Come on, fellerz! Get your chi up!

Ahhh, the human spirit. It is indomitable.

Practicing diao gung, he says, is something you don't do cold, it's a several step process. Typically, students start a work-out session by first taking part in a normal chi gung routine. After an hour or so, on this occasion, the class divided and the diao gung'ers passed through a curtain into a special kind of weight room in the back. Iron plates weighing from 1kg to 20kg were scattered over the padded floor as were the devices used for stacking and hoisting those weights. Vertical rods stick up out of these weight hangers at the end of which is a hook for catching a loop in a blue silk ribbon. The ribbon, which is about 15cm wide before it is folded and rolled into a fastening rope, is looped in a lark's head knot around the base of both penis and scrotum, near the point where they join the abdomen.

"You have to get your chi up first," said Wang Hsin-kun, an air conditioner installer dressed in a sort of light blue satin kilt and glancing down towards his privates.

Without question.

Taipei Times