Beijing - Day 3 (12/2): Cold Tissues and Old Issues

When I woke up this morning my throat was very sore. Sort of a “be careful or you’re going to catch a cold really quick” type of sore. I knew what that meant … lots and lots of rest. I think it’s a result of getting such big doses of cold weather and super-heated rooms so quickly. This sort of weather really does a number on you.

I spent the morning working on the blog from the day before and after a while talked to Jenn and Wang Wei on the phone. They were going to visit the Tea Market to buy some (what else?) Tea. After that they would come over to my neck of the woods and we would grab something to eat. So I spent most of that time working on some projects online and getting a little rest. I also ordered a little room service (It’s been forever since I’ve had a decent club sandwich).

They showed up around 1:00 and we hung out for a bit. Wang Wei was nice enough to run to the pharmacy around the corner and grab some medicine for me, which I took before we headed out for some grub. This turned out to be quite the adventure. First we went by an ATM machine at the post office so I could take out some money, but the machine ended up eating my card. We went inside and the lady with super huge doe-like eyes helped me fish it out.

Jennifer and Wang Wei at the pharmacy

Second, we were on a mission for a certain type of food from a certain type of restaurant. Jennifer had been having some issues with food poisoning for the past several days so we needed to be careful about what sort of things she could eat. We checked a couple of the branches of this particular restaurant but the first two were out. We finally found one that still had two orders left and we got those,as well as some xiao long bao, some won ton soup and a bit of chao bing. It was all quite delicious.

Wang Wei likes his dumplings

After that I decided to head back to my hotel and rest while they went to get massages and do some more shopping. (See? I must have really not been feeling well to pass up an opportunity to get a massage!) I went back to my room and did some surfing and casual reading online for a few hours until my “roommate” came back from his work. By then it was about 7:30.

Since the day in itself was fairly uneventful, I thought I would write up something that a few people asked about after my “not training at Shi Cha Hai” comment from the other day. This is something that happened this past summer and to this day it’s still causing me problems. To be honest, I don’t really want to be bothered with it and that’s one of the reasons I really don’t have much intention to train at Shi Cha Hai again in the future. In any case, this is what happened …

I had arranged through my coach to train at Shi Cha Hai for 2 weeks. Then I was going to take 5 day in Korea and then train for another week before heading back to Shanghai. It was the arrangement I had asked for. I was given the price and I had no objections so I paid it and was happy to head off for Beijing, my training set and my hopes for a good time with old friends in full effect.

The first 2 weeks were great. I had a wonderful time training with Zhang Laoshi and the rest of my Wushu West classmates. No complaints at all. In fact, I was really looking forward to coming back after my visit to Korea. But it was the second leg of my stay at Shi Cha Hai that ended up with problems.

The first small hurdle was that the school’s hotel was all filled up, so they arranged a room for me at the Qi Lu Hotel just down the street (and also owned by Shi Cha Hai). That was fine .. it was only a small inconvenience, if that. But it meant that since my meals weren’t included I would need to pay for them in person each time I ate. Again, I didn’t mind that since I would really only be eating 1 or 2 meals there a day at the most. In any case, the manager of the School’s hotel restaurant knew me by name and I was friends with several of the staff there due to my 6 or 7 visits and stays there over the previous year so I didn’t mind just paying for each meal as it came.

In fact, it almost became a ritual with me and some of the staff there that I would pay for the meal along with a bottled bing hong cha (ice red tea) whenever I sat down. They would even laugh at me for ordering the same drink everytime and scold me whenever I paid for it with a 100 RMB bill and didn’t have exact change.

Also, it turns out that, in order to try to save me money, and since I wasn’t actually staying at the school itself, my coach had just asked the team leader and coach to include me in the practice and I would pay them directly. I wasn’t actually aware of this, and I realize that it was done with the intention to help me. I think that perhaps I didn’t make it clear that I wasn’t in any sort of financial stress and wouldn’t have minded paying the inflated prices the school’s foreign services department charges in exchange for going through the right channels.

