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.