For The Silk Road Kung Fu Friendship Tour Part 3, click here.

July 20, Monday

Today my goals are simple: visit the very famous Urumqi Jingwu School and then another one I’d found on the internet if possible. But nobody had answered the phone so I was a bit skeptical if this second school was still in operation or perhaps off for the summer.

Here in China many of the best martial arts schools are regular schools with reading, writing, math and so on. In addition, they have extraordinary Wushu teachers that produce some of the finest martial artists in China (like June First Middle School in Beijing which was attended for some time by Jet Li ). Jingwu School is one such school. This much I knew before I got there.

I had found a description and address on the Internet in Chinese which was not so difficult, but finding the school itself was a bit tricky. I’m including a photo of the main street location to assist those who might wish to visit, as it’s about half way up a small road off the main street on the left. If one can’t read Chinese it would be easy to miss and if one can’t speak Chinese either it might be impossible to find. Even the taxi driver found this location to be a bit challenging. He’d heard of it of course, but had never been there.

I figured the students would be on vacation, and right I was, but luckily I met young Master Ai Li, a graduate of guess where(?) yep, Xi’an Physical Education University. He is one of 15 Kung Fu Masters teaching at Urumqi Jingwu School. He must be good because this school produces some of Xinjian’s best Taiji, Taolu and Sanda competitors. The school has some 300 students and most excel in one style or another of martial arts.

Asked what his specialty is, Ai Li said: “Shaolin!” What inspired him to get into martial arts? His first answer: Chan Long (Jackie Chan) followed by Li Lianjie (Jet Li).

Front entrance to Urumqi Jing Wu School.

 

Like most masters, Ai Li started young at age 9, and racked up an impressive series of wins during his 35+ competitions, bringing home the gold in most. Though he looks like a fighter, and probably is he prefers Taolu competition with his favorite being Zui Chuan , generally referring to “drunken styles,” which is somewhat contradictory given that he’s a Uyghur, which around here means that he’s Muslim which means that he doesn’t drink, but this is China where the oddest contradictions happily coexist alongside each other, so what would one expect?

I’m just starting to figure out the unique ethnic makeup of Urumqi which consists of 13% Uyghur and a whopping 76% Han ethnic group with the reason being that the Qing Dynasty (the last imperial Dynasty, 1644-1912) promulgated a genocide on the primarily Buddhist Zunghars (Oolod Mongols) and imported primarily (Muslim) Han Huis and Turkic Muslims to resettle the lands they depopulated, while the Turkic Muslim culture in particular was actively promoted. The Qing were not entirely successful in their efforts however, as I have done exhaustive research on trying to get a cup of coffee around here and have found none, which would be unthinkable for a true Turkic person as their unique method of brewing coffee is around 400 years old and world famous.

And, if that doesn’t get your head spinning even without a drop of wine, nothing will. When coffee was first introduced to Europe they called it “Turkish Wine.” Strange but true.

Anyways, the head master of the Wushu program at Jingwu School is Mr. Liu Zhang Liang, who was trained in Shandong, and the school incorporates elementary, middle and high schools.

After a short interview and taking a few photos of the school and young master Ai Li, in classic Kung Fu stances, I moved on to goal number two for the day, a club I’d read about (in Chinese) called Chai Jing Xuan Traditional Martial Arts School. It took a while, but with the help of a tall enthusiastic and intelligent high school young man named Cai Jing Cheng I found the right place there in the basement of what looked like an old department store or something, but apparently the school had moved. Fortunately I met a kind and helpful calligraphy master there who gave me the correct address and name of the primary master, but unfortunately he wasn’t available at that time. No matter. Why? Well, again this is China and disadvantages can be turned into advantages at the drop of a hat, and instead I got the name and address of another school too, and the name and correct address of the bus station I needed to get to tomorrow or the next in order to move on to Kazakhstan. During our time there the kind calligrapher served tea in the traditional manner which means always piping hot, cup ever-full and quite sweet and delicious even without sugar. One does get a little buzz from this and it’s a fun way to socialize.

After that my new high school friend had to take off, while I had a most delicious dinner of chicken and rice, before returning to my hotel. Consulting my list of Kung Fu schools in Urumqi, I decided I had to stay another night. Se est la vie, or in Chinese: Zhe shi shenghuo!

Students ready for action at Urumqi Jingwu School.

 

When I got back to the hotel I tried to take the memory card out of my camera and realized it wasn’t there. I’d left it in my notebook the night before, thus I had no pictures from the one martial arts school I did find. If I were my own employee I’d have docked myself a day pay for that blunder, but since I’m my only employee it didn’t seem practical so instead decided to go back tomorrow.

With a population of around 3 million people, Urumqi is only a medium-sized city by Chinese standards and I have to say I love this city even though I’ve only been here a little more than 24 hours. It’s modern and clean, very diverse, has splendidly creative and integrated cultures and architectural styles, and generally combines traditional with upbeat contemporary very nicely. In addition, the taxi drivers are much more likely to charge a reasonable price and actually take you where you’re going than some other cities I’ve visited. This morning, in fact, one “unofficial taxi” spent half an hour finding the Urumqi Jingwu School for me, finally came very close, dropped me off and refused to take any money. That’s never happened to me before. I like this city!

