Happy Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone! Well, actually for me it's a few days after Christmas. I wish I could say that it's because I was busy. Does "waiting for the Downton Abbey Christmas Special to load" count as busy?

 

Anyway, the week before Christmas was pretty good. Pretty much standard. On Tuesday, one of my roommates left, and she gave everyone from Hungarian chocolate candies, which were SERIOUSLY good. Next time I go to Hungary I'm gonna get me some of those.

 

Also on Tuesday, my internet finally started picking up the pace and video calls on Skype started working for the first time. So because I wasn't sure how long it would last, I skipped the second morning class and talked to my family for an hour and a half. It's been working pretty well since then! Yay.

 

Qin Nan! It's spelled "Qin Nan". Yes. Um, so Qin Nan is on Tuesdays sometimes instead of Sanda Takedowns, and it was good that we did that this week because Wu Sifu wasn't there that day and I'm not a fan of takedowns. I'm assuming that he was doing something awesome, like winning a ping pong tournament.

 

Wednesday I finished 42-Step Tai Chi! Now I just need to practice it for the rest of my life and maybe one day I'll be kinda good at it. :) Um, nothing else exciting happened on Wednesday.

 

Thursday, I think Sifu went kind of easy on us for Power Training because of Christmas. It was mostly weights. Man I'm so weak. And then after Power Training, they announced that we would have Friday and Monday off for Christmas break! So we had a four-day holiday. Love those. Not that I used it to do anything constructive. They also put up some lights for Christmas, which was fun. Festive.

 

Thursday evening we drew the names for Secret Santa, so Friday and Saturday a lot of people went into town to get their presents and things for the stockings. Apparently 'stockings' aren't a big thing in Europe. I just had everyone contribute something to the stockings, and there were 16 in all. Yes, I ended up being the organizer. In an unrelated note, I was the only Western girl there on Christmas Eve and Christmas because my roommate traveled to Nanjing for the weekend.

 

Although I did go shopping on Friday, I ended up having to go back into town on Saturday because I forgot some things. One of those things, I decided, was a curling iron, and I obtained one for 20 kuai ($3). Surprisingly enough, it worked pretty well and didn't ruin my hair. I think.

 

The reason I decided to get dolled up was because we had a special dinner on Christmas Eve Night. It was certainly fun, and full of Christmas spirit. Everyone put their Secret Santa presents in the dining room beforehand. The kitchen ladies prepared a ton of food for us, and set out cans of beer and a big bottle of coke for each table. I was a little disappointed because even though the Sifus did eat in the two smaller dining halls, they weren't actually with us. But it was also a little good because near the end of the meal, people passed out the Secret Santa gifts and the Sifus weren't signed up for that, so… anyway. It was fun to see everyone open their presents and exclaim over what they got like kids. Some people got super nice things like really nice small-scale weapons. Some people got funny things, like fireworks or plastic princess dress up things. All in all a good dinner.

 

After dinner there was a lot of fireworks going off as people waited for the cabs to come to take them to the hostel. I, of course, opted out of going to the hostel because everyone was going there to drink, and I had a nice little quiet evening. Watched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and then my Mom was nice enough to wake up the family at 6:00 in the morning their time to hang out with me briefly.

 

Christmas morning, I got to open some presents that my family had given me several weeks ago when I visited them for the last time before they left China. One of the cool things I got was a book about Confucius-- well, it's called "Confucius from the Heart: Ancient Wisdom for Today's World". Confucius was a pretty zen dude, yo.

 

Here's a story that was in the book that I thought was good.

 

"There is an interesting tale in Buddhism.

 

Two monks came down form their mountain temple to beg alms. When they reached the bank of a river, they saw a girl, who was upset because she was unable to cross it. The old monk said to the girl: 'I'll carry you over on my back.' And he gave the girl a piggy-back across the river.

 

The young monk was too shocked to do anything more than gape in astonishment. He didn't dare to ask any questions. They walked on for another twenty leagues, and at last he could bear it no onger, so he asked the old monk: 'Master, we're monks, we're supposed to be celibate, how could you carry a girl across the river on your back?'

 

The old monk said coolly: 'You saw how I got her across the river and then put her down. How come you have carried this thought with you for twenty leagues and yet you still haven't put it down?'"

 

Basically the whole book makes you examine yourself like that. Deep stuff.

 

For church, we had a special Sacrament Meeting program for Christmas, and I volunteered to read aloud half of 3 Nephi chapter 1. Because it was a special occasion, my family got to listen in on the church meeting from America.

 

Anyway, I ended up having a very relaxing weekend. Although it was nice to have the extra two days off, it was also sort of weird because there's not a whole lot to do here on weekends except train anyway or read or go on the internet. Gets a little boring.

 

Question time! I got more awesome questions from my Grammy. It's good when people ask clarifying questions because I keep just assuming you guys know what I'm talking about.

 

1) How do you communicate with your Sifus?

 

We have two translators here, Nellie and Leah, who tag along with whichever of the 4-5 Sifus need them. My Sifu speaks pretty functional English, but when he's stuck on something he calls over a translator to explain a more difficult concept. He speaks the best English out of the Sifus-- for the others, as far as I know they can say stuff like, "punch right", "more power", "lower", "thirty push-ups"… sometimes it feels like that's all my Sifu can say, actually, haha. But the one Sifu who doesn't speak any English whatever is Wu Sifu, who teaches Bagua and Wudan forms. He's only here in the afternoons, and when there's no translator around it's pretty hard to follow what he's talking about. There's a lot of pantomime involved with that guy. Actually, he generally speaks kind of slow, so I'm starting to pick up some phrases from him, like "step forward" and "turn your foot".

 

2) What is "firebending"?

 

"Firebending" is a reference to a kid's cartoon show that aired a few years ago; I'm not at all surprised that you didn't hear about it. I was just silly in taking it for granted that people would know what I was talking about. It's called Avatar: The Last Airbender. The premise of the show is that people in the world can move around the elements (water, earth, fire, air) by basically using Kung Fu. The animators referred to different Kung Fu styles for the different elements. "Firebending", or the ability to shot fire from your fists, etc., was based off of Shaolin Kung Fu, hence the illusion that I'm firebending whilst practicing my Shaolin Fist forms. I'm actually also learning Tai Chi, which is "Waterbending", and Bagua, which is "Airbending". No Earthbending here, though.

 

3) The part you wrote about Buddhism and how it relates to Shaolin was very interesting to me. I would love to read a lot more about Shaolin history, if you have time.

 

Well, you asked for it, I guess ;). I'm really not a Shaolin History expert, but I'll give it a shot.

 

Buddhism originated in India, and was brought to China by two different monks, spaced about 100 years apart. The first monk, Batuo, came from Northern India in about 500 BC (not positive on that date) and brought a type of Buddhism that encourages one to only improve one's self internally. The Emperor of China really took a liking to Buddhism and eventually built a Buddhist temple for Batuo. Although the Emperor really wanted the people to accept Buddhism in general, it never really took hold. Basically the end result of Batuo's visit was the establishment of a temple and it built awareness so that the Chinese people knew what Buddhism was.

 

100 years later, Dharma came from Southern India to China. His Buddhism was a little different than Batuo's, in that the goal was first to help others, then yourself, with the ultimate goal being to transcend earthly life and become a Buddha. He traveled around for a while, and then he's the guy who meditated in a cave for nine years. His first disciple heard about him and took care of him for a while to show his dedication to learning Buddhism. Then they worked together to build up the Shaolin Temple at the base of the mountain where the cave was at. There were regularly about 2000 monks at the temple, and I think my Sifu said that today there are less than half that number.

 

"15th Generation" Shaolin monk actually means that his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and so on all trained at some point in the Shaolin temple. My Sifu trained there for ten years, starting when he was 7-8 years old, but got into a more advanced class than usual when he started because his father taught him what he had learned at the temple beforehand.  That's why he's so awesome. Wei Sifu, by the way, is a 34th Generation Shaolin monk.

 

That's basically all we covered in our first class. But I know from other times that Sifu has talked about the temple history that the kung fu movements were adapted from working with every day things-- like farming tools. There are a lot of weird weapon forms, man. And of course, there's all the animal forms. Kung Fu Panda showcases some of those, but for some reason they skipped over Scorpion. Not that I blame them-- Scorpion Style only really looks cool when an actual person is doing it. Oh, a "form" is a series of movements that are put together, created to help you remember how to fight. It's pretty easy to go from learning movements in a form to using those movements that you learned in an actual sparring match. Well, *apparently* it's easy. You still need to practice a bit before you get over the fear of having objects (and fists) hurled at your face.

 

But I digress. The Shaolin Temple is apparently where all martial arts started, and the idea soon spread to Japan and Korea and stuff. Different styles developed in different places, like the Wudan mountains up North have a pretty distinctive style. Wing Chun famously originated in Hong Kong (See "Ip Man 2" for further reference). Qi Gong, the meditation style, was actually from India originally, and was more of a prelude to martial arts. If you ever have a chance to do Qi Gong classes, you totally should. It's really good for your health. Sort of like yoga, but less strenuous.

 

Anyway, that's about the conclusion of this week's update. I kinda skimmed over the classes, huh? Hm.

 

Well, I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. See you next year!

 

Sarah

 

PS: The picture is of us doing Qi Gong. I'm the one in the pink sweatshirt.

 

Sunrise, Sunset

Wow. Another week of training has really sped by.

