On any days that I don’t have wushu, like this past Thursday, I will either blog something random and interesting, or I will take a day off from the blogosphere and perhaps focus on less important things — like earning a living.

So, in keeping with this brand new tradition, I will bring you up to date with the last week of my non-wushu life here in China.

I actually blogged a bit about this on Tuesday so there isn’t really too much to talk about. But here are the updates:

Travel Plans

Ruhi suggested looking in to getting a plane ticket down to Guangzhou instead of taking the train and, after looking at the ticket prices, I realized that it would only be another 50 RMB to take a plane instead of the train. On Friday I called up CTrip and booked a ticket leaving next Thursday afternoon.

Unfortunately Ruhi had to go to Beijing first, so I bid her farewell after we grabbed something to eat at Subway Sandwiches on Ke Ji Lu. Here are a few pictures I took of her before saying goodbye.

I just spoke with her a few minutes ago and she is safe and sound in Beijing as of Saturday evening.  She will be train-ing down to Guangzhou on Sunday/Monday and then take a quick trip to Zhuhai and Macau.

Meanwhile, I will spend the week working and wushu-ing until Thursday afternoon when I will fly to Guangzhou and spend the night in Hong Kong with Jack.  Then right back to Guangzhou the next morning to catch the train to Xi’an with Ruhi.  Probably the quickest trip to Hong Kong I’ve ever taken.  I will be in Southern China a total of 20 hours before heading back, and in Hong Kong for only 10 or so.

I feel like such a globetrotter!

Chinese Studies

I wanted to write a little bit about my Chinese studies too, since that is one of the things besides work and wushu that I have been focusing on these days.

I have both of my Tutors (Grace and Ada) on a rotating 2-week schedule.  So I meet with each one on alternating Saturdays.  Unfortunately due to a miscommication I wasn’t able to meet with Grace today so this is my first week off of Chinese tutoring since starting.

With my tutors I generally focus on three things:

First, we go over a specific topic that I want to learn vocabulary for.

For example, last time I met with Ada I asked her to teach me vocabulary related to learning Chinese.  Words such as “noun” (名词), “verb” (动词) and the like, as well as a couple phrases related to learning language like 废寝忘食 (Lit. “Less Sleep, Forget Eat” meaning you are so busy studying you don’t have time to sleep or eat) and 临急抱佛脚 (Lit. “Grabbing Buddha’s Feet” meaning a last ditch effort to ask for divine assistance with a test).

Last time I met with Grace I asked her to teach me words related to religion and philosophy such as 精神 (Spirit), 灵魂 (Soul) and 人类 (humanity).  Also how to express some of my own thoughts in to Chinese such as 我觉得所有的宗教同宗同源一位神. (“I think that the purpose of religion is to unify people”).

Second, we review my study of flash cards and I have them test me on how well I’ve learned them.

And Third, I ask them to recite a page from a book or some passage for me so that I can listen and practice speaking in the right way.  Basically providing me with a pronounciation guide.

On thing I’ve learned is that I have to limit the amount of time we talk about new vocabulary.  With Grace we ended up doing a whole hour on new vocabulary, but since I listen to the lessons after we meet during the week (while walking, working, etc.) an hour of new words is a bit too much to absorb.  20 – 30 minutes is just about perfect so I will try to limit the time spent on that area in the future. Also, I need to ask them for more examples of useage so that I get a better idea of how to use the new words.

Besides meeting with Tutors I also am working on learning all the radicals (all 214 of them) through my flash-card study.  This week I am going to start incorporating some actual characters/words in to my flash card study too, since learning radicals doesn’t actually help improve my useable vocabulary very much and I really need to start learning words.

I found a list of the Chinese words based on frequency of use, so I’m going to use that as my base for learning.  I just have to learn 1,000 to have an 89% comprehension of most written texts. Thats not too bad and I think that is certainly do-able over the next year.  So far since starting this just under 2 months ago, I’ve memorized arond 70 radicals.  Based on that rate I should have them all memorized by the time Spring Festival rolls around.  And by the end of 2010 I hope to have all 1,000 of the most frequent characters memorized (fortunately I already know at least 100 or 200 of them so that gives me a head-start).

A few other things I do when learning Chinese (or am going to start doing shortly) are …

1. Learn Chinese Songs: There are several sites that list out the characters, pinyin and translation for popular, folk and patriotic Chinese songs.  I’m going to try to pick up a few so that I can sing along at KTV or just belt out the Chinese National Anthem while walking through U.S. Customs and Immigration.

