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The end.
Okay, no. The coat was a pretty big highlight of the day though, aside from being in Beijing now, and all.
But let me begin at more of the beginning. Which means we travel several days back to Qufu.
Qufu was cold. Did I mention that already? Because it was. Which wouldn't have been so bad, except that the Shaolin school was so incredibly bare and minimal that they really didn't believe in heating. The entire building where we slept was essentially a cement block with wooden door frames that didn't seal well, no exaggeration. Each room sort of had a heater, but they only turned on twice a day; once in the morning and once at night for about an hour each time. There really wasn't such a thing as being properly warm at all. And we were just there a week.
As mentioned in the previous entry, every day we got up at 7am for breakfast. Training starting at 8:30am sharp, and that was either outside, or in the training hall. The training hall didn't have heat either, but it had slightly less dirt and windchill. Still, not really an ideal place to do things like stretch, even though we did warm up (slowly) from all the activity.
I didn't make another entry while inQufu because there really wasn't a whole lot to say. The days consisted of waking up, breakfast, training, short break, training, lunch, longer break, training, break, dinner at 5:30pm, and then curfew at 9:30. Most people spent the breaks sleeping, washing up, trying to relax, or sleeping. We did talk to a lot of people and got along with almost everyone (pretty much the entire school, with one or two exceptions, was great), but the training coupled with the cold really took a toll on everyone there, I think.
Not to mention that we got there just in time for a cold to be going around. My roommate Sarah got sick first, but I caught it for sure by Tuesday or Wednesday. Running in the cold was hard to begin with, but adding the breathing trouble and it was brutal. I've had a pretty bad hacking cough for the last three or four days, though finally, finally the congestion went away; now it's just the cough. Brittany thinks she's getting sick now, however. Bleh.
Being sick would have been okay, even with the weather (sort of), but on top of that I just wasn't sleeping. The beds at the school are, literally, straw pallets with plywood underneath. It's a little amazing, for all it is the most uncomfortable thing to sleep on anyway. Every thing in the school was hard. The beds are wood, the chairs are wood, the ground was frozen, and the floors are stone. The last two days there I was having such a hard time sleeping, along with not being bale to breathe from the cold, I seriously considered going to the training hall and grabbing a mat to lie down on; it was that bad.
However. That all being said, the training part was incredible. Because it was so close to the new year, there were only three Shifu (master) trainers there, so we didn't get as much attention, so to speak, but I can absolutely see why people go to this school, everything else regardless. Being able to immerse yourself in the training like this really does amazing, incredible things--it's everything I've ever wanted in martial arts training. People were had been there just a month or two were worlds beyond what I've ever been capable off, and the ones who had been there longer? Words can't describe. I think it's very much the mindset of always looking at those who are beyond you; if I had been there a month, I'd be wishing for the skills of those who had been there for three, three months to six, six months to a year, etc, etc. After just being there for a week, we learned:
+ Basics (the eleven moves that make up Shaolin Kung Fu),
+ Sanda basics (Chinese boxing; and after watching the sparring on Wednesday, I have decided to never learn more then that because there is no way I would want to have a Sanda spar ever ever ever; the chances for injury is just way too high),
+ a full Wingcheng form (a form of attacking and defending with just your hands),
+ Five-step form (one of the basic Shaolin Kung Fu forms),
+ half of a Wudang-style straight-sword form
That is a lot, in a week. And yes, we really, really need to improve and practice a lot on all of those things, but still. A week. Imagine a month or more.
Even with all the cons, I still want to go back, and I think that's saying something.
Though definitely in the spring.
Also, I really want a collapsible sword.
Other highlights of the Qufu experience:
The Wudang Shifu. He was a much older Shifu, and he came for afternoon classes to teach a whole bunch of different things. But someone handed us swords and said the sword forms were the easiest and fastest to learn, so that's what we got caught. He was an incredibly cheerful, very fast-talking man who happily demonstrated the thousands of different ways he could kill you while showing you what the moves were supposed to be for. The only problem was that he tended to do things like show you the entire form once, nod brightly, and then walk away.
Uh, yeah. I generally begged help off of other students once I got the 'okay' from the Shifu that I was allowed to move on. The 'okay' meant he'd show me the form in its entirety again. Before leaving. He didn't do that all the time; he did spend quite a while with us when we were first starting out.
The whistle. Okay, no that wasn't a highlight. Just. Every activity was signaled with a whistle. When we were supposed to get up, all meals, when classes started, when classes ended, everything. All the students are thus very attuned to the whistle. To the point that, on Thursday afternoon during the long break, Mintoy was taking a nap while Sarah and I were both reading. I coughed sort of higher than normal, and Mintoy sat straight up, mumbling "...was that the whistle? Has the whistle sounded? Am I late?" Sarah and I assured here she had plenty of time, she dropped back to sleep, and didn't remember a thing about it when we told her the later.
