Eastern Promise

Hi everyone,

Good week this week. I changed groups from Ciao Shifu to Tai chi Shifu at the beginning of the week because I want to do more Tai chi. Tai chi Shifu’s group is the same as all the other’s – doing Kung fu for the most part but because I wanted to specialise more, I moved to his group so he could keep a closer eye on me. My new group is really nice although I miss the old one. Will add some profiles in due course.

Tai chi in general is going really well. I should finish the first form very soon. It’s really long and I think I’ll just get a feel for it before I leave, it’ll take years to perfect!

Itwas white here, at the beginning of the week. It was cold and snowy and the freezing temperatures were back with a vengence. Wednesday morning there was still snow on the ground, but by Wednesday lunchtime the snow had gone and the sun was shining. It’s been getting warmer and warmer eversince. I put suncream on yesterday!

We had an exam on Wednesday – Kung fu jumps and forms, we presented a good exam and it all went quite well. Also presented the stick form too. Photos to follow. Keep checking the profiles category.

Stefan (my roomy) and I also got a chair and a working telephone line on the same day. It was like a Birthday!

I also had the first shower in my room. It was of course cold, but Stefan convinced me it was refreshing. I took the plunge and haven’t turned back since. The initial shock and sudden intake of air soon passes and its fine. I have had one almost everyday since.

Today, we went for a walk and a sort of a picnic and some shaolin soccer. It was really good fun.

Tomorrow, Arthur, Jon and I are going with Tai chi Shifu to the Shaolin temple. Usually everybody goes but as we are leaving before the next organised trip we organised a mini excursion for the 3 of us. Will let you know what it’s like.

That’s all for now.

Take care x

Sunday Update

Late last night we found out that we are not in fact going for the trip tomorrow – only Arthur is as he leaves next week… apparently it takes more time if more of us go and Tai chi Shifu has tocome back early for a meeting. “I don’t quite understand the logic behind this”, as Arthur said, but, of course what do we know. We are rescheduling for a couple of week’s time. A lazy Sunday is in order then!

This is Jurgen (left) and Norbert (right).

Norbert 

Norbert got here in the dark ages when there where no Chinese students during the new year and the food was grim. He’s from Germany and works in computers. We have made good friends and I will try to visit him in Germany soetime in the future. Norbert is sadly injured at the momnent and very frustrated. It’s his knees. He has been for countless different opinions and the latest doctor gave hime some sort of miracle tar to smear on the problem area. He had started to train slowly and will hopefully be back on top form asap!

Jurgen 

Jurgen got here a couple of weeks ago. He arrived from India where he and his partner drove from Germany where he’s from. All the way through Turkey, Iran and Pakistan. It’s quite and adventure and he has a website to which there is a lnk on this site if you want to check out the journey so far. It’s in German and English and called Magic-worlds – check it out. His partner, Alex is holding the fort and the truck in Goa while Jurgen is here.. She is a Reiki Master and teaching while he is away. They also have a dog, who has made joined them on the whole trip! Jurgen was a Loreal hairdresser as well as Alex, but gave it all up to travel. Good for them I say!

Might get a free haircut, fingers crossed, not much to do here though. Although because I am doing the stick form at the moment and my hair is a bit all over the place, I seemed to have picked up the name, Tom the Wizard. As far as nicknames go, it’s not too bad!

Christian

Although the last picture looks as though Christian is turning to the dark side, it is in fact his final exam, Tai chi part. Christian left early this morning after just over 2 months here. He was in my group and a really nice guy. He’s from Bavaria in Germany and only 19! He is returning now to audition for a jazz singing school. Good luck Christian!

Christian and Paul (the Dutch tiger) came up the school anthem. It’s a Elvis number called ‘Trouble’. It goes a little something like this… “If you’re looking for trouble, Well you came to the right place…”. Perfect!

This is Paul. He is from Holland. He has actually just left here last Saturday. He stayed for a month. He was very funny and had a perfect Dutch accent. He usually spends about 6months working and then the rest of the time travelling.

It was sad to see him go as he really made everyone laugh and we got on really well. He was in my group and we started training almost at the exact same time.

Paul left for work in Thailand, he is a underwater construction engineer, I think. He works on oil rig maintenance, diving with aqua gear and sometimes works blind under instruction cleaning or putting together piping and parts. I think he often has to go in decompression tanks. It sounded rather dangerous, but I think that’s just Paul. When he was younger his hobby was to climb cranes with his friends, scramble alongto the end and hang off them! Crazy!

