My Parents

I've been looking forward to my parents coming to China for a couple years now, but when it came down to a few weeks prior, I was more than a little apprehensive. My dad has never been outside North America, (I'm including Mexico in North America although that's not exactly correct) and my mom hasn't left the continent in oh... let's go with 30 years. China's not a place that I would necessarily recommend for the unseasoned traveler either. There's a lot of social differences that even after living here for 2 years, I still don't understand. Add into the equation travelling in China without at least a minor understanding of the Chinese language. I know how difficult it is because I've done it.

I haven't been on a real holiday with my parents since I was a teenager. It was great being able to just wander around and go shopping, or taking buses all over the place, going to look at this temple, and that village. They were the best travelling companions I've had. Their easy going outlook and their willingness to jump with both feet into something completely new was really inspiring to me. If something didn't work out according to plan they easily adapted. They weren't put off by a ducks head, or some weird fish, or a baby pooping in the street. Except for a few questionable bathrooms I'd say they left with a pretty good impression.

Sometimes I'm afraid that I'll end up one day, stuck in a rut, being afraid to really live my life to the fullest. But looking at my parents here in China made my fears soften. They aren't faint of heart. They're brave, inquisitive and curious about different cultures and the world. Hopefully when I'm older I can keep the same open mindedness as they have.

Arg....

Well this blog is about to become a list of my kung fu related injuries. Last Tuesday I pulled my groin which has actually been healing pretty well. Then first class on Friday we fought and I dislocated my shoulder.
I'd have to say that this is the most frustrating part of being here. Compared to a person at home, injuries are always a setback but here being as kung fu is all I do in a day, having an incapacitating injury such as this is really depressing. I know that i'm not going to be out of the game for too long but at this point it's hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
On a totally different note, our Shifu has been giving us numerous lectures on natural living that have been incredibly interesting. I'd write more but I'm typing one handed so I'm going to give up on this effort for now. Good thing I have a lot of free time ;).

After the storm comes the calm

I haven't blogged in a while and honestly, I'm in a terrible frame of mind for it. I was actually hoping that the idiom "after the storm comes the calm" went the other way around because for me at the moment, it seems to be more accurate. Coming back from break was great. I love training. I haven't found anything that makes me feel invigorated like kung fu does, but at the moment, I feel on the verge of death. UGH!

I've already gotten an injury (we've been training for about 3 weeks), and now our Shifu has decided that we should do power training at every class to make ourselves stronger. Which I'm totally all for, except going from doing nothing, to doing in every day. It seems I'm just adding injuries on top of one another already, and we've only begun. The Chinese students return form their holiday tomorrow and I'm dreading the thought of adding them back into the mix.

It's lunch time now, so I'm gonna go stuff my face hopefully.

Tai Ji 108

We've started learning the 108 and well I must say it's definitely intense. Our Shifu gave us a bit of a lecture on Tai Ji that I found really interesting. He said that there's two ways to practice Tai Ji. One is for feeling, so for instance I would say the way people practice normally, working on fluid movement and continuous motion and learning to feel the chi in the movement.

He explained that the other way is to practice similarly to have fluid movement and continuous motion but also to have incredibly low stances. This builds up strength and flexibility together. He said that lifting weights and doing other things like push ups, sit ups, and squats etc., make your body strong but also tend to make your tendons and ligaments stiff. He said practicing Tai Ji with stances as low and as wide as possible helps build up what he calls elastic power. So it's not just the power in your muscles but also improves the power in your tendons and ligaments helping to prevent future injury. He feels that this kind of practice is very important.

I'm not going to go so far as to say that I really like practicing Tai Ji in this fashion but I can see and feel the difference in my body already and it's only been a couple of weeks. I'm really looking forward to the improvement.

Eating Meat

So I've broke my vegetarianism.

I'm a little sad about it I won't lie. I think I lasted... about 4 years. Not bad. The reasons I chose to become a vegetarian still exist and I still feel strongly about them so I do find myself feeling guilty at times. I read in a book called the thrive diet a lot about the acidity of meat and the fact that it's really hard for the body to digest and often times sits in your intestines for a undetermined amount of time (which I really hate to think about). There is also the environmental reasons behind my choice that are really the reasons that make me feel guilty. I just try to make decisions to eat little meat. Although the diet here isn't formed so largely of meat as it seems to be in the prairies of Alberta. Also the meat in China is not so commonly mass produced and farmed like it is at home. You're more likely to be eating beef or chicken from a local farm.

It's really difficult where we're living to keep a vegetarian diet and not be lacking in protein. If I was just living a regular life here and not training for 8 hours and some per day then I think it wouldn't be a problem. Eggs and tofu are not totally uncommon. But I also have been living at the school for over a year now and I have to say that not eating meat here is pretty brutal. There is very little variety in the vegetables cooked at the school and eating cabbage, beansprouts, and squash really loses it's appeal after some point. You would think, living in the country that invented a lot of meat supplements, that there would be a lot of options for meat replacement. But maybe it's because we're living in a smaller town that these things are not available. It's frustrating never the less.

My mom did make the point that once I return home I always have the option of going back to being vegetarian. The initial transition was pretty hard last time but there's so many more option for delicious vegetarian food, and I generally cook my own food a lot when I'm living at home I have more of a choice of the things I need to eat.

Another performance...

SO we just finished another performance with Jackie Chan which was pretty cool. We've spent the past week 'rehearsing' for our performance at the opening ceremony of the international wushu competition. Although I still do find it exciting to be in the presence of an amazing celebrity, I'm pretty much at my end of tolerance for dealing with Chinese culture. I've been swarmed by tourists asking to take pictures with me.

This morning we had to take a bus up the mountain to a temple at the top and do two more performances on the mountain. And once we were up there we found out that we would be doing the same thing for the next three days. I'm just exhausted by being a tourist attraction. I've never been in a situation like this before. How long do you let the government walk all over you before you have to draw the line somewhere? What options does a person really have in this situation?

Moon Festival

So Wednesday was moon festival or autumn festival by use of the lunar calendar and our Shifu was generous enough to give us 3 days off. I can't remember the last time we had a long weekend so this was a really nice break. All of the different classes were asked to come up with some kind of performance for the evening and so we did spend a little time practicing but it was really simple. Our class performed our Daoist chanting that we're learning and also acted out a very simple play from the three kingdoms period. It was really fun to get to use a bit of creativity with our costumes and to just do something a little out of the norm.
Our Shifu also bought a new karaoke machine (in China you can't have a celebration without karaoke). So we sang and danced and it gave us a really great opportunity to get to know some students that maybe we don't get to train with often. Also teaching some of the younger Chinese kids how to dance was hilarious. It's funny to think that someone that's so good at Kung Fu can't seem to figure out how to move to music. Not that I'm a professional or anything but I had a really great time with them. It's nice to see some of the younger kids get a chance to just fool around.

Brandi and I might be getting our own rooms (I'm typing this with crossed fingers). Although I do love my sister, it would be really great after a year of sharing a tiny room with way too much stuff in it. There would be some inconveniences for me since I don't have my own computer, but hey.. I can deal with it. I'm not much for this computer stuff anyways. I'll look forward to having room to spread out. Literally and figuratively.