renato
08-07-2007, 10:25 PM
Well finlay i'm in China. Here's some entries from my blog site (http://renato.amagama.com) i thought might be interesting to read...
_______________________________________________
ok, update on life as i know it. I was on the way to the Tai Chi school I was scheduled to go to and saw another, so I thought I'd pop in and just check it out. Turns out this is the school for Fu NenBing who is one of the 10 Great Tai Chi Treasures of China! No ways! Could you believe it guy?! Anyway, he teaches Westerners, which i'd been told he doesn't... So I'm spending a week there.
The school is about 500 more a week more than I wanted to pay but i thought it's worth it.
There's a guy from denmark who i might rent a room with in the rural; chinese version of Beverly Hills 90210. Well, not at all, but kinda... anyway, it'll cost 220 for both of us for the month! Sure the toilets outside but hey, beat that!
Anyway, right now i've got a room all to myself, which is kinda cool.
I went for a 6 hour cycle through the rural areas surrounding Yangshuo. Such awesome people! Really friendly and curious plus dirt **** poor! I got some great pics... i must find some way to upload them somewhere... chinese kids are so cute... and the old are so... OLD!
Everyone else has buck teeth.
The mosquitos! ****! There swarms of them! I mean, like a 1 or 2 hundred just hanging out waiting for you to walk past.
so i had my first day of training in like 4 months! it was great. 5 hours! really fun and i learnt so much! a world of difference to Simon. he's not bad i guess but this guy is... well one of the 10 treasures! that's like getting nelson mandela to teach you how to be a sweet old man!
Last night me and a french dude i'd met on the bus from Shenzhen had a night on the town before he headed back to HK. Well, a night on the town was eating at a side market food place. Seating for a few hundred. I had a Yangshuo speciality. minced pork and snail stuffed in snail shell. It was bloody brilliant!
_______________________________________________
So i wake at around 8am. Go down for breakfast, which varies from noodles with minced pork to sweet buns. 9:30 we start training. Usually there's a 30 minuute warm-up. 10 odd minutes of opening the joints and then either kicks or basic steps.
From here we do the first repition of the 18 form for the day. That takes 3 minutes. By the end of it i'm already building up a sizeable sweat. Then it's on to Lao Jia Yi Lu. 74 movements. Each with from 3 to 10 components. It takes a total of 10 minutes. Then chances are there's another repition of the 18 form and another Loa Jia. at this point we have usually have a good stretch and a 10 minute break.
The rest of the session is devoted to movement correction. There's so much detail in each move, in each component. While i've learnt an astounding amount there's even more to take on.
At 12 we break. 12:30 it's lunch. that's usually 5 dishes and rice. we have rice with everything, at every meal. then it's nap time. i take off my totally dreanched shirt and fall into bed to rise at 4 for 4:30 training. More Loa Jia after the joing opening and warm-up. This session ends at 7. Dinner, perhaps a game of chinese chess and then back to bed.
Repeat for 6 days a week.
_______________________________________________
There's a story of how two students taught by Chen Fa-Ke asked how long it would take to master Tai Chi. He replied that in 3 years you can expect some success. In 5 moderate success and in 10 great success. One student was already highly accomplished in WuShu and said that he would train twice as hard and do it in half the time. The other was prepared to wait 10 years. Chen Fa-Ke replied that the latter would be the most successful practitioner. Tai Chi can not be rushed.
Funny thing is that i read this on a day i decided to take a morning off. I'd actually changed my attitude to training a bit. When i got here if i missed an hour from over sleeping i would feel so guilty. But now I've taken the attitude that i mustn't push myself too hard. Each thing will come in it's time. And then i read this story. The universe smiled.
So finally it's an off day again! Come Saturday my legs are so sore and my body so tired... it screams for Sunday. Even though we only get one day break it sure is welcome.
Because this has been the "golden week" (a holiday week in china) Yangshuo has been pumping so i been avoiding town. But we get tons of tourists come past the school. They sit and watch us do form. Strange to see. Chinese people watching foreigners do Tai Chi... We even had some German guy come past at lunch and ask what time the show was!
This week Fu has been teaching with grandmaster Chen ZhengLie in Shenzhen so we had his younger brother teach us. I learnt a small simple Kung Fu form called Wu Bu Chuan (5 position fist). That was fun. Some variety. Making me think I'd like to learn a bit more Kung Fu while here. It's also a lot simpler than tai chi and seems to come really naturally for me. Though it tends to pain in areas Tai Chi doesn't affect.
Things here move slowly yet time seems to fly. i can't believe I've been here for a month already. As my time nears to leave i think about extending it. But in some ways i feel it's like leaving my real life back home. There some days the pain is too much, or I've just changed into my third dry shirt of the day and think i can't take this heat anymore. I have decided though that at the very least I'll do my 5 months. And who knows what tomorrow will bring...
Anyway, I'm gonna start teaching English next month. 2 hours a day with the Outdoor School. Basically you go to a park or cafe with a handful of students and teach them some words. They get some practice and i get 2000 a month. We'll see how it affects my training... but i need to make some extra cash. Unless you wanna subsidise me?
