Simon's Occasional China Blog

[SimonM]

Hey there. This is the start of my (undoubtedly sporatic) efforts to set up a Blog about my experiences in China with specific attention to martial arts. You will undoubtedly hear an occasional ESL related diatribe, joke or story though... If Gene thinks that because this will occasionally stray off-topic than I will happily move it. Otherwise proceed with foreknowlege that I am an ESL teacher and my daily life involves a lot of ESL things.

Anyways. Just to bring people up to speed.

I left Canada on June 18, 2005. I arrived in Beijing on June 20, 2005. I never left the airport until I embarked the outbound flight for Taiyuan that night. I arrived in Taiyuan very early in the morning June 21, 2005 and remained there for about three days. I had a very lovely hotel suite and really didn't leave the hotel without accompanyment. I was terribly jet lagged and a little bit nervous about launching myself from the safety and security of suburban Ontario into the vastness of China. I found the whole city to be absolutely confusing and was slightly concerned that I would get lost if I strayed too far from the hotel.

I arrived in Lishi on or about June 24, 2005. At that time my hopes of moving into my new home were dashed as it was remarkably filthy and the school wanted to clean it thoroughly before I moved in.

On either June 25 or 26 I moved into my new appartment. It was still pretty dirty but nowhere near unliveable. By this time my jet lag was pretty much entirely past and I was acclimatized to the 12 hour change in time.

I spent the next month learning my way around Lishi. Fortunately I had a guide, a bloke named Tom who was the out-going FT. He was a three and a half year veteran of ESL and was moving to Shenzen with his Chinese fiancee to start a new, much easier and better paid, job in a British school. However he still had a month and a half to go in Lishi when I arrived and we quickly became friends.

Tom told me that there was a PE teacher in the university who taught Gong Fu but he had sadly left for summer holliday.

I eventually bought a punching bag, a few martial arts weapons and some appropriate pants and began practicing my stuff outside of my flat. This attracted quite a crowd to say the least. Anyway, over the summer holiday I spent most of my time teaching ESL to middle school students and children to support myself until my first paycheck on Sept. 20. I might just make it too. I'm down to around 150 RMB right now...

The school year began on the first monday in September. I quickly met the school's Gong Fu coach, bought a punching bag and found out that I had to buy new shoes. Apparently Doc Martins were not appropriate footwear to practice Gong Fu outside!

Finding new shoes was a trick. I have large feet. Most people in China use the european size system for shoes. According to that system I'm a size 48 though even these are tight and if it were possible I would have shot for a size 50. Only one store in Lishi sold any shoes in size 48, they had one pair of a brand called CBA (chinese basketball association) I bought them.

My first class went very well. My legs are killing me and though I did not realize it at the time I also happened to be coming down with a cold so today I feel like absolute crap. A few problems and revelations from the first class:

Problem 1: I'm not a good runner. This is a self correcting problem as now that I have to run regularly as part of my training I will improve.

Problem 2: There are two classes of Gong Fu per week at the school and one of them conflicted with one of my (shudder) writing classes. Writing is my least favorite subject to teach, I'd rather teach culture, spoken english or (in my dreams) literature than have to slog my way through a million essays each week. A million essays that on average have only marginally better grammar, punctuation and spelling than many spewed forth by various semi-literate trolls on the fora. To my student's credit English is not supposedly their first language. For many it's their third behind pu tong hua and lishi hua.
However that problem was solved by shifting my friday writing class to tomorow afternoon, a minor change that the department was quite happy to do for me. I hope my students get the message. Fortunately the rumour has been refined to a true art form in small town China so as long as one person overheard our conversation I'm sure most of the school knows by now!

Revelation 1: While the skinny as whip-cord and hyper-limber Chinese guys who take this class have an edge over me in the pretty low-stance department only a few aside from the instructor displayed any ability to apply maritial arts. As this is a sanshou class I hope that will change after a few of them have had some time in the ring. It will certainly change after a few of them have had some time in the ring with me!

