The Journey to Wudang 4

A presentation of Ying Zhao Quan, or as we know it "Eagle Claw Kung Fu"

It is now Friday morning and I just finished the first training and is now about to leave for Gu Zheng class. My body is soar and it is because of a week of good training. I would say "two steps forward and one step back" is a good summary of the week. Every night I have been working on my Eagle Claw form and kept on with the palm, finger and grip strengthening I learn here. This is some real gong fu but it is also demanding. Everyday I advance the practice and every night before sleep I have to add a special herbal balm to take away the pain and inflammation in the fingers. The key is endurance and not rushing the process, but still keeping a level that is demanding and therefore developing. 

So, what is this skill and how can it be used? Well, under this picture there is a link to a video that shows the Wudang Eagle Claw. Impressive or not? Well, you be the judge! I'd say it clearly shows that this guy is the center of the party! And what a party!! The video is in Chinese, but it is not so much what they say that is important. Enjoy!


http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTM3NzUzMTk2.html

"Your body is eee'nicee!"

Today I was working on my "areal", or "ce kong fan", or "no hand cartwheel". "A loved child have many names.." is a translation of well known Swedish proverb and perhaps they where talking about this move. Because it is a loved one (not!). Since I do it on a level of a beginner I had to focus the whole afternoon practice on getting it better. I got about 10 000 different suggestions from the team members, who for the first time ever were working together. Seems like all it took to unify these 25 young people was a case of "bad Swedish wushu athlete". Well, saying they where unified is perhaps an overstatement. They for sure differed in ideas about how to improve my flip and it was everything from hands up to hands down, faster legs, more power, relax, look back, first look to the front.. and so on. You get the point! After a confusing practice I still improved a lot and the coach gave me the fantastic compliment " You have improved.. a little little little little bit!" (His hands where showing a 0,05mm raise on the scale)

So, on my way back home I was walking with no shirt since it was about 39’C and my training shirt was too sweaty. Now, I have not trained any other muscles than my legs lately since I got to much complaints about my lack of flexibility in shoulders and upper body. So walking in the university among the elite sportsmen was a bit embarrassing. The other guys are aloud to pump up, so thats what they do. Besides this it was also because of my lack of nice summer tan (since I try to do my training inside to avoid death by dehydration). Anyway, when I finally came out of the campus, and was crossing the street to get to my apartment, a guy sat in a car and saw me coming. He was not at all disappointed of the shape I where in and instead gave me a big smile and wierd thumbs up. He reminded of a Chinese Borat. Was it another case of the “perfect body”? Or perhaps he was ironic? Never the less It made me smile and that’s always something. I love the crazy Chinese people the most! I lifted my sword and held it with a hard grip as in "Yes! I'm training hard!", and his smile grew even bigger. What a beautiful moment!



This is a good year!!

TRANSFORMERS.. this were my big interest as a kid, and in school during the crafts and art lessons I made my own prototypes out of wood. This was not so easy! I still have a few cars that can turn into airplanes at my home. Here they now have Transformers LEGO!! (Perhaps you have it at home as well, I wouldn't know) Now that is the best of two worlds combined and if I had that as a kid my life would have been so much easier! Since in China it is fake LEGO, but I have been here so long I don't care.




Construction workers in China still use bamboo for building their "byggställningar". If it is higher buildings they now have "metal bamboo" rods so they can make the same construction but higher. Lets just say that I would not like to spend one day working on one of those! This is the Hotel next to me that is rebuilding their Night Club.



I went to the Canton Import/Export Fair. Here is a picture from the signing up process, and I was not alone. A good 1,5 hour later I had my pass and could walk around inside. Not much to see for me, it was the wrong phase. Next run will feature "medicine" and "sport" witch are more interesting to me. This time I was just helping one of Ruby’s friends to get in and promote his car batteries.

Nothing beats that perfect combination of anxiety and shame in the body after a day here..

