Jinan - Day 1 (11.13): A False Start in Shandong

2006.11.14 - 6:47

china. shandong. jinan - hotel room

I just slept for 12 hours. I felt like I was coming down with something last night so I probably needed it. I woke up a few times during the night and felt super groggy and out of it, so I probably managed to fight off a possible illness. Good thing too, since Li De Hua’s ( pic) wushu class starts at 8:30 a.m.! After yesterday’s false-start I want to be sure to not look like a total goober in class today.

But, I’m sort of getting ahead of myself here, aren’t I? Let me start at the beginning of this particular adventure so you can know what I’m talking about …

It all started a few months back when Jennifer ( pic) told me that her and Wang Wei were going to be coming to Shandong for Wang Wei’s Brother, Wang Fei’s ( pic) wedding. I definitely wanted to meet up with them and at the same time, it seemed like a great opportunity for me to finally go train with Wang Wei’s alma mata: the Shandong Wushu Team ( pic).

So, after much planning and going back and forth, I had arranged a month of travels. The first leg (11.12 - 11.24) was a trip to Jinan, the capital of Shandong, where I would train with the Shandong Wushu Team for 2 weeks. After that I would meet up with Jennifer and Wang Wei and go to Heze, a smaller town near the border of Shandong and Henan, for Wang Fei’s wedding. I would stay there for a week (11.24 - 11.30), also training wushu, until Jennifer, Wang Wei and I would take a train up to Beijing. I had made arrangements through Wu Di to train with the team for a few days (12.1 - 12.5) while in Beijing. The final leg of my trip would have me going to Korea for a week (12.5 - 12.11) and going to a coastal tourist area with Jisue ( pic). Then I would fly back to Shanghai and resume my life there.

My journey started on Sunday, November 12, when I boarded a China Eastern flight in Shanghai and arrived at Jinan “International” Airpot around 2:00 p.m. I was picked up by Lu Guo Qing, “Lu Laoshi” ( pic), who was previously the head coach of the Shandong Wushu Team, but has since been promoted to the Team Leader for the Shandong Sanda Team. (Team Leader is the person all the coaches report to.) He was the one making the arrangements for me to train with the team.

The Jinan “International” Airport

After an uneventful drive into town he helped me check in to my hotel, the ShanYin DaJiuDian ( pic), located just a couple hundred meters from the entrance to the Shandong Municipal Wushu Insititute ( pic). I had stayed here once before during my trip to Shandong in November of 2005 when I had first met Lu Laoshi and hung out with Jennifer and Wang Wei.

I was left to relax in my hotel room and after unpacking and settling in Lu Laoshi came to pick me up and we rode up the street in a van to a restaurant where we had dinner with a whole bunch of people. It was mostly coaches there. A few people I had met during last year’s trip. Li De Hua, who is currently the coach for the Shandong Men’s Team (and whom some of you might know from his 1997 All China Games 3rd Place award in Changquan ( vid) against the likes of Yuan Wen Qing ( vid), Liu Hai Bo ( vid) and Jiang Bang Jun ( vid)) I had met the previous year, as well as another older generation coach who’s name I had forgotten ( pic). Aside from them it was pretty much a table full of older people talking with thick Shandong accents about topics I had not yet developed the vocabulary to understand. There was one guy who really looked a lot like Andy Lau though … ( pic)

It was still quite fun, and we ate more than our share of the world’s food stores. Since I don’t drink alcohol I was toasting and being toasted with glasses of water and I was told that I needed to toast each person at the table in turn. There were about 12 people, and including the group toasting and getting toasted myself I think I had about 30 glasses of water. At the end it was all I could do to keep it from coming back up the way it went down. I managed to make it back to my hotel in one piece, very well hydated, and with the clearest urine you’ve never seen. I even took a quick walk around the neighborhood to get some supplies (toothpast, shampoo, etc.) and walk off some of the food.

Tooooo much food!

