Posts Tagged ‘wu di’

Before I blog, I wanted to share something that I saw today.  You may recall that I mentioned that the winter smog from the coal burning and polution gets pretty bad here in Xi’an.  But we also get a bit of fog from time to time.  And when you combine the two things together, like we had today, it turns in to a pea soup the likes of which I never saw in my 14 years in the Bay Area.

Here are a few comparative shots from the morning and the afternoon so that you can get an idea of what it looked like from our living room window:

And just so you don’t think it looks like this all the time, here is a picture from just a month or so ago:

See?  Blue skies!

Anyway, back to the blog …

Three main things happened today in the World of Mark.  Well, okay … more than three things.  But three things that I’m going to blog about.

First, was figuring out what to do about our visa renewal.

We spent most of the early hours of the day (i.e. before lunch) going to the visa office and trying to get an extension on our tourist visas.  As we are in the process of closing down Ruhi’s company (after which we will probably start up a new one in 2010) we are technically in China as tourists.  As a result, I either have to leave the country every 30 days (60 for Ruhi) or get an extension.

As you will recall, last month I left the country and went to Hong Kong, only to end up spending a week in Anhui with the flu.  This time we decided to get a 30 day extension instead.

That is, until we found out that the cost of a 30 day extension for U.S. Citizens is 940 RMB ($140 USD), which is also the price of a full one-year multiple entry visa.  But only for 30 days!  Well, for less than 940 RMB we can just take the train down to Guangdong and hop across the border, so why spend all that extra money?

So, on Friday Ruhi will be traveling to Beijing for some meetings.  To save some money I will be going directly to Guangdong from Xi’an.  Sorry to Wu Di, Jenn, Chris, et al. for not being able to make it over to the capital this time around.  But Ruhi will be there in my stead for 2 days.

On Wednesday I’m going to catch a train down to Guangzhou and then hop across the border.  Ruhi will have already been staying in Guangzhou for a couple days and on Friday afternoon we will catch a train back up and get home on Saturday morning.  This time around I opted for the faster train, as the slower one is obviously not an option.  Who wants to go all the way to Anhui anyway?

Here is a map of Ruhi’s journey.  As I said, my route is just a straight back and forth from Xi’an to Guangzhou.

The second thing that happened today was a revamping of our home.

Yue A-yi was here to clean today so we took the opportunity to swap our bedroom and the second room around.  After several hours we have set up the place so that we’re both working in our “spare” room with all the natural light, and our sleeping room is the darker, more comfortable one that gets much warmer.  Plus we moved some furniture around in the main room.  I love optomizing my living space.  According to Ruhi I get a twinkle in my eye when I am in that mode.

And the third thing is (hopefully) a change to my training routine.

I called Yuan Ming earlier in the day and asked him for Coach Zhang’s phone number.  He didn’t have it, so I had to relay the message through him.  I told him that (1) I would not be able to make it today and that (2) I wanted to switch my workouts from the afternoon at 3:00 to the morning at 9:00.  He said he would talk to Coach Zhang for me.

In the evening I gave him a call but it turned out that Coach Zhang wasn’t there today.  Tomorrow morning they also don’t have training because there is a meeting, so I will just go in the afternoon as usual.  Then, assuming Coach Zhang is there, I can ask him about switching to the morning session.

Why switch to mornings?  Well, for one, it will make me more productive with my work.  I will have a bigger chunk of time to get things done during the afternoon and evening.  Also, I think it is better, physically, to exercise during the earlier hours of the day as it sets up your body’s metabolism and function better for the rest of your waking hours.

Plus, I just feel better when I train in the morning vs. the afternoon.

So, that is what happened today.  Tomorrow it is back to the wushu grind stone.  Today they had strength training, so tomorrow, I”m not really sure what is happening.  I’m hoping it is wushu, but it might be running too.  I’ll just play it by ear and make sure I am prepared for any contingency.

Until tomorrow …. here is a bonus picture that I swiped from Wu Di’s camera in Binzhou.  Enjoy!

After the last events (duilian: sparring sets) of the 11th All China Games in Binzhou, Shandong, China, Ruhi and I, along with Marla, Jenn and Wu Di, headed back to the hotel, but not before stopping to take a few photos outside the sports arena.

