The end of Kung Fu School and our final Asian chapter

Last week we completed our one month Kung Fu experience and we were definitely sad to say goodbye to this part of this trip. It was a short week as we were due to leave Thursday lunchtime but it was tough nonetheless. The weather was warmer which always helps so a lot of our training was outside.

Tuesday was my most interesting day with acrobatics in the morning and a change in itinerary so we had power stretching in the afternoon. The usual jumping around with (badly) attempted tornado and butterfly kicks, followed by cartwheels, rolls, headstands, kick ups and rounded off with backward somersaults. Thankfully this was assisted by two people helping you spin backwards once you had jumped. I wasn’t keen on having a go but Master Rong insisted. It all went fine but I did feel something in the back of my knee twang as I landed awkwardly!! Oh dear, another injury to add to the collection. This is actually quite painful and is now in a support but it didn’t stop me doing the rest of the training. During power stretching I asked Master Rong to tell us a story while we were stretching to help pass the time and take our minds of the pain. I’m not sure he understood this concept but was happy to chat whilst showing off his splits, ‘no problem!’ apparently! The only downside to this was I’m sure he forgot about the time when he was chatting and left us there for quite some time. The problem with power stretching is when the time eventually finishes it makes no difference as it still takes another few minutes to ease yourself out of the position that you honestly feel you will be stuck in for eternity! We also had a bit of fun on Wednesday when we played a basketball match against the other Shaolin group. The Sifu’s had the most fun I think, jumping around the court and chasing each other whilst laughing hysterically. We won though so what we may lack in Shaolin ability we made up for with our basketball skills!

John spent his last week practicing, practicing, practicing his form to be graded before we left. The whole school stopped on Wednesday to watch him grade in front of the usual panel of Sifu’s. He was awesome and the practice paid off. He got very high marks for it too so that was a relief. He was also told by Master Guo that he was a good example to the younger ones as despite his back problems he worked really hard. Unfortunately a lot of the younger guys have huge potential but are pretty lazy with their training. John learnt more skills on the wooden dummy and a few skils with the long pole, one of the Wing Chun weapons. Now when I say long pole, I mean long, about 9ft in total. This was very tiring but it was OK as Master Guo told him, when you get tired on one side, practice on the other side!

We could easily have spent longer here and would definitely consider returning as you learn so much in a short space of time due to the intensity of the training. The time to come would be April, May as it’s warming up, the trees are blossoming but it’s not so hot that you struggle to train. It was very sad saying goodbye to friends, translators and Masters but we’ve made some friends for life and will be keeping in touch and definitely seeing some of them again.

We flew to Shanghai and spent a long weekend there walking, walking, walking and eating a lot of street food too. The most difficult thing for us was getting used to not training for 5 hours per day. We literally didn’t know what to do with ourselves and had excess energy waiting to be used. We found ourselves standing on one leg on the trains, still practicing forms without thinking and worst of all still waking up very early!

Shanghai is an amazing city and we definitely preferred it to Beijing. They are very different as Beijing is more traditional and Shanghai more modern and cosmopolitan. The Pudong area looks like something out of the Jetson’s and the French Concession is truly a little bit of France in China as you wander between café’s, boutiques and bakeries in tree-lined avenues. The Bund was by far our favourite place and was a pleasant stroll by the river admiring the amazing art deco architecture. We came here a few times and spent hours looking at the buildings. We visited the old Peace Hotel, once the grandest in all of Asia, to wander through the corridors and lobby’s appreciating the décor. Every detail was in keeping with the era, nothing missed or out of place, absolutely stunning with chandeliers, coloured glass and symmetrical patterns everywhere you looked.

Shanghai is definitely a city to wander around at your leisure exploring the streets and what they have to offer. We walked through the old town which was right next to our hotel and found markets selling everything you could imagine, kitchen utensils, ducks, chickens, a huge variety of food and there was a whole road dedicated to haberdashery with every colour and texture of cloth as well as buttons and sequins. We stumbled upon the antiques market where there is definitely a business in making things look old. If you dare to show an interest in anything you are hounded down the street by the seller who will drop their price to a tenth of the original price fairly quickly.

On Monday we flew to Tokyo to spend the night before flying back to Heathrow the next day. It was galling arriving in Tokyo knowing we were so close yet so far from visiting it properly but we will definitely come back when the country is in a better situation. It’s obvious you’ve arrived though when the toilets have a whole keypad next to them with an array of options from a deodorizing spray to a flushing sound to drown out any toilet sounds! Our hotel room was small and hot, but we did enjoy wearing our kimono bathrobes for a little if brief  taste of the Japanese experience!

