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

 

 

 

By the Sea

Hey everyone! Sorry I'm late this week. Over the weekend I traveled with a bunch of people from my group, and we took our Sifu to the ocean because he'd never been before. More on that in a bit.

Grading went well!

Well, except that I was supposed to grade four things, and Leah accidentally didn't put me down for 24-Step Tai Chi. But it's okay, I can just grade it next month. Last month grading took maybe an hour, hour and a half. But this time? Two and a half hours. It was a little nicer for people who were actually grading, but a lot of people were just sitting on the hard cement steps for that long. Luckily it wasn't cold (at the beginning, anyway). It was also Halloween, so I dressed up as a person who does Kung Fu.

Monday night was Calligraphy, and Nellie had to (or rather, decided to) substitute because the teacher, a local taxi driver, couldn't come. I was getting kind of bored of drawing lines, so I asked Nelly if she could give me a Chinese name, and it ended up being an interesting little lesson on how Chinese names are built. My name is Zhāng Sài Yuán, which roughly means "Open", "Race/Win", "(Beautiful) Lady". Well, "Zhāng" can mean "open", but it's really just a fairly common surname. In fact, all the Sifus here except Wei Sifu and Wu Sifu have that surname-- that's one of the reasons that we gave them all nicknames. You can't really call everyone "Zhang Sifu" without some confusion happening.

I've forgotten bits of last week… oh! I started my staff form. I've forgotten what it's called. But I borrowed one of John's staffs (he's been here for two years. He has several.) and Sifu first set us to practicing "flowers", which is when you just twirl the staff on either side of you. Sifu can do it crazily fast, but I'm still a little slow at it. Need more practice. More power.

I skipped Jumps and Rolls on Tuesday for two reasons: I suck at it and Young Sifu wasn't teaching because of his foot. I had gone the previous week when another Sifu was teaching, but it just wasn't the same, you know? I basically sat out the second half hour with a couple of other students because everyone else was doing standing frog jumps.

Wednesday evening we got our train tickets, and it was awesome to have someone who spoke Chinese (because Sifu came with us). Next time I get train tickets I need to bring one of the translators along. Or call Nellie?

Thursday it started sprinkling right after Qi gong (the first class), but it was light enough that we could do conditioning without a problem. Afternoon power training actually wasn't too bad this time. I could still walk afterwards.

The exciting event of Thursday was that during power training, some people in Wei Sifu's class were doing piggy-back in the rain. Two of the German guys were going, but the guy doing the carrying (Phil) tried to go too fast, slipped, and twisted his ankle so he couldn't walk on it. Fortunately, it wasn't broken. This we discovered on Friday, when Acupuncture class happened.

Every other Friday, Wu Sifu teaches Acupuncture instead of the second hour of Bagua. Usually he just tells us about pressure points for the whole lesson, and I take notes as fast as I can, drawing little pictures of body parts and stuff. This time, Phil limped in at the beginning, and Wu Sifu's face brightened. He… yeah. He gave Phil acupuncture treatment. We have pictures. If anyone gets my mom's updates, it's similar to the treatment that my dad got in Beijing for his shoulder. But this one was certainly more informal. Instead of starting out with a massage, Wu Sifu had him sit down, told someone to hold his upper body still, and then yanked his ankle really hard, twice. Then he did some acupuncture, putting needles in at different places up his lower leg. He disinfected them first, of course. After that came the "globe" treatment, which was a little gross to watch, because the skin kind of went up into the little circular globe thing when Wu Sifu sucked the air out of it with a contraption.

Amazingly, the acupuncture treatment seems to have worked, because Phil was back on his feet on Monday, though he says his ankle's pretty stiff. I'm pretty sure without the treatment he wouldn't be walking right now.

And then, of course, we went to Qingdao!

Friday night, five of us from Young Sifu's class plus Sifu took the midnight train going anywhere…but mostly to Qingdao.

They didn't have a speed train there, but they had one back, so we took the sleeper train. I had taken the sleeper train before, but the difference was that that one had been a soft sleeper, and this one was a hard sleeper. The soft sleeper has compartments with a door, four beds each. The hard sleeper has no doors, and six beds per space. I'd say that the soft sleeper was slightlymore comfortable, but there again appeared the problem of not being able to sleep because of a Chinese guy snoring beneath you. So, not a huge difference.

But anyway, we all got off the train, and Fritz and Sifu came out with a bunch of extra things. I was pretty confused for a second until I saw that they were helping an old lady. Turns out, the old lady had taken a liking to Sifu and they figured out that she was from his hometown. She was sort of smiling and pointing at me and talking, and Sifu was a trooper and translated that she thought I was cute. That certainly won her a lot of points in my book, especially since I was still in sweats and hadn't yet figured out what to do with my hair. After we (meaning, the boys) helped her carry her stuff out to a taxi, she invited us to her house for breakfast but we ended up turning her down (most likely out of politeness, but I don't speak Chinese, so I'm not sure what she and Sifu were discussing). We instead had a buffet breakfast at a hotel which was pretty nice. A nice change from the soy milk/eggs/roll combo that we usually get.