 

So, when Arianne left, she was like, "do you want some wool" and I was like, "what does that even mean"-- until I figured out that she meant yarn. At some point she had gotten some yarn in three different shades of pink, one of which is really violent and a little scary, but the other two are fine. She had started knitting a hat which I might have finished except I haven't a clue how to knit. But I decided to take the yarn anyway because I'm pretty handy at crocheting (April 2008 will tell you as much, when I crocheted a 13-foot Doctor Who Scarf. Whoa, was that really almost four years ago?). Unfortunately, finding a crochet hook is practically impossible in China-- or in Qufu, anyway. Knitting needles? Sure! Cross-stitch patterns? Plenty! But I was trying to explain what crochet was to Nellie, and she really had no idea what I was talking about.

 

So I decided to whittle one. That was my Monday project, and by the end of the day I had a pretty nice-looking little crochet hook that was just the right size. I crocheted three rows of a scarf and haven't looked at it again since.

 

Anyway, the days have certainly gotten colder, though the sun hasn't stopped shining all week. It's really weird to have such consistently nice weather, when back home at least half of the days would be overcast or rainy. I remember the last time Seattle had a week of sunny days I started to feel a little nervous, like something unnatural was going on.

 

I've had several things to divert my time this week. One was the discovery of a site called "Project Gutenberg", which has the e-text of practically any book that has an expired copyright date (something about 70 years after the author's death?). So, all of Sunday afternoon was spent glued to the followings of that elusive English Spy, the Scarlet Pimpernel. For the record, I totally called his disguise at the end.

 

The other diversion came in the form of Justice League, Seasons 1-5. I watched all of them with my sister several years ago, and it was funny to see how many of them I remembered, or missed, or forgot. No, mom, I didn't spend ALL of my spare time staring at the computer screen. Not that I have a lot of spare time.

 

Well, let's get to the play-by-play of the week.

 

Monday classes, as per usual, were (Tai Chi), Basics, Forms, Sanda/Bagua, and Bagua. Learned some more of the 42-Step Tai Chi, learned some more Tonbei (Shaolin Fist form), and practiced my Bagua form which I finished last week. Have I already said how weird it is to be done with that? And at some point I finished the Qi Gong form. The only difficult part of that form is that you need to remember to practice it in the mornings and evenings. I did so for about two days during the week. I'd forgotten that I was supposed to do that until now.

 

We finally had Calligraphy again, and that was interesting this week because a bunch of the new people came, so the teacher was less like, "go draw some lines" and was more like, "this is the history of this character".

 

(Calligraphy teacher writes something)

New Guy: That's beautiful! What is it?

Leah: "Bank of China".

 

Also on Monday, I got a hold of more Dengfeng pictures from someone. She took a LOT of pictures, so I spent some time going through and deleting a couple of repeats.

 

And that was Monday.

 

Tuesday was Wing Chun Day. I like Wing Chun. Have I already told you guys to watch Ip Man? Do. It's awesome. So I did Wing Chun for the first two classes instead of Jumps and Rolls...

 

Yeah, then the afternoon class was Qinan, and we learned some knife defenses. We got to go and choose a stick to be  our knife. In some ways we were kind of messing around with it, and that was okay because Sifu was laughing and joking around too, but then at the end Sifu talked to us in a more serious tone about how important it was to be serious and learn these things well. Overall a good class. Sifu was gracious enough to show me where the pressure point on my elbow is when I asked. He has a painful sense of humor.

 

Once again, reviewed Bagua and learned some Qi Gong.

 

I did go to Mandarin, but because so many new people are doing it, we're kind of at Square 1.5. I learned a little, but at the end I made Nellie stick around and teach me some more family words. Holy cow, the Chinese people have a name for everyone! And it all depends on where you are in the family. Feng le. (crazy).

 

And then I stayed up until 9:30, which actually is too late for me. I slept through half of Tai Chi before I got up and did some Qi gong. You know what? 8:45 is my new bedtime. Srsly.

 

Which brings us to Wednesday.  Um… first class, Basics. We did a little more drill-type stuff. You see it in Kung Fu movies a lot, where the students are all standing in lines and rows, doing movements at exactly the same time. That was both stressful and empowering. Second class, forms, and we learned a bit more of Tonbei. I'm really liking Tonbei, by the way. Especially when I'm pretending to firebend.

 

Now that I've finished my Bagua form, it was about time for me to start learning a new form from Wu Sifu. The timing couldn't have been more perfect, because on Wednesday, Wu Sifu started teaching the Wudan Tai Chi group a Short Staff Form. We all had to hunt down our own Short Staff, and I was lucky enough to find one that had been abandoned a while ago. I also actually found an abandoned long staff, so now I have my own instead of having to borrow someone else's. Wish I could take it home. It seems like the plural for 'staff' should be something besides 'staffs'. Hmm...

 

Thursday. Finished the Qi Gong Yi Jing Ji form (that spelling is complete guesswork), and I got the order of the movements all written down. Now I have yet another Qi Gong form to remember to practice. Huzzah?

 

Haha, conditioning. Remember a few weeks ago, when I said that conditioning my forearms no longer hurt? Well, Sifu decided to help me this week. False alarm, guys. It still hurts, and I've got the bruises to prove it. I wonder at what point in his life his arms turned into small trees?

 

During the half hour before the lunch whistle is blown, I finally posted the sign-up list for Secret Santa. It's hard to fathom that Christmas is only a week away. Here, there's so little hype that December just feels like winter instead of Christmas Month. Apparently in most parts of Europe Christmas isn't nearly as big a deal as it is in America. That seems kind of weird to me. As a Christian, the most important part of Christmas is celebrating Christ's birth. But no one else has mentioned that this is part of their Christmas tradition, so… I dunno. I know I'm gonna watch the First Presidency Christmas Devotional on Christmas Eve, and of course I'll ask if anyone wants to join me. But anyway, I'll write about how Christmas went next week. The update will probably go up on the 26th.

 

Lunchtime, I totally forgot about my laundry until like 15 minutes before class started (I blame Superman), but I managed to get it hung up to dry before I had to scurry out and run around the ponds. You know, I keep forgetting to talk about that part of class. Although the classes are an hour to an hour and a half long, half an hour is always taken up by warm-up. Because it's gotten colder, we often run three laps around the ponds in the morning (those are starting to really freeze over, by the way). Then we head over to the steps, stretch our legs on them, and then do a leg stretch with a partner. For that one, you stand against the wall, and your partner lifts your leg as high as you can go with both legs straight, and then hopefully a little higher. I can definitely see that I've improved in that one. My leg used to only go up to, like, waist height, but now I'm nearly at shoulder height. Then we do a series of warm-ups where we move around our joints starting from our neck down to our ankles. After which, we partner up again and sit on the ground while our partner pushes us in different directions: one where you sit with the soles of your feet together and your partner presses your knees down to the ground (my least favorite), one where you sit with your legs stretched out straight in front of you and your partner pushes your back so that you touch your toes and your head eventually touches your legs (my favorite), and one where you stretch your legs out into a straddle, and your partner puts his feet against your ankles so you don't move and then pulls your arms so you bend forward. Then we do horse stance for three minutes.

 

Short Staff was pretty fun. I was kind of nervous at first because Wu Sifu showed us a whole lot of movements at once, but he repeated it enough times during the next hour that we all (mostly) had it down by the end of class. Short Staff is pretty cool. Very practical. It really reminds me of my Wudan sword form, though of course it's not nearly as pretty.

 

Thursday evening, Sifu taught us Shaolin Theory (with Nellie translating). It's a 'new' class that we're going to do every week from now on. This week we learned mostly about the history of Buddhism and how it relates to the Shaolin Temple. Like, Dharma, an Indian Buddhist guy, came to China and meditated in a cave for 9 years. One of the Chinese guys was all like, "why is that guy meditating in a cave for 9 years" (I'm wondering the same thing), so he went and became his disciple. I saw that cave, actually. It's halfway up the mountain next to the Shaolin Temple. I think I mentioned it a few blog posts ago. If anyone wants to hear more about Shaolin history or anything about life in the Shaolin temple, let me know-- I took pretty good notes, and I know a 15th Generation Shaolin Warrior Monk.

 

For the first class on Friday, Sifu had us review all of our forms. That included 5-Step which I thought I had forgotten and Continuous Fist which I wish I had forgotten. Not because I don't like it, but because when I learned it, I always practiced it with my stance too high, so if I really wanted to be good at it I would have to re-learn it with a lower stance. Ah, me.

 

And then Power Stretching is always fun. Ha. Ha. I feel like it's actually gotten more painful. Seems like if you're closer to doing the splits it should be less painful, right? Usually we do Power Stretching in the training hall because that's where the mats live, but this week we took them outside because it was so nice and sunny. The people in the other class, who were also outside practicing their forms, seemed to find it amusing. After power stretching we always do warm-up kicks because if you don't use the muscles that you just stretched, then they just get weaker. Stretchier, but weaker.

 

Friday afternoon is a free period, so I did a variety of things. I went to the training hall, and a few of the guys had stacked up the mats to practice Parkour, so I did that for a little bit. I actually improved a little. It was going well until more people came in to do it/watch, and then I just got self-conscious and did some stretching in the corner with some of the girls. Then I went and started right into Short Staff. That second afternoon class is becoming kind of hard because at 3:30 the sun is getting low in the sky, and it suddenly gets really cold whether you're moving around or not.

