Posts Tagged ‘wu ya nan’

I have been negligent on sharing some of my non-wushu related adventures with all of you.  So I finally got around to uploading some photos that I have taken to share with you.  I actually have a TON of videos that I need to edit and post up as well, but it will have to wait until later in the week.

Wu Ya Nan Billboard

First up, well … okay.  This is sort of wushu-related.  I took some pictures of a billboard that they have outside of the wushu guan (武术馆) at the Shaanxi Provincial Sports Training Center (陕西神体育训练中心)  which features Wu Ya Nan and a Sanda athlete who both got medals at the recent All China Games in Binzhou, Shandong (山东滨州).  Check it out:

Dou Dou and Family

Waaaay back on December 17 Ruhi and I visited Xuixin (Susan), a local Chinese Friend who works/ed for Ruhi’s consulting company.  Her and her husband asked us over to help with some stuff and while there I got to meet her son, Dou Dou, who was super cute.  I took a bunch of photos of him, Susan and her husband which you can see here.

Holiday Visitors

During this holiday break we also have a few guests visiting our home.  On Thursday, the 24th, Chana and Charise, two sisters who are also from Seattle, came up from Macau to visit. They live/work down there and decided to visit Chana’s old haunt for the break.  Chana and Ruhi used to be roommates and actually Chana used to live in our apartment, so she is very familiar with the area.  I also used to hang out a lot with her brother, Cameron, who lives in Shanghai.  Small world, huh?

The day after they arrived, we went out to dinner at a really nice restaurant (good food , good prices) just up TuanJie Nan Lu (团结南路) from our place (about a block away) and got some delicious food.  Here are some pictures from that evening.

That evening another friend, Adam, whom you might remember from this video/blog entry, came to stay with us too.  We were lucky because he brought his guitar.  For those of you who don’t know, Adam is from Scotland and an AMAZING guitar player.  He is also super fluent in Chinese, having graduated from a Chinese university a few years back.

The morning after he arrived he graced us with some morning guitar playing.  I got some photos of our leisurely Saturday morning socializing and tried to get some video of us doing a bit of “guitar talk” as well.

NOTE: The video is only viewable on wushuzilla.com

video management, video solution, video streaming

Now, if you are reading my twitter feed or my facebook status messages, you already know that there was a big surprise birthday party that Ruhi put on for me on Saturday evening.  However, instead of adding it to this blog, I’m going to give it another entry, probably later in the week.  In fact, we took a LOT of video and I want to edit it a bit before posting it up.  A few highlights:

• Musical concert by Adam, including singing Shaanxi Style Opera for a surprised group of local Chinese
• Yuan Ming doing an aerial in my living room
• A surprise visit by Ruhi’s English students who went WAY out of their way to come to the party
• Amazing gift from Wu Ya Nan — Nike Shaolinquan shoes!
• Theater Sports and Musical Performances galore.
• Lots of great friends and lots of good times.

Stay tuned for that later in the week!

Also, I’m going to be starting a new regular feature, “Ask the ‘Zilla” where I answer some of the questions I get here on wushuzilla.com (or one of the other websites) related to wushu.  Quite a few have been coming in so I’m going to try and answer them (as best I can) here.  Stay tuned for that, probably on Tuesday.

(The alternate title for this blog was “Add Oil, Not Gas”, but I liked the rhyme better …)

I’m going to keep this one relatively short since I don’t have videos of photos to share.  And also because I’m busy with work.

Today was my first morning class since training with the Shaanxi Team.  A few things about the morning class I noticed right away:

• Holy Mother of Darth Vader, it is COLD outside at 8:00 AM.  And it was cold in the wushu guan too.  After 30 minutes of warming up and starting basics I still hadn’t broken a sweat yet.  Getting your body temperature up in wushu class when you can see your breath steaming away is not all that easy.
• The wushu guan isn’t quite as crowded in the morning as it is in the afternoon.  I guess that a lot of the little kids who do wushu don’t train that early — most likely in school where they belong — so it was just Coach Zhang’s group and the taiji folks today.
• Way more emphasis on forms in the morning than the afternoon. Which is kind of nice.  Also, Monday morning is when Coach Zhang puts up the week’s training schedule on the wall so all the athletes clamor around it to see what hellacious tasks are in store for them in the coming 6 days.  It is kind of fun.

