Jinan - Day 3 (11.15): Will YingWen for Wushu

2006.11.15 - 22:50

china. shandong. jinan - hotel room

Amazingly my body only took a day or so to adapt to waking up at 6:30 in the morning. It must have been that 12 hours of sleep I got the other day. After waking up, taking a shower and getting some breakfast in the cafeteria I chatted online with some friends for 30 minutes before heading off to the wushu guan.

Originally the folks in the medical clinic had told me to come by every time before class so they could help tape up my ankle, and even though I said “Even at 8:30 in the morning?” to which they replied “When the athletes are practicing we are always open” I knew in my gut that they would not be open before I started class. And my suspicions were correct. While they might “open” when the athletes are practicing, I needed them open BEFORE I had to practice, which was like 8:10. Needless to say their door was locked so I went upstairs. On the way to class I dropped by a small sports supply store next to the school’s front gate and picked up another ankle wrap. My left ankle had started hurting the day before so I thought it would be smart to wrap them both up. Better safe than sorry.

Once again I was the 2nd one in the room. Li De Hua was there before me and I went to work putting on my ankle wraps and my left petallar support. I opted out of the right knee sleeve for today. And then class started. I joined in with the joint warm up, running around and stretching stuff. The interesting thing is, about 5 - 10 minutes into the running my foot starts to hurt pretty bad, but it’s not due to any injury. The truth is, when I wrap my ankle with the wrap and it goes around the foot, the pressure on my instep makes my foot cramp up a bit when I walk (or jog). So, I kinda limp around a bit, and the coaches think it’s because of my injuries, but the truth is it is because of the thing I’m doing to help contain the injury. How is that for irony?

And while having my instep cramp up kinda hurts, it’s not as painful as it would be if I didn’t have the ankle support while something bad happens to me. So I bit my lip and did the best I could.

While I was warming up in class the women’s coach came up to me and told me that Lu Laoshi had given him a call and asked him to tell me that Lu Laoshi was going out of town until next week. So, I’m really on my own now, huh? Just as well, I like being self-sufficient (to a degree).

So, practice as a whole went quite well (aside from the foot cramps). Two main things happened that are worth writing about.

The first thing is that Li De Hua wasn’t there and left Chen Li in charge of his group. She is sort of his assistant coaching person. (Both of the men’s and women’s team have an assistant person who helps the coach with their group.) She saw that I was hobbling a bit and put me and the Wu Di Look-a-like Nanquan guy on the carpet with the girls from Li De Hua’s group. There were 5 of them today. 3 were practicing duilian, 1 was the nanquan girl and 1 was a broadsword girl. Ding Hai Juan wasn’t there today, possibly because of whatever was bothering her in the medical clinic the day before.

So, as a result of me practicing on the blue carpet I was with the women athletes, who were much more chatty and friendly than the guys had been the day before. The Nanquan girl, who’s name is Yuan Feng Ling, actually remembered me this time around. Well, not specifically but she was like “I’ve met you before, haven’t I?”. Then began the English Inquisition. (Not quite as deadly as the Spanish Inquisition, but just as intense.)

Her and another team member started pelting me with tons of English language questions. “How do you say ‘Faster’ in English?” “How do you say ‘How long have you studied wushu’ in English?” “How do you say ‘I would like to invite you to my birthday party’ in English?” (But did I actually get invited to anyone’s birthday? Of course not.) After each rotation of sections Yuan Feng Ling or the other girl would ask me question after question. It got to the point where I think they were more interested in learning English than practicing wushu. (Well, that probably goes without saying for some of the athletes…). Chen Li came by a few times to call them “ben dan” and smack them on the legs with the flat of a sword when they weren’t paying attention. It was funny in a “I hope that doesn’t happen to me” kind of way.

She explained to me that it’s been a long time since she’s practiced English so she was trying to remember how to say different phrases. But the nice thing is that helping her with English opened the door to talking with them about other things. We chatted about this and that … nothing specific per se, but it was nice to have a conversation with the athletes. In any case, I came to realize that they were all super friendly, if not initially a little on the shy side.

