Posts Tagged ‘liu qi’

This blog entry is being written for Wushu West’s website, wushuwest.com. However, since I’m the one writing it, I thought it might be of interest to other folks too. If you would like to learn more, please visit the Wushu West website.

————

Edit (7/28): Swapped video with youtube version

Sorry for the lack of updates over the last 2 days.  Not that much have happened to warrant a single entry for each day, but now two days have passed.  And since I’m waiting for the guest blog entries on the F0rbidd3n City and The Gr3at Wa11 (Pierre and Ashley?  Hellooooo?) I’ll fill some time by sharing what we’ve been up to the last two days.

Monday morning was practice.  9:00 AM in the Wushu Hall.  Actually all practices this week are at 9:00 and 3:30 in the upstairs wushu hall, so at least it is consistent.   Everyone was working hard, and down on the far carpet was Liu Qing Hua’s group.  Since it was just the two of us, we got to be on the blue carpet.  Yay!  For myself, I primarily focused on the first section of my nangun (Southern Staff) form.  I’m working on making a new one this week so each day I’m creating a new section.

After class was lunch and then I spent some time in the afternoon working in my room.  The afternoon class came and went as well, and I spent that time working on more nangun.

I’m not sure what everyone did in the evening, but I spent the whole time working on my computer, so this is why I didn’t end up writing much in the blog.

Tuesday was another morning training (of course). Unfortunately Myles hurt his ankle so had to sit out the rest of the day.  Jennifer said she tweaked her ankle as well.  Hopefully they’ll both be back in full form soon.

After the morning practice I spent 20 minutes or so working on my nangun form after everyone left.  However, Liu Qi and Zhang Ye Xin were still there so I talked to them for a while and had them record a video so they could greet everyone in America.

In the afternoon I went to the airport with Lauren to pick up her mom, Susan and younger brother, Travis.  Once again we were blessed by the airport gods and they came out of the terminal just as we walked up to the door.

We got back to Shi Cha Hai just in time to go watch most of the training.  Lauren quickly changed and I spent some time either talking with Susan and Travis, helping Wu Di with some conditioning, or working on my nangun.  It was Tiger’s last time teaching us, as he would be leaving the next day for a competition in ZhengZhou, Henan.  Actually, we will see him there since he will still be in town when we go to check out the Shaolin Temple.  We grabbed a group photo for posterity.

After class I was asked to go to a Japanese restaurant with Wu Di, who had also invited Shahaub, Patti, Cary and Jennifer.  It happened to be the same restaurant I ate at last November, also with Wu Di.  We had a good amount of food and naturally I took some photos:

After that Patti and Cary went back to Shi Cha Hai, and the rest of us walked down the street to digest our food.  We also grabbed a quick cone at McDonald’s before catching a cab back to the school.

Tomorrow we have two different coaches training us.  I’ll be sure to snap a few photos and post them up.

Edit (7/28): Swapped video with youtube embed

This blog doesn’t really have to do that much with the Wushu West summer trip so I’m going to just post it on narom.net. The school all went to the Great Wall on Sunday. I slept in and spent the morning cleaning up my stuff and chatting with folks back home. But the time I was done Pierre had gotten back from the Wall and I decided to go do some shopping.

I went to the Di’An Men Market, which is sort of like Ya Xiu, but for things you actually need.  I got some hangers, hooks and various necessities.  I also grabbed a quick bite at KFC for lunch.  When I got back home and had taken a shower, Shahaub came over.

Originally we were going to go out to sushi with Wu Di, but they had gone there the night before (originally my plan too, but I had to go to Hutong Pizza instead) so they weren’t really up for it.  But never ones to take an opportunity for granted, they posed for some photos.

We decided to go walk down the street and get some food.  We ended up at a hot pot place around the corner.  The food was good and we enjoyed spending time with each other.  Here are some photos:

After hot pot we walked down the street towards the Hou Hai bars.  As you may recall (all 1 of you) I spent my 36th birthday in Hou Hai at a bar owned by a friend of Wu Di. You can see a youtube video of it here.

Since then the friend has seriously expanded the size of his club.  We chilled out in some nice cushy couches enjoying some soda water and cappucino.  We also took a LOT of photos.  Here are some of the best ones:

After that Wu Di had arranged to meet up with Peggy and Chris.  However, my stomach and the hot pot had other plans so I rushed back ahead of them to the hotel to pay a visit with Mother Nature (yay for adapting back to China food).  When I was going through the lobby I saw Liu Qi and some other athletes playing cards so I said I would come back down and visit with them, which I did.

They were playing a variation on Big 2.  Shahaub, Wu Di, Peggy and Chris soon joined in the lobby hang-out and of course I took some more photos, and even a video:

After that Wu Di, Shahaub and I decided to go hang out in Jennifer’s room to talk about script stuff, so I went up there.  We ended up ordering some Lamb Stick delivery while learning interesting things about each other’s lives.  Here are some photos.

By the end of that I was pretty tired so I headed to bed and tried to get a good night’s sleep for the next day’s practice at 9:00 AM.

This blog entry is being written for Wushu West’s website, wushuwest.com. However, since I’m the one writing it, I thought it might be of interest to other folks too. If you would like to learn more, please visit the Wushu West website.

————

Edit (7/28): Added James’ photos from the Forbidden City and Hutong Pizza

Finally our last 8:00 am training was here.  I will not be sad to see those be a thing of the past.  Next week all our trainings are at 9:00 and 3:30 in the wushu hall.

