Wenzhou (5/18 - 5/20): Men's Wushu National Qualifiers

WARNING: This will be a long blog.  You have been warned.

Also, I will be putting up wushu videos from the competition later on, but I'll update my blog when that happens.

The week before my trip to Wenzhou wasn't all that action-packed so I'll save you guys from a boring blog by not really putting one up for the 4 days of boring text (MORE boring than usual, I mean).

The main point of excitement was getting my ticket and visa for China, but even that was kind of "meh".  So .. whatever.

Anyway. on Friday I left work around 5 p.m. and caught the Star Ferry to Kowloon to catch the TurboJet to Shenzhen airport for my flight to Wenzhou.  For those of you who don't know where Wenzhou is, allow me to educate you ...

Right smack on the belly of the Chicken, as they say.

The TurboJet was uneventful (I slept) and at the airport my flight was delayed about one hour (no surprise), but when I got to the gate I realized that it was actually a multi-destination flight.  That means I would be going first to Jinjiang in Fujian and then we would continue on to Wenzhou.

That's sort of like this:

And in case you didn't see that, JinJiang is literally one town up from Xiamen where Pat and Stephen used to live.

The Wenzhou airport was pretty small, but it was late so I didn't really pay much attention when we arrived.  Their cab system was rather interesting.  Basically 100 cab drivers standing outside the front door trying to get people to use their service.  At first I thought these were the "illegitimate" drivers that you sometimes see outside airports, but these were actually real cabs.

I grabbed one and had them take me to the hotel where the Beijing team and a couple of my friends were staying, Hua Yuan Da Jiu Dian.

When I arrived I met Wu Di in the lobby (of alive not dead featured artist fame) and after I checked in we went to go visit Alfred and Shahaub in their room.  We spent a few hours hanging out and gabbing but it was getting late and we had to get up early the next morning so I ended up going to bed around 3 a.m. or so.

Shahaub and Wu Di

Wu Di taking advantage of a sleeping Alfred

Saturday

I woke up at 7:30, got dressed and met Wu Di, Alfred and Shahaub in the lobby where we grabbed on of the athlete busses to the Ti Yu Zhong Xin (Sports Center) about 15 minutes away.  I got to see a bunch of my pals from the Beijing Team, and at the tournament also saw some of my friends from Shandong and Shanghai too.  It's great meeting up with old friends.

Riding the Wushu Bus

Athletes waiting for the walk of nations .. err .. provinces

Each session got progressively more crowded

Alfred and Shahaub

Athletes all lined up

Beijing in Blue

Zhao Qing Jian

Wu Di with HK Team coach, Hei Zhi Hong

The first event was taiji quan, and if I had known that I would have slept in a bit more.  Since we were all on just a few hours of sleep most of us were dozing off from time to time.  After about 50 competitors and 3 hours of taiji it was time to go back to the hotel.

Taiji jump kick

This guy REALLY wants to go to the Olympics

We were sleepy

Lunch was with the athletes, where I met another old friend Guo Yi Na from the Guangdong team.  She was coaching now, which explained why she was there at an all-men's competition.  For those of you who don't remember her, here is a reminder:

No wires ... just pure raw leg strength.  Here is another picture from the last time I hung out with her in Shanghai last fall:

Guo Li Na and Liu Xiao Lei

In any case, a bunch of us ate lunch at the cafeteria in the hotel and then we went to Wu Di and Zhao Qing Jian's room to hang out.  Mostly athletes hanging out, playing cards and what not. 

Lunch of champions

Wu Di gives his pouty, sexy look

Guo Li Na, Zhao Qing Jian and Wu Di

Alfred and Guo Li Na

The afternoon session was Men's Nanquan, my favorite event!  I was pretty stoked so I made sure my video camera was all charged up and I was raring to go.

I got to see a few great competitors, including my old training buddy, Xie Fu Yan from Shanghai, and Li Neng Miao from Beijing.  They both did well, qualifying for Nationals in October.

But, amazingly, I was so tired from my lack of sleep the night before that I started nodding off.  I walked over to the practice gym with Wu Di where a lot of the Nanquan guys were preparing to compete, but I was too tired to enjoy it so I went back to the hotel and took a nap.

Xu Ming Hu

I slept pretty much right up to the evening event, which was Men's Changquan.  Again, a TON (literally) of competitors, but I was mainly there to see some of my friends compete -- Yang Yu Hong, Zhao Qing Jian, Liang Qiao, etc..  All of them except for Liang Qiao qualified so I was pretty happy about that. 

Lining up for Men's Chang Quan

Yang Yu Hong's silk

Yang Yu Hong right after he competed in Chang Quan

Afterwards we all headed back to the hotel.  Shahaub, Alfred and I decided to go out to get some food but Wu Di had to rest up for the next day's competition so we said farewell and grabbed a cab.  We asked him to take us somewhere decent to eat (it was after 10 p.m. by that point) so he took us a mile or so down the street to a nice little spot.

Actually, we really enjoyed it there.  And not because of the uber-cute waitress.  But it was just a nice place to chill and relax.  We got some dumplings, rice and various dishes. 

After the meal we decided to walk back to the hotel.  It was just over one mile, as you can see from this gmap-pedometer link.  After that it was time for bed.

Dumplings baby!

Random Pig Parts

My partners in Crime

A colorful dish

Sunday

Since the morning was Men's Taiji Sword I decided to sleep in and get some rest.  It was a good thing too.  After I got up and got all my things packed, I met with Shahaub and Alfred and we caught a cab to the Sports Center to grab a bite at McDonald's before the competition.

We had fun telling each other stories and relaxing.  I should also make note of the fact that the whole weekend was basically us talking about Heroes (it was a few days before the Season finale), comic books and wushu.  Aside from those three topics I don't think we really spent more than 5 minutes on anything else.

What? 'Choo talkin' to mee?

Alfred laying the smack down

A sleepy Xu Ming Hu

So it was time to watch men's straightsword.  The event started at 2:30, but I had to leave at 4:15 to get to the airport so I was hoping that I would be able to see Wu Di before I left.

I did manage to see Liang Qiao and Wei Jian, which was great.  But unfortunately I left just a few minutes before Wu Di went up.  I'm glad he posted up the video on his blog though, or I would never have known how he did (6th in straightsword, 4th in spear).

The taxi ride was tricky since no one wanted to take me there during rush hour but I managed to find a willing driver and we made our way to the airport.  I guess the airport is so far out of the way that no one really ever wants to go out there.  We even had some other taxi driver with a passenger in their car ask my driver if he could give us his passenger to take the rest of the way.  Talk about desperate.

When we arrived I was able to get a better look at the airport.  It was basically the same set up as a train station.  Not even a real terminal or gates.  Just a big room with some doors to the tarmac.  You line up when your flight is ready to board, then you board a bus and it takes you to where your plane is parked.  I guess this is what it was like before they had these super international airport systems that now populate our globe.

The "terminal" at Wenzhou "international" airport

Basically just a parking lot for planes

They actually had an "international" arrivals area, but it looked like a ghost town

In case you didn't know where you were

The flight back was direct so I arrived in Shenzhen without any problems.  I grabbed the bus across the border to Hong Kong and amazingly it dropped me off literally across the street from my office.  Not too bad!  I ended up getting to the office where I met up with Terence, but I will leave the Hong Kong stuff for the next blog entry.  This one has gone on long enough!