wushuzilla

Archive for October, 2009

For those of you who were around here 2 years ago, It is time once again for NaNoWriMo! And I’m going to participate again. If you liked my last novel, “Dream World”, then be sure to sign up for updates this time around since I’m planning on writing another chapter in the same series.

Actually, it is a prequel.

Actually, I’m not sure what I’m writing yet…

It might be part of the same story. Or I might just decide to write something completely new.  If I don’t know yet, then I’m pretty sure you don’t either.  But isn’t the curiosity just driving you crazy?  Sure it is!  So sign up!

You can sign up by sending an e-mail to wushuzilla@gmail.com with the subject like “nanowrimo” and I will add the e-mail address to the list. Then, whenever I finish a chapter, I will send it out in PDF format for all of you to enjoy.

Ruhi and I had the opportunity to go visit a couple friends of hers who live a bit south of Xi’an in a small University town on a mountain.  Garnet and Umesh are teachers at the Xi’an FanYi Daxe (Xi’an Translation University) and we hopped on a bus to go meet up for lunch and check out the local scene.

Rather than bore you with details, I will share with you some of the photographs I took, as well as a small film I made to practice my documentary film-making skills (such as they are) and my non-linear editing gong-fu (such as it isn’t).  Enjoy!

Going Up

Lunch with Garnet and Umesh

On the Street

And here is the video of our adventures.  I hope you like it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg6bZipfaM8

And here is one for those of you in China:

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTI4Mzk5MTA0.html

You can view the rest of my photos here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/markmoran2k9b/GoingUpTheMountain

• The third day after your first time back to wushu from a break is always brutal. So happy I have a 2 day rest … #
• women's gunshu done, men's jianshu almost done. women's nanquan next! http://www.youtube.com/wushuzilla #
• We have internet at home! Yay! #
• No internet at home yet, so I'm hopping around various coffee shops in Xi'an. Yay for free wi-fi. #

So, it has been a week since we arrived in Xi’an.  Here are the highlights:

The first day we slept in as much as possible, but there was a lot to do on our first day so we couldn’t oversleep too much.  After getting ready we headed out, first to get some breakfast and check out the local market for groceries.  The best discovery we made is that there is a small stand where a lady makes my favorite type of bing.  And right next to her is my second favorite type of bing.  Just 2 – 3 RMB each.  Heaven.

The market is pretty nice in that there is an endless supply of fresh vegetables, fruits, meats and what not for very cheap prices.  I bought a huge sack of groceries there for about $6 USD, including meat, freshly made ready to cook noodles and really good tofu.

After that we took a taxi to the Muslim Quarter.  Ever since I had been here last year with Shahaub, Zane and X2, I’d been dreaming about these lamb dumplings we ate.  They were so good we ate there 3 times in 5 days.  It was my first order of business for food consumption.  While we were there I made some small videos of us walking around which you can see here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC78RrD8uYQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSqwuvjUTaw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKonjmRajN4

After eating we grabbed a motorized pedicab and got a ride to the train station.  The trip was just 5 RMB and we had a nice conversation with the driver too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWJYVFh5Y6w

At the train station we thought we would be able to pick up the 3 big suitcases we had shipped up from Shenzhen, but it turns out they were at a different facility in the North East of Xi’an.  So we grabbed a taxi and went there.  The taxi driver accidentally forgot to start the meter (this has happened to me twice in the last week, for some reason) and so we asked him to wait for us and take us and our luggage back to Xi Gao Xin, which would be a good fare for him.  He was pretty nice and even helped us get the luggage organized in the car.  Soon enough we were back home, with a ton of my stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh3Ek51WhlA

The next day we went to the electronics market to get a router and a few other things for the home.  Unfortunately the problem wasn’t the router, but our lack of an access login for our internet, so we would have to use the internet at the local coffee shops (Starbucks and S.I.T.) which was actually kind of nice.  Ruhi has spent most of the week working on her Mona Foundation documentary project while I’ve been getting the lay of the land.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtzmHxJFvl0

I spent some time going through my things, re-arranging furniture with Ruhi, cleaning up the second room and figuring out what the neighborhood is like.  I also went to Metro to buy a soup pot.