Getting out of Qufu. Let me explain. We had meant to buy tickets to Beijing, our next travel destination, upon arrival at Qufu, in order to get that out of the way. Except that didn't happen, so we had to buy tickets at a ticket station instead. Which was. Sort of an ordeal. Because in order to get to the ticker station, we needed to find it. That would have been fine, except that the only way to get there was by bus, we had never ridden the bus before, neither of us knew the town at all, and we had no idea what to look for.
In hindsight, we should have gotten better directions...maybe traded numbers with a couple of the people at school...eh.
Well, we got on the bus. Rode for quite a while. Brittany thought she saw the station, but wasn't sure, asked a guy in a rush who was getting off the bus who told us no. Oookay. We stay on bus. It gets to a place that says Tickets. We get off. It's the bus terminal. We get on another bus. It drives out to the middle of nowhere and stops. We get off and look bewildered enough that a Chinese woman asks, "do you want to go here?" We replied with an emphatic no, and after some confusion got across that we wanted to go to the Gong Fu school (the name in Chinese). Back on the bus (had to pay fare again) and decided that okay, we're just going to stay on the bus, get back to the school, and then either get better directions or go into town later with some of the other students who were planning on buying tickets then.
Ten minutes into the ride, Brittany spots that place she'd thought that the station before, yells that its the right place and leaps off the bus. I have no choice but to follow. And guess what? It was the ticket station. Should have trusted that instinct. But whatever, we're there now!
There's a crush of people against the barred gate separating the (two) ticket workers from the crowd. We sort of push in and then nothing. No one moves. We sort of just wait there for a good ten minutes until Brittany finally asks a woman what's going on. Turns out the people are all waiting until three o'clock, for their tickets to go on sale. We didn't need to wait, since are tickets were for the next day.
Except just as we're moving to get the attention of the workers, it turns 3pm. The crowd explodes. Pushing, yelling, shoving--I now understand how people get trampled to death. It was pretty bad. I acted as best I could as a human barricade, shoving Brittany toward the counter while trying to keep us both from being squashed. I got shoved, I shoved back.
Finally, she reaches the counter, starts the transaction. As she's doing that, the woman right next to her (young, maybe our age or a bit older?) has her tickets and is trying to get out and can't. So I just grabbed her arm, pushed the people behind me, and threw her toward the exit. I got thanked in Chinese as she was sailing past.
By the time I finish my heroic act of heroism, Brittany's done. She checked the tickets over to make sure they were right.
Me: Are they good?
Her: Yes. Move.
And so I turn around, bark, "WEI" really loud (basically "hey!"), and push forward. The crowd parts like the red sea, and we are out in about three seconds, no joke. And proceed to stumble toward the bus stop, drunk-giggling on adrenaline. Bus ride home with no trouble, and we were set to go to Beijing.
And now we're here!
The trip the Beijing doesn't have a lot to it. We spent the night before staying up late (till past 10pm!) with Sarah, watching Terry Fator and Aladdin, and then talking for a while longer before going to bed. Up at 7am the next day for breakfast, and then we left. Walked to the bus stop with our luggage, took the bus to the Youth Hostel in town, from there grabbed a taxi with no fuss (thank goodness), to the station, waited for an hour because we'd gotten there early, on train for four hours, and then Beijing! It was a bit more than a mile to the hostel, which was fun dealing with the cold and the luggage (I really, really despise my big suitcase), but we found it with little trouble (again, thank goodness).
After checking in, we dropped out luggage and froze to death a little while waiting for the heater to work (everything is made of stone, or wood, and no insulation it is COLD), took showers, and then went back out again for dinner and a bank. Found the bank first (and took the opportunity to thaw out frozen feet), and luckily found a noodle place soon after, which really ended up being a good meal. Afterwards we ducked into a Bakery for a sweet snack and ended up with a very odd green-tea bread (...not my favorite) and peanut-paste-filled bread (not bad) and some warm drinks.
Warmer, fuller, and much more comfortable, we then spent a bit of time looking into the stores we passed that sold coats. And in the second store, we found one! It's dark blue, and fits, and is fairly warm, and has more pockets than my broken one, and the pockets zip which is an added security load-off-my-mind, and it cost 99RMB. Meaning about $16. From a shop that gave me a receipt and everything. Definitely a good buy, in my mind. No more broken zipper and worrying about pockets = happy me!
And now we're back in the hostel, planning for tomorrow, which is going to be a busy day. I'm looking forward to it a lot more, now that I have a working coat.