Revelation 2: Just because you are chinese doesn't mean you automatically know the first thing about Gong Fu. Ok, a bit of a no-brainer, but stick with me. We were supposed to be doing a simple partner drill designed to work on balance, stability and hip flexibility. Each person was supposed to put both palms together and (starting from Ma Bu) rotate at the hip while thrusting the palms foreward and backward. My partner and I square up, settle into ma bu and begin. And he is thrashing and flailing about, he's leaning his full body weight into me, he's not in any sort of propper body alignment. I simply slip my thumb behind his hand and on one of his pushes I provide zero resistance and help him along... ever so slightly. He goes stumbling off to my left looking all confused. I try to explain to him in a halting combination of rudimentary english and pu tong hua what caused that to happen but I don't think we really communicate. We start again and he's flailing again and he's leaning again and his back is wobbling from rediculously leaned back to way too far foreward and I slip my thumb behind his hand again and give the smallest tug to the right and he goes staggering off to my right, keeping his feet mainly because I was holding his hands. Anyways this went on for a little while and eventually he began to get the idea (I think it helped when Sifu Zhang came along and explained things to him a bit) of how to balance a bit better but still... It shows what happens when somebody doesn't understand the difference between movie-fu and Gong Fu.

I am really looking foreward to Friday's class. I hope it's not too many classes before we do some rudimentary sparring but I am patient and can wait. And you never know. Mabey Mega Fist, his M8t Andy and Ashida Kim will show up at my doorstep with their Nunchucks and Judo Katanas and give me the match I offered them.

More updates as they come.

PS: If you have anything to say regarding what I write here I love to talk but do me a favour and say it here!

[SimonM]

So I am still down with a cold and had six hours of classes today so I didn't really do much Kung Fu related stuff but I don't know if I mentioned this before but I got my timetable sorted and Friday is now free... Thus the six hours of classes today.

Anyway, I was on the phone to my family back home and my mother was saying how people are always asking her how I handle the absence of free speech. I had just finished talking about how readily my students laugh, sincere mirth, not an embarassed laugh. Really they are a warm, happy bunch. This did not mesh with many North-Americans impressions of the "people trodden under the boot of the communist oppressor (insert T-Square or FLG reference here)".

My Mom said she usually tells these people, when they ask her "what about free speech" that she didn't think anybody really noticed. I went one step further and said "people here seem to speak pretty freely to me".

Seriously, even in Canada and the USA - two of the traditional bastions of "freedom of expression" we restrict what people can and can not say. Some of this is done through law, just see what happens if you say "I like Al Qaieda" in an airport. Some of this is done through less-formal channels. For instance people who suggest that Capitalism is not a good ideology are often marginalized as "crazy", "naiive", "hippies", etc.

In China there are also proscribed areas of conversation and un-proscribed areas of conversation. But just as most of us don't find it particularly restricting to not be allowed to pledge alleigance to known terrorist groups I think that the average Chinese person never really considers that their ability to say what they want to say is particularly curtailed.

Another thing, YES, China is an authoritarian country. It's ALWAYS been an authoritarian country - Communism didn't cause that... Mao didn't overthrow an egalitarian democracy to create the PRC. I think that the average college student percieves the CCP as having caused more good than harm over all. They have better health care, access to decent education and food is abundant. In general the people I have talked to seem to think that things are looking up.

If we accept as premises that:

1: Democracy is not a perfect system of governance, pseudo Communist imperial governance is also not a perfect system of governance.
2: Most Chinese people - average Chinese people - seem to be pretty free to pursue prosperity and happiness.
3: Just because there is a formal right to free speech does not mean that there IS absolute free speech and just because there is NO formal right to free speech does not mean that peoples speech is automatically curtailed in any Orwellian sense.

It raises an important question of why we feel like we have some sort of moral high ground from which to criticise others.

Perhaps when we have absolute freedom of expression, no political prisoners, and no flaws in our system of government we will be in a position to sit in judgement over China. Until then a certain level of cultural relaivism is appropriate.