On Monday and the two of us went to the McDonald’s by RenRenLe to meet with Susan and Vivian, who work in Ruhi’s company.  After that we took another pedicab to the S.I.T. Cafe near the University to use their internet and do some work.  We got some delicious street food over there too.  Really cheap too.  I can tell I’m going to like eating in Xi’an.

Tuesday was Ruhi’s birthday!  Happy Birthday Ruhi! It is also a Holy Day for Baha’i's.  In the morning we went to the Starbucks on KeJiLu and then to the S.I.T. cafe just upstairs from it where we did lots of work during the day.  In the afternoon we also got a call that the internet technician was coming over to our place to help set things up.  So we rushed back and waited for him to show up.

During the week I had also been asking Wu Di to help introduce me to his friends on the Shaanxi Wushu Team so that I could figure out what the training options are.  My friends Lucianno and Angelica also were helping me with some information on other options.

The options I had for Xi’an were either to go to the Sports University (Xi’an Physical Education University or XPEU), train with a nanquan guy named Su Ke Feng who was teaching at a school in Xi’an, or train with the Shaanxi Wushu Team.

Each had their pro’s and cons, but first I had to make contact with someone who could help me make the best decision.  Wu Di was able to get me in touch with Wu Ya Nan, last year’s Chinese National Taiji Champion (he got silver this year) who said that he could help me out.

First he offered to take me to meet with Su Ke Feng.  We planned to meet in the evening around 4:30 or 5:00, so Ruhi and I hurridly got our internet hooked up and then headed out to meet up with WYN and his girlfriend, Bai Xue, who worked at the Sheraton and spoke some pretty good English.

They were really nice and got us some Pizza to eat, one for us and one for them.  However, the kitchen at the Sheraton had accidentally put ham on them and since they were Muslim they don’t eat any pork.  Also, on the way to Su Ke Feng’s school, we found out that (a) he would not be there during that particular evening and (b) it was REALLY far on the east side of town.  Like … REALLY far.  Here is a map for comparison:

So, we opted instead to go get some dinner together.  That turned out to be a good idea.

Why?  Because both of them live in the Muslim Quarter and they both really know the food there.  The conversation in the cab was basically like this:

WYN: What sort of food have you had here before?

US: Yang Ro Pa Muo, the lamb burger things, some lamb dumplings and stuff like that.

WYN: Ah.  You ate all the famous food.  But you haven’t had any of the best food.

US: ……….

So they took us to the part of the Muslim Quarter that foreigners never go to and fed us food that foreigners usually never get to eat.  It was quite delicious and we had a great time hanging out with them.

Afterwards we said farewell and took a taxi from the Bell Tower back home.  WYN had also said he would help me visit the Shaanxi Wushu Team’s training location, since it was so close to where we lived.  Score!

The next day I got a message from him that he would take me there on the following day (Thursday, October 22).  So I spent most of the day working on my computer while Ruhi worked on hers.

Then Thursday came.  I made my way to the Xi’an Sports Center located about 10km down the road from us (11 RMB in the taxi) and met WYN at the front gate.  He brought me in to the facility and took me to the wushu hall.  I had actually been here once before when Wu Di was staying here after last year’s nationals.  At that time he was training with the National Team and they had sequestered them prior to a wushu demonstration in Taiwan.

Here is a picture of the Wushu Hall that I took in 2008.  I also stuck in a few of Wu Di, Ma Ling Juan and Zhao Qing Jian for good measure.

Since the All China Games had just ended WYN and the rest of the professional team were on vacation.  So it was nice of him to take the time to bring me by.  He introduced me to Yuan Ming who was coaching a group of nanquan athletes and kids (about 7 of them).  I would be training with them.