We were in the lower wushu hall for basics and forms.  Also a bit of basket brawl to warm up.  But after a while he took us to the weight room / fitness center to do some strength training.  It was my first time in the room.  It was pretty nice.  Like a 24 Hour Fitness type of thing with lots of modern equipment; mostly Life Fitness if memory serves.

We did circuit training and my legs got a good workout.  Myles was helping several of the kids who hadn’t done any weight training before.  After the workout we went back to shower and eat.

When I got back to my room I saw some of the athletes working out on the track so I snapped a few shots with my telefoto lens.

Then it was time for lunch.  And after lunch everyone was supposed to meet up for the trip to the Forbidden City.  But before that I had to take Pierre and Jennifer to the bank to change their money. That didn’t take too long and we were joined by Loren and Ryan as well.  Everyone met in the lobby and they took off for their excursion.

I was told that they took a lot of pictures and Pierre said he would try to write up a quick blog about the experience, so I will post those when I have them ready.  Keep your eyes peeled for that.

EDIT: Here are the pictures that James took!

While they were all out at the Forbidden City I was tempted to take a nap, but I hadn’t fully unpacked from my move to the new room (actually, I hadn’t even fully unpacked since arriving in China since I’ve been busy the whole time) so I spent 3 hours doing that.  I finished just as Pierre walked back in the room.

The comments I got from the Forbidden City ranged from “amazing” to “boring”.  I guess it isn’t for everyone.

In the evening we were doing a group dinner at Hutong Pizza, which was just around the corner in Hou Hai.  Joining us were some friends of Patti.  Liu Yan, her former teammate with her husband Chris.  Anthony Chan, one of the original American wushu athletes from the 80’s, and his daughter (his wife was also a team-mate of Patti’s — in fact Patti, Liu Yan and her got a gold medal for their sparring set in 1984).  Two other people whom I don’t know met us at the Pizza place.  I think the man’s name was Henry.  The pizza was pretty good, but I spent some time taking pictures outside in the Hutong.  After a while I escorted the kids back to the hotel while the adults stayed to chat.

James also took many photos from the Huton Pizza excursion, but I’m just going to include the ones that deal with subjects i didn’t cover in my own.  Here are his!

The next day would be their excursion to the Great Wall.

This blog entry is being written for Wushu West’s website, wushuwest.com. However, since I’m the one writing it, I thought it might be of interest to other folks too. If you would like to learn more, please visit the Wushu West website.

————

Edit 7/27: Swapped out videos with youtube embeds

First, sorry for the delay.  I haven’t had as much time to blog these days.  I’m going to recap Day 7 and 8 here.  But first, here are a few pictures from Day 6 that I didn’t have time to post earlier.

Here are some nice taro treats that they served during lunch.  Sifu Patti asked me to take some pictures of them:

Next, I was really surprised to run into an old friend of mine here.  Liu Qi used to be on the Shanghai Wushu Team and trained in the hall near mine.  We used to hang out quite often back in 2006, but she went back to Gansu with her coach and I haven’t seen her since then (or heard about her).  I was super surprised to run into her here and we had a nice time catching up.  Here is a Pepsi she gave me when we first ran in to each other.

In the evening I went to get a massage with Myles and we also got some Qian Bing and Tang Su Li Ji (just for you, Jenn! ) which he had never had either of before.  It was delicious!

Now, back to Day 7.

Since the quaratine is over, we are able to train in the wushu halls next to actual other human beings. A nice change of pace.

The morning practice was in the underground wushu hall. We started at 8:00 AM, which was rather early for us. At 9:00 AM some of the professional-type athletes came in. It was Mr. And Mrs. Zhang’s group (two old teammates of Patti’s who are coaches here).  The Mr. coaches taiji athletes and the Mrs. coaches kids around the teen-ish years. The kids were doing conditioning for their class, but the taiji folks were in full force so a bunch of stuck around after class to watch them.  Very amazing.  The Macau Team was also there training and we got to see them go as well.  Also very good.

Our workouts were no longer quaratined, but our meals still were.  We hadn’t moved to the big lunch room yet, but that was okay, because the small one is kind of nice.  We get all the same foods, without the same crowds.  Plus, Myles loves his Yogurt drinks.

The afternoon practice was in the main wushu hall.  It was our first time training there, and we were doing it next to the pro’s, no less.  Here, Tyler shares his thoughts on the training so far.

And just because we can, here is a picture of Wu Di’s abs …

The evening was spent hanging out in the hotel.  Not too much to report about that.

Day 8

Finally we could eat in the main cafeteria.  Here are some pictures of us, as well as Noah hiding his new haircut.

The morning training at 9:00 – 11:00 was in the main upstairs Wushu Hall again.  I think this is the best hall to train in, because you are next to lots of professionals doing wushu.  The downstairs hall just doesn’t have the same feeling of “awe” for me.  (Plus it kind of feels like a dungeon.)  Myles was kind enough to record a section of my nanquan for posterity.  Hopefully this is the last time it will suck quite so bad:

After lunch I went to Noah and Jonah’s room to record their messages for the folks back home (i.e. you).  Here is a video of them:

The afternoon training was, once again, in the upstairs wushu hall.  Since I don’t train in the afternoons, I just made sure that all the Wushu West students got to class on time (2 people were late — the same 2 that were late the other day…) and once I had done that I went to go pick up some shirts that I had ordered at Ya Xiu.  Yay for tailoring!  After that we came back and had dinner in the cafeteria.

In the evening my room became the social hub for Wushu West, with people playing games on one laptop and watching movies on the other.  Liu Qi and Wu Di both dropped by the room as well.  I got a bit over stimulated so I grabbed a book and went down to the lobby to read for a while.  Soon enough it was time for bed.

And thus ends Days 7 and 8.