 

Saturday all I really did was watch Justice League and go into town for my weekly shopping. I went with one of my roommates, and we walked along the street next to the Confucius Temple, where they sell a bunch of souvenirs. If anyone wants anything like a wooden scroll or an ocarina or a stamp with their name carved into it, let me know-- I've gotten pretty good at haggling. I'm glad Qufu is sort of a tourist spot. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get any lame Chinese souvenirs once I left Beijing, but this is not so.

 

… And that was my week.

 

Hope everyone has a great Christmas!

 

<3,

 

Sarah

 

PS: This week's title was from Fiddler on the Roof. It sort of applies because the time seems to be passing really quickly, and also the sunrises are getting really pretty. We hold Tai Chi in the training hall because it's too cold outside, and when you look out the window, you can see the sky turning shades of pink and orange through the black silhouettes of tree branches.

Total Eclipse of the Heart

I was really kind of stuck on a title for this update until I walked out to brush my teeth, and one of the guys said that a lunar eclipse was happening. Pretty cool, right? Wish I had a good camera. And something that repelled the cold.

 

Basically, this week was another week of training that went by super quickly. (cue day-by-day summary)

 

On Sunday, I got to dial in to church via cell phone. You can totally do it by Skype if your internet is trustworthy. Mine isn't. Because there are very few members in China (Chinese government policies are to blame for that, unfortunately), my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), has a Virtual Branch in China for existing members that have moved to different cities in China. I'm not sure exactly how many people call in, but it's been so nice to have an hour or two of something that feels like home every week. I also got to talk to my family through Skype Chat, which was great. And entertaining. <3 you guys.

 

And then, all too soon, the weekend was over and "normal life" resumed. I sort of don't remember Monday. The classes were Basics and then Forms for the morning, and Sanda in the afternoon-- which, as usual, I skipped in favor of Bagua. Some time during the week I finished my Bagua form! Finally! That thing is, like, over 200 movements, man. Not counting all the times that you walk in a circle. It feels weird to have finished it. Like there should be something more. But now Wu Sifu is teaching me the companion Qi Gong form so that I can do the breathing in it properly. That part is super cool. I have a video of Wu Sifu doing some Qi Gong, and then he puts three bricks on top of his head and one of the other Sifus takes a sledgehammer and breaks the bricks. That are on top of his head. And then he walks away from it, laughing and smiling like "That was easy! You guys ready to try?". That's one hardcore cute old Chinese man.

 

Tuesday was pretty cool in the morning. First hour was Wing Chun, and then second hour I would usually go to Jumps and Rolls, but I somehow couldn't muster up the gumption for it this week, so I sidled over to Hair Sifu's Wing Chun class, which is what everyone else does instead of Jumps and Rolls. I totally liked it. There's an exercise that people call "Sticky Hands" that's sort of like sparring. You touch wrists with your partner, standing far enough apart that your elbows are bent and your shoulders relaxed. You have one wrist inside, one outside. Then you sort of relax your wrists and flop them over each other, the point of which is to feel what your partner's about to do. When one of you strikes, the other can then feel how to block it Wing Chun style, and pretty soon you're not connected by the wrists anymore, but are just blocking and striking like nobody's business. Sometimes it just sort of ends up looking like a catfight. But when Hair Sifu demonstrated a little, it just looked awesome. Like Ip Man. How does he do that? (wistful sigh)

 

Also on Tuesday we had a little bit of a hullaballoo… well, basically someone has been sending letters to the local government, claiming that students in our school have been doing some disreputable things. It's all lies, of course. The letters were sent anonymously, so Wei Sifu can't request that his accuser look him in the eye. Maybe that's a good thing, because that could end in an Agni Kai*. Anyway, some of the students finally came forward about an issue that's been bothering pretty much all of us: that the rules aren't being enforced properly, especially about staying out late.

 

That was to be resolved on Thursday, which I'll talk about in a minute.

 

Continuing on, Mandarin on Tuesday night displayed a class full of three students who hadn't been here more than three weeks between them all… and me, who's been here for three months. So the stuff we learned was super basic. But maybe it's a good thing for me to take a break from "learning" new stuff and going back to my old lessons which I haven't even kind of memorized. Chinese has a lot of words.

 

Wednesday. Morning was, again, Basics and Forms. Because I'm officially done with my Staff form, I've started onto the next Shaolin Fist Form, Tonbei**. At first I was hesitant to learn it because I felt like I could be learning something cooler (single chain whip, anyone?), but now that I've started it, it feels pretty cool. Like I'm firebending. Yeh. Afternoon class was Bagua. The second hour of Bagua, Wu Sifu took us to the training hall and taught us some applications to the Wudan Tai Chi form that a whole lot of people have been learning. That mostly consisted of blocking someone's punch, hitting them where it hurt (such as a shoulder pressure point, which he kindly demonstrated on me), and throwing them to the ground. Pretty fun stuff.

 

Wednesday evening, Nellie wanted to watch a movie to improve her English, and someone had suggested The King's Speech to her. I've been wanting to see that, so we watched it together and it was great. Admittedly, it was a little weird to see Colin Firth as a somewhat older man than he was as Mr. Darcy in the 1995 A&E Pride and Prejudice.

 

Thursday. After breakfast, I looked over at the bathrooms, and saw that a bird had flown into the sink area. It looked sort of charming, perched there at the edge of the sink. I walked over and saw that the window was closed. I guess it had flown in through the door? So I tiptoed over, opened the window, backed away, and watched it run into the glass several times before finally finding the open window and escaping to freedom.

 

Qi Gong and Conditioning were about the same as usual. When I go home I think I'll miss having gnarly bruises on my arms. Not that I want people at home to beat me up (pft, I know kung fu now. I'd like to see them try).

 

But Power Training this week was brutal. I think. No, yeah, it was because I was super sore afterwards. I still am, a little bit. But it's sort of a blur. I remember running. Chicken Steps. Push-ups. Lifting stones over my head. Ledge Walk. Ledge push-ups. 2-person Squats. And at the end he made us do some wheelbarrow. Yeah. Nothing quite like power training, where you do ridiculous things while a Chinese guy follows you around, urging you to go faster.

 

So, as per the issue raised on Tuesday, on Thursday afternoon we all sat in the freezing Training Hall and had a Student/Staff meeting to decide what the rules and punishments are for smoking, drinking, and staying out late on the weekends. Pretty much, the punishment for violating any of the Big Three will be doing horse stance for half an hour, then subsequently holding a push-up position for half an hour and running ten laps. We're not sure it's possible. Monday might bring that to the test. After being punished like this twice, a student will be dismissed from the school if they do it a third time.

 

Friday, was (Tai Chi), Forms, and Power Stretching. For forms I worked on Tonbei some more. We actually got a new guy in our class, so I soooort of feel like Sifu didn't go as hard on us as usual with the Power Stretching. I learned how to count to five in Hungarian. Then we had the Friday Afternoon class… it's usually a Free Period, but Sifu had the three of us who graded the Staff Form learn some Staff Applications. Fighting with staffs, man. A little bit scary, actually, because if you don't block someone's attack, it really will hurt when they hit you. I mean, when someone's punching you in class, they sort of give you time to block it, or it's become such a habit that you block it automatically, you know? But at first, hitting your staff against someone else's staff so it makes a loud CLACK was sort of… sort of like when you first get into a Chinese taxi and the guy's veering around people and honking his horn and you realize that there's no seatbelt buckle so you're in real danger. But then you get used to it and pretty soon it's kind of fun. It's like that.

 

Friday night I sort of stayed up late, and got to chat with my awesome Mom, who happened to be on the computer at five in the morning, her time. When I said I'd lost my Nook (grrr), she sent me a website that had a whole bunch of free ebooks (somehow made legal because of expired copyrights and such). It's called Project Gutenberg. The majority of my Saturday was spent reading Anne's House of Dreams. Man, L. M. Montgomery is good for the soul. I couldn't decide if it cured my homesickness or made me even more homesick.

 

So, yeah. Saturday. Today. Basically all I did was read, spend some time on the computer doing other things, and run to the supermarket for this week's victuals. I'll be trying out some apples that look special because they have that wrapping around them that Americans put around Asian Pears. And to be adventurous I decided to give Chinese pastries another chance. They still suck.

 

And that was my week. I didn't get any official questions from anybody, but my mom asked me if I was cold.

 

Yes. Yes I am. But I'm pretty much always wearing a sweatshirt (or "jumper" as people around here call them. That took me a little while to get used to), and sometimes I feel like I'm the person who's wearing the fewest layers around here, especially compared to my roommate who always has another longsleeve to put on. But the cold basically doesn't bother me a lot… especially during training, right after I've run three laps. And the thermals I got are really nice. I discovered on Monday that one of the pairs that the lady at the Underground sold me was made for guys. Luckily, I have a sewing kit. No longer made for guys.

 

Well, that concludes this week's update! Feel free to send me any comments or questions as usual. You are also free to send me any presents for Christmas. If you want it to be a surprise, the address for the school is on their website, www.shaolinskungfu.com. ;)

 

<3,

 

Sarah

 

 

*A Firebending duel, usually initiated when one firebender has insulted the honor of another. See Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 1, Episode 3: The Southern Air Temple for a good example.