On another carpet was a big group of changquan kids being coached by none other than Chu Feng Lian, the famous Fanzi Quan athlete from the 80′s and teammate with Zhao Chang Jun.  In fact several of them were learning Fanzi Quan and they had some pretty crazy techniques in the form that I hadn’t seen in the standard fanzi you see at most competitions.  Definitely the real deal.

The workout was pretty good.  I haven’t trained in almost 2 months, so I was a little out of sorts, but the good thing was that everyone was sort of on coasting mode because it was a break for the pro’s and their coaches.  It wasn’t quite as rigorous as it might have been, which was good for someone like me who was trying to get back in to the swing of wushu again.  I made it through the class and worked on some conditioning at the end (frog leaps, duck walks and wall sits).  When I left my legs were a bit on the wobbly side.

Here is a little video I took while there so you can see what the training hall looks like inside:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spu0gXU1vWU

WYN said that, until the professional team and coaches come back on the 1st, I could train with the nanquan group.  Then, when they got back we would figure out the cost and schedule for my training.  I was pretty happy to have found such a good facility so close to my home.  And after that he took me to show me which bus I would take to get there.  Just 1 RMB each way (about 12 cents).  Pretty nice.  Here is the bus route:

And so that was my first week in Xi’an.  I went from taking the train, getting my train-delivered bags, getting settled in my neighborhood, and finding a place to train (even though it is somewhat temporary).  I can’t wait to see how things develop next week!

After the last events (duilian: sparring sets) of the 11th All China Games in Binzhou, Shandong, China, Ruhi and I, along with Marla, Jenn and Wu Di, headed back to the hotel, but not before stopping to take a few photos outside the sports arena.

We were going to the hotel to take care of a little file transferring.  Wu Di had asked for the footage of her events and the various photographs I took during the competition.  Wang Xi also asked me to give Wu Di his changquan form so that he could take a look.

After that everyone was on the hungry side.  First we went down the street to our favorite restaurant with the large chef, but he was just closing up (it really was a very good restaurant).  So, we climbed in a couple cabs who took us to BoHai Road No. 6 (bohai liu lu) which had a bunch of Muslim restaurants.  We walked around until we found a good one.  It just so happened to have Zhang Ji Dong eating there with a bunch of coaches and judges (he was just certified as a judge).

But we sat at our own table and then Wu Di called over some friends to visit us.  Gao Song, coach for the Hong Kong Team (originally from the Liaoning Wushu Team) and Yang Yu Hong, super nice guy from the Shanghai Wushu Team.

We ate a bunch of food and had a nice time, but unfortunately Ruhi and I had to leave early because we were waking up at 5:00 AM and it was already almost midnight.  We said our farewells and headed back to our hotel to pack and prepare for our very long day of travel on the 15th.

5:00 AM came along a bit too soon, but we managed to pack up our things, check out of our hotel and get on to our long-distance (2.5 hour) bus to Jinan by 5:35.  The bus took off as scheduled around 5:50 and we slept uncomfortably in our seats until arriving in Jinan and taking a taxi to the train station.

When we got there I realized that one of the train tickets had fallen out of my pouch.  We were planning on upgrading to the soft-sleeper, but instead upgraded one ticket and purchased another for the berth next to it.  But something pretty amazing happened later on while we were on the train.

A few hours after departing from Jinan a conductor came up to our compartment and said that someone had turned in our ticket and that we could get a refund for the price of the original ticket.  To be honest, we were floored.  It isn’t often that someone in China comes up to you and offers to give you money.  We were so surprised we took a picture to make sure we didn’t dream it.

We shared the compartment with a nice man from Urumuqi and his business associate.  He invited us to come visit him out in Xinjiang, which we just might do someday.  It really is a beautiful place.  He showed us pictures and it actually looked a lot like Eastern Idaho.  I showed him some photos of Eastern Idaho and he agreed.

