OK folks, so Shanghai was awesome after the intial hiccup of being completely lost in a foreign city with no help but my steely-grey-eyed killing instinct to guide me (which proved sufficient in the end).
We caught the overnight train to Louyang where we didnt have much time before we were shipped out on a bus to go to the Shaolin monastery. We arrived around 11.30 and set down to a brunch of which included fish tasting egg-plant and spiced ass meat (best ass I've had in years...) Then it was down to business. I booked myself a three hour lesson with a Shaolin coach and was pretty worried about being chi punched through a wall during that time. I didn't really get a chance to look around the monastery before I had to head to the gym and meet my trainer: Chang Wao Jon (phonetic spelling I'm afraid) who I was lucky to meet let alone be coached by since he is a highly esteemed Martial Artist.
He sat me down and talked about basic Chi use and some history of Shaolin Kung Fu. Then It was onto business. He first demonstrated what it was like to be hit without chi (ow! mildly stingy) to being hit with Chi (My arm just went numb and I was knocked about 3 feet back... and that was a "gentle" hit!). I was then shown the basic form I was going to learn and shown the punch bag. After some breathing, twisting, punching and berating I finally managed to channel some "chi" into my punch and knock the punch bag over. I was shown the form in great detail and Chang Wao Jon demonstrated some practical uses for the moves used in the form(like dropping me on my head or countering every move I did when he told me to hit him). It was a good experience and I learned a lot about the physical nature of the wushu style.
After the lesson I got chatting to a couple of students, Josh, from England, and Yan, from Germany. We discussed deep subjects like how Shaolin and Wushu martial arts (their style) compared to fencing (my style), the chinese culture and the impact it has on foreigners and the price of the meat dumplings in local towns.
After that I got some time to see the kids practicing in the courtyard and was supremely impressed. I walked out the door and the first thing I saw was a 10 yr old doing an aerial cartwheel in front of me!
Well, s'all I got time for now. Drop a post and let me know how you're doing. More to come soon.