We were going to the hotel to take care of a little file transferring.  Wu Di had asked for the footage of her events and the various photographs I took during the competition.  Wang Xi also asked me to give Wu Di his changquan form so that he could take a look.

After that everyone was on the hungry side.  First we went down the street to our favorite restaurant with the large chef, but he was just closing up (it really was a very good restaurant).  So, we climbed in a couple cabs who took us to BoHai Road No. 6 (bohai liu lu) which had a bunch of Muslim restaurants.  We walked around until we found a good one.  It just so happened to have Zhang Ji Dong eating there with a bunch of coaches and judges (he was just certified as a judge).

But we sat at our own table and then Wu Di called over some friends to visit us.  Gao Song, coach for the Hong Kong Team (originally from the Liaoning Wushu Team) and Yang Yu Hong, super nice guy from the Shanghai Wushu Team.

We ate a bunch of food and had a nice time, but unfortunately Ruhi and I had to leave early because we were waking up at 5:00 AM and it was already almost midnight.  We said our farewells and headed back to our hotel to pack and prepare for our very long day of travel on the 15th.

5:00 AM came along a bit too soon, but we managed to pack up our things, check out of our hotel and get on to our long-distance (2.5 hour) bus to Jinan by 5:35.  The bus took off as scheduled around 5:50 and we slept uncomfortably in our seats until arriving in Jinan and taking a taxi to the train station.

When we got there I realized that one of the train tickets had fallen out of my pouch.  We were planning on upgrading to the soft-sleeper, but instead upgraded one ticket and purchased another for the berth next to it.  But something pretty amazing happened later on while we were on the train.

A few hours after departing from Jinan a conductor came up to our compartment and said that someone had turned in our ticket and that we could get a refund for the price of the original ticket.  To be honest, we were floored.  It isn’t often that someone in China comes up to you and offers to give you money.  We were so surprised we took a picture to make sure we didn’t dream it.

We shared the compartment with a nice man from Urumuqi and his business associate.  He invited us to come visit him out in Xinjiang, which we just might do someday.  It really is a beautiful place.  He showed us pictures and it actually looked a lot like Eastern Idaho.  I showed him some photos of Eastern Idaho and he agreed.

Our train made its way through Shandong, across Henan, through Zhengzhou, and then over to Shaanxi, where we rolled in to Xi’an around 12:30 AM on the 16th.  We did manage to sleep for a few hours on the train, but it was hardly a good night’s rest.  After a taxi ride from the train station to Xi Gao Xin (Xi’an High Tech Zone, where we live) it didn’t take very long to crash in to bed.

And here we are in Xi’an.  I’m about a week behind on these blogs, but I’ll get you back up to date with the next one as it will be a recap of my first week in Xi’an.  Stay tuned for my adventures getting the luggage we shipped from Shenzhen, hitting the Muslim Quarter for some Shahaub Dumplings, and our outing with last year’s Chinese National Taiji Champion!

As previously mentioned, Ruhi and I attended the 11th All China Games in Binzhou, Shandong, China from October 12-14, 2009.

As usual it was a fun event filled with friends, food and more wushu than you can shake a stick at.  Of the 6 morning and evening sessions, I attended a little over 4 of them (sorry, not a big fan of the taiji events) and managed to get quite a bit of footage, but mostly of those people or events that were of interest to me.

I saw Ray from w1f.com at the competition, so you can expect to see all of the footage on their website sooner or later.  In the meantime, I’ve begun uploading footage to youtube.com/wushuzilla and will probably put it up on youku.com later (for those of you in China).

As for results, you can get most of those on one of the wushu forums (jiayo.com, w1f.com, etc.) and I’m not really that in to the points and scoring, preferring to watch and get inspired with all the great wushu technique and choreography.