The other problem I had going for me today was a really bad case of gas.  No, I wasn’t passing gas.  I just felt very uncomfortable and it was not easy to focus on training.  After doing a couple combinations and sections I let the coach know that I wasn’t feeling well and sat out the rest of practice, watching the athletes do their thing.

Yue Xiao Yu asked me as we were leaving the wushu guan why I didn’t leave when I stopped training and I explained that I like to watch so that, even if I can’t train my body, I can at least train my mind and learn from what I see.  She admitted that she liked doing that too.  In fact, today her knee was acting up so she was sitting out pretty much most of the class, instead working out on the side thinking through her form.

I kept track of today’s schedule as well as what was on the schedule for Wednesday and thought I would share it with you guys here:

Monday:

• Jibbengong: All basics x 2
• Nandu: Each x 4
• 1/4 Forms: 16
• 1/2 Forms: 2

Wednesday:

• Jibbengong: x 1
• Nandu: x2
• 1/4 Forms: 40

So … everyone has to do 10 of each section on Wednesday?  I was keeping track today and I’m not sure we did a whole 20 single sections, and I only saw a few guys doing half sets.  But then, I was feeling gassy so I might not have noticed.  lol.

Also, since I wasn’t taking video of the class, I was able to actually watch and analyze the athletes a bit better.  There are a couple of them that are really quite amazing.  And a few of them that weren’t as good as I thought they would be.  hahaha.  I suppose I should pay better attention and stop trying to snap video and photos for you guys.  But then … I’m guessing you would prefer I take videos and photos, huh?

Next practice is on Wednesday.  I’ll see if I can’t actually keep up and get in a good workout this time around.  And maybe bring a bottle of hot water with me to keep myself warm.

Also, I think on Wednesday afternoon Yue Xiao Yu and Wu Ya Nan (and possibly Qi Peng Hui) are coming over to my place to practice some English, so I’ll try to snap a few photos of that, or maybe do a WYN interview video.

‘Till then ….

Ruhi had been asking to come watch me train for a while, and since I’ve been at the wushu school for a little while, and Yue Xiao Yu had thought it would be okay, we both headed over to the Shaanxi Provincial Sports Training Center’s wushu guan for a bit of Monday afternoon forms training.

My alterior motive for doing this was to get some videos of my own training so that I could see what I looked like and figure out what I need to work on.  (my own wushu videos will only be available for those registered on wushuzilla.com, just because it is a little embarassing.  lol.)

For the rest of you who aren’t on wushuzilla, you can still enjoy the ton of footage that Ruhi was able to take for me.  I discovered that the best way to get a lot of wushu footage is to just ask someone to take it for you.  Trying to train and get media for you guys to watch was a little problematic, but having my wife the film director there made it a breeze.  Thanks Ruhi!

As a result, I don’t actually have to talk too much about what happened.  I can just show you!  First off, here is some wushu tag and warm-up videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-y4pRQDQiE

For some reason the wushu hall was a bit chilly today.  Probably due to the snow falling outside (I finally get to see snow falling in Xi’an!) and the sub-zero temperatures coming in through the super drafty windows, but it took us a while to warm up.

After warming up we did basics.  Here are those …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_RjFrj9I8Q

And then it was time for forms.  I asked Ruhi to focus on capturing the nanquan athletes.  So for your viewing pleasure you can see Ting Jing Fan, Yuan Ming and Yue Xiao Yu practicing some southern wushu weapons.  Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPFQAfz8fKs

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f5i8GYAEBI

Over on the other carpet with Chu Feng Ling’s group I noticed that the kids were working on some cha quan combinations.  Pretty neat and a great way to really drill some good long fist technique.  Here is a short video of that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cson11K_1A8

And, of course, Wu Ya Nan and his Taiji posse were hard at work on their Monday power training workout.  Ruhi was able to get a bit of them using the hurdles for some plyometrics and jumping practice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PBC0j4SEz8