 

**Don't take my word for it on that spelling.

Sarah vs. The Racist Visa Folks

This week, my main woe was that the internet hasn't been working well. For a few days it was working okay in the mornings, other days maybe once in the evening, but for the most part not at all. I'm not even sure when I'll be able to upload this, so I'm trying to get it done as soon as possible.

 

So! We'll start with Monday. I didn't put a whole lot of effort into Monday's training because I was still pretty tired from the weekend adventure. It started sprinkling during the second morning class, while I was practicing my staff form. Twirling a staff around is not an easy feat when the staff is slippery. But the rain didn't really start coming down until lunch break, which was a shame because I had started my laundry in the morning. I ended up hanging it around my room, which might be everyone's practice during the winter. Now that the grass wakes up covered in frost, hanging your laundry outside to freeze in the night doesn't seem very effective. But they've turned the heat on, which is nice. Well, it's nice for the two hours of the day that it's on. They have a small hill of coal next to the laundry lines for the boiler. At 6:00 in the morning and 5:00 in the evening you can see black smoke belching out of the boiler room. It makes our rooms warm, but is also a rather painful reminder that China isn't huge on carbon footprints.

 

But, yeah. It's gotten super cold here. The Chinese say that winter starts on November 8th rather than on, like, December 22nd (according to my Western calendar, that's when it's supposed to start). They're sure right about that. December especially has brought out everyone's snow coats, hats, scarves, and gloves. I'm actually going into town today with my roommates to get myself some thermals.

 

Seriously, if you're reading this and you're planning to come here during the winter, bring a LOT of warm clothing. Two snowcoats, long johns, three sweatshirts, five longsleeves, and thermal underwear is not excessive. Well, especially if you plan on changing your clothing. Some people seem not to.

 

And we're back to Monday. Because of the cold and the rain, Bagua was held in the Training Hall, and I got a few steps closer to finishing my Bagua form. It was really hard to do without a circle. Apparently, Wu Sifu has the full form on youtube somewhere, but I can't actually look at it in China. Once I get back I'll find it and put the link up. You should check it out.

 

For some reason, they didn't have Calligraphy on Monday night like they usually do. So, as mentioned in the last post, I watched "Shaolin Temple". It was kind of at the front of my mind when I was writing the bulk of my update on Tuesday.

 

Tuesday, it continued to rain, though for the morning it was mainly windy. I worked on my staff form for the first class. Usually it's Wing Chun for the first class, but it seemed more prudent to get ready for grading on Wednesday. I've been debating on whether I should continue doing Jumps and Rolls, but for this week I tried it out. I still suck at it, but a bunch of other people do too, so it was okay. We ended up learning some Parkour for the last half hour because one of the guys does it back home in Norway and Sifu thought it was pretty cool. It is. But it's a whole lot harder than it looks.

 

The afternoon class was Qinan (I've really got to figure out how that's spelled) and it was actually pretty fun. It's nice now that I have a girl to practice with. Makes it less awkward when they need to grab the front of your shirt to attack you. Near the beginning of the class Sifu was trying out his new word: "whatever", and we were trying to help him know how to use it. It depends on the tone of voice you use, really. And then, of course, it's always super fun to have Sifu demonstrate a Qinan move on you. Not. But it makes him laugh a little when you're cringing and rubbing your wrist or shoulder afterwards. Hilarious, Sifu. Hilarious.

 

Because of the rain I guess Wu Sifu didn't show up for Bagua, so instead of Bagua for the second class, I had a bunch of free time. Arianne had left me some sword oil, so I oiled both my swords, which was actually kind of fun. Sort of like oiling a dutch oven. I need some suggestions for what to name my new sword that I got in Dengfeng. I had named my training sword "The Silver Shadow", but I can't transfer that name to my better sword because it has gold on the sheath and hilt. If you guys have any ideas, let me know.

 

Wednesday actually turned out to be quite a good day. Well, the morning wasn't too special. Just practicing my staff form and 24-Step Tai Chi. It stopped raining, but the ground was too wet to hold Grading outside, so we did it in the Training Hall.

 

For Grading, I wore the new outfit I got from Dengfeng. It's one of those Tai Chi Outfits-- you know, the baggy pants, the loose longsleeve shirt with Chinese-type clasps going down the front… it was black. I looked cool. Probably. I pulled off my staff form without making any major mistakes, but I honestly I don't really care about that one. I don't think the staff is my Thing. But I feel like the Tai Chi went really well. I mean, after Grading usually a few people (if they remember) will be like, "oh, good job on your basics" or whatever. But a lot of people came up to me afterward and told me that my Tai Chi form looked really good. That was pretty gratifying. It made Wednesday a good day.

 

Thursday. We started learning a new Qi Gong form, called "Yi Jing Ji" or something like that. The one that we've been practicing up to now was called "Ba... Something". I just remember the "ba" part because it has eight movements, and "ba" is the Chinese word for eight.

 

Conditioning was super weird. On the exercise where your hit your forearms against someone else's forearms (or against a tree, sometimes), the guy I was with was giving an absurd amount of power, and I could feel that he was. But it legitimately didn't hurt. Of course that's the point of conditioning, but it was really weird to actually experience it. Once again, Sifu decided that my partner for the shoulder/bicep punching wasn't putting enough power on my arm, so he helped me condition. Thanks, man. Nice to know he's watching out for me.

 

Power Training, as usual, wasn't fun. The Favorite Exercise of the class was push-ups, or staying in the push-up position with your feet on the ledge for what felt like several minutes. Why do I get the feeling he's going to make us do handstand push-ups next week? I need to get a video of people doing the "chicken steps" exercise. It's like, you squat all the way down and put your hands behind your back, and take tiny steps forward. It looks really funny. I feel like we're all little video game minions, and Mario's gonna jump onto our heads at any given minute.

 

Friday had a lot of ups and downs. The morning got me pretty annoyed. At the beginning of the first class (Power Stretching), one of the translators suddenly came up to me and said that in fifteen minutes I would have to get in a taxi to go extend my visa. What? Okay, whatever. I had given them my passport earlier in the week for this purpose, but no one had said anything about going into town. Oh well.

 

I went with a couple of other guys who also needed their visas extended. We first went to get some pictures taken for the visa photo. I have two extra if you want me to autograph them for you. Then we headed over to the police station. We pasted our photos on some documents, signed some stuff, got our picture taken, watched the same old Chinese lady walk by the office to look at us at least six times, and then got a receipt. We would have to pay the receipt at the bank.

 

I looked at my receipt and was sure there was some mistake. I had heard that the  visa extension would cost 500 yuan at the very most. I looked at the other guy's, and they were all at around 250. But mine? 940 yuan.

 

940 yuan, "because I'm American". And that's only for two extra months, zero entrance.

 

What the heck?

 

I made it sound like the whole document pasting and signing went by quickly, but it didn't. It seriously felt like it took forever. Probably an hour. And then the bank took, like, half an hour because we had to wait in line and stuff. So, because we were by that time too late for lunch, we all went and got chicken burgers and hailed a taxi. I let the guys pay for the taxi.

 

That bogus visa price made me fume over my lunch break, and I totally wanted to fume for longer, but I think I have some sort of miswiring in my system because I couldn't get myself to feel truly upset about it for much longer than that. Or maybe training just distracted me. 940 yuan, by the way, is $146 USD. Grr.

 

Friday afternoon class is a Free Period, so I asked Sifu if I could do Power Stretching because I had missed it that morning. Honestly, that wasn't one of my better ideas. I'm actually getting really close to the splits, but only when Sifu is pushing down on my hips and shoulders. The thing about being the only person doing Power Stretching is you don't get a little break between one leg and the other, because he's not leaving you alone to stretch someone else. After about four stretches I had to call it quits out of sheer self-preservation.

 

Apparently, in town you can buy some pretty nice BB guns for cheap. Young Sifu doesn't actually own one (I think?) but he borrowed a shotgun-type one from one of the guys and was having fun shooting leaves and stuff. I tried it, and it was pretty nice. Apparently it's pretty painful. So while students weren't asking him questions or being tortured, he was messing around with that during class.

 

I have to admit I skipped Acupuncture. Basically all we do is write down (or just watch him point out) pressure points and hear the explanation on them. I mean, sure it's interesting, but I think I've got all the ones written down that he's willing to teach us. I'm pretty sure I even have repeats. Now the next step would be to study them. Which I probably won't do.

 

In the evening after dinner, me and my two roommates tried out a Chinese bathhouse, which was pretty nice mostly because it had a sauna. It was 40 kuai per person, and you could pay more if you wanted a massage and stuff. Fortunately for this American, Chinese massage places are really cheap, even if the visas aren't. I really wanted a massage that night, but we decided to get one on Saturday instead.

 

And then we had a super eventful Saturday. My two roommates, my roommate's boyfriend and me all decided to go into town together to get massages, eat lunch, and hit the supermarket. Going into town with people is quite a bit different than going by yourself. You have to gage everyone's opinions, for one thing. One of my roommates is considerably more outspoken than her boyfriend, the other girl, and in most cases, me. If she had been the one who had been here for three months instead of me, we definitely would've wound up following her all day. I mean, not that she was bossy. Just a little more adventurous.

 

We went to the massage place that everyone talks about, and got the full body massage, 138 kuai. Although nice, I didn't really feel like it did me a lot of good. Not a lot of working over going on. I should try to find a place that really works on your back, because mine sort of hurts. Maybe it's just bruised from conditioning, though… But I've gotta say, massages are a little better when you get them in the evening and can go home and sleep. Going back out onto the cold street to shop was a little bit of a shock.