Beforehand, Fritz (the planning extraordinaire) had figured out a good hostel to go to, but we had a lot of trouble finding it because no one had the address written down. But it was okay because that meant we got to walk around the city a little bit.

Qingdao is a SERIOUSLY pretty city. I mean, of course it had a standard downtown area with big buildings, but the area where the hostel was was really European. I would say that Qingdao= (Seattle x a German Town) + China. Thinking of my mom, I tried to take plenty of pictures of the architecture.

After we found the hostel we stopped by a standard little noodle place, though the lady out front scared me half to death with her huge hair. It's hard to go wrong with those little noodle places. A lot of times they'll have a picture menu up on the wall, but even better than that we had a guy who spoke Chinese with us (victory pose), so everything we got was good.

Once we got all of our stuff settled in at the hostel, I re-packed my backpack for beach wear and we headed out to try and find the beach. We learned that if you got on the 228 bus and rode quite a ways you could get a really nice one, so we dutifully hopped on. We passed some bits of beach, but we knew that there was a really nice one past the downtown area, so we stayed on for quite a long time, until suddenly the driver told us to get off and we realized we had gotten to the end of the route. Oops! But it was an okay mistake because we needed to get an ATM anyway, and that was quickly located. We dithered a little bit about what to do, and Sifu went off and asked some people where the beach was. We had totally and completely passed it. So we got back on the 228 bus in the opposite direction and somehow managed to figure that out.

It was kind of an overcast day, but luckily it wasn't too cold. We did end up swimming, and I finally found a chance to use the swimsuit that I brought to China. It was Sifu's first time at the ocean, and it was really cute how awesome he thought it was. Most of us swam except one guy who wanted to guard the stuff instead. We took a bunch of pictures and headed back to the hostel.

By then it was maybe 4:30, so I headed downstairs to the lounge and all the guys were pretty engaged with the pool table. I didn't play pool, but luckily I had my Nook with me and I started reading "A Thousand Pieces of Gold" which was SUPER good. I'm actually on my second time reading it right now. It's a book about Chinese proverbs and how they come from Chinese history. I recommend it to anyone who likes anything.

Because the hostel food was good, we just ate dinner and breakfast the next day there. It was an international hostel, so they had Western food! That was rather exciting. By about 10:30 Sunday morning everyone had trickled down the lounge and eaten breakfast. I got all of my stuff packed up and we were ready to go by about 11:00. While we were waiting for other people, someone pulled out a game that they had discovered last night. I have a feeling it's called "Go", but I can't remember the Chinese name. You have a board that's a bit like a grid, and two players have their own small black or white circular pieces. The point of the game is to get five of your pieces in a row-- sort of like tic tac toe. Fritz got really into it, figuring out tactics and all that. I got a little pulled into that and now I'm a bit addicted. We ended up finding a store in town that had mini sets of them, so I've got my own now. :)

Anyway, before we went to said store, we decided to just walk around town for a bit since it was turning out to be a nice day. We found a cathedral and took some pictures on the pathway leading up to it. When we walked up to it, we found a whole lot of brides taking pictures on the windy square in front of it. This seems to be a big thing in China. Whenever you go to a really pretty and potentially touristy spot, you find brides having their pictures taken, with an optional groom.

And then we walked down to a multi floor market, where we found the games. I also bought a Chinese Chess Set which I got mostly because it looked cool. Nellie says she'll teach me how to play.

As we were walking out, we spotted one of those Huge Nut Cake Vendors that I totally forgot to mention. These guys have these seriously huge cake things that look like they're made of nuts that have been molded together, with like dates or something on top for decoration. They're probably a foot thick, and 4x4 feet wide, easy. They cart them around on wheelbarrows and cut off a section for any sucker who decides to buy some. Fritz decided to buy some. The piece that he decided to cut off was about an 1 inch thick, 8 inches long, and almost a foot high. It ended up being two kilos! Which, unfortunately, equaled out to 160 kuai. Fortunately for everyone, it doesn't taste too bad. Sort of like a Snickers without the chocolate. We'll see if it can all be eaten before it goes bad.

We actually didn't end up getting lunch before we went into the train station, but some of the guys had bought things at the game market, plus we had the nut stuff which was rather filling. We got on the speed train, which was only 3 hours compared to the 8 hours we spent getting to Qingdao. When we got back we barely missed dinner, but I had earlier gotten an instant noodles bowl (thank you, Sarah from the past) just in case something like this happened.

And that was our trip! It was really quite nice. Everyone got along and looked out for each other. Maybe if we had been more than two days together it could've turned sour, but a weekend was the perfect amount of time to spend with a bunch of people you don't really know. In fact, it was almost too much time. I'm feeling a little bit social'd out. I sort of want another weekend.

Will Young Sifu's foot ever get better? Will Sarah's family convince her to visit them on their last weekend in Beijing? Will the Chinese Mafia force Wei Sifu to pay them in blood?

All that and more on the next week's episode of

SOMEWHAT SHAOLIN

 

 

PS: the picture is of my Sifu, getting all excited about seeing the ocean.