So that’s the Asian chapter finished and now we are in Birmingham for a couple of nights before starting our new and unexpected European chapter. Spain here we come and then who knows!

Some of the Chinese Master’s very few English phrases that will stick with us for a very long time!:

‘More power’ (used all the time)

‘Faster’ (in power training)

‘Slower’ (admittedly used less than the others- but there were moments believe it or not)

‘Higher’ (acrobatics jumping!)

‘Lower’ (usually in stance training!)

And the best one of all…’Fierce!’ (applied to nearly everything!)

Kung Fu fighting – week 4!!!

Our last full week over at the academy, with a few extra challenges thrown in. The biggest one was the grading of our basics on Tuesday. This was held instead of session 2 in front of a panel of masters with the rest of the school watching. There were 9 people grading altogether from the various martial arts groups here. John did his basic Wing Chun steps and stances form and that went really well. I was very nervous and made a couple of mistakes but overall it went fine and we were both glad that it was over!

The 2^nd treat we had was on Friday. We were informed the day before that there would be no regular classes that day but instead we would be given bread and water and our task was to climb the highest mountain in the Kunyu mountain range. This particular peak is called tai bo and is 923m high. It was like a big school outing. We all headed off at 8.30am with back packs on filled with lots of snacks and goodies as well as our bread and water! The walk to the base steadily rises, is quite steep in places and took us one hour at a good pace. We had a quick break at the base where the Master’s where waiting for us (after arriving by taxi I might add!), then John’s master smiled and told us to get going. It was a hard climb of 3km to the peak up what seemed like thousands upon thousands of stairs, then a wooded track with a final rocky scramble to the top.

It actually felt like your heart was going to burst. Geoff and I walked up steadily without stopping and reached the top in 1 hour while John and Neville stopped a few times and were about half an hour behind us. A few of the superfit guys ran/walked up in 39 mins and then decided to bear crawl down too! We had lunch at the top then started the painful on the knees walk down.

To ease our pain we decided to take the option of the slide part way down to cut out a lot of stairs and it looked like great fun too. Very little health and safety usually goes hand in hand with a fast and fun ride which this was. We had to tie a piece of cloth round our waists and legs, wear a pair of gloves to protect your hands when braking then sit on a squashed plastic bottle.

The lady was very keen that you put your feet against the side to slow down. The slide was in 2 sections with mats at the bottom with a cargo net to catch you as you hurtled off the bottom of the slide. I think Gary from our group broke the speed records on this one. The husband and wife owners looked at each other in shock and concern when he lay back flat and flew away like a bullet out of a gun, riding it luge style. He has the burn marks on his arms and a near sprained ankle from hitting the net at such high speed at the bottom. It had to be done though and it was better than killing your knees on all those stairs!

Another hour back along the road to the academy and our 5 ½ hour, 10 mile walk was over by 2pm. We were then thankfully allowed to laze for the rest of the day. Phew!

John has finished learning his first form this week and now needs to practice, practice, practice as he thinks he might be graded on this before we leave. His training has been hard as usual as has mine, however we have both noticed that the Master’s seem to all be increasing the intensity. John’s group are always kept back later than everyone else and mine just likes to walk round with his stick ready to give you a quick whack if you are slacking.

There was a whole new level to our stances training this week when it no longer seemed good enough to stand in horse stance for 10 mins holding weights. Half way through we had to place our weights on our legs and hold a staff out in front of us. We were told if we dropped the weights we would be beaten. It was pretty impossible so everyone seemed to find a way of holding the weights on legs with elbows while holding the staff out in front! My new challenge this week has been knuckle press ups which I find difficult with permanently bruised knuckles from padwork and sparring but I persevered and have improved already.

One of the highlights of my week was during conditioning. We went down to the lake for our Qi ging session and then did our conditioning there too but somehow I managed to draw the short straw of getting Master Rong as my partner. Conditioning with him was excruciatingly painful and made me realize how kind Monica and I had been to each other. It doesn’t seem to make any difference that you’re a girl and no allowances are made as he punched and kicked me with all his might. He actually had to take rests he was putting so much effort in! By the time he reached my inner thighs all I could do was laugh (it was this or cry!). A whole new reaction for him I think as he looked at me in confusion and bewilderment! I told you some people have funny reactions to pain! He then finished the session off with him and a couple of the other guys having a jumping competition across the water. He is annoyingly good and makes it look so easy!

On Saturday we popped into Muping for our weekly treat, a supermarket shop and street food for lunch. You can buy these amazing pancakes stuffed full of lettuce, aubergine, potatoe, sausage, chilli and garlic sauce,etc. They are delicious and cost all of 4 Yuan (about 35p!).