I still think two of the most worthwhile things said in the bible are

He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone (sorry I forget the specific chapter and verse reference)

and

Judge not lest ye be judged

.

Man... That's a dour note to end the blog on...

I had my European Culture class watch the beginning of Troy today. I took them as far as Achilles landing and stopped the movie as he was in mid-hop over the rail of his boat. Then I said "to be continued next week". Am I cruel of what?

[SimonM]

So I got a call friday morning saying that my Gong Fu class was cancelled because Sifu Zhang was visiting his home-town since I had a bad cough and there is a lot of running in his class I was not overly upset and practiced at home. I have a few vcds I picked up. When I have gone through them I will post a review. The first one is by a guy who gets advertised in KFM, Alex Tao.... Anyone seen his stuff before? Anyway, like I said, when I have gone through it I will give reviews.

In other news I introduced my ESL students to the Arrogant Worms by singing "Canada is Really Big" they liked it. But then they like it whenever I sing. It's convenient that I enjoy singing.

[SimonM]

This weekend I climbed a mountain in the dark, picked dates with a pair of Chinese beauties, slept in a cave and did qigong in the first rays of the moring sun on a mountainside.

Let me explain.

I departed from Lishi in the company of two beautiful ladies each only three years younger than myself. Always a good start to a journey. You see a week ago one of those two ladies (Lake, yes her English name is Lake) invited her friend Eileen and I to visit her home-town. One of my main reasons for coming to China was to travel so I immediately assented. We took a crowded bus across many precarious dirt roads perched on the side of the earthen mountains that dominate the western Shanxi landscape for two hours before arriving at a small town nestled on a small plateau surrounded by terraced mountains and hills covered in corn, millet, caster, and date trees. We walked down the side of the small mountain that the village we disembarked from was and up to the base of a much taller mountain (about 800 meters). There we were faced with a choice. Lake's village occupied the top half of the mountain. Her house was on one of the lower terraces, about 350-400 meters above where we were. The light was fading fast and we had already walked 2 kilometers over uneven terrain. So we could take the road (the safe path) or the steep dirt trail up the side of the mountain (the not-so-safe path). Neither Eileen or I had been to this village before so I asked Lake "which is faster" she said "that path" (pointing to the steep dirt trail) and so up that path we went. Everything was fine until we got to a point where the trail its self was sloped roughly 45 degrees. It was nearly dark by then (the nearly full moon was large and bright in a navy blue sky) and Eileen lost her nerve and began to do those mistakes caused by nervousness that can get one hurt when climbing a narrow and steep mountain trail in twilight. So with Lake leading us and pathfinding, I took Eileen's hand (I was behind her) and told her not to be afraid because I wouldn't let her fall. Ok, so I was playing up the white-knight role, so sue me!

We got to the top of the path, flushed and buzzed on adrenaline from a combination of strenuous climbing and nervous energy from our ascent of the narrow trail, and wandered through the many terraces and pathes of the village until we came to Lake's house. It was a traditional Shanxi dwelling: an artaficial cave dug into the side of the mountain with a walled courtyard in-front. To their credit it was really the closest thing I have ever seen to a hobbit hole, underground, one story, dry, clean and tidy. We watched TV and sipped tea before the three of us went out to climb the rest of the way up the mountain to the summit.

Eileen was getting very tired, as she said she was from a city and was not used to so much climbing. So Lake took her hand and I (taking up the rear once more) spotted her promising that I wouldn't let her stumble. We climbed the rest of the way up the mountain to the summit, covered in a large castor crop. So we returned to the second terrace (about 2 meters beneath the summit) where there was a patch of grass underneath some date trees overlooking a hundred foot cliff. We picked some fresh dates (you have not had dates until you have them right off the tree) and sat and talked and sometimes just sat quietly and listened to the sound of wind and water; a welcome change from the car-horns of Lishi.