It really got me thinking about the English for Wushu idea though. I have yet to go to a wushu school in China (not that I’ve been to a TON of them) where there are not athletes who have a desire and inclination to practice or learn English. So, there is definitely a market there. And I remember from Jennifer’s experience doing a “Teach English in Exchange for Learning Wushu” program that it’s a feasible idea. With all the wushu athletes in the world who can speak English and would love to come to China to train, why wouldn’t it be possible to set up some sort of exchange program between Chinese wushu schools and foreigners who practice wushu? You could do a 6 month or 12 month program where they come to train in wushu 1 or 2 times a day, and they teach English for an hour every afternoon … or maybe 3 times a week. Even if it’s wushu-realted English, that wouldn’t be so bad. Half the time they ask me for wushu terms in English anyway (”How do you say ‘Kick higher’ in English?”, etc.).

Anyway, it’s just a thought I had. I’ve actually suggested it to some of the athletes and coaches where I train in Shanghai and they were enthusiastic about it. (I think Yang Laoshi actually tells people that I’m the ad hoc English teacher for his students…) The main difficulty is that you’d have to find people who could take the time off from their lives back home and who didn’t have any recurring bills or loan payments to make, since it would probably be a straight trade of English Teaching for Lodging, Food and Wushu. Perhaps a college student could take a year off of school to do it? I don’t know … I haven’t really thought it out that much.

The second thing worth writing about from practice was my physical condition. Maybe it was the basics, or maybe it was all the running around and longer stretching periods here in Shandong, but I felt good today. That is to say, my body felt warm and ready for a good workout. And I was lighter and quicker than I was the day before. My horse stance was lower and less painful, my general physical condition was good, I was more flexible. Maybe it is the better air quality in Jinan, but I really felt more on top of my game. I even got some “jiayou!”s from the girls when I was doing my form (which, in hind sight, might have been more from pity than excitement, but I’ll take what I can get). I made it pretty much all the way through the class and even though it wasn’t quite as intense as yesterday (due primarily to the “How do you say ___ in English” pauses in the rotation) it was still a good workout for me.

Towards the end of class a bunch of older ladies came in. One of them saw me and came up to try to practice her English. It turns out they were a group of women practicing Taiji. She was from Heze (the 3rd person I’ve met from Heze, oddly enough) but I’m not sure if that applied to the rest of her group.

After class a few of the girls in my group started looking at the wushu videos from Nationals, last year’s Shandong trailers and the Shanghai Team trailers I have on my cell phone. That led to questions about what I do for a living and who I work for kind of came up in the conversation. When you say “I make websites” and they say “what website?” it’s hard to keep it a secret for too long. I try to downplay it as much as I can but apparently no matter how many times I say “It’s just a job. It’s not that big of a deal”, I can’t really take away the “cool” factor of whom I work for.

Oh well .. it’s an interesting conversation topic, I guess.

Lots of stalls of food along the street

After class I grabbed some food from the alley across the street. A chicken leg and thigh for 6 rmb and a meat-filled bing for 0.5 rmb. I couldn’t even finish it all because of the quantity of it. That’s less than US$1 for a lunch I couldn’t even finish. If I ever decide to live on $5 a day, I’m moving to Jinan.

I came back to my room, ate my lunch and did some updates on my blog and chatted with folks while doing some web work. That pretty much lasted most of the afternoon and soon enough it was time for dinner.

This time I decided to partake of the restaurant’s dumplings. They have a counter where the dumplings are made fresh to order. They make the wrappers, create the filling and boil them right there. Then they bring them, piping hot to your table for you to eat. For some reason a single order has 18 dumplings and it was way more than I could eat. I tried to get through them all but only made it to 16. And by that point I was pretty stuffed. But the amazing thing is, for this entire dumpling feast it only cost 8 RMB. That’s about a buck. And I didn’t even order the cheaper ones. They had some 6 RMB dumpling plates too! It was really enough dumplings for 2 people, but I was pretty hungry.

Delicious Dumplings A’Plenty

After the dumpling feast I went back to my room to finish up the work for my parent’s website. It seems like I’ve been working on it forever, huh? Well, after some going back and forth with the content and information and getting everything worked out it looks like it’s just about done. I couldn’t get my FTP working but once it is I’ll be able to upload it and you can see what it ended up looking like. I worked on the website pretty much until I went to bed around 11:00 p.m. Getting up at 6:30 will not be a pleasant ordeal.

View my Shandong 2006 Gallery here