So we have 4 days left here which will be the end of our month and we will have mixed feelings when we leave. The food is awful and we can’t wait to have our own bathroom with hot water whenever we like but we will miss the training, the Master’s and some of the other students. We’ve definitely made some friends for life and we wouldn’t rule out returning at some point. We fly to Shanghai on Thursday to spend the weekend there before flying back to the UK a little early (as we can’t go to Japan as originally planned). We will spend 2 days in the UK and then fly to Malaga where we have rented a villa for a few weeks to rest but definitely continue our training, but maybe not at quite the same intensity!

Kung Fu Fighting - Week 3!!!

I can’t believe I’m actually writing week 3 and we are still here with just under 2 weeks of training left! This week has been a tough one as exhaustion has set in. We’ve had a few really tired days and it was our first complete week. As usual we find that once you get to the end of training on Wednesday the rest of the week flies by.

The masters have definitely been having discussions as they are all becoming stricter and tougher with punishments threatened for lack of effort, not been courteous to tell them if you are missing class due to illness or injury, not standing up and showing respect during room inspections, plus anything else that generally shows lack of respect or effort. John’s master told them that the master he remembered the most from his childhood was the one that beat him the most and the forms taught by him are still the ones he remembers the best! Watch out John! Luckily he also added that the younger ones would be physically punished and the older ones, whose bodies can’t take it (not naming any names!) would have their names written on the board as bad examples to the school. Phew…that’s not so bad after all then!

Unfortunately I found this out all too soon on Wednesday after practicing the new form that 3 of us in my group were being taught. We were taught quite a few new steps which we practiced without mistake a number of times. At the end of the session we had what I call, ‘show and tell’ where we show our form to the rest of our group. Monica went before me and couldn’t remember loads of it because she was facing a different way. She received a kick to the leg from our Master. I asked if I could stand the way I had learnt it to learn from her mistake and even though I did this my mind went totally blank with the group watching and I made far too many mistakes. Annoyed with myself I was brave and took my punishment without flinching. He kicked me in the leg and then obviously decided the first time wasn’t hard enough (maybe I should have flinched after all) so he kicked me again. At the time it didn’t hurt but on returning to the lineup 2 minutes later I had a dead leg. He actually felt really bad when I was limping and I took great pleasure reminding him of my injury when I was still limping and couldn’t bend my leg properly for 2 days. As if I don’t have enough injuries of my own without him adding to them!! He said there was no power in his kick. I agreed but told him it must have been his secret Shaolin power as he obviously knew exactly where to kick and landed it deep in the muscle!

Most people here have injuries of one kind or another and of varying degrees and if they don’t have one at the start of the week they most certainly do at the end. This is from the challenging sessions and the sheer amount of training that takes place. Unless your leg is broken, they expect you to train! During John’s Wing Chun circuits on Thursday he injured his knuckle punching a stool! Yes it was probably always going to happen. We actually think he’s chipped the bone as he now has a little bit of bone missing! My knuckle on the other hand has been permanently swollen since day one. It heels by the end of the week and then during sanda on a Monday afternoon it swells up again and the bruising spreads down my fingers. No pain, no gain as they say! Let’s hope that’s true. You don’t get much sympathy for whinging here so you just have to shut up and get on with it.

I’ve had some pretty enjoyable sessions too this week so it’s not all been hard. Thursday morning is our Qi gong session and our master took us up the road to a small cove in the mountains where there is running water to practice our meditation. It was lovely as the sun was out and was warm on my face too.

 After half an hour or so he took us up to the bridge to do some moving Qi gong and our conditioning. I suppose he thought the beautiful scenery might take our minds off the fact that we were allowing someone to punch and kick us in the arms, legs, stomach and back! John’s group does their conditioning by striking a tree and some of them even head-butt it repeatedly!

On Friday morning he suggested we play a basketball match to warm up. So our group split into two teams of 4 with Master Rong included and luckily my team won, hooray!!! Master Rong loves basketball and is always bouncing the ball and trying to shoot while he waits for us to warm up so he wasn’t happy to lose but he enjoyed the game, laughing hysterically every time he got the ball.

This meant we didn’t have time for power stretching (what a shame!) as there were a couple of people grading in front of everyone and then there was sparring. This was definitely the highlight of the week as people volunteer to spar in the ring in front of everyone for two 3 minute rounds. It’s an important part of the training as you can use all the techniques that you have been learning in sanda. You wear a head guard, body guard, shin guards, gum shield and gloves. There were some great fights and even some blood!