During class an interesting thing happened.  As I was practicing my form, Coach Zhang asked me to show him a combination from my 3rd section.  It was actually a combination I had learned back in 2006 from Zhu Wen Jun and worked in to my choreography.  I ended up showing him, as well as Yuan Ming and Yue Xiao Yu.  I have it on wushuzilla as a bonus video.

video management, video solution, video streaming

Also, After class I got to sit and talk with a few of Chu Feng Ling’s kids and introduce some of them to Ruhi.  It is fun to meet these kids and get to know more and more of the athletes.  I think they are slowly acclimating to me being there.  it has been about 2 months now so I suppose I’m becoming more and more of a familiar face.  Should be fun to see what the coming months will bring.  Another bonus video of the kids is also on wushuzilla.com

video management, video solution, video streaming

Finally, if you want to see my nanquan video, just go to wushuzilla, login (or register — it’s free and way easy) and then go to the “members” area where I have it posted.

Those two days off from training and the relatively light schedule last week really helped my recovery and today I got to class and was raring to go.

We did the group warm up and then they started with wushu tag for the “sweat inducer”. As I mentioned before, playing wushu tag with professional athletes half my age is no walk in the proverbial park, but this time I tried it out. There was one time where I was chasing after a whole sequence of athletes, but eventually I was able to tag someone and sub someone else in. We have about 20 athletes in our group and there are usually 3 pairs of tag runners going at the same time. And boy are they fast.

The running and conditioning training is definitely helping. In fact, at the beginning of class Yuan Ming asked me if I wanted to ask about changing to 9:00 classes and I told him that I wasn’t sure and decided that for now I will stay with the 3pm classes so that I can focus on building up my strength and physical condition.

After looking at the schedule on the wall I saw that today would be the only afternoon wushu workout for the week (they do it mostly in the morning) and it was a repeat of the previous two weeks. Tomorrow is strength conditioning and Wednesday is running. On Thursday they have a break, but I’m going to Hong Kong on that day, so no loss for me. I will miss out on Friday’s class, which is also strength training, but that is okay. I’m considering asking to come on Saturday afternoons and reschedule my tutors for earlier in the day, but its still just an idea at this point.

Wu Ya Nan was back today too. He was in Gansu Province last week at a performance which was, as he put it, “very fun”. Coach Zhang was back too, which was nice.

For today’s workout it was the standard routine of basics for about 40 minutes (including nandu). Today’s nandu was a focus on nailing their landings, which was very interesting to watch. Some have it pretty good and some are still working on it.

Then we did about 10 – 15 lines of weapon combinations (I borrowed a spare nangun) and that was followed by 8 full sections. He split our group up in to two carpets, most of the kids and younger athletes went to the other carpet and I got to train on the carpet with the “big boys and girls”.

I realized that my nangun wasn’t quite developed yet, so for sections I switched back to nanquan. I did 2 of each section and managed to get a really good workout, but I think the best part was that this was really the first time the coach had seen me do any wushu. Aside from 2 weeks ago when we just did small combinations practice, he’s never seen me go all out before.

Now, it isn’t that I’m super good or anything. My wushu has a nice long list of deficiencies that need work. But I think what happens is that, when people see me they don’t think that my particular physique is very well suited to wushu. I’m overweight and I look kind of slow. So, based on their expectations, I usually do much better than they would assume, and it usually ends up impressing them.

I got some good comments from the coach and each time I went he clapped, which he didn’t do for any of the other athletes. It might be the “you’re a foreigner trying to do wushu so I will clap to make you feel better” or it might be a “for someone your size you sure are putting in a good effort, so I will clap for you”. But either way it was a nice guesture. He was even trying to figure out some of my choreo, which was flattering too.

Some of the athletes shouted out some “jiayou!”s for me which was nice. But by the end I was pretty wiped. Class was over at 5:00 and the coach made a point of saying goodbye to me. Up until now he just leaves the room and doesn’t even look in my direction, so I suppose that is an improvement.