 

For lunch, we were heading to a noodle place I know but wasn't totally set on, but then spotted a place that sort of looked like a fast food thing. More like a buffet, actually. So we went in and got some stuff, and it was fairly good food for-- not dirt cheap, but really inexpensive compared to what it would cost in America. It was really funny to my Italian roommate how much we were getting stared at, as Westerners using chopsticks and all that. I feel so used to it now that I almost feel weird when people don't look at me.

 

When we got into the taxi to head to the supermarket, we had two choices for it: Bai Yi or InZone. I'm the only one who's been to both, so I decided that we would go to InZone. To make the taxi drivers understand you, you have to pronounce it a little different, more like "Yin Zuo". So I said it like that to the driver, and he was saying it back to me a little bit weird, but I assumed he understood and we started off. And then we started driving in a direction that I felt was weird. After a few minutes, I realized that we had gone, like, way too far. So I said again to him, "Yin Zuo? Yin Zuo?", and he was like, "Yangzhou?", and I'm like "aw, snap." He totally tried to take us to the train station. Luckily I had stopped him before the meter went too high. That was actually the first time the language barrier had been a problem with a taxi driver.

 

Once we got to the supermarket, we had a ball looking at all the weird Chinese foods, and occasionally buying some. I found some hawthorne (no idea how you spell that or if that's really the thing I'm talking about) candy! Before I leave I'm going to go back and get a whole lot of it to bring back with me to America. Really, it's one of the few Chinese candies that legitimately tastes like candy, and it's because they taste like a really powerful fruit. One of my goals was to get some pairs of thermals, but we didn't find any at the supermarket. I was sort of worried that people wouldn't want to stop in town on the way back to school and I wouldn't end up getting my thermals, but on the contrary we ended up staying out even after I had gotten them at the Underground and looked around a bit more. On the Food Street (not far from the Underground and Milkshake Shop), there's a bunch of street food. The main delights this time of year are corn on the cob and fried octopus on a stick. But if you were really adventurous, you could get a cooked dog skull, with (I'm assuming) the brain still inside. No joke. We tried to get a picture of it, but the guy shooed us away. Maybe selling edible dog skulls is against the law in Qufu?

 

We looked around a bit more, I nabbed a book of Confucius Sayings (with English translations, of course) off of a stand for 5 kuai, and pretty soon we got us a taxi and got back to the school with our key phrase, "Shaolin Wushu Xue Xiao".

 

And that was my week! Although in some ways it feels like every week of training turns out the same, life is built in such a way that you can never have the same day twice. Really, going into this whole blog thing I felt like I would just be repeating everything. Like, 'this week we had training. I ran around the fish ponds for the 350th time'. But I talk about different things, right? We have field trips, and I go to town, and sometimes we watch movies in the training hall if it's pouring outside. Every day it gets colder, every week I get a little bit closer to doing the splits.

 

Anyway.

 

Question time! Thank you to my awesome Grammy for submitting some questions this week.

 

I'd like to know if you have a calligraphy pen set that you can use to practise drawing bamboo leaves and stems with for hours?

 

I do have two calligraphy brushes that I got in Beijing (let me know if you want any, they're pretty cheap and I've seen them here in Qufu), but we haven't actually drawn any bamboo leaves yet. Mostly a lot of straight lines. :)

 

I also wonder if Shaolin masters are required to be celibate.

 

The answer to that is no. If you're sworn in to be a monk and you live at the temple and stuff I think it's different, but our headmaster here, Wei Sifu, is actually married to a lovely woman, Joy, who speaks great English and they have a little son about ten months old. His English name is Luke, but I can never seem to remember his Chinese name. So… yeah. I mean, no. What?

 

I also wonder if you pronounce the letter Chinese Q like English CH? How do you write the French sound for J in Chinese? Also, have you studied Bo Po Mo Fo?

 

That's exactly right! So, "Qufu" actually sounds like "Chew Foo". Pinyin was established in China about 50 years ago to help foreigners know how to pronounce it, but it's not all exactly how you would think it would be pronounced. Like, the "Bo Po Mo Fo" exercise (which we studied in Beijing with a tutor-- I haven't learned it here as of yet) sounds more like they're saying "Bwoh Pwoh Moh Foh". And when you see a "C" in Pinyin, it's pronounced "Ts". Crazy, right? You know, I don't think they actually have a soft "J". "Zh" is as close as it gets because it's not quite as hard as "J".

 

Thanks so much for sending me questions, Grammy! I love reading your mission updates, and I'm so proud of you guys.

 

I wish I had a good picture of me in my Shaolin outfit during Grading, but I still need to collect pictures and video from people...

 

Until next week,

 

Sarah

Dengfeng It!

Kudos to my sister Ellyn for coming up with the title. Eat a slice of pumpkin pie for breakfast for me, dear. If I could have one type of food to appear before me, it would be pumpkin pie from a can. Oh, and eggnog.

 

Once again, my excuse for being late is completely valid because I was in Dengfeng, doing stuff instead of writing about doing stuff. I'm glad I went because the week itself was pretty boring. I had, like, no energy. Oh! And I suddenly decided that I would try to do Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month). For those of you who don't know, it's basically a challenge where you write 50,000 words of a novel in one month. It's sort of crazy. www.nanowrimo.org for more info. I had written about 5,000 words at the beginning of the month, and then kind of dropped it and then decided last week that I would try to write 5,000 words every day in order to finish it. About Thursday I dropped it again. Maybe next year?

 

So, mad typing was taking up a lot of my breaks, and still would be if I wasn't trying to concentrate on grading. Yep, grading is tomorrow! I'll be doing my 24-step Tai Chi and my Staff Form, which I finished on Friday. That one kind of worries me because I haven't had a whole lot of time to prepare for it with my weekend trip to Dengfeng. Tai Chi doesn't worry me at all, though. I've been doing it for ages and it's starting to feel like the only Kung Fu style that I'm actually sort of good at. :/

 

Before I get into my weekend trip, I've got some roommate switching going on! I really thought that no more people would be coming (what with winter shoving its way through our sliding doors), but in the past week two more girls and a boy have arrived. Monday brought the first one, and then my first roommate Arianne went with us to Dengfeng and then left for Beijing, so her departure made room for another new girl, which I found out at 5:00 in the morning on Monday when we arrived. They're both lovely, though not exactly talkative. One is from Hungary, which makes it a little bit difficult, though she speaks basically communicable English. Remember how I thought I would be the only girl in my class forever? Not anymore! Kind of bad timing, that. I had finally gotten used to it. But now I have a partner for (let's see if I can spell this right) "Qinan", which is a class that we didn't do for the first two months. I guess we're now doing it instead of Sanda takedowns on Tuesday afternoons sometimes. It's a class where you learn how to twist people's wrists into uncomfortable positions, basically. It's extra uncomfortable when Sifu decides to demonstrate on you.

 

Anyway, flashback to Friday evening.

 

Sifu told us to meet him in the office at 9:45 so that we could take the taxis at 10:00 to get to the station in plenty of time for the 11:49 train going from Yangzhou Station to Zhengzhou Station. As you may notice, neither of those stations are "Qufu" or "Dengfeng" anything. The Yangzhou Station is the one for the slow (or 'regular') trains. It's the one you would go to if you wanted to take eight hours to get to Beijing instead of 2-3. I'd been there once before, when we went to Qingdao. It's considerably less clean than the shiny Qufu East Station for the speed train.

 

Anyway, Sifu talked us through our weekend tour schedule and it ended up taking until 10:30, so all 17 of us (including Sifu) jogged out to the taxis and told them to go fast. So of course all of the taxis decided to develop minor engine problems and crawled to the station. Being American, I'm not exactly sure how fast 40 km/h is, but it nearly wasn't fast enough. And the driver had the gall to follow his meter for the time and definitely overcharged us.

 

But anyway, we did make it on time and all piled onto the sleeper train. I've decided that I don't like doing that. Do all men snore, or is it just middle-aged Chinese men? But I sort of like the bunks themselves. They're at least as comfortable as the beds we have at the school.

 

When you ride on a sleeper train, a ticket guy comes around at the beginning and exchanges your ticket for a little card, which you mustn't lose. Then when your stop is coming up, he comes and wakes you about half an hour beforehand and changes your ticket back. Our train left around midnight and got into Zhengzhou at about 6:00 Saturday morning.

 

Oh, this brings me to Saturday. So, we all got off the train and headed over to McDonalds for some breakfast. Man, what a dirty city. Zhengzhou looks all modern and nice, but we were approached by so many beggars, and it all smelled terrible. McDonalds took a bit long because so many people had to order and Chinese people kept butting in line because no one in China actually knows how a line functions. I was sitting at one of those little two-person tables with Arianne, but at one point she went to the bathroom, and a homeless guy with bloodshot eyes actually came up to our table and started looking through her food for the sugar packets and stuff. I kind of froze for a second because it was so foreign to me, but then shooed him away. Scary.

 

Well, after breakfast we headed over to the Zhengzhou bus station to book some tickets to Dengfeng. It wasn't too far away. At that point, Sifu lined us all up and gave us all numbers to count off during the next few days so we could make sure everyone was together. I was Five. *high fives Peter Davison*

 

The bus ride was about an hour and 45 minutes. They showed some Chinese movies during the ride which looked pretty weird (I actually understood a lot of the first one because people kept shouting "WEI SHEN ME", meaning "WHY?"), and were definitely turned up too loud.  I tried to listen to Mika for a while to cover the sound, but I had to give up after a few songs.