It has been a week of ups and downs and we’ve both had moments of being really fed up and then the mood will lighten and I will become hysterical with laughter during an extremely painful stretch. This was actually because I could see John stretching too and looking over at me and I think we could read each other’s minds – What on earth are we doing!!??? My Master thought I was extremely strange as he was looking bewildered and asking what I was laughing at. I really don’t know I replied. It is possible that some people react in some rather strange ways to pain!

A few people have left this weekend and John and I will miss two of them very much as they were our training partners. Monica has gone home and now I’ll be the only girl in my group and John has said goodbye to Peter who he was learning with. Four others have also left to go to the other academy at the Shaolin Temple now the weather is slightly warmer. Much more hardcore there and definitely not for the faint-hearted! Rather them than us! We went out for a leaving dinner on Friday which was a nice break from the awful food that they serve here. We are struggling with that and all we seem to talk about is food!!! Today we ventured out again for a long Sunday walk. In 4 hours we climbed the mountain that continues on after our mountain hell stairs and then walked to the base of Tai Bo mountain and back. It’s a gorgeous clear day and the views were amazing. We’ve been good and practiced our forms which I need as I’m being graded on Tuesday in front of everyone!! Aaggh!!

Now others have left we have also taken the opportunity to move room to the top floor and we’re much happier here; it’s warmer, lighter and an altogether nicer room so that should make the last ten days or so that we have left much more pleasant…we hope!

Kunyu mountain Kung Fu Academy – week 2

So another week done and once again thankfully we are both still standing. A little less energy left than last week maybe but less aches and pains so something must be working.  It started off really cold again after a slight temperature raise at the weekend but it has warmed up again a bit and today I even managed to take my coat off and I think we caught the sun on our faces too. It’s gorgeous when the sun is out and there is no biting wind and we’ve both enjoyed training a lot more outside this week.  As soon as the sun disappears though we are shivering again. Roll on the promised 16 degrees of Thursday!!

This was nearly a full week but we did have Thursday morning off from training to go into Yantai and renew our Visas for another month. Luckily we just made it back in time for the afternoon session, boooo! Renewing the visas was an experience; a group of us were taken by a driver and the office girl from the school and basically we stopped at 4 different places and just get herded like sheep to the various desks and get asked for money a lot. No one knows what is actually going on and even though we had given two photos each that we had pre-prepared in an organized fashion we still had to have more taken at the visa office (which obviously cost more money!). The prices of visas in China are a reflection of how much you are hated by the Chinese! The Australians pay 250 Yuan, British 520 Yuan and Americans 950 Yuan!!!

I was proud of myself on Monday morning as by the end of the 2^nd session I had learnt all the basics that I need to know, which was quick according to other people here. I was just pleased I’d learnt 3 new things in one morning. When the master asked to see them though his impression was quite different! ‘You are very unskilled,’ I was told, ‘and must practice more.’ I smiled and replied through gritted teeth that I had been concentrating on learning the steps but hoped I would improve with more practice! The day did not improve after that and during sanda in the afternoon I received a spinning back fist to the throat from one of the guys after not moving out of the way quick enough.  I think this week has been one of mental overload for me.

Once again the acrobatics class was the funniest. After failing miserably again at jumping spin kicks we had to balance on one hand and throw your legs up in the air with a little heel click, a la Singin’ in the rain. I decided this was very much like breakdancing which was a good ploy for distraction as the master loved this, saying he used to breakdance and then proceeded to show us some of his moves which we were then all trying to copy. Back to the acrobatics; two of the more skilled guys in my group managed 2 person forward rolls! I declined the offer of having a go at this but felt I had to show willing for the 2 person cartwheels! ‘What am I doing’ was going through my head as I clutched Ben’s chest tightly. Both of us had to cartwheel together with me on his back and using no hands! It wasn’t as bad as I thought, we landed in a bit of a heap but I did try it again and improved slightly.

Stances and power training were both tough sessions again, standing in a horse stance (squat) for over 10 minutes with weights and then moving straight on to holding the wall bar while standing in a horse stance with Ben standing on my legs.  This was so unbearable as you couldn’t stand up even if you wanted to and I was nearly crying, when I did manage to straighten slightly to relieve some pressure Sifu Rong hit Ben instead of me! Needless to say I went straight back into position even with my legs shaking uncontrollably. More frog jumps, hopping and wheelbarrows in power training. Excruciating pain in Power stretching where you are left in a straddle split position for so long you think you may never walk again. Even the translator was getting involved in moving our feet out just a little bit further and a little bit more and OW!!!!

Mountain hell seemed harder this week for both of us and as if it’s not hard enough some people who’ve been here for a while choose to bear crawl down the steps. I managed 7 times this week, after 6 I waited for Monica and we did a team effort on the last one. A group of us went to the Little Pagoda on the way back as it was such a clear day. It made John and I realise once again how lucky we are to have this opportunity as the views were truly stunning across the Kunyu mountain range and beyond.