2. Watch Chinese TV shows: I got Doreamon, one of my all-time favorite Japanese animation shows, on DVD.  They speak Chinese which is going to be helpful with my listening practice.  I don’t have to memorize all the words, but I want to get used to listening to simple (i.e. animation-style) Chinese expressions and vocabulary on a regular basis.  I just wish that the subtitles weren’t in traditional characters …

3. Read Chinese Children’s Books: I’ve picked up a couple simple texts to practice reading and understanding.  The best books have just Chinese with supporting pinyin and no English so that I have to figure out the meaning of what I’m reading.  Just like a Chinese kid would have to do when they were learning to read for themselves.  I figure the best way to learn a language is organically, just like a child does.  So thats what I’m trying to do.

4. Writing a Chinese Journal: I won’t be starting this one until I’ve learned more characters, but I plan (probably around Spring Festival or maybe a bit earlier) to write a small journal in Chinese and have my tutors read it over and correct my grammar and word-useage.  I think that besides reading Chinese, writing Chinese is probably one of the best ways to get a grasp of the written language.  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll even start blogging in only Chinese next year.  Anything is possible!

In case you haven’t seen it, here are a couple pictures of me with Grace, one of my tutors.  Just to prove that I’m actually making an attempt to learn some Chinese while living in China.

Besides Work, Wushu, Chinese and upcoming Travel there isn’t a ton of other things to blog about.  I have started up on my novel again.  I got really far behind in November with my illness and Anhui adventures so I decided to do my nanowrimo in December instead.  I finished another chapter earlier today and hope to get more out the door in the near future.

Its also been nice slowly getting to meet Ruhi’s Friends, and even making a few of my own through Wushu or learning Chinese.  I hope to get that English class with the wushu athletes going soon so that I can get some wushu socializing on the calendar.

By the way, after blogging about the smoggy weather, EVERY day since then has been sunny, warm and pleasant.  Its hard to believe it is December in China, but go figure.  Maybe I need to complain about the weather more often in my blog.

Until next time ….

Related posts:

1. (Sm/F)og, Three Things and a Bonus (12/1)
2. Xi’an Week 1: From the Train to Training
3. 48 Hours to Southern China

Here are a few comparative shots from the morning and the afternoon so that you can get an idea of what it looked like from our living room window:

And just so you don’t think it looks like this all the time, here is a picture from just a month or so ago:

See?  Blue skies!

Anyway, back to the blog …

Three main things happened today in the World of Mark.  Well, okay … more than three things.  But three things that I’m going to blog about.

First, was figuring out what to do about our visa renewal.

We spent most of the early hours of the day (i.e. before lunch) going to the visa office and trying to get an extension on our tourist visas.  As we are in the process of closing down Ruhi’s company (after which we will probably start up a new one in 2010) we are technically in China as tourists.  As a result, I either have to leave the country every 30 days (60 for Ruhi) or get an extension.

As you will recall, last month I left the country and went to Hong Kong, only to end up spending a week in Anhui with the flu.  This time we decided to get a 30 day extension instead.

That is, until we found out that the cost of a 30 day extension for U.S. Citizens is 940 RMB ($140 USD), which is also the price of a full one-year multiple entry visa.  But only for 30 days!  Well, for less than 940 RMB we can just take the train down to Guangdong and hop across the border, so why spend all that extra money?

So, on Friday Ruhi will be traveling to Beijing for some meetings.  To save some money I will be going directly to Guangdong from Xi’an.  Sorry to Wu Di, Jenn, Chris, et al. for not being able to make it over to the capital this time around.  But Ruhi will be there in my stead for 2 days.

On Wednesday I’m going to catch a train down to Guangzhou and then hop across the border.  Ruhi will have already been staying in Guangzhou for a couple days and on Friday afternoon we will catch a train back up and get home on Saturday morning.  This time around I opted for the faster train, as the slower one is obviously not an option.  Who wants to go all the way to Anhui anyway?

Here is a map of Ruhi’s journey.  As I said, my route is just a straight back and forth from Xi’an to Guangzhou.

The second thing that happened today was a revamping of our home.

Yue A-yi was here to clean today so we took the opportunity to swap our bedroom and the second room around.  After several hours we have set up the place so that we’re both working in our “spare” room with all the natural light, and our sleeping room is the darker, more comfortable one that gets much warmer.  Plus we moved some furniture around in the main room.  I love optomizing my living space.  According to Ruhi I get a twinkle in my eye when I am in that mode.

And the third thing is (hopefully) a change to my training routine.