I stayed behind to do a lot of stretching since I knew that I would really feel it later on. I also managed to get some names of a few athletes, so i thought I would introduce you to them:

First up is the 2nd best nanquan guy in our class. I put up a video of him the other day practicing his nanquan in the mirror, but I’ll post it here again just for your reference. His name is Tian Jing Fan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWDyFFT53iw

Next is the guy who was doing the chang quan walk-through last week. Again, this is a re-post of the video for your reference. i would say this guy has the best body for wushu and moves really naturally, but his power and jumps are not quite there yet. Fortunately, the power and jumps can be trained much easier than natural ability. His name is Yen Ming Song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtxHaZ5u6P0

And then there is an athlete who was practicing dao shu today. He was in the line right before me, but I don’t have any specific footage of him. You can see him at 0:14 – 0:22 on this video though. He is sitting on the ground talking to Yue Xiao Yu. His name is Zhao Shao Dong

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCSqC9×3u5M

And finally, I managed to find the memory card that I had recorded Qi Peng Hui’s introduction on, so here it is. I added some footage of him doing wushu at the end so you can see which one he is from the previously uploaded footage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3XSxTb-CmQ

I’m going to try to get some more athletes introducing themselves and possibly get an interview or two in the mix. But it might not be until later in the month or early January.

I was running a little late to class today so I called up Yuan Ming to ask him to let Zhang Laoshi know that I would be a few minutes late.

Then, as my cab pulled up to the front gate of the Sports Center, who was in the cab right in front of me but Yuan Ming!  He had run an errand for a coach to get something for one of the kids.  He met up with Xin Rue right in front of the medical building and they walked in so I think one of them might be sick.

In any case, it turned out I didn’t need to worry. Zhang Laoshi wasn’t in class today.  I found out later that he was in a meeting and left one of the students in charge.

According to the schedule, today was a form practice day.  Mostly small combinations done over and over and over.  I got there just as they were running around for warm-ups so I quickly got ready and did my own run around the far carpet.  I joined in with them when they got to stretching.

Of course, I couldn’t do nandu, so after my standard wall-sits practice I shot some video of them practicing their jumps:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdkKXEln4o8

My back was still hurting me from the Friday conditioning workout.  As a result, when we started on basics my performance was a little lack-luster.  But I stuck with it and tried to keep up.  I was behind Yue Xiao Yu and throughout the class she was very helpful, providing me with suggestions and tips for my nanquan.  She also mentioned that Wu Ya Nan had left for a competition.  Perhaps he is going to Hong Kong?  I don’t remember seeing his name on the roster, but maybe someone got sick …

Anyway, over the previous two days I had been mentally reworking the beginning of my 3rd section, so I spent pretty much the whole forms-practice time on that.  After basics and nandu, it was pretty much just small sections practice for everyone.  So, we just kept going back and forth along the carpet, non-stop, working on our forms.  And for me that meant working on the first half of my 3rd section.

When I got a bit tuckered I would sit down and drink some water and get a bit of video footage.  But then I would get back up and get back in line.  I think all-in-all I probably went about 20 times back and forth along the carpet, which meant that the rest of them probably did closer to 35 or 40.

Here is a video where you can see some of the athletes working on their combinations.  I through in Qi Peng Hui’s double broadsword practice too, since I had it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjlaXrOokq8

After we did our combinations, a bunch of the athletes in our group grabbed their short weapons and were told to practice flowers and reverse flowers.  They would do the drills over and over for a minute and then rest for 30 seconds.  They did about 6 rounds of these.  And if you have ever done this, you know how tired your shoulders and arms get.  I took this one during their 3rd and 4th rotations:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=225Bci006HM

Eventually the class ended around 5:10 and as people and coaches made their way out of the wushu guan, a few of the students stuck around to polish some of their movements.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlNEr7iKW58

One student in particular, who was in my group but does changquan / dao and has redish hair, really works hard.  Even after a full class, he still stayed behind to work on his stuff.  And while other athletes had already started playing their daily afternoon soccer game on one half of the room, he stayed on the far side walking through his form, doing some conditioning and stretching and working hard.  It was very motivational.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtxHaZ5u6P0

After class I took off for home.  Tomorrow I have some errands to run in the afternoon so I won’t be able to go to class.  I’m going to be calling Zhang Laoshi though and asking him about the possibility of switching from the afternoons to the mornings, as I think it will help both my overall training regimen, as well as my work schedule at home.