John has learnt a complete footwork and stances form this week and is half way through another empty hand form Which he’s hoping to finish by the time we leave. The power training and stretching was as hard as ever for him but the good news is all this stretching every day seems to help relieve some of his back pain for a while. Definitely something to keep up when we leave.

The food here is not great, after 2 weeks we are bored of eating the same thing and although it is healthy there’s not a large variety and you are often left unsatisfied. Last night we tried the little café next door (glad we went with someone else as it just looked like a rundown farmhouse and we probably would have turned around!). The food was good and extremely cheap. The meat and fish is served on sticks and you order the number of sticks you want, so John ordered 2 squid. When a plate full of sticks arrived he didn’t think they belonged to him but this seems to be the only dish that is different and instead of getting 2 sticks he actually got 2 whole squid! The locals were laughing a lot so clearly thought he was incredibly greedy…little do they know! We had 2 whole squid (about 15 sticks!), 2 fish fillets (like 2 sardines), 5 chicken wings, a plateful of fried rice and a plateful of dumplings, 2 sprites, 2 fantas and 3 bottles of water for 67 Yuan (6.37GBP!!).

We are now enjoying the school more in general, the friends we have made, the routine and the beautiful surroundings in the middle of nowhere in China with no worries at all.

Sometimes though we are reminded you are still in China and the language barrier is a difficulty. We tried to top up our China mobile today and were directed to a tiny stone house in the little village.

The first time we had to leave as stupidly we had not written down our number. We came back the 2^nd time and spent 40 minutes in there while the woman phoned her son who John had to talk to as supposedly he spoke English, although he didn’t really!

 It was all very confusing and even more so when a random man came in, lit up a cigarette, offered one to John and me, laughed when we declined,  sat down next to me and starting jabbering to me. I said I didn’t understand but he continued. I tried to guess what he was saying, so pointed to the school and said Kunyu academy and he knew this and started doing Kung Fu moves and smiling. I gave it the thumbs up. Clearly I’d guessed right because he then took this as a sign to continue chatting to me in Mandarin and laughed when I couldn’t understand! Finally we admitted defeat, aborted the mission and went back to the local shop to buy a new simcard with credit on it. Why didn’t we do that in the first place?!

Again it’s nice to relax at the weekend and we did a bit of shopping in nearby Muping yesterday and bought some tasty street food. You get together as a group, order a minibus taxi to take you there. It waits for you and then brings you back and this costs less than 2 pound each for a roughly 4 hour round trip! Jersey taxi drivers could definitely learn something.  Then today was such a beautiful day a group of us went on a 4 hour trip walking to the base of Kunyu mountain, which is in a stunning national park, and back. Amazing views and it’s lovely to see the locals out walking too, working hard in the fields and smiling and saying ‘Ni-hao’.

 

Kunyu Mountain Kung Fu Academy - Week 1

Well the good news is we survived our first week and we are still in one piece! We arrived on Monday morning and after introducing ourselves to everyone at the afternoon line up!!!! we were straight into training. The academy is situated about an hour away from Yantai which is a seaside town in the North East below Beijing – on the part of China that juts out towards Korea. It is a very rural setting in the mountains, which makes a nice change from all the cities we have been staying in recently. It is very beautiful here and there are nearby temples and lakes to visit. The bad news is it has been absolutely freezing this week! A big change from the last few months for us and there is no heating in the rooms.  It was hard to even take your coat off when in your bedroom! The accommodation is on site and is a bit like halls of residence although we share a room – still shared bathrooms though! There is a dining hall and we all eat together 3 times per day (also with coat and hat on!).

The living quarters

There are a few different styles of Kung Fu you can train in here. John is continuing with his Wing Chun and I am learning Shaolin and Sanda (Chinese kickboxing).You are assigned to a group which has a dedicated master in charge and he is then responsible for you. If you want to leave the academy to go anywhere you must request his permission. There are also translators present in each class and everything must get translated which can be quite confusing at times trying to understand the meaning of things.