Okay, no. The coat was a pretty big highlight of the day though, aside from being in Beijing now, and all.
But let me begin at more of the beginning. Which means we travel several days back to Qufu.
Qufu was cold. Did I mention that already? Because it was. Which wouldn't have been so bad, except that the Shaolin school was so incredibly bare and minimal that they really didn't believe in heating. The entire building where we slept was essentially a cement block with wooden door frames that didn't seal well, no exaggeration. Each room sort of had a heater, but they only turned on twice a day; once in the morning and once at night for about an hour each time. There really wasn't such a thing as being properly warm at all. And we were just there a week.
As mentioned in the previous entry, every day we got up at 7am for breakfast. Training starting at 8:30am sharp, and that was either outside, or in the training hall. The training hall didn't have heat either, but it had slightly less dirt and windchill. Still, not really an ideal place to do things like stretch, even though we did warm up (slowly) from all the activity.
I didn't make another entry while inQufu because there really wasn't a whole lot to say. The days consisted of waking up, breakfast, training, short break, training, lunch, longer break, training, break, dinner at 5:30pm, and then curfew at 9:30. Most people spent the breaks sleeping, washing up, trying to relax, or sleeping. We did talk to a lot of people and got along with almost everyone (pretty much the entire school, with one or two exceptions, was great), but the training coupled with the cold really took a toll on everyone there, I think.
Not to mention that we got there just in time for a cold to be going around. My roommate Sarah got sick first, but I caught it for sure by Tuesday or Wednesday. Running in the cold was hard to begin with, but adding the breathing trouble and it was brutal. I've had a pretty bad hacking cough for the last three or four days, though finally, finally the congestion went away; now it's just the cough. Brittany thinks she's getting sick now, however. Bleh.
Being sick would have been okay, even with the weather (sort of), but on top of that I just wasn't sleeping. The beds at the school are, literally, straw pallets with plywood underneath. It's a little amazing, for all it is the most uncomfortable thing to sleep on anyway. Every thing in the school was hard. The beds are wood, the chairs are wood, the ground was frozen, and the floors are stone. The last two days there I was having such a hard time sleeping, along with not being bale to breathe from the cold, I seriously considered going to the training hall and grabbing a mat to lie down on; it was that bad.
However. That all being said, the training part was incredible. Because it was so close to the new year, there were only three Shifu (master) trainers there, so we didn't get as much attention, so to speak, but I can absolutely see why people go to this school, everything else regardless. Being able to immerse yourself in the training like this really does amazing, incredible things--it's everything I've ever wanted in martial arts training. People were had been there just a month or two were worlds beyond what I've ever been capable off, and the ones who had been there longer? Words can't describe. I think it's very much the mindset of always looking at those who are beyond you; if I had been there a month, I'd be wishing for the skills of those who had been there for three, three months to six, six months to a year, etc, etc. After just being there for a week, we learned:
+ Basics (the eleven moves that make up Shaolin Kung Fu),
+ Sanda basics (Chinese boxing; and after watching the sparring on Wednesday, I have decided to never learn more then that because there is no way I would want to have a Sanda spar ever ever ever; the chances for injury is just way too high),
+ a full Wingcheng form (a form of attacking and defending with just your hands),
+ Five-step form (one of the basic Shaolin Kung Fu forms),
+ half of a Wudang-style straight-sword form
That is a lot, in a week. And yes, we really, really need to improve and practice a lot on all of those things, but still. A week. Imagine a month or more.
Even with all the cons, I still want to go back, and I think that's saying something.
Though definitely in the spring.
Also, I really want a collapsible sword.
Other highlights of the Qufu experience:
The Wudang Shifu. He was a much older Shifu, and he came for afternoon classes to teach a whole bunch of different things. But someone handed us swords and said the sword forms were the easiest and fastest to learn, so that's what we got caught. He was an incredibly cheerful, very fast-talking man who happily demonstrated the thousands of different ways he could kill you while showing you what the moves were supposed to be for. The only problem was that he tended to do things like show you the entire form once, nod brightly, and then walk away.
Uh, yeah. I generally begged help off of other students once I got the 'okay' from the Shifu that I was allowed to move on. The 'okay' meant he'd show me the form in its entirety again. Before leaving. He didn't do that all the time; he did spend quite a while with us when we were first starting out.
The whistle. Okay, no that wasn't a highlight. Just. Every activity was signaled with a whistle. When we were supposed to get up, all meals, when classes started, when classes ended, everything. All the students are thus very attuned to the whistle. To the point that, on Thursday afternoon during the long break, Mintoy was taking a nap while Sarah and I were both reading. I coughed sort of higher than normal, and Mintoy sat straight up, mumbling "...was that the whistle? Has the whistle sounded? Am I late?" Sarah and I assured here she had plenty of time, she dropped back to sleep, and didn't remember a thing about it when we told her the later.