But I think it was sort of like “These are my old friends whom are like my brothers and sisters and I grew up with. I’ll just ask them directly to help out my student instead of dealing with the middle man”. It turns out the foriegn services department didn’t really like it, so after my first day of training I wasn’t able to join the Wushu West group anymore. My coach was a little distraught since I didn’t have a place to train, and to be honest I really mainly wanted to learn the rest of Yang Bei Bei’s nanquan form as well as Li Neng Miao’s nangun form. I didn’t need the full training class to do that. So she talked to Li Neng Miao and he said he didn’t mind helping me out and arranged to meet with me and another student from Wushu West in the multi-purpose gym’s weight room to learn some nanquan and nangun.

I also talked to Yang Bei Bei and asked her if she could teach me the rest of her nanquan. I had learned 3 sections and just had the 4th to finish up so she said to come by her practice one morning before they started training and she would show me quickly on the side. We did that and it didn’t take more than 15 - 20 minutes for me to learn the rest. Then I just sat on the side watching them and the Wushu West group practice.

I only ended up training with Li Neng Miao two or possibly three times all together. He mainly did it as a favor to me and my coach. Sort of like if you came up to me at a tournament and said “Hey could you teach me that one combo you do?” and I said “Oh sure, it goes like this and this … ” and spent a few minutes with you to show it to you. (This is assuming we’re friends, of course. I’m probably not going to do this for some random stranger that walks up to me.)

So, for these 5 days I continued to keep paying for my meals individually, and spent most of the time just hanging out in the wushu guan watching other people practice or going to ya xiu for shopping. Training wise, it was sort of a wash, but I didn’t mind since it was nice hanging out with friends again.

On the day I was supposed to leave for the airport, my coach had told me she arranged for me to get a ride to the airport with another classmate of mine who was also flying out the same day. I was ready to go at the appointed time in the lobby, but the one foreign services department person I saw there said she didn’t know anything about it and said they wouldn’t be able to take me. Considering they were using a minibus to take a single individual to the airport, this didn’t really make sense to me, but I didn’t argue the point and said “Okay, that’s fine” and went out to the street to grab a taxi and ride to the airport to catch my flight.

It was the next week or so that I started to realize that something was amiss back at Shi Cha Hai.

The first thing I heard from a friend was “Hey, did you know that the foreign services department are saying that you stole from the school and are blacklisting you from ever training or visiting here again?” I was surprised, of course. It must have been a misunderstanding of some sort. I asked them to talk to the person that told them this to make sure it wasn’t a mistake.

But it wasn’t. It turns out that the foreign services department was under the impression that I was sneaking in to training classes in the wushu guan to train without permission. In addition, they said that I never paid for any meals and that they had cameras showing me using their facilities without authorization and “stealing” coaching from athletes. On top of this, the head of the department had decided to spread this information around and one of the people they told, a former Beijing Team member who had brought students there to train, decided in turn to go and tell everyone that he could find that I had been stealing from Shi Cha Hai. This coach was apparently telling people that didn’t even know me about my “indescretions” — complete strangers to me being told that I was stealing and sneaking around behind the school’s back.

I was really taken aback and somewhat hurt and offended. First, for this coach to spread rumors that had no basis in truth and, not only that, to spend such effort to tell people that had nothing to do with it and discredit me really made me lose a lot of respect I had for this person. I can understand if he would tell someone that he knew was my friend so that they could let me know, but spread false rumors about someone behind their back is one of the lowest forms of behavīor I can think of.

The second thing that surprised me is that no one bothered to ask me about it. Not only did the foreign services deparment never contact me in regards to this incident while I was staying in their hotel (they apparently had been “monitoring” my behavīor during my whole time there) and walking around their facility (many times right next to them or sitting at the table near them), but they didn’t even bother to check to make sure their facts were correct. Their claim that I stole food from the cafeteria by not paying could easily be proven false by asking the half dozen or so workers in the cafeteria who knew me if it was true or not. They also claimed that they were searching all over for me the day I left in order to force me to pay them but couldn’t find me because I had run away so that I wouldn’t have to give them money. But the truth is, I was there waiting for my “ride” to the airport and had even talked to one of their staff who had told me that I should take a cab instead. If they were looking for me, they weren’t trying very hard because they already knew where I was.