He was only here for a month and in the beginning found it quite difficult: authority and picking up movement. But by the end he had improved so much I was really happy for him. He didn’t want to leave and may come back in again when the weather is a little warmer and if they get rid of the dust in the training halls!

Dear all,

Sorry I haven’t written in some time. Busy here. Snowing too!… The cold is back.

Welcome to the new Profiles category I have made. Everyso often I will get some pictures of my fellow students on here with a brief introduction.

Hope you are all well. Will keep on adding to the Zhengzhou category too so keep on checking there!

Take care,

Tom x

We had a small exam yesterday. Each group made a presentation to the rest of us of what they have been doing for the past month. It’s not really assessed as such but was filmed so we can watch ourselves back and apply corrections.

I had some nice comments so I think I did quite well.

Here are a few photos…

Will try to get a copy of the video to bring home.

It’s Thursday morning off. In the city to get some fibre in the form of cereal.

There are a lot more Chinese students now although the 1000 that were promised are not yet here, maybe they’ll come in drips and drabs.

More students means more choice in the kitchen at meal times. The past two meals I have had cold rice ho-fun noodles with sweet vinegar cucumbers. It’s the closest thing to quench my craving for a nice simple, fresh salad!

I don’t know what it will be like when the school is full. It’s already a bundle to get to the serving hatches!

It’s so strange walking through the school grounds. There are groups of children of about 9 or 10 years old. They are chatting away quite happily. Everything could be considered normal, but I still can’t get used to the fact that one child is wielding and cracking a whip, or swinging a staff or even over-arm throwing a fire cracker the size of a mini-grenade… This ain’t no ordinary school!

That doesn’t mean that all us laowai (foreigners) are normal though. I will try and get some off the nuttier students’ profiles on at some point. And the shifus, they are also rather fruit cakey!

Ciao fo now x

Hi y’all!
It’s Sunday and I’m in the city. It’s been an eventful day already. I did yga this morning, then off to the city with Kristian and Paul. We were just pointing to the taxi driver where we wanted to get off and he pulled in rather quick and had a bit of an accident. A large yellow camper-van/ people carrier bumped into us. There was quite a large dent although as far as these sort of things go it was pretty harmless. I think the taxi driver was quite upset, but it seemed to be ok and he signalled that we should go.

After shopping, I walked via a DVD shop to meet some of the others in a restaurant. You know I don’t think it’s possible to buy legitimate DVDs in China. The selection is amazing and you can get titles that are still just opening in the cinema for about 45p!

After a bit of a rummage, I went onto the restaurant. It was, I am asshamed to say, an all-you-can-eat buffet serving western food. There is a group of the foreigners here who go every week. I, for one will not be joining them as I ended up eatingfartoo much and only realised this when I got up to leave. The school of cuisine was not un-tainted by the location though, there was the odd ecclectic mix of Chinese taste and randomness. Among these were apple and cheese pizza, deep-fried chicken feet bites and Japanese vegetable sushi roles. Quite bizzare. And it wasnt unusual to find strawberry cream puffs on the same tray as chicken nuggets.

After that I came here, to the smoky old internet place. Well, that’s not entirely true now, because the computer there was not working properly and now I am re-typing this message on Monday evening after loosing most of the post I was writing somewhere on the super highway. Hope I can remember all the good bits from memeory. It was an eventful day and it wasn’t even home time yet.

The week passed quite well, and the sanda that I was dreading all day on Thursday turned out to be not too bad. Actually I quite enjoyed it – it was like a ‘box-ercise’ class. A good-old sweaty workout with boxing gloves and pads. I am not sure if the teacher was going a bit easy and trying to change my mind on sanda. I am going to stick to my guns on this one though and keep going with the kung-fu and tai-chi. Sanda is not whatI want and I know that it’s not going to change.

I think what helped me enjoy it was the factthatthe sun has finally come out in Zhengzhou. The weather s pleasand and the sky is blue. It is different to European skies though. It’s somehow paler and all the colours are muted slightly. I don’t know if this is to do with pollutuion or just the global position. It is clear to see though why colours are so important here like red for example. All the colours have there own specific meaning and if the surrounding colours are pale then any added colour is so much more important.

Kung fu is going well. I finished my first empty-hand form last week – Shao-heng form. I found out today (Monday) thatI can start the gun form (don’t worry mum – there are no fire-arms allowed in school – it’s pronounced ‘guhn’. It’s a staff form. I want to get started as soon as poss because next month I may transfer fully over to Tai-chi.

Tai-chi’s all good, lots to learn but I am excited at the prospect of continuing it even when I get back home – ooh – long-term commitment. I am also looking forward to teaching some more yoga when I get back. Maybe that means I have to stay in one place for a bit too.