But one thing I did this time that I haven’t done much at other competitions is focus on my photography.  I’ve been getting more in to that so I took some time to try my hand at a bit of wushu action photos. You can see my whole gallery from the competition here, but I will show you a few of my favorites so that you can get a flavor for the fever.  I’ve grouped them in to categories for your convenience:

Competitors

In the Stands

Friends

And so another wushu competition comes to a close.  I got to combine a bunch of favorite things (wushu, friends, shandong, ruhi, photography, etc) at once so I was pretty happy.  Early on the 15th we had to take off to Xi’an so I wasn’t able to celebrate Wu Di’s birthday or stay out too late on the 14th, but it was a great trip none-the-less.

We spent a week in Macau with Gordon and Maureen Kerr.  Super nice folks who were kind enough to open up their home to us.  Ruhi spent most of the week working with Gordon on a film project and I spent a lot of time in cafe’s and restaurants using free wi-fi to get some work done.  They actually have wi-fi at the Kerr home, but I like exploring too.

After dinner we headed out to Tin Sui Wai to stay with Jack.  Once again they were most hospitable as we re-packed all of our things before our 3:30 ferry to Shekou.  In fact, we were taking the ferry from Tuen Mun to Shekou, a route I had always wanted to take.  It is a better route to Shekou than the one from Hong Kong mainly due to it only taking 30 minutes, the ferry being practically empty on every route and the price being only $45 HKD.  If I had lived in Tuen Mun or Yuen Long instead of Tung Chung I would have probably gone to Shenzhen more often.

We arrived in Shekou and waited at the ferry terminal’s cafe for Ruhi’s friend, Bill.

Bill and his fiance Ting Ting helped us check in to a cheap hotel near the Shenzhen West train station followed by a meal at a local Dong Bei style restaurant.  Man it was nice to eat some Chinese food in China again.  Case in point:

After that it was time to crash for the night.  With not too much sleep the night before it was well deserved and much needed.  Here is a view from the hotel room:

On the 9th (our wedding lunaversary, btw) we had breakfast at the hotel after sleeping in and then made our way to the train station with Dan and Ting Ting.  They helped us find the luggage shipping desk where we checked our 3 large suitcases all the way to Xi’an.  Since we were going to Shandong for a week first it would make sense to have the bags waiting for us in Xi’an instead of lugging them all over the place.  Just 500RMB ($73 USD)  to ship 90KG (198 pounds) half-way across China.  Not too bad.

The Shenzhen West train station was nice and small with not much traffic.  Also, since it was the first stop on this route and right after the October holidays it was pretty empty.

In fact, for almost the entire trip we were the only two people in the soft sleeper car.  We had our whole compartment to ourselves.   The dining car was right next to ours so we would go there to eat our meals or do some work in a more comfortable environment.  It also gave us the opportunity to chat with some of the staff and learn a bit more about how Chinese trains operate.  Since this particular route wasn’t one that foreigners usually went on (slower than the other Shenzhen-Jinan route and it isn’t a popular tourist train route) we were interesting to them as well.

27 hours after learing Shenzhen on the 9th we arrived in Jinan on the 10th.  Unfortunately we JUST missed the last bus to Binzhou, but it ended up working out in our favor.  We got a bite at KFC while I called Jenn and asked her to book us a cheap Jinan hotel through ctrip.  5 minutes later we had our confirmation number SMS’ed to us and we were on our way to a 150 RMB / night business hotel with free internet.

It turns out that KFC coffee drinks are a bit on the strong side because I had a hard time getting to sleep.  It was tricky dragging myself out of bed at 7:30 AM so that we could catch our 9:30 AM bus to Binzhou.  The bus was 2.5 hours long and they were playing the LOUDEST videos in the universe.  I used my ear plugs and it was still too loud for me.  It was vibrating directly through my skull.  After some fitful sleeping we made it to Binzhou around noon and my time to check out the 11th All China Games was about to begin!

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.

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Edit (7/28): Added video of athletes conditioning and swapped out others with youtube versions

Once again I have skipped a couple days in my blogging. Originally I thought Lauren was going to be writing a blog for me. Why did I think that? Probably by the way she asked me multiple times during Wednesday morning’s class “Can I write the blog for today? Pleeeeeease???” and I told her yes (naturally .. I would love it if they would write some blogs in here. Makes my life easier, right?)

Jump forward a day or so:

“Hey Lauren, don’t forget to write that blog for me” I reminded her.

“Do I have to?” she asked.

