Posts Tagged ‘food’

Doing a bit of catching up with this entry.  I have a backlog of photos to share so here we go with that …

On December 28, while Chana and Teresa were still in town, a friend invited us all out to KTV inside the city wall.  So we headed over to Li Jia Cun (李家村) to get our song on.  It was pretty fun and after a few hours we all headed back home.  Here are a few photos:

That was lots of fun.

A few days later was my birthday.  After a morning wushu class I went home and washed up for a nice brunch with Ruhi at the Shangrila Hotel.  It was delicious and I got a wonderful card and gift — tickets to the visiting Fame 2010 Live broadway show that is coming to Xi’an!  The show is on 1/9, which is also the 4 month-iversary of our wedding.  Pretty neat.

Here are some pictures from the brunch:

When we got back home we took a couple of pictures too.  Here is one in celebration of the upcoming and poorly named “Karate Kid”.

In the evening we met up with Charisse and Theresa at the Da Yang Tan (Big Wild Goose Pagoda).  It was my first time there and boy is it hmm .. well, “big”, I guess.  And a little commercial looking, I suppose.  Quite the tourist attraction.

Then we walked to Chang An Lu and caught a taxi to Gaoxin where we partook of Ro Jia Mo and some B&R Ice Cream:

Then a few days later we found ourselves at the Xi’an Sports University checking out information about classes with our friend, Yue Xiao Yu.  She was kind enough to provide us with some introductions with one of the teachers there.  We commemorated the occasion with a few photos at the front gate:

Then it was off to meet up with Ruhi’s friend Stephen, a doctor in Xi’an who I got to meet for the first time.  Very nice guy and was very helpful answering some medical questions for us.  Here he is:

And finally we went to Ruhi’s friend’s home where she and her son treated us to some Shaanxi home cooking. It was quite delicious and I learned how to make Suan La Bai Cai!  Pretty neat.  Her name is Martha and here are some photos:

It was quite delicious.  Actually, that was yesterday (Wednesday, January 6) after wushu class.  Today (Thursday) we had an early morning appointment at the medical center so we grabbed some breakfast in the village on our way back home.  Some Chinese donuts!  Delicious!

And, with the exception of my birthday party video footage, that pretty much brings us up to date.

I did go to the Xi’an International University today, a private university located a mile or so from my home.  I was asking about Chinese language programs for the spring term but I’ll fill you guys in on all of that once I figure out exactly what I will be doing.

Tomorrow morning is wushu. My knee has been really acting up the last 2 days so I’m going to see what happens in the morning.  If I don’t feel up to it, I might just go and work on the side on some choreography stuff.  Hopefully I’ll be okay.  Although, it also means I have to wake up in 6 hours so I better go now.

Until later …

I will say right now that I didn’t take any pictures or videos today during practice, so if you are just here for that, you can go now.

The reason I didn’t get any media is because I was busy getting my butt kicked with some serious strength training and conditioning.  It was basically a repeat of Tuesday, but unlike Tuesday, this time around I actually participated in as many of the exercises as I could.

In fact, at the beginning of class I was feeling pretty good.  Probably because of the day of rest on Thursday.  I was raring to go.  We did our usual joint warm-up and running around (it is slowly starting to get a little easier) and then we did our stretching.  After that it was time to go in to the weight room.

Again we did work with the big bar and weights.  20kg to start (not including the bar, which i think is another 10kg or so).  I asked for a bit more clarification from Yuan Ming about how the exercise is done.  They focus not on the squat itself, or even on the rise from the squat, but mainly on the pop-up at the top where you’re supposed to use your quads and calves in unison to give you a slight explosive “push” upwards.  Similar to plyometrics, I guess.

We did 4 sets of those, each time increasing the weight by 10kg or so until we had gone up to around 50kg.  I could handle the weight okay, but some of those kids were having a rough time of it, given the fact that they coudn’t weight more than 50kg themselves.  After each set you were supposed to go sprint out of the room to get your legs moving.

Then they brought the weight down to around 15 kg and we did calf hops with the bar on our shoulders.  20 hops, 4 sets.  By the end of this I could start to feel it in my quads.

Then it was time for conditioning.   Coach Zhang devided us in to two groups: big (“da”) and small (“xiao”).  I was in the “big” group, but mainly because the small group goes first and sometimes I don’t know what the exercise is until I see people doing it.

First up was a 3 hop exercise.  You hop up 3 times, the first time with high knees, the second time with feet behind you and the third time with legs out to the sides.  You do 10 of those, so basically 30 hopes.  3 sets.

After that was incline pushups and a down-and-back wheelbarrow run.  3 sets.  I didn’t have a partner for this so I did incline pushups on the stretching bar by the window.