Around 11 o-clock we returned to the house and went to sleep. I slept soundly until 7:45 this morning when Lake woke me up. The three of us went out front to pick dates from the trees in front of their house to take back with us to Lishi and I paused to practice the Qigong routines I brought with me from Canada. The house overlooked a grove of date trees in a steep ravine and so it was a beautiful sight, inspiring. Then we went to work. Lake and Eileen found my ability to bend the thicker branches downward (a combination of height, strength and weight) to be very useful in collecting some dates which they otherwise could not reach.

We went into the house and had dates, moon cakes (to celebrate the Moon Festival today) and noodles with squash and tomato sauce for breakfeast before returning to the bus stop.

All the hiking and climbing over the last two days had taken a toll on Eileen and she fell asleep on the bus - in my arms. It was a good weekend.

[TonyM.]

What a great time you must have had! Carry on!

[SimonM]

So I said I'd review his VCD after I went through it. I have two VCDs. The first one was not particularly bad but it was incredibly basic. Basic footwork for in sparring; a few throws, punches, locks (mostly wrist) kicks, lots of kicks, headbuts, hip bumps and shoulder strikes.

I guess he was on the cover of KFM once because the video starts with a big blow-up of the cover. Gene: free advertising in China; you should start distributing in Lishi, Shanxi, PRC, 033000. OK?

Anyways, I was not overly fond of the hip bump because if I were in the position he was in I'd simply chuck the target right over my shoulder and onto the ground in-front of me rather than leaving the opponent standing behind me with a slightly sore pelvis. The elbows seemed sound enough, the kicks were relatively good (some better than others), the knee-headbut combo he drills was wonderful; it's too bad it would probably get a person DQed from pretty much any tournament. He didn't really demonstrate how to apply the locks at all so I can't comment on their efficacy however he was using compliant partners in the video for application drills so I don't know how much use they would have been anyway. His shoulder striking techniques were novel; they were amoung the few new things I picked up off the video and I am looking foreward to having an opportunity to stress-test the hell out of them.

I wasn't entirely impressed with the punching. His punches tended to be a bit off-center and he kept his guard quite wide. Since my Sifu advocated control of the center line and a narrow guard I was a bit concerned about this.

All in all I'd say that this would be a relatively good VCD - for beginners but has little for more advanced students aside from some non-conventional strike point drills (head, shoulder, hip) a few fancy ground kicks and low-sweeps.

I don't understand why most schools DON'T include the headbut in their curriculum. Even NBDMA didn't really teach it. It's just that my bro and I muddled it out by trial and error (possibly at the cost of a few braincells but I still got my degree so I'm not overly concerned).

PS: I went to my favorite tea house in Lishi (Hong Ch'a) with Elaine and Lake (and one tag-along guy who invited himself ) this evening and we had a great time. I think that I am beginning to quite like Elaine... She asked me if she could come with me to the disco next weekend. I said yes... I don't know how to dance though.

[SimonM]

So anyone who can go home for the Moon Festival to spend time with their families does. Sadly that includes Sifu Zhang and so once more class was cancelled. Oh well, more at-home practice for Simon. I worked the bag for a while, my knuckles have finally fully healed from when I split them open and this time they are thickening up enough again that I didn't cut them again. However I'm afraid that my poor punching bag has seen better days. Much more punishment like this and it may be the one with a cut. Hopefully duct tape is available in China; if not at least it was cheap.

After that I decided to play around a little bit. I've been working on codifying some ideas I have for paired knives, long and short. The two blades I'm using are a 14 inch short sabre and a 10-11 inch bowie knife but, hey, it's what I've got. As I'm a lefty the long one sits in the left hand while the short is residing in my right. I played around with those for a while and managed to not cut myself while still getting the first few movements how I wanted them. What can I say I may be an advocate of stress-testing, sparring and partner drills but in the absence of any partners and practice weapons except for sharp steel blades I'll default back to forms until such time as I can test my theories in a safe environment...

I get my photos from my trip back later today. I'll post some of them to either this thread or here.

[SimonM]

Hey gang! Here are the photos I promised.



This is a picture of me, Lake and Eileen. Eileen is in black and Lake is in Orange. Lake swears that she was not sticking out her tongue in the picture and that it is an error on the negative.