After a pause: “You asked me to. Multiple times. and I said yes. Multple times.” I replied.

“But I didn’t think you would say yes.” she said.

After considering the illogic of that statement I replied with “Why would you think that?”

To which she replied “Because you always say ‘no’.”

So, besides the fact that she had asked multple times and I had said yes multple times, she didn’t think she actually had to write the blog because she assumed I would say “no”? Well, I think what really happened is she realized that writing a blog requires writing a blog, so she decided it wasn’t how she wanted to spend her hard-earned personal time.

That being the case, you are still stuck with my personal rendition of this trip. Until someone else decides to chip in with some content, I’m left holding the ball (so to speak).

Thursday

Actually, Thursday I was anticipating Ruhi’s arrival to Beijing. (We’re engaged, in case you didn’t know, which is entirely possible since there are lots of people I didn’t tell and who don’t check my facebook status — consider this your notice )

She was flying in around 5AM and would make her way to Shi Cha Hai after dropping her things off at Grace’s house. She finally made it around noon-ish and we went downstairs to grab some food, running in to Patti and Cary in the process.

We went to go watch the afternoon training as well, since she had never seen professional wushu up close and personal. She also got to meet Shahaub and Wu Di. I also got to help Wu Di and Myles with some conditioning.

After class we went down to eat because we had requested 2 dishes from the manager. Unforunately they seem to had forgotten, so we just ate what was there (which was perfectly fine, of course) and spent time with some Wushu West folks.

After dinner she was tired, but we got sucked in to watching “Kiss of the Dragon” on Pierre’s laptop and then I took her to Dongzhimen Station and came back and fell asleep. zzzzzz.

Friday

The morning practice was good. It was the first time my calves weren’t hurting. It might have been because Ruhi brought me some requested supplements (vitamins, mostly), but I wasn’t complaining. The class wasn’t unusual in any way. Everyone is slowly improving and it is starting to show.

It is a little hard to see since we see each other do wushu everyday, but it is a little noticeable. When we get back to the U.S. everyone will have to let us know if we have gotten any stronger/faster/more flexible/better. But from my own estimation, I’m seeing some good growth in Tyler, Noah and Myles. Ashley is working really hard and improving too. And I even see Lauren overcoming some of her arm issues. Jonah is relaxing his shoulders and Jennifer is building up her endurance. Pierre is also getting some good corrections from Liu Hong.

During the morning training I walked over to Xie Zhen Hao (Shanghai nanquan guy) and asked him if he could teach me his form. He said yes! I would start learning it in the afternoon. Cooooool.

Ruhi came over in the afternoon again. We decided to go run an errand to change some of her (our?) money and then grab some lunch. We went to the same small place I took Myles and got the Tang Su Li Ji (sweet and sour pork — the real version, not the stuff you get in the U.S.) and Suan La Bai Cai (hot and sour cabbage — which wasn’t quite hot or soury enough). After eating we walked around Di’An Men Market for a bit and then walked back to the school for the afternoon practice.

I took a lot of photos and after class Xie Zhen Hao taught me his first section. It was probably one of the most complex nanquan forms I’ve ever learned. Whoever made this form was on some sort of nanquan crack. But it is cool to learn new techniques and movements, so I’m not complaining. If I can finish learning the whole thing I’m going to teach it to the Wushu West nanquan folks. Gotta get a video too …

But here is a quick video I took of the professionals doing some conditioning:

We also took a TON of photos during class. Here are some to enjoy …

And a few videos of Ashley’s wushu, per her request:

After class I went out for a dinner with Ruhi’s friend, Josie, and some of her friends. It was a nice restaurant which was 1/2 Sweenson’s (A Bay Area ice-cream and burger place) and 1/2 Singaporean food. It was actually very good. Awesome ice cream deserts and located close to Ya Xiu, so I think I will need to take some of the Wushu West foks.

After eating our fill it was time to head back by way of Dongzhimen station where we said goodbye. Then I came back and crashed hard again.

Saturday will be a half-wushu day with just the morning class. In the evening we are all going to chek out the Bird’s Nest stadium! Photos are definitely on the menu.

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.

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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.

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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.