 

But we got to Dengfeng with our eardrums completely intact and safe, though not for long. Just as I was getting off the bus we were suddenly surrounded by like a dozen monks all holding long-handled swords and Sifu had to fight them off using the double chain whips he'd brought with him for the occasion.

 

Wait.

 

Isn't that what happened in that Jet Li movie?*

 

We didn't actually get attacked by a bunch of Shaolin monks, although we met quite a few. We all got into some cars and got to the temple, but in order to get through a checkpoint we had to have a monk in each car, so Wei Sifu's brother and another guy were waiting for us. Young Sifu totally counted as a car monk. How cool is that?

 

As we were driving through Dengfeng, we passed a lot of kung fu schools, with hundreds of Chinese guys in matching outfits practicing jumps and rolls or standing in straight rows punching and kicking. I had looked at a school before I came to this one, and I think that's basically what it would have been like. 30,000 Chinese dudes and, like, 3 foreigners. We also saw some people practicing Jumps and Rolls, and there were plenty of 12-year-old kids doing no-handed cartwheels and backflips and stuff. No big deal. When we got to the temple we left our bags in the cars so they could take them to the hostel for us and went in. Oh! One thing I forgot to say earlier is that we all paid 400 yuan to pay for the entrance, hostel, lunch, and any other fees that might happen (excluding cars). So we walked in without showing a ticket or anything. I think the entrance is usually 100 or 150 or something.

 

If you ever go to the Shaolin Temple, the way to do it is tag along with a monk. Sifu got us in to have lunch with the monks! It wasn't bad at all. They had two dishes. One was a green bean and tofu thing that was actually quite good. I think usually you would have it with rice or a steamed bun, but they ran out of buns right before they got to me, so I didn't get one. The other dish was a Chinese tasteless porridge. It literally had absolutely no taste whatever, so it didn't taste bad. It didn't taste like anything. I keep trying to fathom how they did that. It was filling, though. The kid who was serving everyone spilled some of mine, so he gave me extra. Lucky me? When we walked in for the meal, the monks were chanting something, and one guy was really getting into it. I think it was some sort of prayer chant. Sifu told us to stay silent during the meal, but that didn't stop us from sometimes exchanging looks or whispering a little bit. I think we were all a little bit intimidated by it, because none of us got a picture of the dining hall. It was in one of those buildings at a Buddhist temple that you wonder what's inside and the plaque tells you it was for meetings or something. It was pretty spacious and very cold, with a whole lot of wooden benches and thin wooden tables. There were two sides that faced the middle, where a gold Buddha statue sat. At the back was I guess where they got the food.

 

When we walked out, we didn't stick around the temple and instead headed over to the hostel that Sifu had arranged for us to stay in. It was in a funny little village that had Hutong-type architecture, although taller. It was just up an uphill road from the front of the temple. Sifu said that his Sifu used to make them do the little frog hop thing all the way up the hill. That guy goes so easy on us. The village had some small convenience stores, one of which sold the training shoes that we wear. Later I looked around and realized that we totally wear the same sort of shoes that the monks wear for training. How legit is that? I bought a white pair since our school only sells black and was feeling all cool and special, and then everyone else  bought a white pair, too. I guess I won't be so special when I wear them.

 

The reason we were hanging around going to the convenience store was that Sifu told us to just stay at the hostel and rest until 2:00 when he would come to pick us up. When he did so, he brought us back to the temple and then ran off to change into his monk's clothes. During the winter, the monks wear a long grey overcoat that looks pretty warm. I sort of wish I had bought one, but the practical side of me wouldn't let me do so because I wouldn't have the gumption to actually wear it. When he came back in his monk outfit he took us to the Kung Fu Show, which is a must-see if you visit the Shaolin Temple. I mean, I would've been okay with not seeing it because I see that sort of stuff all the time, but they do some pretty hardcore things. The forms are always awesome to watch, and several guys did Hard Qi Gong (a type of meditation that concentrates your chi) and then broke metal over their heads or threw darts through glass. There were also some kids doing crazy flexible stuff. We have pictures.

 

Then Sifu showed us around the temple. We got to one of the shrine building things, and most people in our group went in, but I suddenly realized that they might be doing prayers or something which I didn't want to do, so I stuck around outside for a little while. A big group of Chinese people (they seemed like a family) sort of spotted me, I guess, because two of the women asked if they could take a picture with me, and I was like "…okay, sure" and suddenly a huge group of them surrounded me to pose. They spotted Barney next and swarmed him to take a photo. I felt both weirded out and flattered. That would never happen in America unless you saw a celebrity. Presently my group came out of the little shrine building thing, and we went to the next one. This one was bigger, and had murals on it of… something. The Thirteen Monks Who Saved The Tang Emperor?** The murals reminded me of the Western Air Temple (see Avatar: The Last Airbender, Season 3). But the cool part about that was there were grooves or dips in the ground where the stones had been pressed down in a weird way, just about long enough for a horse stance. It was where, for centuries, monks had stood in the same place and practiced, jumping into different stances and stomping and kicking and stuff. Sifu showed us where he usually stood to do it. Like, whoa.

 

The rest of the temple was basically like any other Buddhist temple. Plenty of cool old buildings, a few shops, and stands outside. There was also a room with some really shiny and pretty weapons on display. It was sort of like the weapons rack we have in the training hall, but there was no staff with a birdcage on top and none of them were rusty. I got a little brown purse that says "Shaolin Temple" on it. The stands outside sold jewelry and little monk figurines and some weapons, so when we came back the next day some of the guys bought, like, throwing knives and a broadsword. We then walked around the grounds a bit with both Sifu and one of his monk friends, and Sifu would point out places and be like, "that's where we did conditioning", or "that's where my Sifu would make us do a horse stance for two hours if we slacked off". One famous spot was the Pagoda Forest, which does have some trees but is mostly Pagodas built over graves of past Abbots. Those were pretty cool to see. One of the newest pagodas had things engraved on it that the Abbot had seen during his life, and there was an airplane and a laptop and what looked like a big ship. The Pagoda Forest also had a few stands, and I bought some pretty little marble eggs for 5 kuai each.

 

Then we went back to the hostel, ate at a restaurant in the little village, hung out a bit, and went to sleep. Sifu went back to the temple before dinner to chill with his friends and sleep there.

 

I think the most surreal part of the day was looking around and realizing that the guy who was teaching me Kung Fu on a daily basis had actually grown up in that place. It seemed like a completely different world that was sitting just down the road from a gas station. I think I understand the Sifus a little better now, knowing where they came from and what their young life was like.

 

Anyway, Sunday morning we climbed the nearby mountain! (cue: Climb Every Mountain (Reprise)). Young Sifu said that he would meet us all at the hostel at 8:00, but 8:00 came and went without a sign of him. At around 8:30 he finally called and told us that his friend would take us up the mountain, so we would need to meet him at the temple. But not letting that deter us, we set off, led by a Shaolin monk who only knew four words of English: "Let's go" and "Follow me", which I suspect Young Sifu taught him that morning. Five of us stayed behind at the hostel due to sore knees and such things.

 

Although the hike was steep and the stairs were numerous, it didn't take more than maybe two hours to go up and down. It was a nice view, too, though a clearer day would have improved it (cue: That's a Pretty Rad Wall! (Reprise)). At the top was the white statue of a huge guy that was sitting in a meditating pose like Buddha, but he had a beard. He had some sort of gold plating shaped like flames framing him, and faced East. Arianne nicknamed him Sunshine Man. Although obviously a sacred place, a bunch of people had etched their names into the back of his pedestal. Real mature, guys. Right next to Sunshine Man was a little dwelling, and two people in monk robes were doing something-- it looked like they were cooking breakfast for themselves, maybe. They both had shaved heads and glasses, and it wasn't until they spoke that I realized they were women. One had twelve dots on the top of her head, sort of like Krilin from Dragonball Z, except that her dots weren't drawn there with Sharpie. According to the aforementioned Jet Li movie, they actually burn those onto your head when you become a full-fledged monk.

 

We sat in front of Sunshine Man for a little while, took some pictures, and then headed back down when a group of Chinese people arrived with speakers blasting Chinese pop music. Not far from the top is a small cave that makes the mountain famous. It's where someone meditated for 9 years (we deduced that his wife had to climb the mountain every day to bring him food), and then came up with some Buddhist theories or something. Maybe I should've paid more attention to the plaque. But there was a statue inside the tiny cave, and some ginormous incense sticks burning outside.

 

We went back to the Temple to drop our new monk friend off, hung around the stands for a bit, and then went back to the hostel. Because Sifu hadn't showed up for the mountain, we weren't sure when we would next see him. Due to some miscommunication, the five people who stayed behind for the mountain climbing went into town to start shopping and eat lunch, but then Sifu came back and we all wanted to go into town, and then we couldn't until the hostel had all the keys back and the people in town had two of them… and in the end our shopping time in the afternoon was cut to two and a half hours instead of the six or so we had wished for.