Yesterday (Sunday) was like a second Chinese New Year. It was the end of the festive season celebrations so we took a bus into the city to see the fireworks. I was quite excited to see fireworks in China where they originated. It was really impressive. The display lasted about 30 minutes and although there was mist and some of the higher rockets were a bit obscured they were still massive. The best parts were the rockets that let off about a hundred red lanterns that had green lights hanging off them which hung in the sky and floated down. Brill.

Well everyone, today is another day, well in fact I have been here a week. A strange one. From the panic of the beginning to the now where I am writing this on the usual Thursday morning off.

I asked for more Tai chi and got it. Well, only one extra class yesterday nstead of a Kung fu class. The original plan was to have a secong\d class yesterday as well replacing the dreaded sanda class. Things didn’t go quite to plan due to a mix-up and I had my 3rd sanda class. Great! Not much changed, well I felt it was worse. On reflection, quite outrageous and amusing. But on serious consideration, outrageous and terrible.

The class started as usual with the customery running in big circles outside, blah, blah, blah. We then did some unbelieveably lop-sided stretching. Sanda, by nature is unbalanced. The left-leg has to be flexible and the right solid. Combinations next with the obligatory shouting. The teacher doesn’t seem to understand that the louder he shouts the more incomprehensible he is and therefore the more annoyed he gets because we can’t understand what he is saying. I also loked the extra touch of the flexible small whipping branch he weilded and whipped for that power-look. Nice.

After a breather, we unbelieveably went out of the school front gates and crossed the behemoth of a main road to a deserted gas station. We stood in lines practicing the special sanda kicks, about 300 of them actually. We kicked above a waist-high hedge-row. If we accidently kicked too low due exhaustiona and kicked a leaf on the bush, we had to stand before sanda shifu, arms to the sky and receive a lovely whip. It was not hard, hardly felt, but I guess something to do with humiliation and no-doubt reflective of the shifu’s unbalaced past. The crowd of bewildered passers-by added extra comedy value. The slack-jawed (well, fly-catching mouth wide open) simple Zhengzhou folk joined me in their dis-belief of the situation. The kung-fu master-wannabe drunk was the exception who proceeded to whisper teaching tips in the shifu’s ear.

After this ‘training’ joke we crossed back over and did some more running races, followed by everybody hold hands in a chain frog-jumps, followed by carry you partner like a bride across the thresh-hold running and topped off with couple of final sprints. The promise of the next 2 classes being souly power-training made it for me.

Last night I promptly talked to my Shifu (Ciao Shifu- a veritable saint in comparison, mild-mannered and big on the nice-front) explaining my dis-like of sanda and how it is not what I want from martial arts or why I came to China. So from next week, I no longer join the pain-parade. Wish me luck for my last sanda-samba tomorrow. Hooray!

Tai chi is going well. I have been promised that if I stay next month then I can do solely Tai chi and learn Tai chi sword form as well. I must say this is quite tempting and Tai chi Shifu is quite a character, especially cosidering his ripe-old-age of 20! It’s something to consider, and I will be mulling it seriously… any input would be appreciated, so leave me a message.

The day before yesterday, I also got my uniform! All the new-boys look splendid in red and black. Photos to follow at some point.

While in the office building, awaiting my fitting I also discovered the origin of part of the school’s name. Xiao Long was a child progidy and a Martial Art movie-star to boot.

Food is looking up. Since all the cooks are back from holiday, the food is fresh and non-recylcled and the variety is not too shabby. I have become rather partial to the moon cakes of a multitude of various fillings (green paste, orange paste, brown paste – sounds nasty but actually sweet and tasty).

May add some more as the day goes on as there is time to spare today.

x

I’ve done two Tai chi classes so far. Both have been pretty brill. There is something in this I am sure. There is a definate power in it that is peaceful and strong. The first class was some Tai chi walking and some other movements. I got it quite well I think. There was also some fighting appliations, which I was rubbish at. I was pushing with muscular strength which is really limited. I am not sure what it is that the teacher is using but I can almost see it even if I can’t do it.
The second class was the start of a form. It is so intricate that I think will take quite some time to master.
The teacher, Taichi Shifu as we all call him, is really young (about 20) as most of them are and so I am not sure he is able to fully communicate the full extent of what he is doing.
I think this time in China will hopefully turn out to be the foundation for a continuation back in Europe. It’s quite exciting and I look forward to wherever it will take me.
I am going to speak to Shi Shifu tonight to see about the possibilities of taking exra classes… and hopefully less Sanda!!
All for now –