Next in line we have a photo of Lake and Eileen standing in front of the top half of the mountain Lake's house was in. If you squint your eyes up really hard you can just make out the pair of date trees at the top that we sat under on Saturday night.



This is the terrace in front of Lake's house. Here is where I practiced in the morning. Man! This is a lovely village. If not for it being one of the most remote places I have ever visited I'd want to live somewhere like here. It's clean, quiet, and beautiful.



I took this photograph from the spot I practiced at in the morning. How is that for an inspiring view eh?

[GeneChing]

Alex Tao was the cover story for out Jan/Feb 2001 issue, one of our best sellers, I might add. We carry a few of his videos. He has a lot of VCDs in China, along with a highly-regarded TV series that was televised about half a decade ago. In fact, these videos were extracted from the master tapes of some of his China VCDs; we re-edited, re-formated and translated them and have exclusive rights for US distribution. GM Tao was in our area for a few months over the summer and he filmed two more videos for us: 24 Killing Blows of the Chinese Military and Fingertip Handstands - both of which should debut any day now...

[SimonM]

My internet was down. I'm posting just quickly before class today. If I am not too tired I will post again later. I haven't had a chance to look at the second VCD in the Alex Tao series. I don't want to judge too finally on GM Tao based on the first as it was a very basic VCD however in combination with a related style of training in a classroom setting it could be a useful aid for a beginner in home-study.

Now I just need a living room large enough to move around in without kicking the coffee table all the time. I converted my office into a gym room but there is no TV in there.

[SimonM]

Went well. I didn't collapse during the running like during the first class... Running is my bane. I also found that the style of gongfu here is very different in some key ways to the style back home... Less mobile, more fixed stances I didn't really like that too much but I figure that learning completely different styles and then critically analyzing them can only help me as long as I don't allow any bad habits to enter into my ring-work. Still no ring-work yet; I do hope we get some soon as it is sparring that I like most.

[SimonM]

So I get a call from one of my better friends asking me if I want to go to a party being held at the public square outside of the museum. Since my other option for entertainment tonight was to watch Seven Swords (again) in the Resource Room I say YES!

But one small catch: she wants to walk and I have trouble saying no to a sweet girl with beautiful eyes. So despite the fact that my legs are aching from class earlier today we walk to the public square... About 4 to 5 kilometers away from the school and on the opposite side of a hill.

She, her best friend, her best friends boyfriend and I set off from the school around 7:50 and arrive at the public square by 8:25. By that time the performers are already on the stage, the crowds are thick, vendors are selling dates, sunflower seeds, iced tea, Wen Tou, and just about anything that you can cook on a stick.

My friend and I lose the other two couples (we met another of their friends and her boyfriend on the way) in the crowd as she wants to get closer to get a better view. It works counter-productive to her goal though as we get boxed in by the crowd and although I can look over the heads of the crowd with ease she can not, she is a head shorter than I am. (She is the one in black in the photographs in a previous entry of my Blog.)

Anyway, long story short, there are only four performers after we arrive: a very entertaining Shanxi traditional folk singer, a really, really lousy pop singer, another folk singer (who was not quite as good as the first but who was much better than the dismal pop singer) and then a song and dance performance put on by the arts department of my school that featured four excellent singers and quite a lot of interesting traditional Shanxi dancing. Then the party was over. We had been there for mabey 20 minutes. And my friend wanted to walk back again. To my credit I did get to within 2 km of their home before I said that I really wanted to cab it the rest of the way (I cited an early morning and the fact that the gates closed in less than 20 minutes as excuses) and we hopped a cab back to their school before I returned home to write this entry. So that's the latest of my China adventures.

PS: New on my MP3 Player: Raining Blood by Slayer as covered by Tori Amos

[SimonM]

I swear. There are a few students who have taken to showing up in classes that they are not registered for, sometimes doing the same lesson two or three times in one week, when they don't have other classes.