 

Dude. Dengfeng is THE PLACE to shop for weapons. We went along a street full of weapons stores. Most of a store would be lined up with different types of swords or spears, and have display cases with fans, throwing knives, throwing stars, whips… you name it. One we went into also had a whole lot of staffs, and over half of us ended up carrying a new staff back to the school. I sort of wish I had gotten one, but with my sword, backpack, and bag 'o' clothes I wouldn't have had enough hands. Yep, I bought a pretty nice straight sword to go with my Wudan Sword Form. I also knew I wanted pants and a tai chi outfit like the one Wu Sifu always wears, and I managed to get both. I totally should've gotten more special Shaolin pants (I got two black and two grey), but I had waited until the end to get them and so we were in a bit of a hurry to get into the cars and get to the bus station. I also got a pair of shoes.

 

Anyway, we then took the cars to the bus station which was a drive of, like, two minutes. Sifu didn't end up meeting up with us. He met us in Zhengzhou and I'm not positive on how he got there. Teleportation? We got the 6:30 bus, and I must've dozed off because suddenly the ride was over and it had felt a lot shorter than the one from Zhengzhou to Dengfeng.

 

Then we met up with Young Sifu, Wei Sifu, and Shu-Shu (Barney: where are they? Me: they're the three Chinese guys standing over there. Barney: that doesn't tell me anything.). Wei Sifu and Shu-Shu had also gone to Dengfeng, but we didn't see a lot of them, so I forgot to mention it. There was a McDonalds and KFC right next to us, and we all had just enough time to grab ourselves a super healthy dinner. Our train was at 9:30, but Arianne's was at 9:24, so she went first and we all hugged her goodbye. And so departed my first 'college' roommate.

 

We then all got on the train. Supposedly we would all have top bunks, but then my ticket ended up being a middle one, again. I've been wanting to try a top bunk to see if it's any quieter or darker. But the middle one is kind of nice because then you can stare out the window at the darkness if you're too tired to sleep. I did sleep a few hours, but then kept waking up with a stuffy nose or to the sound of every single Chinese man around me performing a snoring quartet.

 

We arrived, counted off our numbers for officially the last time (minus Arianne), and Sifu got us a deal for 50 yuan a taxi to get back to the school, where we arrived at around 5 in the morning.

 

And so ended our trip to Dengfeng.

 

*Here I'm referring to "Shaolin Temple" with Jet Li. I watched it last night, but I totally should've watched it before I went to the temple. I kept going "Hey! I've been there!". Apparently there's a new "Shaolin Temple" movie and we may or may not have seen one of the monks who was in it. But I haven't actually seen that one, so I don't know.

 

**Again, I'm referring to "Shaolin Temple" with Jet Li. It's based on the legend "The Thirteen Monks Who Saved The Tang Emperor", which according to the movie was a mural on one of the walls in one of the buildings in the Shaolin Temple.

 

Well, I believe that's all I had to say. Oh, Thursday was Thanksgiving, but I didn't do anything except tell everyone at the table I was sitting at that they needed to say something they were thankful for. Have I already mentioned that I could go for some pumpkin pie?

 

So far it's turning out to be a rainy week. But you'll hear more about what I did this week on the next installment of

 

SOMEWHAT SHAOLIN

 

 

PS. I've decided that the "Shaolin Temple" theme (Shaolin, Shaolin) is also the theme for this blog.

PPS. I enjoy questions.

 

As If We Never Said Goodbye

Guess what? I was completely bored today. Literally, I went and practiced Calligraphy by myself for an hour and a half because I felt like I had nothing else to do. Didn't even think about writing this.

 

Man.

 

Well, I actually did start writing this thing last Friday, but then I went to Beijing to see my family for the last time for 2 1/2 months and figured it could wait another week. It was kind of a failed surprise. Really, I shouldn't have told any of them that I was coming, but I kind of had to have at least one person on the inside, so I told Ellyn and then Dad offered to pay me and then I felt too bad about lying to Mom. I'm not so good at keeping a secret when it doesn't really need to be kept. Sorry, Ellyn.

 

Um. Before I jump to all of that, I guess I should start with two weeks ago, on Monday, November 7th.

 

The Chinese government sent a group of officials for the annual sanitary check of the school, so first of all Wei Sifu asked us in the morning to bring all of our clothes inside, which were hanging out on the lines. This sucked for me because I had just barely done my laundry on Sunday night, so some of my stuff was still just a bit damp. I should really get in the habit of starting my laundry at the beginning of the day instead of the evening.

 

Anyway, it was rather interesting how the inspection was set up. Apparently they had representatives from every department (whatever that means), and I think there were about… twenty total. They drove up in their sleek black cars and we all made the old joke about the Chinese Mafia coming to 'ask' Wei Sifu for payment. Ha. Ha. Really, it was all made to look rather intimidating, with the guys in black suits walking around with serious faces. More than anything, it was kind of distracting to see people drive up in cars and watch us train and sometimes go in our rooms. Monday morning is also inspection day, so we had gotten everything tidied up anyway, so I wasn't too self-conscious when Arianne said they had looked at our room. They were gone by the end of the morning, and I guess we passed the check because the school's still here. :)

 

A few days later, Wei Sifu again lined us up together to tell us that the real reason the Chinese government had sent so many people to inspect was that they had gotten word that people from our school had been staying out late into the night and visiting inappropriate establishments. Awkward. They're going to crack down more on curfew, which I'm kind of happy about because it's pretty annoying to hear people talking outside of your door in the middle of the night when you're trying to sleep.

 

The rest of the training days passed without any incident. My Bagua form is going well! For a while I didn't see get how it looked like airbending, but some of the newer moves are totally air blasts. And then I re-watched some Avatar:TLA episodes and it's really cool to see Aang do airbending and recognize it as a Bagua move.

 

Thurrrrsday, one of the guys upstairs is leaving for a month, so I asked if I could keep his piano in my room while he's gone. He said sure, so now I've got a pretty dinky 6-octave electric piano in my room that only has Chinese writing on it to tell you what the buttons mean. But it's a piano! And I snagged some piano music from my family while I was in Beijing, so now I have something to play. Now I have no excuse to let myself continue sucking at sight-reading.

 

And then Friday came! I'll defer to my personal journal for a complete rendition of my weekend in Beijing.

 

Friday was a little sad because two of the guys in my class left the School, both of whom have been here nearly the whole time I have. They were the biggest talkers and cheeriest voices, so training since they left has been weirdly quiet. One of them left during the first class, which was Shaolin basics/forms. I worked on my staff form, which I haven't quite found the heart of yet. Like, when you start learning a form you kind of feel like "why am I doing this" and you can't quite get yourself to put power into it. Some forms, if they're short enough or if you don't work on them for long enough, always stay that way. But if you really get into a form, then suddenly you feel like the coolest person ever, and five moves in, your adrenalin goes up and you might as well be flying. That's how I feel about my sword form. Doing that form while listening to Swan Lake is amazing.

 

Anyway, second lesson was Power Stretching, and that always sucks while you're doing it, but it's sort of a fun class because you somehow end up laughing at people's pain. But it's not really that funny when it's you. Although Sifu insists that he doesn't really like it, I'm pretty sure that's his favorite class.

 

Near the end of class, Camilla ran in to tell me that my jacket was ringing, which I left outside. WANNA KNOW WHY? It was my cell phone alarm, set for 11:11 on 11/11/11. The Ultimate Wishing Minute. I didn't make a wish. In my excitement, I forgot to. Oh well.

 

Right after class I went and changed because I would be leaving at 1:30 for a 2:30 train (Well, 2:37. Whatever). So I got to hang around looking cute, which is fun to do every now and then because I usually really don't look cute whilst learning Kung Fu. No one does. Especially when one wears the same shirt for an entire month. Please change your clothes, guys.

 

The train ride was as boring as expected. Listened to Mika and drew the whole time, basically. Ellyn met me at the Subway station downstairs, and the timing actually worked out perfectly because she called me when she got off the train and I had just gotten off the escalator. Not exactly hard to spot a foreign face. And it was lovely to see hers. <3 We went to Wangfujing (which is a subway stop! How convenient, right?) and Ellyn and I got cheap matching pocketwatches.

 

Anyway, to summarize, we met my parents and a bunch of their China Friends at a restaurant (me still dragging my suitcase) and we had a lovely dinner. I showed off some Tai Chi, which they were quite impressed with, and we managed to get a taxi home.

 

After hanging out with a barely-conscious Daniel for a little while and talking to my family, I stayed up until 3:30 watching Downton Abbey.

 

Saturday, November 12th.

 

Because I've already seen the Beijing Sights (well, except Bei Hai Park, I guess. Oh well.), we decided to just do some shopping. Our plan was to hit the Yashow Market and later the Dirt Market (Panjiayuan). Because it was my family's last Saturday, the day wasn't completely about me, but it was totally fine because I wanted to buy stuff, too. My favorite buy was the two warm hats I got which are pretty awesome. One's red with black pom poms and the other's teal with grey pom poms. I fully plan to train in them during the winter.

 

After we spent nearly all our money, we went back to Oakwood to try to figure out what our next plan of action was. We sort of just hung out for a while and they showed me a  series called "Sing-Off", which is sort of like "So You Think You Can Dance", except that the competitors are groups of professional a'cappella groups. We're especially interested in it this season because Vocal Point from BYU is competing.