Then they did 3 sets of 20 lunge jumps.  I can’t do those so I did lunge walks along the carpet, 3 sets of 16 each.

After that we did 3 rounds of frog leaps down and back on the carpet. Or maybe it was 4.  Hard to remember.

After the frog leaps we did core work.  V-ups were done on the coach’s count up to 10 and then 5 quick ones followed by holding your legs and torso off the ground for 15 seconds.  Then turn over and do 30 fish flops followed by holding that position for 15 seconds.  4 rounds of all this.

Then they did some around-the-carpet single leg runs.  My knees wouldn’t let me do this one so I did calf-raises instead.  30 each leg.  3 sets for both them and I.

Then it was time for sprints.  We would walk down the length of 2 carpets and then sprint as fast as we could back.  My quads were pretty worn out by this point so slowing down from the sprint at the end of the room I almost fell, not realizing that my legs had weakened.

After 6 sprints we were told to stretch and relax.  And that was class.  It was a good workout and I’m glad I have the weekend to recover because it will really help.

One nice thing was that during the class Yue Xiao Yu came up to ask me a few questions about English.  Its nice that they feel comfortable enough with me to ask me questions.  I’m going to see if I can’t start up a little once-a-week English conversation practice for her and some of the other athletes that have expressed an interest in learning English.  Unfortunately they are trying to learn on their own, which I know is not easy.  So I figure I should let them take advantage of the opportunity presented by having a native English speaker training with them for the next year or ten.

This weekend should be a good one.  I’m meeting my Chinese tutor(s) tomorrow (Saturday) and doing my Chinese study over at the Village Cafe.  Then Sunday will be spent doing some work and getting things in order and organized at home.

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.  It came and went with narry a notice here at the Moran’s Xi’an household.  It was just a year ago that I was in Idhao celebrating the holiday wth my mom and Reid.  Here are some nice pictures of that in honor of the holiday.

Since I didn’t have to go training today, I thought I would post up a few pictures from the past few days of non-wushu-related life in Xi’an.

Making Noodles (10/25)

First though, I realized that I forgot to post up a bit of footage and photos from waaaay back on the 25th of October after Ruhi and I had visited Garnett and Umesh at the Xi’an Translation University (西安翻译大学). When we got back home we dropped by the local market village and got some noodles at one of our favorite little restaurants. This time around, since I had my video and still camera I thought I would capture some of the magic.

We ordered mian piao, a noodle dish made with flat noodles. Here you can see some photos of them being made and put in to the cooking water.

And here is a video of our noodle dish being made.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV4hWLrgrj8

Are you hungry yet?

Winter Smog (11/24)

Anyway, moving back to the present, one thing that Xi’an has which is unique from the other cities I’ve lived in around China, is the winter pollution.  It is a combination of the high number of coal being burned in the winter for heat, as well as the fact that we are in a valley surrounded by mountains.  As a result there are some days when the winds are blowing the wrong way and you can barely see a block away from you, sometimes even less.  Here are some photos I took the other day in front of our apartment complex.

It wouldn’t be so bad, but you can really smell a sooty flavor in the air and it makes me feel like eating BBQ all the time.   It also makes running around the track at the Sports Center quite interesting.  But I suppose it is one of the reasons that Xi’an is a good place to visit in the spring, summer and fall.

Although, one nice thing about Xi’an in the winter is that it doesn’t get super cold.  Well, at least it hasn’t this year.  Unlike Beijing that is under a carpet of snow, or Shanghai with its super frigid winds right off the ocean, Xi’an is a bit farther inland so we don’t get super freezing. (Crossing my fingers)

Restaurant Eating (11/25)

On Wednesday night we got a little hungry so we went to one of the other restaurants in the outdoor market next to our building.  This one has yang ro chua’r, which is the main reason we go there.  We originally wanted to go to another restaurant but they were closed so we ate at this one.  Here are a couple pictures.  I would have taken some of the food, but it was gone before you knew it!

Meeting James at the Village (11/26)

And tonight we went over to Shi Da Lu’s Village Cafe to do a little work, get something to eat and meet up with James, a Friend of Ruhi’s who lives in Xi’an.  Actually he will be moving close to our home in another week or two so we will practically be neighbors!  Here are a few photos of us hanging out at the cafe.

And thats about it for this time around.  Tomorrow it is back to the wushu guan and some more training.  Its been great having a day to heal up and I hope my body took good advantage of it.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the U.S. and Happy Day of the Covenant for those who know what that is.

Site Updates (11/26)

By the way, I changed out the header of my website (and the website looks pretty different these days if you haven’t visited it in a while), wushuzilla.com.  There is a pretty good chance that, if you are reading this, you may not have visited in a while. I actually have my blog replicating to 4 different websites, so you may not even know I have the site at all.