Our train made its way through Shandong, across Henan, through Zhengzhou, and then over to Shaanxi, where we rolled in to Xi’an around 12:30 AM on the 16th.  We did manage to sleep for a few hours on the train, but it was hardly a good night’s rest.  After a taxi ride from the train station to Xi Gao Xin (Xi’an High Tech Zone, where we live) it didn’t take very long to crash in to bed.

And here we are in Xi’an.  I’m about a week behind on these blogs, but I’ll get you back up to date with the next one as it will be a recap of my first week in Xi’an.  Stay tuned for my adventures getting the luggage we shipped from Shenzhen, hitting the Muslim Quarter for some Shahaub Dumplings, and our outing with last year’s Chinese National Taiji Champion!

• men's nangun finished. women's gunshu starting. http://www.youtube.com/wushuzilla #
• I am finding that the more a person brags about how great they are, the less interested i am in them. Thanks coffee shop patron! #
• new photo blog from the 11th all china games! http://www.narom.net/?p=333 #
• i'm in xi'an, but no internet at home, so no updates for a little while or until i hang out at starbucks for the afternoon. #
• competition is over. had fun hanging out with wu di, yyh, jenn, marla, ruhi and gaosong tonight. going to miss my friends! #
• wei jian 1st in combined ss/sp. wu di 4th. cao jing 1st in combined bs/st, liu xiao lei 2nd. #
• update: shandong 1st in men's gun/dao. lin fan messed up nanquan nandu. #
• 8 Men's Changquan videos are posted. Next is Women's Jianshu: http://www.youtube.com/wushuzilla #
• Update: Woman's Jianshu: Ma Ling Juan 1st, Li Na 2nd; Men's Jianshu: Wei Jain 1st, Wu Di 3rd. #
• The uploads have begun (slowly)! 11th All China Games Videos on my youtube channel. http://www.youtube.com/wushuzilla #
• Update from Jenn: ZQJ got 7th. HK Colin got last. Shandong got 1st and 3rd. #
• Update from Jenn: ZQJ got 9.72 in Daoshu and is currently in 6th with 2 left to compete, including HK Colin #
• First session was good. Men's CQ & NQ, Women's CQ & ND. ZQJ got gold. CaoJing / LXL were 1 &2. #

As previously mentioned, Ruhi and I attended the 11th All China Games in Binzhou, Shandong, China from October 12-14, 2009.

As usual it was a fun event filled with friends, food and more wushu than you can shake a stick at.  Of the 6 morning and evening sessions, I attended a little over 4 of them (sorry, not a big fan of the taiji events) and managed to get quite a bit of footage, but mostly of those people or events that were of interest to me.

I saw Ray from w1f.com at the competition, so you can expect to see all of the footage on their website sooner or later.  In the meantime, I’ve begun uploading footage to youtube.com/wushuzilla and will probably put it up on youku.com later (for those of you in China).

As for results, you can get most of those on one of the wushu forums (jiayo.com, w1f.com, etc.) and I’m not really that in to the points and scoring, preferring to watch and get inspired with all the great wushu technique and choreography.

But one thing I did this time that I haven’t done much at other competitions is focus on my photography.  I’ve been getting more in to that so I took some time to try my hand at a bit of wushu action photos. You can see my whole gallery from the competition here, but I will show you a few of my favorites so that you can get a flavor for the fever.  I’ve grouped them in to categories for your convenience:

Competitors

In the Stands

Friends

And so another wushu competition comes to a close.  I got to combine a bunch of favorite things (wushu, friends, shandong, ruhi, photography, etc) at once so I was pretty happy.  Early on the 15th we had to take off to Xi’an so I wasn’t able to celebrate Wu Di’s birthday or stay out too late on the 14th, but it was a great trip none-the-less.

Just wanted to share a change in how I plan on blogging in the future.

My personal blogs (i.e. travel blogs, what I ate today, who I’m hanging out with, etc) will be only on narom.net, which actually feeds to my facebook notes.  But if you aren’t my friend on facebook no worries.  Just read narom.net or subscribe to the RSS feed from there.