There is one girl who seems to show up to literally every class I teach except for when she is in another class. She did my boring as all hell writing class three times this week! She has also showed up to every movie night and every English corner. Today I remarked on the fact that she had attended so many extra classes and she said "I just like your classes"!

Oh! And some of my students have taken to watching the Gong Fu class that I am in.

PS: Want a laugh? Go to this website.

[SimonM]

One of my students took me out for dinner with a friend of hers who wants to visit my ESL class. He is the first person in China to drink me under the table. I'm a little intoxicated right now so I'll sign off 'till tomorow. TTYAL!

[SimonM]

So I get home from work today to the sound of my phone ringing.

I get to the phone and it is one of the ladies I have been spending time with lately.

"I called you three times, why didn't you answer?" she says.

I appologize and say that I hadn't gotten home yet. Later in the night she brought up the subject again and I told her that I was teaching a class.

Anyways... She asks me if I am free. Unfortunately I am not. Changfeng (my not-really-FAO who does the FAO job) is coming over to take me to the bank. Despite the fact that Changfeng and I tend to squabble whenever we are in each other's company for more than five minutes I need his help to deal with the PTBs at the bank of China so his presence was sort of necessary.

Sadly his presence is basically anathema to this friend of mine; she hates him.

I appologize to her and promise to message her the second I am done with Changfeng.

So I go to the bank and buy the Canadian money I need to transfer. Then I go to transfer the money just to find out that though the bank remains open until 6 you can't do money transfers after 4. I got off class at 4:30. Ma Fan.

So I leave the bank, briefly stop by the bus station where I find out that I can't take a bus directly from Lishi to Deng Feng, I will have to go to another city (such as Taiyuan) first and take either busses or trains from there and then head home. The entire way back Changfeng and I argue about how I should get to Shaolin. He thinks I should take a bus to Luoyang and then take the train from there while I think I should take a bus to Taiyuan and take the train from there. According to my sources the trains are generally cheaper than the busses see. Anyway after Changfeng suggests that I walk to Deng Feng I counter with the suggestion that he give me one of his two motorcycles and a roadmap and I will just drive myself down. That kind of ends that quarrel just around the time I arrive home.

As I'm getting through the door my cellphone goes off and I get an instant message from my friend asking me if I am out still. I write her back that I just stepped through the door.

"Do you want to go to dinner with me?" she asks.

"Yes. Where and when?"

"BDC at 7:00."

"OK!"

At this time I check the clock and see it's actually 6:15. I haven't showered, I haven't shaved, I'm wearing yesterday's T-Shirt and I'm damp from the rain.

Ok, no problem, shave quickly, jump into the shower, heap on the shampoo (expensive western shampoo that smells nice) grab my only clean and dry shirt (the uniform top from my Canadian Kwoon - a cotton t-shirt with the logo of the school: Northern above, Black Dragon below and in the middle the characters 黑
龍武術) throw on a jacket and rush out the door.

So I get to BDC with two minutes to spare despite the bad traffic. She hasn't arrived yet. Bonus. Two minutes later she arrives and this time she is without her best friend who has often accompanied us when we go out together she is however wearing the bracelet that I got her a while back and over the course of the night she had a tendency to fidgit with it a lot. We go into the restaurant and order and a very common scene between us plays out.

I reach into my wallet. She says "Bu shi" and reaches for her purse. I reply with "no, ,no, no, I've got this one" and hand over a 50 rather than spending time rooting for exact change. We go upstairs and have supper together just talking (mostly about weddings we have been to and flowers) for about two hours... A long time to spend sitting in a KFC knockoff on a rainy night.

Supper ends and we go for a walk. We end up in the park. With the rain and the increasingly late hour the park is abandoned. Most of the lights in the park are off and the only sound is that of raindrops hitting the ornamental lake and the distant street noises of Urban China. We walk along the lake sometimes talking and sometimes just being quiet until we reach a foot-bridge. We pause there and talk about subjects that become increasingly personal and emotionally charged on both sides. Then we walk off the bridge making small talk and telling jokes and the rest of the way around the lake before hailing a cab and going home.