With any luck, come Wednesday morning, I will be back at it, training hard again.

Oh, and just for good measure, here is a copy of the class schedule for this week:

Monday was here! It was finally time for me to get some real hard-core training in with the Shaanxi Wushu Team!

I showed up just as the Wushu athletes were walking up to the wushu hall and climbed the stairs with them, changed my shoes and sat down on the carpet to get ready for class.

The wushu guan has 4 carpets and 3 groups of athletes (well, sometimes 4, but they weren’t there today). One one carpet is Chu laoshi with her kids (mostly changquan). On the other carpet is the Taiji athletes (including Wu Ya Nan) and on a third carpet is the non-taiji “adult” athletes. This is the group Yuan Ming and Yue Xiao Yu are in (although she left at the beginning of class today and looked a little under the weather). So there are about 4 or 5 nanquan athletes and the rest are changquan. Its a good mix and they are all pretty high level so I’m pretty happy to be working out with them.

Our coach is a former Shaanxi Wushu Team member that retired about 5 years ago. He’s leading our group, along with an assistant coach and the main coach that I was introduced to on Friday sat along the mirrors watching all of the groups and keeping tabs on the situation. Chu Laoshi and the Taiji coach both have assistant coaches too. It seems like they are all pretty well organized.

The class was good and intense. Warm up the joints, run around the carpet, then lots of stretching on the bar and floor. Then it was time for basics.

I made sure to go in the line with the nanquan athletes, and I went at the end behind Yuen Ming since his nanquan is the best in the group and I figure watching him will be a good motivation and instruction for me. He was actually spending half his time helping a young man with his nanquan. He had some good pointers!

The forms practice was mostly combinations and small parts of sections. After a while we were told to put on some jackets to stay warm and to stretch. They also handed out a bunch of booklets for the athletes in my group. They were daily logs where they would write down everything from what they ate, to their weight to all of their training information. Like I said — they are pretty organized.

I also brought my camera along to snap some photos, but the light in there is really bad (essentially it is all back-light) and I don’t want to use my flash, so I don’t think they turned out so great. But it at least gives you an idea of what it is like.

After class I walked out and caught a taxi that was just leaving the campus. As we crossed the front gate my coach (who’s name I really have to figure out) was trying to flag down a taxi so I offered him a ride to where he was going.

We talked a bit. He had last competed in 2004-2005 and since then had been coaching. He asked me a bit about myself as well and in general we had a pretty nice conversation. One thing I learned is that currently the wushu athletes are training just twice a day. They start at 9:00 a.m. and at 3:00 p.m. I asked what time it is usually over and he said that there is no set ending time. They end whenever the training for the session is complete. I guess that explains why I am sometimes there until 4:45 and sometimes until 5:30.

My body was pretty sore so I took a hot shower when I got home. I’m looking forward to the next day’s training. I’m going to try to take a bit more photos or videos at some point, but I don’t want to be annoying so I’m going to wait until I have spent a bit more time there and it isn’t so obnoxious for me to be sitting there with a camera.

With Ruhi’s help I had kept Wu Ya Nan in the loop with my illness and about how I was stuck in Anhui.  But now that I was back in Xi’an and feeling better I really wanted to get back in to the wushu guan and start training again.

I was especially looking forward to being there when the top-level Shaanxi Wushu Team members would be training.  Nothing quite like seeing some ridiculously awesome wushu to motivate you when you train.

The good news was, they were all there.

The bad news was, they were not actually training today.

Wu Ya Nan greeted me as I walked in and brought over my weapons bag.  I had asked Wu Di to bring my weapons (nan gun and nan dao) to the traditional competition in Jiangsu and i had also asked Wu Ya Nan to bring it back with him after the competition.  It had been so long I had almost forgotten, but it was great to see my trusty friends back in my hands again.