My “artist” type blogs (i.e. my work, photography, editing, writing, drawing, and related topics) will be onnaromdesigns.com, my work website, which feeds to my artist profile on alivenotdead.com.

I figured this will be a little clearer and more interesting for those who aren’t really interested in my personal life, and only want to know about my artistic endeavors.

Speaking of which, the next artist/work blog should have some of my photography work while at the 11th All China Games in Binzhou, Shandong, China.  Here is a quick pic to give you a small teaser.

We spent a week in Macau with Gordon and Maureen Kerr.  Super nice folks who were kind enough to open up their home to us.  Ruhi spent most of the week working with Gordon on a film project and I spent a lot of time in cafe’s and restaurants using free wi-fi to get some work done.  They actually have wi-fi at the Kerr home, but I like exploring too.

After dinner we headed out to Tin Sui Wai to stay with Jack.  Once again they were most hospitable as we re-packed all of our things before our 3:30 ferry to Shekou.  In fact, we were taking the ferry from Tuen Mun to Shekou, a route I had always wanted to take.  It is a better route to Shekou than the one from Hong Kong mainly due to it only taking 30 minutes, the ferry being practically empty on every route and the price being only $45 HKD.  If I had lived in Tuen Mun or Yuen Long instead of Tung Chung I would have probably gone to Shenzhen more often.

We arrived in Shekou and waited at the ferry terminal’s cafe for Ruhi’s friend, Bill.

Bill and his fiance Ting Ting helped us check in to a cheap hotel near the Shenzhen West train station followed by a meal at a local Dong Bei style restaurant.  Man it was nice to eat some Chinese food in China again.  Case in point:

After that it was time to crash for the night.  With not too much sleep the night before it was well deserved and much needed.  Here is a view from the hotel room:

On the 9th (our wedding lunaversary, btw) we had breakfast at the hotel after sleeping in and then made our way to the train station with Dan and Ting Ting.  They helped us find the luggage shipping desk where we checked our 3 large suitcases all the way to Xi’an.  Since we were going to Shandong for a week first it would make sense to have the bags waiting for us in Xi’an instead of lugging them all over the place.  Just 500RMB ($73 USD)  to ship 90KG (198 pounds) half-way across China.  Not too bad.

The Shenzhen West train station was nice and small with not much traffic.  Also, since it was the first stop on this route and right after the October holidays it was pretty empty.

In fact, for almost the entire trip we were the only two people in the soft sleeper car.  We had our whole compartment to ourselves.   The dining car was right next to ours so we would go there to eat our meals or do some work in a more comfortable environment.  It also gave us the opportunity to chat with some of the staff and learn a bit more about how Chinese trains operate.  Since this particular route wasn’t one that foreigners usually went on (slower than the other Shenzhen-Jinan route and it isn’t a popular tourist train route) we were interesting to them as well.

27 hours after learing Shenzhen on the 9th we arrived in Jinan on the 10th.  Unfortunately we JUST missed the last bus to Binzhou, but it ended up working out in our favor.  We got a bite at KFC while I called Jenn and asked her to book us a cheap Jinan hotel through ctrip.  5 minutes later we had our confirmation number SMS’ed to us and we were on our way to a 150 RMB / night business hotel with free internet.

It turns out that KFC coffee drinks are a bit on the strong side because I had a hard time getting to sleep.  It was tricky dragging myself out of bed at 7:30 AM so that we could catch our 9:30 AM bus to Binzhou.  The bus was 2.5 hours long and they were playing the LOUDEST videos in the universe.  I used my ear plugs and it was still too loud for me.  It was vibrating directly through my skull.  After some fitful sleeping we made it to Binzhou around noon and my time to check out the 11th All China Games was about to begin!

• Staying at a super cheap hotel down the street from the All China Games in Binzhou. They start tomorrow! #
• In a hotel in Jinan for the night. Heading to Binzhou tomorrow on the 9:30 bus. #
• Today's Plan: Catch a train from Shenzhen to Jinan #
• Sitting in a cafe in Shenzhen. I'm back in China!! #