I also have a few ideas for the site that I will try to implement in the semi-near future.  But we’ll see what happens.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please feel free to use my new contact form on my website too.  I’m happy to hear whatever you might have to say.

On Thursday night Ruhi and I had trekked over to Shi Da Lu to meet up with Jamie for dinner at the Village Cafe.  While there Adam, a long-time resident of Xi’an now living in Shanghai, happened to call Ruhi and let her know that he was in town.  So we all made plans to meet up the next night and have dinner.

So Friday evening, after wushu class, I came home, cleaned up and then Ruhi and I took a cab over to the south gate to meet up with Adam and another friend, Jia Run.  (It turned out Jamie couldn’t make it.)  The four of us met up at the South Gate of the Xi’an City wall, just across from where I stayed with Wushu West only 4 months before.  My how time flies!

We went to eat at a restaurant that had been an old haunt of theirs back in the day.  It turned out to be pretty delicious as we ordered some Gong Pao Ji (Kung Pao Chicken), some Suan La Bai Cai (Hot and Sour Cabbage), a bit of soup and plenty of tea, and got down to some serious conversatin’.

After getting our fill of food, we all headed back to the South Gate area where Jia Run caught the good old 600 bus to her home.  Then Adam, Ruhi and I went to the hostel where another friend of theirs was staying.  Adam was in town doing some work for a Scottish company called Pure Media, a group that works with poor and underpriveledged groups and provides training and education in the arts.  (Adam is actually a very good musician (guitar) who was even featured in Xi’an television for being the first foreigner to ever learn and perform Shaanxi style Chinese Opera.)  Unfortunately the guy we went to see wasn’t there, but we did manage to make our own little street party, which was pretty fun..

After that we hung out a little longer pulling a “parking lot wushu” (sans wushu) until it got late enough for Ruhi and I to catch a cab back home and rest.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures.  Here is a video of us enjoying ourselves, just for your entertainment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyyQCbrhSTY

And for you folks in the mainland:

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTMzODUyMjA4.html

So, it has been a week since we arrived in Xi’an.  Here are the highlights:

The first day we slept in as much as possible, but there was a lot to do on our first day so we couldn’t oversleep too much.  After getting ready we headed out, first to get some breakfast and check out the local market for groceries.  The best discovery we made is that there is a small stand where a lady makes my favorite type of bing.  And right next to her is my second favorite type of bing.  Just 2 – 3 RMB each.  Heaven.

The market is pretty nice in that there is an endless supply of fresh vegetables, fruits, meats and what not for very cheap prices.  I bought a huge sack of groceries there for about $6 USD, including meat, freshly made ready to cook noodles and really good tofu.

After that we took a taxi to the Muslim Quarter.  Ever since I had been here last year with Shahaub, Zane and X2, I’d been dreaming about these lamb dumplings we ate.  They were so good we ate there 3 times in 5 days.  It was my first order of business for food consumption.  While we were there I made some small videos of us walking around which you can see here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC78RrD8uYQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSqwuvjUTaw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKonjmRajN4

After eating we grabbed a motorized pedicab and got a ride to the train station.  The trip was just 5 RMB and we had a nice conversation with the driver too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWJYVFh5Y6w

At the train station we thought we would be able to pick up the 3 big suitcases we had shipped up from Shenzhen, but it turns out they were at a different facility in the North East of Xi’an.  So we grabbed a taxi and went there.  The taxi driver accidentally forgot to start the meter (this has happened to me twice in the last week, for some reason) and so we asked him to wait for us and take us and our luggage back to Xi Gao Xin, which would be a good fare for him.  He was pretty nice and even helped us get the luggage organized in the car.  Soon enough we were back home, with a ton of my stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh3Ek51WhlA

The next day we went to the electronics market to get a router and a few other things for the home.  Unfortunately the problem wasn’t the router, but our lack of an access login for our internet, so we would have to use the internet at the local coffee shops (Starbucks and S.I.T.) which was actually kind of nice.  Ruhi has spent most of the week working on her Mona Foundation documentary project while I’ve been getting the lay of the land.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtzmHxJFvl0

I spent some time going through my things, re-arranging furniture with Ruhi, cleaning up the second room and figuring out what the neighborhood is like.  I also went to Metro to buy a soup pot.

On Monday and the two of us went to the McDonald’s by RenRenLe to meet with Susan and Vivian, who work in Ruhi’s company.  After that we took another pedicab to the S.I.T. Cafe near the University to use their internet and do some work.  We got some delicious street food over there too.  Really cheap too.  I can tell I’m going to like eating in Xi’an.