WYN first introduced me to one of the head coaches for the Shaanxi Wushu Team.  I didn’t quite understand, but I think he was the guy who was either the team manager, or the head coach.  In any case, a person in a high position.

After meeting the coach I asked WYN where I should train (i.e. with which group of athletes).  He spoke with the shorter coach (I really gotta learn their names) and then told me that normally I would train with them, but today they were doing some sort of performance / testing so they wouldn’t be training today and I would have to train on my own.

It turned out that today was one of those random days where the coaches measure the physical ability of the athletes — standing broad jump, flexibility, strength, etc., — and then compare it to previous results.  I had seen this sort of thing with other teams before, of course, so it wasn’t totally alien.  Unfortunately it meant I was up to my own devices.

Now, if I know in advance that I will be training on my own I’m usually pretty good about writing out a workout plan ahead of time so that I have something to follow.  But when I suddenly find out I’m training individually, I tend to draw a big old blank.  I realize that I should just have a default self-training program that I revert to, but I don’t … so, oh well.  Maybe next time.

I warmed up and stretched and then walked through a few basics.  Then I walked through my nanquan form.  After that I grabbed my nangun and walked through my form, trying to figure out a few of the combinations and choreography.

During my nangun practice Chu Feng Lian (80’s generation Fanzi Quan specialist) asked me to let some of her kids work out on the carpet too.  (Why she would need to ask me anything and not just tell me is beyond me, but it was very nice of her.)  There was a guy (who looked a lot like Jay Chow) coaching them and after a little while I decided to just tag along at the end of one of their lines and work through my form combinations.  It worked out well, since they were working on form combinations too.

I actually managed to break a pretty good sweat and get a good workout.  I was also prepared with my video camera so towards the end of class I managed to capture a bit of the kids’ training session.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ue7vx1O0_c

I have a 2 day break and then I’m back on Monday, this time training all out with the pro’s (I hope).  I still feel a bit of a lingering cold, but sweating and training helped me feel better and I think it helped me heal up a bit quicker too.

Next week I’m going to start preparing a bit better for my training, with specific things I want to work on for each day.  I would really like to finalize the choreography on my forms by the end of January and also focus a lot on getting back some of my flexibility (splits, head-to-toe).

Yay!  I’m training again!

When last we left my training adventures I was anticipating a week with the professional Shaanxi Team athletes who were back from their post-All China Games hiatus.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Monday I was pleased to see that Wu Ya Nan and a group of new athletes  in the wushu guan.  Among them were a few of the athletes I had taken pictures of during the pre-competition training session.  Specifically, this girl (who’s name I don’t know).  But based on what I saw, her wushu skill is pretty good (even though she looks 12 years old).

Wu Ya Nan introduced me to the main nanquan coach too.  I was prepared for a tough workout, but instead of anyone working out or doing warm ups together, it turned out that it was more of a free-form training session.  The next day they would all be leaving for the Traditional Wushu Games in Jiangsu Province so they were just using this practice as more of a social hangout and last-minute walk through for the forms they would be competing with.

I also got to meet Yue Xiao Yu, who was their sole nanquan representative at the All China Games.  Here is her nanquan footage from the competition:

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

Interesting thing was that for the traditional games she was practicing taiji jian (sword).  When I asked Wu Ya Nan why she was going to compete in Taiji sword considering how good her nanquan is, he shrugged and said “she likes Taiji”.

Some other guys were practicing Ditang Quan, and some others were doing a variety of other traditional styles.  But for the most part it seemed like they were just sort of having a good time being back home and hanging out.  Of course, this meant I didn’t have much of a workout, but I didn’t let that stop me from doing something productive.

Around 4:30 most of the athletes had wondered off.  WYN told me that they would be leaving the next day so he wouldn’t see me until they got back the next week.  Well, at least I would still have the same folks to train with as the previous week, right?