 It’s quite full on during the week and this is a typical day:

5.50am                 Wake up

6-7am                   Tai Chi and Qi gong (meditation)

7.10am                 Breakfast

8.30-10am            Kung Fu Session 1

10.30-11.30am     Kung Fu Session 2

12pm                     Lunch

2.30-4pm              Kung Fu Session 3

5.30pm                 Dinner

Outdoor training areas and punch bags for Sanda training

Each session involves an extensive warm up starting with a 1 mile run twice a day (John power walks). The sessions are quite varied throughout the week and can be practicing forms. In Shaolin I also have a morning of acrobatics (hilarious – expected to do jumping spin kicks, cartwheels, handstands, forward rolls, flicks, etc!). My poor attempts actually make myself laugh and take me back to gym club, age 10, except I‘m much older and much less flexible. Three of my afternoons are Sanda training, one morning is Qi gong (meditating for 40 mins – even this is painful as I lose feeling in my crossed legs after about 15 mins) and another afternoon is power training (frog jumps, wheelbarrows, handstands, hopping, sit ups – anything to ruin your legs and upper body basically!). John just immerses himself in Wing Chun because he wants to learn as much as he can in the short time that we have.

We both have the delightful power stretching which is our least favourite and by far the most painful session. This is a variety of stretches that you do in pairs as one person pushes you past your point of comfort. When the master comes round he takes you well beyond this point and people swear, shout, scream and even grown men have been known to cry. I’m not ashamed to admit I was begging him to stop. Then just to top of the week Friday afternoon is Mountain hell!!! This starts with a 20 minute steep walk up to a nearby temple, by which time you are out of breath and your calves are screaming in pain. The next hour is then spent walking (I won’t even bother to say running as very little running occurs) up approximately 300 steps repeatedly. The goal is to repeat this 6 times which I’m pleased to say I managed on my first week. The run back down is the only pleasant part before you start all over again! John stuck with it, completed it 5 times and was last man of the mountain.

Mountain hell - the only good bit is on the way down!!

There are a few extra classes you can also attend if you choose to, so we are learning Chinese acupuncture and massage too. I might even try Chinese calligraphy next week. John also has cleaning duties (no one has said anything to me so I’m keeping quiet) which involves sweeping outside areas and sweeping and mopping the training room. This is supposed to be done in a team but John was the only one that turned up (good practice I say!).

It sounds awful but we’re both really enjoying it. It was lovely to have a rest day yesterday but today we both wanted to do some training as we were missing it already so I went for a long run, John a long walk and we both spent time practicing our forms.

We’ve made some good friends as there are at least 40 people here from all over the world of varying experience. Some are here for just a month like us while others are here for 1 or even 2 years. I went out for dinner with my group on Friday as some are leaving and we took our master and one of the translators too. The master is only 24 years old but keen to know what we thought of China and its people. He tries to be very serious in training but makes us laugh as he enjoys singing popular songs and is constantly checking out his hair and his abs in the mirror! John calls his master the smiling assassin because he’s always got a smile on his face especially as he’s torturing them, which is most of the time!

Misunderstandings in Beijing - or maybe just 'Lost in translation??'

After a reasonably pleasant 22 hour train ride where the beds were comfy and we were lucky enough to only be sharing with one man who was quiet and slept the whole night. It went surprisingly quickly considering it was a bit late too. Getting drinks was fun. I went to the dining car and pointed to some water, then tried to ask for orange but really shouldn’t have bothered, everyone was staring and getting involved and jabbering to me in Chinese. Instead I got a bag for the water!! So needless to say I gave up on the orange! We ate two meals on the train of rice, veggies and meat – exactly the same dish both meals.

Beijing is huge!! A sprawling city full of high rise buildings and the pollution is supposed to be the worst in the world. We were quite lucky when we were here as the skies were blue and there seemed to be very little smog.  It was very cold though but I didn’t find it as much of a shock as North Vietnam – better prepared I think! The temperature usually rose to the mid teens by the middle of the day though and the temp went up from 13 to 17 during the 5 days we were here – so definitely not as bad as it could have been.

The language barrier was still a problem but slightly better as most signs were also in English and the metro is easy to navigate and extremely cheap (just under 20p for a ride anywhere in the city!). They are always busy and no matter what time of day you travel you are packed on like sardines. However finding the hotel was still a problem even though we had the name and address written down in mandarin! We ended up consulting the map and directing him once near. We were still surrounded by plenty of smoking, coughing and spitting everywhere and anywhere; so it seems there is no escape! The Beijing locals have a very distinctive accent which is very different to the accent we had been used to hearing in the South. If you didn’t concentrate on the actual words they were saying you would have sworn they were Cornish!

There is so much to do in the city and just outside you could easily spend a couple of weeks here and still fill all your days but as you know we are not really city kids so 5 days was plenty for us. So I’ll break what we did up into days as this is easier.

