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Published: September 21st 2008
Brendas
Brendas is there on the right, the local hotspot!This week’s edition is just full of stories and wisdoms that I wanted to tell but didn’t fit into any greater category and have no particular order, ill also shove afew pictures up which may bare no resemblance to the text. Sorry if it all seems abit scrappy!
Brenda’s The main social spot for the academy is 'Brenda’s' which has multiple purposes with roles including shop, bar, storage and mah jong central. There’s even a bed in the bar where Brenda’s son Mickey sleeps, often during drinking sessions which can be boisterous making it an impressive achievement for the child. While rather odd im reliably informed that in time you become accustomed to the presence of the sleeping child.
By English standards the prices here are dirt cheap with coke costing roughly 25p a bottle and beer being the same price for a 600ml bottle, fortunately bottled water is obscenely cheap at under 10p a bottle. Ice creams are also a bargain and very popular at the academy at about 5p each. Since Brenda has a monopoly over the area she gouges the student’s abit but that’s to be expected, only special foreign imports
Bottom 365
View of the lake from the bottom of the 365 stairs. Picture taken by Amado at the academy, sadly I suck at taking photos but as you can see theres some pretty stuff here! such as snickers/peanut butter/Oreos are seriously over priced with the rest being competitive with the local supermarket. This also comes with the dubious pleasure of being served by an ageing lady in her PJ's.
The bar itself is really a glorified dining room which doubles up as mah jong room in the day, however its upsides include a ipod speaker allowing us to select our own music with a common choice being drum and base or trance (poor Mickey) Beers are easily available from a fridge running on an honesty system to be paid later. One downside is the ever present collection of mushrooms stinking out the bar - the latest batch having been specially collected by The Dragon Master during a training session. Needless to say everyone was quite surprised to see him jump out of the bushes with a selection of mushrooms mid-training session; thankfully he didn’t force us to eat any of them (as they often do with the local crab apples - where worms are a common surprise)
Money The main currency in China is the Yuan, I was led to believe that the US Dollar was widely accepted in China
Entrance
Entrance to the academy, closes at 10:30pm so if you come in after that you have to sneak under the gate! (the academy specifically requested dollars) but from my experience this really wasn’t the case on the rare occasions they accepted dollars it wasn’t at a competitive rate. Most money I took out was in US Travelers Checks - something that confused most banks I entered. It didn’t help that Siping is far from the financial capital of China and it maybe the case that dollars are widely accepted in Beijing and Shanghai, but in Siping only one bank accepted traveler’s checks. Even then the process took well over an hour to get them cashed and that was with three people working especially on this clearly rare and exciting occurrence. Some of the longer term people have set up accounts here and this seems to be the best method but there’s also lots of ATM's for the major credit cards - at a nominal fee. The Chinese currency is also somewhat awkward as its not accepted outside China, fortunately id planned this rather well and had very little left at the time of leaving - just enough to buy food at Beijing airport.
Animals One of my major concerns before coming to China was insects - since
Top of 365
View from the top of 365 stairs id had unpleasant experiences with them in Malaysia and I was concerned that this maybe somewhat similar. Thankfully this wasn’t the case - with no dangerous bugs and very few large ones. The main bug at this time of year is a large ladybug creature which invades the rooms en-masse, harmless but still highly irritating as many somehow sneak through the insect netting just to die on our window ledge. However insects increase in volume in the summer up to the point where if you leave your light on at night moths can fully cover the window like an exterior curtain. Wildlife in general seems pretty sparse and ive yet to spot anything beyond alley cats but apparently there are wild boar, bears and meerkat things in the area!
TV Crews The TV crews apparently come roughly every month for about a day, with differing reasons from local press to the academy making an advertisement for TV. In general they tend to irritate most the academy and cause general nuisance, mostly through interrupting good training sessions with events for the cameras to especially record - with the Masters often going into showoff mode for the cameras.
Karaoke
The warmup! The morning of their arrival the whole academy was roused at 5am for a full gathering outside (unheard of for the rest of the month) so that the cameras could take some pictures of an event that only happens in their presence, and then we were sent to the 365 stairs where we bear-crawled past the cameras then walked the rest of the way down, which was totally surreal and seemed pointlessly false. At the bottom of the stairs we filled 2 buckets of water and held them out horizontally, walking up the stairs past the TV cameras, at which point we emptied the buckets and went back down again. These sorts of occurrences went on for a lot of the day, and swiftly became annoying.
Festival The day before heading back to the UK I was fortunate to bare witness to the mid-autumn festival (moon cake festival). Which at the academy consisted of karaoke practice from 3pm (very loud) then the full on ceremony after 6pm which was bountiful in terrible Chinese techno - sung over by Chinese kids (whose talent clearly laid elsewhere). Those of us observing this authentic Chinese culture unfold were
The Feast!
The goodies on offer at the festival! invited to join the Headmaster in feasting on a selection of nuts and watermelon while watching the entertainment which included a Chinese comedian double-act (or at least I assume they were since people kept laughing) and some Chinese theatre - again performed by the kids with some basic props. The event ended with 'fireworks' (looked more like gunpowder inside empty toilet rolls as it never left the ground and everyone got covered in cardboard shreds) and a bonfire - overlaid by more bad terrible Chinese techno. While I may seem sinicle about the events it was enjoyable, amusing and seemed very genuine and a lot more typical of a local Chinese celebration. The majority of the students didn’t quite see the amusing side of the celebrations and barricaded themselves away from the appalling music.
Test day The 11th of every month is test day, meaning that everyone has to get up and present to the academy their latest form. The majority of the academy's forms were very impressive - however as my skills with the sword were somewhat limited I performed a basic fist form (not very exciting) and followed on from the 3 Korean students (all who've been there for over a year and are very impressive) making my performance look somewhat silly, nevertheless thankfully everyone was very complimentary and polite. As Sanda don’t learn forms, they have to participate in sparring matches in front of the academy - along with any other volunteers that wish to spar. Only 6 people sparred (3 volunteers out of 20) in the academy but the fights were quite intense and impressive. While I was very eager to spar, I had no intention of making an idiot of myself (having learnt no practical fighting moves I was bound to) and settled with sparring a Sanda student later in the day who gave me some practical tips for fighting as Shaolin is near useless for any real life combat and is purely for ceremonial and fitness purposes.
Injuries Before coming to the academy I was greatly concerned for the future well-being of my teeth - having been told plenty of gruesome stories and having seen one too many toothless fighters. Fortunately there was nothing to worry about as Sanda was the only day-to-day contact discipline and even then no blows were made to the head and im happy to report that everyone at the academy had a full set of teeth. Ironically the only two injuries I got at the academy were from table-tennis (slipped and stabbed my shoulder on the corner of the table) and football (tackle took my ankle out) the latter occurred two days before traveling home and was of concern as I could barely walk and it swelled considerably leaving a impressive bruise behind even a week later. If anything the wound occurred at an ideal time as the injury was such that I still can’t run a week later and shoes are painful to wear - which would have made training somewhat awkward. Nobody at the academy got really injured the whole time I was there, the most serious was some idiot that was debating the strength of a plank and decided to test it against his arm - which was in a sling for a week afterwards (the plank didn’t break). Most injuries here seem to occur from sports in-between training rather than training itself nevertheless it’s always worth getting insurance as apparently hospital bills here are astronomical.
Thats all for today! Should conclude the blog in the next edition with any final thoughts and a brief piece about my adventure on the Chinese 'sleeper' coach system.
~Lukey
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