Time to sleep! Yesterday I could not fall asleep until 03.00 and that kind of set the level for this day. I felt like I was behind on everything.. and that is probably because I was. Two classes of "Gunshu" in the morning followed with acrobatics and later music class. I left everything with a feeling of being worthless and like I hadn't done my job.

Well, new day tomorrow, and hopefully I will get a full nights sleep now. See you later!

This is a good year!

Guangzhou Sport University, With a headmaster like this the training can not be anything else than hard and good!

On Monday we have time off from school. In China this means that we have classes during the weekend some we won't miss anything. Last time this happened I was not told about this, so I missed school and lost my routines and daily schedule and got knocked out of my socks. This time I found out about it in time. Not in good time though. But still in time.

Let me explain this more clearly. We had our Friday afternoon training as usual today, where we normally press out the last poor drops of energy like a "kalles-kaviar-tub" (a famous Swedish "pålägg"). So after some rounds of circle training that right from the start just didn't feel good the teacher comes up to me and explains that tomorrow we will have classes like if it was a Monday. FANTASTIC!! was my first reaction after realizing that this Friday training wasn't the last training of the week, and that tomorrow when I can't feel my legs I have to go to school and swing my "Gun". But I know.. This is needed to achieve greatness. For those who don't know what I'm talking about I post a picture of one of the teachers here on the school. Focus on his fingers..



Me and Ruby were on our way to Yoga class now, but in my condition it would have been impossible, and she also had some work left. This Friday I can rest instead, and perhaps that might save my life tomorrow. Later we will go on a nice vacation for three days. More info and pictures will come later. Lets just say that it will be a nice and needed break in an otherwise hard period of my life.

I have found some new Shaw Brother movies that I will watch to get inspiration. Hopefully some classic cases of Chinese kung fu mysteries will help me to keep the track. I have now advanced in my music class and is aloud to play some traditional Chinese songs, and that feels great. Finally that is starting to become fun as well. My teacher is perhaps not sharing my joy since my off tones probably will driver her crazy soon. Well, I better practice some more so here days will be more pleasant as well.

Now SLEEP, EAT.. and then SLEEP.. and back to training! This is such a good year!!

OK, I'm BACK! After a downer for a few weeks due to the disruption created by days off from school (should be forbidden), and a stomach problem that knocked me out, I am back in business. Motivation on TOP! The last weeks I still have been training hard, but with use of force. 

But.. Don't think that the training is easy now or that I am having a great time. It is just that I have entered my "Hard against Hard" mode and I am up for the challenge. So lets go!! I passed the Saber test and we have now moved on to "Gun", or the long stick. Turns out that swinging a "Gun" is quite exhausting if in combination with deep stances. So exhausting that I basically collapsed during training today. Fantastic!

More things that are back to normal is my teachers friendly motivational speeches about how bad I am. I have made a great deal of progress during the last weeks, and in any other place this would make me qualified for pep talk and nice words. But here... NO! Mei you! Before my problem was strength so I have added strength training, today I told my teacher about this and then he explained that "Yes, OK, now you have some strength, but you don't know how to use it, so you suck!". Seems like I need to work on my non sucking skills for a while.

Turns out that my "Gun" was to heavy witch explains a little bit why everybody else where so much faster the first week of practice. The last two days I have been refining my weapon with help of a not so sharp knife and Chinese sand-paper that worked good.. for 5 min.. now it is like any other paper. I might have to go at it one more day before it is thin enough.

It is raining heavily every day, and everyday it is also sun and very hot? This is a weird combination and perhaps explains the thunderstorms that are over us every day. In this I have caught some kind of weird cold again. It is not like catching a cold back home, it is from wind and cold wheat clothes and leaves you with fever and a lot of heat in the body. I could treat it with acupuncture, but I'm to tired for that. I try to drink a lot of water though. That's my response.

This is a good year!

My classmate Lin Hai. He is only 18 years old but with strong legs, firm stances and powerful Nan Quan.