Day 1: Drum and Bell Tower / Lama temple / Hutongs

After recovering from our overnight train ride we explored the local area around our hotel by foot. The Lama temple is a large Buddhist temple which is the most renowned Tibetan Buddhist temple outside of Tibet. The architecture was beautiful and it was busy with pilgrims lining up to pay their respects and burning incense. The drum and bell towers have both been used in the past to mark the hours of the day. Thy drums and bell we saw certainly looked large enough to be heard from quite far away! It was a very steep climb up both (our exercise for the day!) but we were rewarded with pleasant views across the city and over the rooftops of the Hutongs underneath. On the way back we took a stroll through the Hutongs which are specific to Beijing and are historic alleyways as the houses used to be built. There are still plenty of people living and working in the tiny alleys but not many left now due to the high rises that are built instead.

Day 2: Forbidden city / Tiananmen square

The Forbidden city, home to past emperors, is every bit as amazing as the pictures I have seen before visiting. Vast expanses of space (enough to hold 100,000 people!) in between halls, with living quarters at the East and West and the Imperial garden to the north. You could easily spend a whole day here exploring the rooms and exhibits.

 We walked from here to Tiananmen square but we weren’t sure it would be open as there were government meetings being held and they often close it for security reasons. We were lucky that it was open but bags were checked on the way in and there was a large police presence. Very surreal to be there with Chinese flags flying and two huge screens showing Chinese patriotic footage. I was immediately accosted by 2 Chinese women to have my photo taken with them while holding their flag – not quite sure exactly why this was so exciting for them but it was funny!

Day 3: Olympic park

As a self-confessed Olympic geek this was very exciting for me! We saw the architecturally stunning and awe-inspiring Bird’s nest and Water cube.

We bought tickets to walk around inside the Bird’s nest where they had been holding a snow and ice festival in the last few weeks. Unfortunately we just missed this and they were busy clearing all the snow and ice away. I even managed to get my photo taken with one of the Olympic mascots!

The water cube now houses a water park so we gave this one a miss. There were so many tourists there – who would have thought that an Olympic stadium could still be such a draw 3 years later!

Day 4: Great wall

We decided to hire a car for the day to visit a less touristy section of the wall at Mutianyu. The drive was an hour and a half and I was a bit worried about how cold it would be when we were driving past frozen rivers! It was fresh up there but the steep walks (or climbs in some cases) certainly warm you up! A bit of a circus at the bottom when you arrive with no shortage of hawkers with great wall t-shirts, caps and keyrings for sale. Included in the price of the ticket was a chair lift up and a toboggan ride down! We were glad of this though as the chair lift got us up there in a fraction of the time and luckily left us with fresh legs ready for the wall.

We could have gone east or west so we chose the one that looked the steepest as we decided most people would be too lazy to walk it and we were right! It was a tough walk but worth every step as it was quiet and the views were stunning. It was a very clear day and this was definitely one that took your breath away. After passing a few watchtowers we came to a sign that said no admittance so obviously we walked past this. It was just a further section of the wall that was unrestored and not quite as safe to walk on. We walked on to the next very dilapidated watchtower and it was definitely worth it for the impressive views. We were the only two there for quite some time and it was a fantastic experience.

After spending about 3 hours on the wall we headed back for our toboggan ride which would have been great if we had not been stuck behind the two slowest and scared girls in the world! We kept giving them at least 50m gaps by slowing down, hoping that we could then go down the twisty run as fast as we liked. Every time there was a moment of exhilaration as the wind whistled through your hair and then we would catch them up again! Our shouts of ‘faster’ and ‘come on, hurry up!’ seemed to make no difference – what a shame! This might have been a blessing in disguise as you very quickly reached speeds of over 30 mph and there was no health and safety!

Day 5: Beijing zoo

As we are in China and we won’t have time to visit Chengdu we decided our visit would not be complete without seeing some Panda’s so we headed to the zoo that has been so successful in breeding them. They were worth seeing, very cute and sleepy with one even sleeping up a tree but much smaller than I imagined. We don’t normally like going to zoos other than our very own as the conditions are often not very good with small enclosures and animals that don’t really need to be kept in a zoo and the rest of the zoo just confirmed everything we hate about these places unfortunately. They had some amazing animals in there – giraffes, elephants, gorillas, lions, tigers, zebras, etc but it made us both sad to see them cooped up, looking quite miserable in some cases and showing clear signs of going mad. This left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth especially as no one else seemed to care and were just knocking on the glass and making stupid noises at them! We also may as well have been in one of the cages for the amount of blatant stares we were getting, I thought for a moment that we were one of the exhibits!

Day 6: Train misunderstanding

Our next plan was to travel to Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, although we think it may have been totally the wrong time of year to go. Our hotel had booked the train ticket for us and even though I checked with the girl twice which station it was leaving from we found out when we arrived at that station today that it was the wrong one! By this time we were so fed up of struggling with the language that we went back to the hotel with a grump, got a full refund and got them to book plane tickets to Yantai instead, which is where we will be going to Kung Fu school. So here we are in another noisy hotel in another Chinese city and starting training at the school on Monday. Another adventure begins!