I was told to go to the wushu guan ( pic) at 9:30 the next morning and meet up with Lu Laoshi at 10:00. That seemed a little late for me, but I assumed that they knew best so the next morning I got up (still full from the dinner!) got ready, and made my way to the wushu guan. It seemed that all the athletes were already in the midsts of their forms, which meant it was at least an hour since class had started. I was greeted by Li De Hua who introduced me to Yang Laoshi, the current head coach for the Shandong Wushu Team. She was super nice. They told me to go down to the last carpet and stretch and warm up.

I think they weren’t really sure what to do with me, because I ended up doing that for pretty much the whole morning. I didn’t really mind though because I was doing that next to the carpet with Cao Jing. I have to say that previously I had only seen her a couple times at various competitions and she never really struck me as having such amazing wushu (as compared to the general everyone-is-pretty-much-amazing level that presides here in China) but then I saw her practice.

When you only see someone do wushu once in a blue moon at a competition ( vid). you don’t really get the full impact of their skill level. It’s just a quick one and a half minute blurb that is hopefully their better techniques on display. But to watch someone practice for 2 hours you get a much better grasp of their skill level. To be honest, it’s the best women’s broadsword I’ve seen in a long time. I’d say Liu Xiao Lei ( pic) is also of a similar level, but aside from those two, I haven’t really seen broadsword like that since at least the previous generation. (Maybe Wang Xiao Na ( pic) too, but I really prefer her staff and long fist, to be honest.) I guess the three of them are pretty much the holy trinity of current women’s dao/gun competitors ( pic).

During the class Lu Laoshi came by and said hello. I thought he might tell me where I should go to train, but he left after a while. At the end of class I spoke with this one woman coach whom I met last year (and don’t remember the name of) ( pic) and she said that there was class at 2:30 in the afternoon. I decided to come back then.

On the way to my hotel I picked up some 1 RMB food at a stall nearby and ate it in my room while checking things online. I chatted with Jennifer on the phone too, and she said she would talk to Wang Wei about the coaching thing and figure out where I’m supposed to go. I took a bath and soaked my body in hot water for a while to get the soreness out of my muscles (how can I possible get sore from just stretching and walking through my form??) and at 2:00 I headed over to the wushu guan once again.

An empty wushu guan before afternoon class

The same thing sort of happened again. I got to the wushu guan and the female coach asked me who I was training with. I said I hadn’t been told and she kind of laughed. So, I sat there warming up and stretching. But you know what happens when you warm up and stretch for an hour? It actually starts to do more harm than good. I was cooling down and warming up so much I started feeling like last week’s leftovers. Yang Laoshi came up to me after a while and said that Cao Jing’s group was doing strength training until 4:00 and I could go join them or wait for them to come back. I said anything was okay … but that basically ended up with me staying there watching people do wushu for a while longer.

After a while I got a call from Jennifer and Wang Wei. We did a few calls, they called Lu Laoshi (who is Wang Wei’s uncle, by the way) and Wang Wei talked to Li De Hua (he’s the men’s coach, by the way) and it all got sorted out.

The main point of miscommunication is that we weren’t aware of the situation here in Shandong. Typically when I go train with some team (like in Beijing or Shanghai) I’m told “Go to this place at this time and train with this person. They’re expecting you” … it’s very much planned for me. But here in Shandong it was self-directed, to a degree. Yang Laoshi was told I was going to be training there, but where, when and who I trained with were all pretty much up to me. I ended up making arrangements with Li De Hua to train with his group the next morning. In hind sight I sort of wish I had arranged to train with Cao Jing’s group, but it isn’t like I’m not working out 30 feet away from them anyway.

So, I came back to my hotel. For some reason I was really tired. Even though I was watching wushu I felt very sleepy and kept nodding off. For me, that means I’m REALLY tired. It also felt like I might be coming down with something (possibly from the change in temperature from warmer Shanghai to colder Shandong) so I went back to the hotel. I changed and went down to the restaurant for some dinner. I had some veggies, rice and a plate of Tang Cu Li Ji (Sweet and Sour Pork) ( pic), which was amazingly delicious. It’s a regional specialty and it was as tasty as I remember it.

After that I felt really tired so I went back to my room and fell asleep around 6:30 p.m. And that brings us up to date. I woke up at 6:30 a.m. and prepared myself for my first wushu class with the Shangdong Wushu Team!

Click here to view my Shandong 2006 Photo Album