Like the past blog posts have hinted my motivation have run low the last few weeks. Not so strange perhaps after two years of hard training? Now I have started an attempt to get the energy back again. Here is some of my tricks to do this:

Light: Light is an important energy source and have great effect on the body. When it is dark we want to sleep and when it is light we want to work (we are like ants, but pretend to be a little less obvious). My problem is that my appartment has no real window so when I'm inside I don't know if it is day or night. This means spending more time outside will help me get the energy back on top, but it is also about keeping the big light on in the apartment. Basically...light is energy.

Food and drink: There are two sides of this. One is eating too much of something bad (sugar) and one is eating not enough of something good (nutrition). I will adjust this balance. I will also try to get the body going by drinking extra water. I have still not gotten used to the weather here and I sweating like a pig! I have found a favourite sweat replacement drink that I consume every day. I hope it is what it says on the bottle.

Focus: Once again this kind of training needs strict schedule and goals to strive for. Why I had a dip now was because I just had a test/exam in Dao'shu (the "Chinese Saber Play"), I passed the test but it was hard for me to reload and set up a new goal. But now I think I have done it. New forms and new inspiration. To save some energy I will be avoiding facebook (time and energy killer no 1) for two weeks now.

Friends: Real friends, not facebook.. well many of my "real" friends are on facebook. But i mean actually meeting people. I came to the conclusion that need to work on my social side a bit. It is starting to get lonely here here in China, and I can not blame it on vaste population! Any ways, hanging out with friends more is also a good way to improve my Chinese. I have now two months before I go back to Wudang, and there I don't have a girlfriend around to help me translate. I need to get fluent by then. So I had my friend "Linhai" over for a hangout session yesterday. Just to have something to do I'm helping him in his attempt to "do business". You see, he wants to help his family get some money and I suggested we would do a nice presentation that he can mail people. We also made a cool wushu flyer on the side. That's the one I posted here!

"Chinese Wushu Lin Hai"

This will be a good year after all!

OK, yesterday was a good but demanding day. First class starts at 07.50 in the morning, than straight away to music class, then lunch and quick back to school for the afternoon practice. After school I went to Yoga class with Ruby just to put a nice finale to the week.

My music classes are getting more and more fun, but also more demanding. I study with a teacher two times every week. Besides this I get a lot of homework that I just barely have time to practice, and arrive at next class worried about what she will say. All together I feel I should have sticked to the Gu Qin with only 7 strings instead of jumping on this 21 stringed monster. My teacher thinks I’m doing good, but for me it is hard since we are doing a lot of basic exercises now. My skill is with in the melodies. I have a good feeling for that from playing other instruments and dancing for 20 years. So playing songs is more easy than the technique practice we do. Finally we are changing now and I just got my book with the “National Gu Zheng Grading System“. This is the traditional songs taught and played, graded in a system to level the practitioners.

The Friday wushu team practice was an extraordinary event. We started by running some km’s and then stretched. Already then I could feel that this week’s hard training had left a nice feeling in my body. It started raining so I was sent inside with a graduate student from last year as my coach for the day. Subject: Saber Play. But right when we come inside the schools Taiji teacher comes to me and ask me if I have practiced the Taiji “nan du” that she have taught me. I answered yes and she wanted to see me do it. Problem is that “nandu” means difficulty movements, and when your body have enough difficulty just to stand straight this is not a good idea. I tried my best and fell flat on the floor. I apologized and explained that Mondays might be a better day to do this. Of course she was insulted and I was ashamed, but what to do? I later talked to her and explained that when I say “too tired” I’m not talking about normal tired, more on the line of life and death. She was pleased again and I also managed to pull off one of the moves in front of her. The rest of the training was details on my Saber and that was very good. My technique actually improved allot during that hour. Thanks to “Dawei” who is a Christian Chinese who likes to sing opera and wants me to teach him dance.

Now, two days of rest.. well..  except for 2 hour badminton training tonigh, you see.. that together with Yoga is me and Ruby’s new weekend activities. Good for her, since she dont exercise so much. For me.. hmm.. it is also good? Right?

This will be a good year!



Perfect with a nice and relaxing Badminton training on Saturdays from now on!