So in the end it was just Yue Xiao Yu on one carpet practicing taiji sword and me on another carpet doing conditioning exercises.  I did 3 sets of frog leaps, 3 sets of 10 burpies and a bunch of wall sits.  Also a few jogs and sprints in there too. I left around 4:55, but YXY was still going through her taiji when I was leaving.  I guess she really does like taiji!

During the class WYN had called up the administration office to find out what I should do about payment for training.  Unfortunately (or fortunately?) they weren’t in so he left a message.  He said that if they called back before the end of class then we would go over and talk to them, but since they didn’t call back he said not to worry about it for the week and that we would deal with it when they returned from Jiangsu.

Yay! Another week in limbo!

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

The next day I showed up to practice at 3:00 PM.  However, it turned out that not just the main team members had left for Jiangsu.  In fact, almost everyone had left, and the only people left to train were a few kids or random people.  I ended up training with some of the teen boys and the girl from Zhejiang.  But there were only about 15 of us in the whole training hall.

We started off with a keep-away soccer type of game for about 30 minutes (not much of a warm up, to be honest) and then we did some lines of random combos, like forward rolls and some ditang basics.  Of course, I couldn’t do a lot of the ditang stuff so I would work on whatever I could, but it was fun to see them trying to do whatever they could.

But before too long it basically deteriorated into a free for all of randomness.  Case in point, this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34Qm75EI76g

The only saving grace was that at the end of class the guy in charge (who couldn’t have been more than 18 years old) had everyone run sprints cross-ways across the hall (around 100 feet), 15 times in a row.  Now for someone like me, that was a bit much, but I did manage to get 12 sprints out, even though I didn’t finish until the rest of them had already been sitting down and stretching for a bit.

I had thought I would stay after and do some conditioning, but it turned out they were going to lock up the wushu guan so I had to head out of there.  Ah well, at least I would get to practice another day …

On my way out I took this video of some of the gymnastics girls running their laps at the track.  It is both scary and inspirational.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_9bdrOa2ls

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

I had to run some errands on this day so I couldn’t make it to class to train.  Since no one was around who would notice, it didn’t seem like such a big loss.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

It seemed like even less of a loss when I came to the wushu guan and found out that the group I had trained with on Tuesday had not even been there on Wednesday.  Even if I had shown up there wouldn’t have been a practice.

And it seemed that would be the case on Thursday too.  When I got there no one was there to train with.  Some of the kids from an earlier group who were finishing up at 3:00 were still there and one of them, Qi Peng Hui, really wanted to hang out and talk with me.  He’s trying to teach himself English, so I thought it would be good to give him the opportunity, since there probably weren’t a whole ton of native English speakers hanging out in this wushu guan on a daily basis.

It turned out he also wanted me to teach him the intro to my nanquan form.  He went on and on about how unique and interesting my choreography was and how he “hadn’t seen anything like it before”, which is either his nice way of saying that my stuff is just bizarre and weird, or maybe he actually likes my choreo.  Either way, I at least got to do a little teaching of my form, so that was good.

To be honest, my form isn’t all that unique.  Many parts of it were taken from other forms I had learned over the past 15 years, but I guess I might have arranged them in a unique way or something.  Or at least in a way that current athletes aren’t doing.  In any case, its always fun to trade wushu with someone.

I took a video of him introducing himself to everyone, but I don’t have that video with me so I can’t upload it for you all to see.  Next time though, I promise.  He was a nice kid.  He even went over some of the Chinese for a few nanquan techniques with me, since I never really learned the proper names for some of the stances and movements.

And, sadly, that was the last practice I’ve had in the past 2 weeks.  As I was leaving I saw a bunch of the kids I had been training with some back in a taxi from what looked like a shopping excursion.  They seemed very surprised to see me.  Sort of like “Oh crap.  Didn’t anyone tell him we weren’t training today??”.  It was kind of funny, actually.

The next day I didn’t train and Friday I was running around trying to take care of my visa extension which I couldn’t get.  Which meant I had to run down to Hong Kong to renew my visa.  And what happened after that was a whole ‘nother adventure, including blistering heat, snow storms of the century, and a brush with the Swine Flu.  I’ll save all of that for another blog entry though.

Until then …

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!