I called Yuan Ming earlier in the day and asked him for Coach Zhang’s phone number.  He didn’t have it, so I had to relay the message through him.  I told him that (1) I would not be able to make it today and that (2) I wanted to switch my workouts from the afternoon at 3:00 to the morning at 9:00.  He said he would talk to Coach Zhang for me.

In the evening I gave him a call but it turned out that Coach Zhang wasn’t there today.  Tomorrow morning they also don’t have training because there is a meeting, so I will just go in the afternoon as usual.  Then, assuming Coach Zhang is there, I can ask him about switching to the morning session.

Why switch to mornings?  Well, for one, it will make me more productive with my work.  I will have a bigger chunk of time to get things done during the afternoon and evening.  Also, I think it is better, physically, to exercise during the earlier hours of the day as it sets up your body’s metabolism and function better for the rest of your waking hours.

Plus, I just feel better when I train in the morning vs. the afternoon.

So, that is what happened today.  Tomorrow it is back to the wushu grind stone.  Today they had strength training, so tomorrow, I”m not really sure what is happening.  I’m hoping it is wushu, but it might be running too.  I’ll just play it by ear and make sure I am prepared for any contingency.

Until tomorrow …. here is a bonus picture that I swiped from Wu Di’s camera in Binzhou.  Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. 48 Hours to Southern China
2. Binzhou to Xi’an
3. The Week in Review (12/5)

… hmm .. maybe explain why you are doing that first.  Otherwise things could get weird.

I’m actually writing this on the 15th of November and post-dating it for tomorrow when I will be traveling from Fuyang to Xi’an (barring any unforseen snow storms).  I also wanted to post up some information on recent videos I’ve updated to my youtube channel and some changes I’ll be making to my website too.

Videos

I recently started putting up the 1996 China Nationals footage that I have on my hard drive up on youtube.  It isn’t the whole competition by a long shot, but it should give you enough of a feeling for the stuff there were doing that year.  Some great performances by the likes of Liu Hai Bo and Liu Qing Hua so be sure to check that out.  So far I’ve put all my women’s footage, including some traditional events (because they used to rock it Old School, back in the day), as well as men’s Chang Quan.  The men’s events will follow during the week.

You can see my youtube channel at http://youtube.com/wushuzilla

Here’s a quick one of LQH’s long fist:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvrNfWI0mVA

Updates

If you haven’t had a chance to sign up for my twitter feed, you can do that as well.  Just head over to twtitter.com/wushuzilla.  I also have a facebook fan page for those of you who want to keep in the loop through that network.  facebook.com/pages/wushuzillacom (I should probably change that name ….).

I’m going to be slowly rolling out changes to my website to help consolidate all of the content in to one location.  Mainly to do with my videos.  Having them on youtube is great, and it is good to have them organized into play lists there, but sometimes I think people just want to have a page where they can go and see all of the videos that they can watch listed together in an easy to read, chronological format.  So, one page has all the playlists for a specific competition, for example, instead of circulating through a ton of different pages on youtube through trial, error and lucky “related videos” finds.

If you haven’t noticed by now, the content for both narom.net and wushuzilla.com are the same.  I set it up so that the themes look different based on the URL you are visiting from, but the content remains the same.  It should keep me from having to repost everything across multiple networks.  I’m also going to try to figure out the deal with my alivenotdead accounts.  Having two of them is becoming somewhat problematic.  But more on that situation later (but any suggestions you have in the meantime would be appreicated though).

I am going to try to be a bit more responsible and accessible through my blog and online networks as well, so feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions about something.  I’m more than happy to help out if I can.  Especially if you have suggestions on ways to make thigns easier for visitors to wushuzilla.com. (Keeping in mind that this current design is PURELY TEMPORARY!)

I would say that probably most requests would be for specific videos, which is one of the reason all the 1996 stuff is going up right now, but keep in mind that I’m eventually going to put up everything I have online (if it isn’t already there) so if you are patient enough you will see it all there anyway.  I do get unusual requests from time to time so if you are looking for some esoteric or hard-to-find, let me know and if  I have it I’ll try to post it up for you.

I also have a few ideas for some regular features here, but I’m going to ease in to those gradually.  No need to rush things.  I’m not going anywhere (I hope).

I think is most of what I wantecd to write.  If not, I’ll post it up for the next update.  In the meantime, cross your fingers and dot your eyes, and if we’re all lucky, by this time tomorrow I’ll be back in Xi’an!  And hopefully soon thereafter back to training.

P.S.

Oh, by the way, my sickness is dying out almost as quickly as it came up.  I just have some residual coughing from a throat tickle right now, but barely even a stuffed up nose or a tingling head to speak of so that is pretty good news.  Yay for my immune system!

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