Who wants to live forever?

One of the irritating things about aging is that the witlessly energetic forms of exercise I favour become harder. Having brain surgery earlier this year seems to have been a bit of a catalyst for picking up other minor, niggling injuries which just won't go away; I've had to quit running because my knees really don't like me any more, for example, and presumably sooner or later I'll have to leave the kickboxing behind as well which will sadden me because not only do I rather like smacking stuff, but also the female:male ratio in my class is about 5:1.

So it is that I'm looking more seriously at Tai Chi as a long-term fitness solution. For as long as I've been doing martial arts, I've kept running into enthusiastic, cheerful and deceptively youthful-looking oriental men. Way back when I lived in Manchester there was Master Shin who taught me Tae Kwon Do - I was always impressed that he had been in the Korean TKD national team, but I was even more impressed that he'd been in the national team in the early 70's and he still looked about 30.
Then there's Tai Chi. I guessed Ninja Master's age once, and underestimated it by ten years. More impressive are masters Wang Hei Jun, and Lo de Xiu who are both well older than you'd think would be more than capable of kicking most people's heads in. Of course, probably the best advert for Tai Chi is the legendary Bolo Yeung. That's him in the middle. The photo was taken in 1995 when he was 57 and if Tai Chi can make me look that good when I'm 57, sign me up right now.