July 21, Tuesday

Traveling like this involves so many details. For example I’d heard the night before the bus to Almaty is better than the train so after my early morning stretches and 1,000 kicks and punches, and well, breakfast of course, I had to find the International Bus Station and get a ticket for tomorrow. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, recall this is a foreign country… First I had to find the right name for the International Bus Station in Chinese, because a city this size is going to have a lot of bus stations. So I found it in Chinese on Baidu.com, the most popular search engine here, copy and pasted it to a word document, increased the font size to 25 then took a picture of it with my phone.

With the name of the International Bus Station in Chinese in hand, I went to the front desk of the hotel and asked them to find the phone number and address. Luckily it’s only about 500 meters away. Then, in my best Putonghua I asked the hotel clerk to find out if I could buy a ticket for tomorrow, today. Yes!

So, off to buy a ticket. It turned out the International Bus Station building is off to the left of the regular long distance bus station. But, the building on the left turned out to be a rather nice looking bathhouse so I was a bit confused till some rather tall Kazakh guys came along and showed me that I had to go up a little street to the left of the bathhouse to find the International bus station. During this short walk he asked me why I wanted to go to Kazakhstan, and I told him I was working for Kung Fu Tai Chi magazine. He then told me he likes martial arts and asked me to kick his hand which he held up around shoulder high. Luckily I’d already stretched out so I did a turning kick followed by a spinning kick, which seemed to please him and his friend and we arrived at the International Bus Station quite good friends I think.

Got the ticket, off for second breakfast at a small roadside Halal restaurant consisting of rice with some little carrots and green something, with delicious beef. Super second breakfast!

Back at the hotel I got a call from new friend/translator Cai Jing Cheng and it turned out he was free for the day, so about an hour later he showed up and off we went back to Urumqi Jingwu School. This time we spent quite a while with Ai Li because he knows just about everything about Urumqi and thanks to new friend Cai, I could communicate better with him. Also I had my HP notebook with me, so I asked about other martial arts school in Urumqi, calling one after another when possible, but… almost nobody answered. A couple of schools said they weren’t training now because it was too hot.

On the bright side, I found out from Ai Li there is a real Tai Chi Chuan master that lives about two hours away named Chen Jia Gou. He’s highly respected and quite famous so Cai called him and I got his address in Pinyin (the phonetic spelling for Putonghua – Mandarin Chinese), phone number and QQ number (one of China’s most popular social media venues kind of like Facebook).

I also found that the Executive Security/Body Guard Company that holds Sanda classes daily in Urumqi is doing well and the contact information is correct, but, I also found out from Cai they were two hours away.

Entrance to the little street off the main street you'll got to go up in order to find Urumqi Urumqi Jingwu School on your left.

 

Why were both schools so far away when they had Urumqi addresses? Well, the answer lies in a geographic restructuring that happened in China (and incidentally South Korea) back in the 1970s. For some reason government administrators decided to cluster groups of small towns and call them all by the largest town’s name. Over time the central towns grew into major cities, but still are spread over huge geographic areas. I’ve been to several other Chinese (and Korean) cities consisting of five or six small towns grouped together over several hundred kilometers and called a city. Everyone accepts this so it must be OK. Urumqi is spread over seven urban and suburban districts and over 11,000 square kilometers. That’s why I didn’t particularly feel like going to visit the Tai Chi master or the Executive Security/Sanda school. Or, maybe I’m just lazy. Who knows?

It was however very nice sitting around Ai Li’s dorm room (no air conditioning though) with him and Cai, chatting the afternoon away figuring out the martial arts scene in Urumqi. He showed us some videos of his Taolu competitions and his work with the spear and other weapons was impressive. He’s got a good gymnastics background as well, probably from some training in the “New Wushu” carried along from the 1980s. But he like other martial arts people I’ve met in China are proud that they mainly practice traditional Chinese Kung Fu.

He was quite confident that his school is the only real martial arts and Kung Fu school in the city proper, though he said there were a few small Taekwondo schools scattered around, but acknowledged that they might not really train regularly during the hottest part of summer, explaining why I couldn’t find regular classes anywhere in town.

Anyways, I retook some photos of him and also got him to share some photos from his computer of Urumqi Jingwu School classes with me. So, this visit was more productive than yesterdays and when we left I felt quite happy I had a new friend in Urumqi and a deeper understanding of the city and martial arts therein.

Back at the hotel I had dinner, made reservations for a hotel in Almaty Kazakhstan while chatting in Chinese (characters) on Weixin (the most popular social networking app in China) with a Uyghur that lives here in Urumqi, and wrote to one of my two contacts in Almaty in anticipation of my next adventure, and oh yes of course typed up a rough draft of this here fine story!

For The Silk Road Kung Fu Friendship Tour Part 5, click here.