Or, if they claimed that there was no way to reach me, then they need only ask the reception desk people who knew my cell phone number, or the athletes who I’m friends with who knew my cell phone number, or my coach and other members of my school who were stil around who also knew my cell phone number (or even the coach who knew how to get ahold of me) and then call me to talk to me directly. But it seems that they didn’t actually make any effort at all to contact me to discuss this matter.

The third thing that surprised me is that anything I had done could actually be construed as “wrong” in the first place. I had paid whatever I was asked to pay when I was asked. I wasn’t hurting for money and didn’t mind giving the fair value of whatever I had asked for. I wanted to train so of course I didn’t mind paying for it. And even when I found out they had a problem with my training in the wushu guan I didn’t complain. I just did as I was told and met up with Li Neng Miao instead. I paid for all the meals I ate … I paid for my hotel .. I paid for whatever I was asked to pay for. I could have even paid double what I paid … it’s not like I was broke during this period of time so it wasn’t an issue for me at all. How did I behave improperly?

The last thing that really bothered me is that they, knowing what they know about me, would even think that I would behave in that sort of way. Think of it this way: I train with one of the most famous members of the Beijing Team from the 80’s. I work for the most famous Beijing Team Member and wushu athlete in the world. I am fully aware of the responsibility I have in representing both of these people in the best possible light. I work hard to make sure that when people find out I’m associated with them (especially wushu people) that I behave in the best possible manner so that I don’t give either of them any loss of face or discredit their reputations. I take that responsibility very seriously, in fact.

So for them to think that I’m capable of lying, cheating and stealing in order to get an $2.50 meal and wushu training (which to me was reasonably priced), seemed to be not only an insult to me, but to the people I worked for. I am not a petty person. And if I can’t afford something, then I simply don’t do it. I don’t steal and lie to get meager helpings of something I don’t necessarily need in the first place. I’m not that selfish.

In any case, while I was feeling all these feelings I decided I should at least try to communicate with the foreign service department to let them know that I hadn’t committed these acts they seemed to be accusing me of. So, I called up my coach (at that time back in the U.S.) and let her know the situation and asked what the best course to follow was in order to remedy the situation and not be “blacklisted” from the facility. (To be honest, if I was blacklisted for something I had actually done, then I’d have no problem. And honestly, there are many other wushu facilities I can train at in China so it’s not like blacklisting me from Shi Cha Hai means I can never train again. I was mainly concerned that this would negatively impact my school’s visit the following year.) She said she would contact them and let me know what they say. (She used a bit harsher language when referring to the foreign services department, but I will keep the language less colorful here in my blog.)

After a week or so I hadn’t heard from her (she had gone to Canada for the Pan Am games so was busy at that time) but when I finally did get in touch with her the advice was that I shouldn’t worry about it and that she could just call Cui Ya Hui (the current Team Leader) or any of the coaches there to smooth things over should I want to train at Shi Cha Hai again in the future. Again, I don’t think she quite understood my concern since training at Shi Cha Hai wasn’t really my concern so much as making sure that it didn’t have a negative impact on her or her students in the future. But, she is my coach so I followed her advice and decided not to worry about it and, if I wanted to train at Shi Cha Hai in the future I would just go through the proper channels.

6 months have passed and here I am back in Beijing. When I was thinking about coming to Beijing I was hopeful that I would be able to train while I was here — preferrably at Shi Cha Hai, but if not any other facility would have been fine. At first I had asked Liu Xiao Lei about joining her to train at Bei Ti (I had done it before in the spring and the coach had said I could come back to train again in the future) but she was going to Fuzhou to train with the National Team and wouldn’t be there to help me out.

