a truth, not just a conclusion from my personal experience. That’s what it takes to flow in parkour—one needs to let go of one’s inner attachments first.

PARKOUR IS, AFTER ALL, AN IMPORTED SPORT. DO YOU BORROW FROM PARKOUR TRAINERS FROM FOREIGN COUNTRIES?

I don’t know how other trainers teach, and I don’t borrow the training methods of other teams or from foreign countries. I teach people how to move, and that’s it. It’s not just parkour. In fact, if you are observant enough, you will realize that parkour is not different from what we do in our everyday life—walking, sitting down, and standing up. Once you get that, you will not only know how to do parkour, but also how to live.

YOU HAVE ALSO WRITTEN THAT PARKOUR IS NO DIFFERENT FROM BABYSITTING OR ATTENDING TO HOUSEHOLD CHORES. HOW ARE THEY THE SAME?

Ha! How can I not say they are the same? Of course they are different in some way. However, if you keep yourself open, sensitive, and conscious, these things are the same. You feel everything with the same consciousness.

WHAT IS THE ULTIMATE GOAL THAT YOU WANT TO REACH AS A TRACEUR?

To accept when something comes along my way and not attach myself to anything when it leaves. For example, if I do a good move, that’s it. Let it go.

WHAT KIND OF CHANGES HAVE YOU WITNESSED IN CHINESE PARKOUR CIRCLES?

Not many fundamental changes, really. It is still common for many traceurs to not have a good grasp of the meaning of parkour, much less expressing it to a general audience. I know my understanding of parkour is quite personal, and I do not intend to preach it to others. For me, parkour is just a way to improve myself, and it takes me on the path to freedom. I’m not aiming for success.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF PARKOUR’S FUTURE IN CHINA? WHAT ARE CHINA’S ADVANTAGES OR DISADVANTAGES IN THIS REGARD?

In China, many of the first traceurs are just like me—they love the sport sincerely, and they hope parkour remains simple and pure in China in the future. If my training models mature in a few years, I may put my efforts into spreading parkour on a bigger scale. Hopefully that will help its popularization in China, or help usher it into a new phase...There is nothing we can do to change the way things go. I don’t want to look back, or look forward. That just distracts me from concentrating on my feelings in the present.

– GINGER HUANG (黃原竟)