 

So, we hung out at the apartment for a while and then went back out to go to the Dirt Market, which I really liked. I like that market. You just don't get bored, you know? It's pretty much outside, and they sell a lot of souvenir-type things. Calligraphy, jewelry, shadow puppets (which are gorgeous, by the way), bags, more jewelry, and then there's a whole section where they sell things like porcelain and big rocks and 'old coins' and figurines. And another section where they sell books, which are all in Chinese. On the way to the Dirt Market there were just people sitting along the sidewalk with things to sell spread out on blankets or towels or whatever, and we actually got a few things from them, too.

 

The Dirt Market seems to close at around 5:00 (though it might just be 'dusk' that it closes), so we left as the stall keepers were wheeling out their wares on flatbed bicycles stacked several feet high. Then on the way to the nearby subway stop (Jinsong), we decided to stop for dinner at a random place. That could've been better. My vote was to eat some of the roasted sweet potatoes they sell on the street. Those are so good. I wonder if they have them in Qufu…?

 

A few subway stops and a taxi ride later, we got back to our apartment and hung out, singing from the Broadway Book and playing games. When it was late enough at night that Mom was done accompanying us on the piano, I stayed up and watched three episodes of Merlin.

 

Sunday, November 13th

 

For church I borrowed one of Ellyn's cute new dresses and wore the black boots and the grey coat that Ellyn bought that I'm taking from her. It's really cool that we're allowed to have the church in China at all. There are some really strict rules surrounding it, though.  Even though China allows people to believe whatever they want, we're not allowed to proselyte to Chinese Nationals. But even suckier than that, when a Chinese National gets baptized outside of China and comes back… they can go to church, but we're not allowed to have any contact whatsoever with them.

 

But anyway, I went to church part of the time with my family and part of the time to the Virtual Branch. Because we're so spread out, they've set it up so that saints across China can call into a phone line and have church that way. Awesome, right? I got to chat a bit with the Virtual Branch President's wife, so that was great. Plus, I got cookies.

 

After church we had the usual hassle of getting a taxi home, but it worked out in the end (as usual) and we went home and had dinner.  Mom's figured out an easy meal to make in China, that includes chopped vegetables and meat and curry mix, stewed together, all over rice. It's making me hungry to think of it.

 

Um, yeah. So we had dinner and then I packed my bag full of Christmas presents. But then an hour before I went I was like, "I wish my suitcase was bigger…" and we switched out my smaller blue suitcase for a medium blue suitcase and I am well pleased with it.

 

Ellyn was a dear and accompanied me on the long taxi ride to the train station. Then I had another 3-hour speedtrain ride to Qufu. Those train rides are sort of like being transported between two very different universes: my life with my family and my life in Qufu. If you look out the window and watch the darkness pass by, it all feels kind of eerie. Especially when you pull into a platform with white columns standing stark against the blackness of the night, and the stillness of the white tiled floor is suddenly interrupted by a group of Chinese people streaming towards the escalators. And then you feel annoyed because you're not one of them and you have another hour and a half to go.

 

Remember last time, when I got surrounded by a bunch of taxi drivers and called Joy in a panic? Well, that didn't happen this time. Instead, I went with the first guy who motioned to me and had a really silent taxi ride back to the school. Like, super silent. Sometimes a Chinese taxi driver guy will try to talk to me, which is annoying if he talks too much because I really don't speak Chinese and it ends up just getting me flustered and saying sarcastic things in English (but with a smile on my face so he doesn't suspect) which he doesn't understand. Sometimes the taxi driver will hit it right on the nail and ask the few questions that I know how to answer and then shuts his mouth (the type I like best). And then sometimes he won't speak at all and gets me home as fast as possible so  he can go home himself (the type that feels like at any moment they're going to pull over and shoot me).

 

As an interesting side note, Chinese people call the taxi drivers "Shifu", pronounced in the same way you say "Sifu", as in "Master"… but with different characters, I assume. *shrugs*

 

Coming back to the universe where I just train all day was kind of weird, but not as weird as the time when I was out of it for two weeks, instead of this time's two days. While I was gone they decided to get another dog-- a puppy. We didn't even need one dog, and now we have three. Well, technically one of them (Gremlin) belongs to Arianne, and she's okay. But Dodo, Wei Sifu's dog, is a critter that is well-hated by those of us who have woken up to her barking in the middle of the night, every night, for a week straight. Actually, she's been pretty good about not doing that lately, but for me the resentment hasn't quite disappeared. Especially since on more than one occasion I was the one to finally run out and yell at her, shoe in hand. But the new puppy ("Wang Wang"? "Wa Wa"?) hasn't really learned how to bark yet, and besides that is pretty cute, so there's hope for him yet. His name in Chinese means "Everything Gets Better and Better". Maybe that's a subtle way of saying that Dodo's dying?

 

It's been overcast and/or rainy for most of the week, so my laundry got rained on and some of the classes were spent on the porch or in the training hall. Or just in the rain. Turns out, it's not very easy to do a staff form when you're swinging around a slippery staff. With all of the overcast skies happening, it sort of felt like Seattle. Like home. I hate to say 'training was as usual', but it kind of was. Yeah. No special stories to tell. Except that for conditioning, I had the pleasure of letting Sifu be the one to pound on my arm. Huh. Not sure why I let him do that.

 

Today, the most exciting thing I did was go into town for an hour to get me some fruit, yo. They don't serve fruit at the mealtimes, so I have this weird (and irrational) feeling that I'll, like, get scurvy if I don't start eating some oranges between meals. But when I got on the bus into town, I realized that I had just barely enough money to feel comfortable shopping and getting home (the equivalent of about 20 bucks, tops), so I didn't dally around town and, amazingly, didn't end up getting any crazy Chinese snacks. Funny thing: usually if you bring something home, you're going to eat it. So if you don't buy chips or chocolate, chances are you're not going to eat chips or chocolate. That's kind of the nice thing about living on your own. If you don't buy it, junk food doesn't just magically appear in your cupboard (well, I don't actually have a cupboard, but you get the idea).

 

Like I talked about before, I kind of wiled away the day… I don't feel like I wasted time, exactly, but I didn't even think about my blog until I checked my e-mail and saw Ellyn had sent out her latest China Chronicles. So I'd like to dedicate this one to her. Is that weird? .._

 

Before I conclude my update, I'd like to apologize to my lovely Aunt Heather, who e-mailed me back to ask me questions about the School. Between my bad internet connection and overall laziness, I didn't end up e-mailing her back personally. I shall now answer her questions here. All of you, by the way, are encouraged to also send me questions.

 

Are you taking any video at your school? The answer is yes, but not enough. I got a video of my Sifu doing the whole staff form, which I thought looked awesome. But then he watched it too and said it wasn't any good. I guess he'd know better than me? Haha. I've also nabbed some of Arianne's videos of the Sifus doing different forms, and like, breaking bricks on their heads. On Tuesday, actually, I took a little bit of video of the Jumps and Rolls class, hoping to catch Sifu doing a spontaneous backflip. Next time I'll just ask him straight out to let me film him doing some aerial tricks.

 

So what does this whole adventure mean? Are you going to become an acupuncturist? Are you going to study Mandarin in college? Will you spend 10 years becoming a Kung Fu Master and demand we call you Sifu Cardon?... or is it Sifu Sarah? Inquiring minds want to know.

 

Although the things I'm learning here are awesome, I think the main point of this whole adventure for me is learning how to grow up. John Steinbeck said in one of his short stories (I hope I'm getting this right), "a boy becomes a man when a man is needed". Up until this point, I haven't really needed to not be a child, because I was (and still sort of am) depending on my parents to tell me what to do, what to eat, and discipline. I think that if I had gone straight to college still in the frame of mind that it was up to my parents to look after my grades, etc. I wouldn't have done so well. But because the life here is so different from life in America, it gives me a whole different perspective on what kind of control I have over my own life. Like, because the internet connection's bad I don't spend a lot of time surfing it and instead go straight to my e-mail where the important people relationships are. Because six hours of the day are dedicated to exercise, I'm not put off by the fact that I'll sometimes have to take more than one shower a day. Because I don't feel like I have the spare money (even though I kind of do), I don't go out and buy junk food and therefore keep myself healthy. Ming bai ma? (Understand?)

 

Haha, I'll probably not become an acupuncturist, though those pressure points are super interesting. I've certainly gained an appreciation for Traditional Chinese Medicine! As for Mandarin, I totally want to study it in college. I hope to someday come back to China (maybe to teach English? Literally, anyone who speaks English can be an English teacher here. They kind of just want Westerners for the novelty of it.), and when I do come back I want to understand what everyone's saying, goshdarnit. I think that's what I miss about America the most: being able to eavesdrop on people's conversations whether they like it or not. Of course, the flip side is that here you can talk in English without fear of people understanding you (probably).

 

If I could continue doing Tai Chi and/or Bagua, I would be well pleased. But I don't quite think the life of a Kung Fu Master is right for me ;). If I did, it would actually be "Cardon Sifu", except that you would use my Chinese name, making it "Zhang Sifu". Because you asked, I insist that you call me that from now on.

 

Thanks for asking questions, Heather! You're awesome and I love you.

 

And there we shall conclude.

 

The picture, by the way, is of me, my Sifu, and Nellie, one of the translators. Because I'm probably destined to forever be the only girl in my class, she stood in as my partner for a "Qinan" session, which is sort of like takedowns but is mostly learning how to put people in uncomfortable holds.

 

Next weekend a large group of us are going to Dengfeng, where the Shaolin Temple is! So you shall hear more about that on the next installment of

 

SOMEWHAT SHAOLIN