While I was talking to a friend from the team online one day he asked me if I was going to stay at the hotel at Shi Cha Hai during my visit. I said that I was planning on finding cheaper accomodations (400 - 500 RMB is a bit stiff). He also asked if wanted to train with the team while I was there. I said I wouldn’t have minded, but didn’t think I would be allowed to due to all the things that had happened over the summer. I said that while I would like to train with them, I would only do that if I could go through the foreign services department in a legitimate way so that they could see I had nothing to hide and wasn’t stealing from them.

But his reply was “They’re so stupid. I’ll just talk to my coach and team manager and you can train with us. You don’t need to go through them.” But he completely missed the point. the point is that I HAD to go through the foreign services department. Sure, I could call up the coach and ask to train there myself if I wanted to, but doing that would just reinforce the belief by the foreign services department that I was prone to lying, stealing and sneaking behind their back. I would only want to train there if I could be sure that I wasn’t giving the appearance of wrong-doings.

I tried to explain this, but he kept saying “I’ll just talk to the team manager. Dont’ worry. You can train with us. I’ll take care of it.” (I’ve noticed this trend in some athletes here that they occasionally only hear what they want you to be saying, and not what is actually coming out of your mouth.) So he proceeded to talk to Cui Ya Hui to ask about my training.

And of course I knew that what he would say. Cui Ya Hui said that, while he knew me and wouldn’t mind me training with them, that if he brought me in around the foreign services department he would end up in a big fight with them and didn’t want to deal with that. That was, of course, my whole point in the beginning, but I think my friend thought that I was more concerned with just getting in to train no matter what, as opposed to doing the right thing.

So, that is basically the issue with why I can’t (and probably won’t) train at Shi Cha Hai anymore. It’s not because I don’t want to, and it’s not because I mind paying their rates (they are a bit steep, but I still don’t mind paying for what I get), and it’s not because I’m unable to do the right thing. Using my connections and various guanxi avenues to go around them isn’t an option for me because I don’t want to HAVE to do that. It’s one thing to use guanxi to help out a friend or see about getting some help with something yourself, but not if the result is that you will lose face or show yourself to be something (like a thief) which you are not.

So, the foreign services department doesn’t want me to train there, and I won’t train there without their permission. It’s a bit of a standstill, but it’s the way things go. In the meantime, I still have other options for training in Beijing (Shi Cha Hai isn’t the only school here, after all) and I still have many many options in other parts of China as well. So, it’s not such a great loss for me, training-wise. If anything I feel bad that it might reflect negatively on the people around me and their future efforts to train at Shi Cha Hai.

And I should say that, as a whole I think Shi Cha Hai is still a great place to train. I can even sympathize with the difficult task the foreign services department has in dealing with such a large number of foreigners coming to train in such a large variety of sports, in such quick succession. The logistics must be a lot to deal with so it’s natural that they should occasionally have some misunderstandings and miscommunication. I don’t want to discourage other people from training there and I’m not trying to say anything bad about the school itself. I still have a lot of respect and love for everyone there.

In any case, I was able to get in to train with the wushu class at Zhong Guo Renmin Daxue (China National People’s University) while I was here and I met some nice athletes that way, so I guess in a way I can be thankful for the Shi Cha Hai incident, because it means I have other opportunities that I didn’t even know about before.

Every cloud has a silver lining, I suppose.

In the evening I opted to stay in for the night. I spent some time up in Jason’s room talking, went down to the reception desk to register for the FREE breakfast buffet and also took a look at the gym.  While I was there I saw a familiar face on their board of trainers.  It was Shan Ming, Zhang Zi Dong’s wife and former Beijing Team member.  I had recently seen her on TV in October teaching Taiji on a variety show, and here she was again.  Unfortunately the taiji class she teaches is only on Thursday evenings and I’ll be gone by then.  But it would have been awesome to drop in and say hello to her.