 

China first impressions and Foshan

After a last day of relaxing in Macau we felt finally ready to tackle the immense China! We took a bus to the border, walked through immigration both sides and then made it onto a 2 ½ hour coach ride to Foshan, just outside of Guangzhou city in the South. The difference was noticeable as soon as we crossed the border. Very little English and suddenly realizing the need to learn the difference between the Chinese characters for the ladies toilet and the men’s!

Our first impressions as we gazed out of the bus window were built up, bleak and grey. We could also immediately see the vastness of China and the size of the population was already apparent in the housing we could see. At the same time the landscape in the South is very similar to North Vietnam and the climate is similar too. It was strange to see rural landscapes with fish farms, paddy fields and farmers in wellington boots adjacent to large housing estates. There was one in particular we notice that was just huge, it seemed about 100 times the size of Le Squez!

When we got off the bus we flagged down a taxi to take us to our hotel. We thought we were fairly organized here as we had the name of the Hotel written in Chinese characters too. This didn’t seem to make a lot of difference as the taxi driver still seemed just as confused. So after a few minutes of us trying to say place names and him saying things back to us which we hoped were right we set off…luckily we made it to the correct place, phew – hurdle one, complete!

The hotel was in the middle of nowhere it seemed or maybe just a very poor area. We walked through the nearby streets and market and it was immediately clear to us that they don’t get very many Western faces around here. We were a source of much amusement to the locals, particularly because it was about 20 degrees so John was in shorts, t-shirt and flip flops but they all had huge coats on. They pointed and laughed a lot and some shouted hello, got children to wave, giggled madly or were just plain miserable. It seems that we bring out the best in everybody! We braved it and managed to buy some food of a street stall by pointing and holding up fingers for our unknown pot luck choices which turned out to be a little parcel of rice and a cabbage filled dumpling. The hotel staff barely spoke any English which resulted in John swimming in the lobby to find out where the hotel pool and gym where. China is going to be very hard work!

On our second day in Foshan we made the pilgrimage to the legacy of Grandmaster Ip Man (John’s Wing Chun hero) at the Foshan museum.

 We spent a couple of hours browsing the exhibits and wandering around what was a very comprehensive and beautiful museum. The courtyard was lovely and the buildings architecturally stunning. They even had some martial arts lessons going on in parts which we watched for a while. It’s definitely back to celebrity status for us as I was asked to have my photo taken with a random women and when we walked to the next sight school children, pointed, shouted hello, giggled and were obviously talking about us! Oh how we have missed being celebrities!

 We visited a temple which had some amazing Bonsai trees in the courtyard, then an old ancestral home and gardens. The gardens were everything you imagine of a beautiful, relaxing Chinese garden. There were pagodas, a lotus pond, Koi carp, bridges, rocks and bamboo.

Again two men seemed very excited to try out their limited English of ‘Hello’ on us and then one felt it his duty to become our personal photographer. With signs he insisted on taking our photo and then we had to follow him around the gardens while he pointed at places for us to stand for more photos! One of them involving climbing over a fence and standing on a rock in the pond – not sure the gardener would have approved.

Anyway we ended up with some very nice photos thanks to him but we had to say no after a while as there are only so many photos I can pose for in one day without getting a permanent fixed smile!

Our next hurdle was to buy a train ticket to Beijing so we headed to the train station. On the way John stopped at a street seller to try a piece of Bamboo. They peel it for you and you bite a bit off, chew it, then spit it out. Extremely sweet but very nice!! They thought it was hilarious again that we were ordering this. There were sticks of various lengths and we only wanted the smallest, which he was amazed at and kept trying to give us a bigger one. He then tried to give it to us for free! I think he felt it was so small he couldn’t sell it to us – it was still too big for us though and we ended up chucking the rest away. We did make him take a little bit of money though, equivalent of about 10p I think!

We made it to the train station and queued up with our phrase book in hand. As ever in Asia queuing makes no difference and someone still managed to push straight in front of us. We pointed to the words in the phrase book but it seemed the woman still couldn’t understand what we wanted! Luckily a young guy behind us spoke a little English and managed to help – phew again! He was very kind and even caught us up after to make sure we knew what time we had to be at the station for.

So here we are now on our 21 ½ hour train to Beijing in Soft sleeper which means you have 4 beds in the compartment. They provide blankets and pillows and a flask of hot water too. It’s quite comfortable although first class looks even nicer!