_______________________________________________
ok, update on life as i know it. I was on the way to the Tai Chi school I was scheduled to go to and saw another, so I thought I'd pop in and just check it out. Turns out this is the school for Fu NenBing who is one of the 10 Great Tai Chi Treasures of China! No ways! Could you believe it guy?! Anyway, he teaches Westerners, which i'd been told he doesn't... So I'm spending a week there.
The school is about 500 more a week more than I wanted to pay but i thought it's worth it.
There's a guy from denmark who i might rent a room with in the rural; chinese version of Beverly Hills 90210. Well, not at all, but kinda... anyway, it'll cost 220 for both of us for the month! Sure the toilets outside but hey, beat that!
Anyway, right now i've got a room all to myself, which is kinda cool.
I went for a 6 hour cycle through the rural areas surrounding Yangshuo. Such awesome people! Really friendly and curious plus dirt **** poor! I got some great pics... i must find some way to upload them somewhere... chinese kids are so cute... and the old are so... OLD!
Everyone else has buck teeth.
The mosquitos! ****! There swarms of them! I mean, like a 1 or 2 hundred just hanging out waiting for you to walk past.
so i had my first day of training in like 4 months! it was great. 5 hours! really fun and i learnt so much! a world of difference to Simon. he's not bad i guess but this guy is... well one of the 10 treasures! that's like getting nelson mandela to teach you how to be a sweet old man!
Last night me and a french dude i'd met on the bus from Shenzhen had a night on the town before he headed back to HK. Well, a night on the town was eating at a side market food place. Seating for a few hundred. I had a Yangshuo speciality. minced pork and snail stuffed in snail shell. It was bloody brilliant!
_______________________________________________
So i wake at around 8am. Go down for breakfast, which varies from noodles with minced pork to sweet buns. 9:30 we start training. Usually there's a 30 minuute warm-up. 10 odd minutes of opening the joints and then either kicks or basic steps.
From here we do the first repition of the 18 form for the day. That takes 3 minutes. By the end of it i'm already building up a sizeable sweat. Then it's on to Lao Jia Yi Lu. 74 movements. Each with from 3 to 10 components. It takes a total of 10 minutes. Then chances are there's another repition of the 18 form and another Loa Jia. at this point we have usually have a good stretch and a 10 minute break.
The rest of the session is devoted to movement correction. There's so much detail in each move, in each component. While i've learnt an astounding amount there's even more to take on.
At 12 we break. 12:30 it's lunch. that's usually 5 dishes and rice. we have rice with everything, at every meal. then it's nap time. i take off my totally dreanched shirt and fall into bed to rise at 4 for 4:30 training. More Loa Jia after the joing opening and warm-up. This session ends at 7. Dinner, perhaps a game of chinese chess and then back to bed.
Repeat for 6 days a week.
_______________________________________________
There's a story of how two students taught by Chen Fa-Ke asked how long it would take to master Tai Chi. He replied that in 3 years you can expect some success. In 5 moderate success and in 10 great success. One student was already highly accomplished in WuShu and said that he would train twice as hard and do it in half the time. The other was prepared to wait 10 years. Chen Fa-Ke replied that the latter would be the most successful practitioner. Tai Chi can not be rushed.
Funny thing is that i read this on a day i decided to take a morning off. I'd actually changed my attitude to training a bit. When i got here if i missed an hour from over sleeping i would feel so guilty. But now I've taken the attitude that i mustn't push myself too hard. Each thing will come in it's time. And then i read this story. The universe smiled.
So finally it's an off day again! Come Saturday my legs are so sore and my body so tired... it screams for Sunday. Even though we only get one day break it sure is welcome.
Because this has been the "golden week" (a holiday week in china) Yangshuo has been pumping so i been avoiding town. But we get tons of tourists come past the school. They sit and watch us do form. Strange to see. Chinese people watching foreigners do Tai Chi... We even had some German guy come past at lunch and ask what time the show was!
This week Fu has been teaching with grandmaster Chen ZhengLie in Shenzhen so we had his younger brother teach us. I learnt a small simple Kung Fu form called Wu Bu Chuan (5 position fist). That was fun. Some variety. Making me think I'd like to learn a bit more Kung Fu while here. It's also a lot simpler than tai chi and seems to come really naturally for me. Though it tends to pain in areas Tai Chi doesn't affect.
Things here move slowly yet time seems to fly. i can't believe I've been here for a month already. As my time nears to leave i think about extending it. But in some ways i feel it's like leaving my real life back home. There some days the pain is too much, or I've just changed into my third dry shirt of the day and think i can't take this heat anymore. I have decided though that at the very least I'll do my 5 months. And who knows what tomorrow will bring...
Anyway, I'm gonna start teaching English next month. 2 hours a day with the Outdoor School. Basically you go to a park or cafe with a handful of students and teach them some words. They get some practice and i get 2000 a month. We'll see how it affects my training... but i need to make some extra cash. Unless you wanna subsidise me?