Tuesday was Ruhi’s birthday!  Happy Birthday Ruhi! It is also a Holy Day for Baha’i’s.  In the morning we went to the Starbucks on KeJiLu and then to the S.I.T. cafe just upstairs from it where we did lots of work during the day.  In the afternoon we also got a call that the internet technician was coming over to our place to help set things up.  So we rushed back and waited for him to show up.

During the week I had also been asking Wu Di to help introduce me to his friends on the Shaanxi Wushu Team so that I could figure out what the training options are.  My friends Lucianno and Angelica also were helping me with some information on other options.

The options I had for Xi’an were either to go to the Sports University (Xi’an Physical Education University or XPEU), train with a nanquan guy named Su Ke Feng who was teaching at a school in Xi’an, or train with the Shaanxi Wushu Team.

Each had their pro’s and cons, but first I had to make contact with someone who could help me make the best decision.  Wu Di was able to get me in touch with Wu Ya Nan, last year’s Chinese National Taiji Champion (he got silver this year) who said that he could help me out.

First he offered to take me to meet with Su Ke Feng.  We planned to meet in the evening around 4:30 or 5:00, so Ruhi and I hurridly got our internet hooked up and then headed out to meet up with WYN and his girlfriend, Bai Xue, who worked at the Sheraton and spoke some pretty good English.

They were really nice and got us some Pizza to eat, one for us and one for them.  However, the kitchen at the Sheraton had accidentally put ham on them and since they were Muslim they don’t eat any pork.  Also, on the way to Su Ke Feng’s school, we found out that (a) he would not be there during that particular evening and (b) it was REALLY far on the east side of town.  Like … REALLY far.  Here is a map for comparison:

So, we opted instead to go get some dinner together.  That turned out to be a good idea.

Why?  Because both of them live in the Muslim Quarter and they both really know the food there.  The conversation in the cab was basically like this:

WYN: What sort of food have you had here before?

US: Yang Ro Pa Muo, the lamb burger things, some lamb dumplings and stuff like that.

WYN: Ah.  You ate all the famous food.  But you haven’t had any of the best food.

US: ……….

So they took us to the part of the Muslim Quarter that foreigners never go to and fed us food that foreigners usually never get to eat.  It was quite delicious and we had a great time hanging out with them.

Afterwards we said farewell and took a taxi from the Bell Tower back home.  WYN had also said he would help me visit the Shaanxi Wushu Team’s training location, since it was so close to where we lived.  Score!

The next day I got a message from him that he would take me there on the following day (Thursday, October 22).  So I spent most of the day working on my computer while Ruhi worked on hers.

Then Thursday came.  I made my way to the Xi’an Sports Center located about 10km down the road from us (11 RMB in the taxi) and met WYN at the front gate.  He brought me in to the facility and took me to the wushu hall.  I had actually been here once before when Wu Di was staying here after last year’s nationals.  At that time he was training with the National Team and they had sequestered them prior to a wushu demonstration in Taiwan.

Here is a picture of the Wushu Hall that I took in 2008.  I also stuck in a few of Wu Di, Ma Ling Juan and Zhao Qing Jian for good measure.

Since the All China Games had just ended WYN and the rest of the professional team were on vacation.  So it was nice of him to take the time to bring me by.  He introduced me to Yuan Ming who was coaching a group of nanquan athletes and kids (about 7 of them).  I would be training with them.

On another carpet was a big group of changquan kids being coached by none other than Chu Feng Lian, the famous Fanzi Quan athlete from the 80’s and teammate with Zhao Chang Jun.  In fact several of them were learning Fanzi Quan and they had some pretty crazy techniques in the form that I hadn’t seen in the standard fanzi you see at most competitions.  Definitely the real deal.

The workout was pretty good.  I haven’t trained in almost 2 months, so I was a little out of sorts, but the good thing was that everyone was sort of on coasting mode because it was a break for the pro’s and their coaches.  It wasn’t quite as rigorous as it might have been, which was good for someone like me who was trying to get back in to the swing of wushu again.  I made it through the class and worked on some conditioning at the end (frog leaps, duck walks and wall sits).  When I left my legs were a bit on the wobbly side.

Here is a little video I took while there so you can see what the training hall looks like inside:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spu0gXU1vWU

WYN said that, until the professional team and coaches come back on the 1st, I could train with the nanquan group.  Then, when they got back we would figure out the cost and schedule for my training.  I was pretty happy to have found such a good facility so close to my home.  And after that he took me to show me which bus I would take to get there.  Just 1 RMB each way (about 12 cents).  Pretty nice.  Here is the bus route:

And so that was my first week in Xi’an.  I went from taking the train, getting my train-delivered bags, getting settled in my neighborhood, and finding a place to train (even though it is somewhat temporary).  I can’t wait to see how things develop next week!