Getting out of Qufu. Let me explain. We had meant to buy tickets to Beijing, our next travel destination, upon arrival at Qufu, in order to get that out of the way. Except that didn't happen, so we had to buy tickets at a ticket station instead. Which was. Sort of an ordeal. Because in order to get to the ticker station, we needed to find it. That would have been fine, except that the only way to get there was by bus, we had never ridden the bus before, neither of us knew the town at all, and we had no idea what to look for.
In hindsight, we should have gotten better directions...maybe traded numbers with a couple of the people at school...eh.
Well, we got on the bus. Rode for quite a while. Brittany thought she saw the station, but wasn't sure, asked a guy in a rush who was getting off the bus who told us no. Oookay. We stay on bus. It gets to a place that says Tickets. We get off. It's the bus terminal. We get on another bus. It drives out to the middle of nowhere and stops. We get off and look bewildered enough that a Chinese woman asks, "do you want to go here?" We replied with an emphatic no, and after some confusion got across that we wanted to go to the Gong Fu school (the name in Chinese). Back on the bus (had to pay fare again) and decided that okay, we're just going to stay on the bus, get back to the school, and then either get better directions or go into town later with some of the other students who were planning on buying tickets then.
Ten minutes into the ride, Brittany spots that place she'd thought that the station before, yells that its the right place and leaps off the bus. I have no choice but to follow. And guess what? It was the ticket station. Should have trusted that instinct. But whatever, we're there now!
There's a crush of people against the barred gate separating the (two) ticket workers from the crowd. We sort of push in and then nothing. No one moves. We sort of just wait there for a good ten minutes until Brittany finally asks a woman what's going on. Turns out the people are all waiting until three o'clock, for their tickets to go on sale. We didn't need to wait, since are tickets were for the next day.
Except just as we're moving to get the attention of the workers, it turns 3pm. The crowd explodes. Pushing, yelling, shoving--I now understand how people get trampled to death. It was pretty bad. I acted as best I could as a human barricade, shoving Brittany toward the counter while trying to keep us both from being squashed. I got shoved, I shoved back.
Finally, she reaches the counter, starts the transaction. As she's doing that, the woman right next to her (young, maybe our age or a bit older?) has her tickets and is trying to get out and can't. So I just grabbed her arm, pushed the people behind me, and threw her toward the exit. I got thanked in Chinese as she was sailing past.
By the time I finish my heroic act of heroism, Brittany's done. She checked the tickets over to make sure they were right.
Me: Are they good?
Her: Yes. Move.
And so I turn around, bark, "WEI" really loud (basically "hey!"), and push forward. The crowd parts like the red sea, and we are out in about three seconds, no joke. And proceed to stumble toward the bus stop, drunk-giggling on adrenaline. Bus ride home with no trouble, and we were set to go to Beijing.
And now we're here!
The trip the Beijing doesn't have a lot to it. We spent the night before staying up late (till past 10pm!) with Sarah, watching Terry Fator and Aladdin, and then talking for a while longer before going to bed. Up at 7am the next day for breakfast, and then we left. Walked to the bus stop with our luggage, took the bus to the Youth Hostel in town, from there grabbed a taxi with no fuss (thank goodness), to the station, waited for an hour because we'd gotten there early, on train for four hours, and then Beijing! It was a bit more than a mile to the hostel, which was fun dealing with the cold and the luggage (I really, really despise my big suitcase), but we found it with little trouble (again, thank goodness).
After checking in, we dropped out luggage and froze to death a little while waiting for the heater to work (everything is made of stone, or wood, and no insulation it is COLD), took showers, and then went back out again for dinner and a bank. Found the bank first (and took the opportunity to thaw out frozen feet), and luckily found a noodle place soon after, which really ended up being a good meal. Afterwards we ducked into a Bakery for a sweet snack and ended up with a very odd green-tea bread (...not my favorite) and peanut-paste-filled bread (not bad) and some warm drinks.
Warmer, fuller, and much more comfortable, we then spent a bit of time looking into the stores we passed that sold coats. And in the second store, we found one! It's dark blue, and fits, and is fairly warm, and has more pockets than my broken one, and the pockets zip which is an added security load-off-my-mind, and it cost 99RMB. Meaning about $16. From a shop that gave me a receipt and everything. Definitely a good buy, in my mind. No more broken zipper and worrying about pockets = happy me!
And now we're back in the hostel, planning for tomorrow, which is going to be a busy day. I'm looking forward to it a lot more, now that I have a working coat.
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