Kung Fu Griping

For the past 2 weeks I have been in a martial arts academy in the mountains of China. Life here is very enjoyable in some aspects, and less so in others. The academy is a little like a boarding school with about 50 pupils, 6 'masters' and 4 translators. I share a small room with an american/arab who wears a cowboy hat and prays 3 times a day. The 3 toilets on my floor are shared between 25 guys and the plumbing is basic so... you get the idea. Meals are eaten in a food hall when the bell goes and is always rice, served in a big pot at the end of the room , and 5 plates of chicken, egg and vegetables in one combination or another. Apparently the food used to be terrible but is now quite nice... if you like chicken and rice.

Training is done either in the academy or at the temple which is a short walk up a steep hill. The temple has about 60 stairs which lead up to it and is exactly what you would imagine it to be like from any kung fu film you have seen. There is a platform at the temple where we practice and it has views of the mountains in the national park (http://www.chinatravelguide.com/ctgwiki/Kunyu_Mountain_National_Forest_Park).

If I had to choose anywhere to get the shit kicked out of me, it would be there. Training is split into groups under different masters depending on what you want to learn. My group has another scottish guy, an australian, an englishman, a hyper-active 16 year old brazillian and a guy from oman. Our master, or sheefu, in chinese, is Wong Sheefu, who speaks very little english but manages to get his point across by kicking us or shouting one of the 3 phrases he does know, 'more power!', 'punch' or 'kick'. Although that is just as good as my mandarin which includes 'hello', 'this one' and 'thank you'. The training includes a lot of running, a lot of stretching (including power stretching where you stretch as far as your body allows in a certain place and 1 or 2 people will stand/push on you to stretch you until you scream... then hold it for 30 seconds), conditioning (where a part of your body gets hurt lots by people hitting it and the theory goes that next time it won't hurt as much - Im still to see results), kung fu forms (punches, kicks etc), meditation (which on friday was sitting in shorts on a rock in the middle of a stream for an hour in 30 degree heat. Relaxing until the sun burn comes out), Power training, weights and sparring.

(This is a picture of my Sheefu (master) putting

his kung fu skills to good use by balancing on the
top of a ladder whilst fixing an electric box)

Every month there is also the chance for people to fight each other in the ring with the whole academy watching. This was on friday and Antonio (the hyper-active brazillian in my group) decided to fight properly for the first time. He was put up against Carlos, they touched gloves and the fight started. Its important to know at this stage that Antonio claims to love kung fu more than his mother (who shipped him off to china for 5 years to study it at the age of 16) and he has an unhealthy obsession with Bruce Lee. So the fight starts and Antonio steps forward, makes a 'whaaaa daaaaaaaaaaa!!!' screaming noise and kicks Carlos in the groin (which isn't allowed). Carlos doubles over and isnt heard from for the next 15 minutes, the whole time of which the entire academy is laughing hysterically.

Yesterday was a day off and i went into the local city (an hour away) called Yantai with 5 other students. We did some shopping then tried to find lunch. We decided that it would be good to try dog. So after telling our taxi driver this and a bit of a wild goose chase we ended up in a weird back alley with lots of animals in cages. Turned out to be a chinese pet store. So after looking at the animals for a while we decided most of us couldn't stomach dog for lunch so went for some silk worm instead (i passed on the silk worm too in favour of the more appealing 'mystery' meat).





After lunch we went to the beach which was packed. We got lots of stares to start with and even more once we started practising our punching and kicking routines in unison. Fortunately most of the stares were directed at Andy who is impossibly muscular, very blonde and has dreadlocks down to his bum. We later had a much deserved pizza hut and headed home. I have another couple of weeks here, then I'm off travelling through china with my limited mandarin and my now extremely full backpack.

P.S. Since writting the above I got back to Andy saying "Did you see the news?!". Confused I took a look at the paper he was waving about and it turned out one of the people taking pictures of us on the beach had been a photographer for the Yantai paper and Andy was on the front cover with a headline that translated as "white people practice chinese martial arts on the beach". Sadly they missed me out of the paper, obviously I wasnt quite 'white' enough for them.