11:30 – 14:00

1970 Chestnut Street

Wushu West is hosting an open house this Saturday. There will be a demonstration followed by a party and games! Come by and check it out!!! (:

Along with these changes, all tuition rates are UNLIMITED, which means that you can come to as many classes as you like during the month with no extra charge!

And don’t forget our Back To School Special for the month of September!  50% off your first month’s tuition when you sign up during the month of September, and an extra 10% off for college students as well!

Contact us today to schedule a FREE trial class!

During the month of September when you sign up as a new student* at Wushu West, you will get 50% off your first month’s tuition!  And with our newly reduced tuition rates that is an even bigger savings!

Also, for a limited time we are offering a special 10% discount to all college students!

So what are you waiting for?  Come by for a visit and try out a free class at Wushu West today.  There has never been a better time to experience the amazing cultural treasure that is Wushu.

(*New students are anyone who have not been signed up for classes at Wushu West in the last 6 months)

• Tuesday
  • Beginning/Intermediate Wushu: 5:30 – 7:00 PM
  • Advanced Wushu: 7:00 – 9:00 PM
• Wednesday
  • Tai Chi / Bagua Zhang: 6:00 – 7:15 PM
• Thursday
  • Beginning/Intermediate Wushu: 5:30 – 7:00 PM
  • Advanced Wushu: 7:00 – 9:00 PM
• Sunday
  • Tai Chi / Bagua Zhang: 9:30 – 11:00 AM
  • All Levels Wushu: 11:00 – 1:00 PM

Also on the horizon are some new specials that we’ll be announcing for new and interested students!  Keep your eyes peeled to this website to find out all the details!

Enjoy!

I should also mention that I went back and updated all of the previous entries with new photographs and videos that weren’t in the previous ones.  Especially for the Shaolin Temple and Xi’an legs of our trip.  So, be sure to visit narom.net or wushuwest.com to check those out (I don’t think they will port over to facebook or alivenotdead).

I’ll probably also post up some additional stuff on wushuzilla.com, if I have some time, and I’ve been slowly posting some wushu videos on my wushuzilla youtube channel too, so you can visit that if you are interested.

Saturday, June 25, 2009

Anyway, the last time I posted we were headed back from Xi’an to Beijing on the train.  We woke up nice and early and got our things together before disembarking.  However, I managed to snap a few nice photos of the surrounding countryside before we did (click a thumbnail to view).

We were greeted by our local tour guide who would accompany us on the bus from the Train station to Shi Cha Hai.  Kent had left us in Xi’an so this was officially the end of our tour.

When we arrived in Shi Cha Hai it was time to re-acclimate to the environment. For most of us, the next 2 days would be spent socializing and shopping.

I saw Shahaub and Wu Di pretty much right after arriving and as Wu Di was leaving to get a haircut, I decided to join him and get one as well (Thanks Wu Di for the haircut!).  The salon was nice and after I was done, I got us something to eat and took a few pictures of him with tin foil in his hair:

Then it was back to the school where I got myself situated in the room I would be sharing with Pierre.

As I was unpacking I realized that I had left the charger for my laptop in Xi’an!  I quickly made some calls and learned that the hotel had found it and that Ruhi would be able to pick it up for me.  I just needed to get a new one in the meantime (it doesn’t hurt to have a backup cable anyway).

I first went to a couple local electronics stores, but they didn’t have anything that I needed, so I finally went to the Electronics store located on People’s Sports Stadium South Street.  They had what I needed and I was able to bargain it down a little bit.  Phew!  problem solved.

In the evening Patti had arranged for everyone to go to Mistica Pizza for a group dinner.  The food was pretty good but the entertainment was even better.  The singer played guitar and had a song list so that you could request a song or even go up and sing it yourself.  Wu Di, Shahaub and some of their friends showed up too and we were serenaded by Wu Di’s dulcet tones

I didn’t get a video of Wu Di singing, but I was able to get some of the guitar player singing a bit of James Blunt.  Coincidentally, during most of the night Daniel Wu was on the TV as the special guest of a variety show where he was showing the hosts how to ride a skateboard and do various acting exercises.  You can see a bit of it in the clip

It was getting late so I rode in a taxi with Jonah and Noah back to Shi Cha Hai.  When I went back to my room I unpacked some stuff, worked on blogs, and then I hit the hay.

Sunday, June 26, 2009

After waking up I finished up a bit of blog work and cleaned up.  I was going to be meeting up my old friend Marco Goodman, who had been living in China since 2004 or so.  In fact, the last time I saw him was 2006 when he dropped by Shi Cha Hai for a quick class.  He had been living in Liaoning but recently moved to Beijing where he was preparing to work on his MBA in China.

He came by the school and then we headed towards Ya Xiu.  But the food at Ya Xiu didn’t seem to suit us so we ended up going to McDonald’s instead.  It seems that food at Ya Xiu is bargainable, which seemed strange to us.  I don’t mind bargaining for clothes or bags, but bargaining for a meal isn’t something I’m as used to.

Anyway, after that he went with me to get fitted for my suit.  While there we ran in to James, Myles, Pierre, Ashley, Lauren, Susan, and Jennifer.  Patti showed up a bit later as well.  Marco and I went down to the luggage floor and ended up having a lengthy conversation with a few girls down there about the business of selling goods.  We learned quite a bit about the mark-ups they put on items, but it was nothing compared to what I would learn later on.

After a while Marco had to leave so I went back up to hang out with the Wushu West folks.  Since I wasn’t buying anything, I decided to further my education and learned some Anhui dialect from the local workers on the 3rd floor.  It actually reminded me a lot of Shanghainese.

After a while I got sort of bored, so I decided to head back down to the bottom floor again.  This is where things got interesting.

I ended up hanging out down there for a few hours talking with the 4 Anhui (and 1 Hangzhou) girls who were working near the escalator.  I was there long enough that I actually ended up helping them with some of the sales.

I worked at the hat stall for a while learning the right phrases to call out to people as they walk by and ignore you.

I worked at the belt and wallet stall learning the mark-up mathematics on various items and how much they should be sold for.  (Foreigners really get shafted here.)

In fact, I even managed to sell a card holder to some Chinese guy who thought I was the boss for the stand (since I didn’t have on the typical blue or pink worker shirt).

I could write a whole blog entry on what I learned from that experience, but I won’t bore you with the details.  Sufficeth to say, it was very educational (and I have a new-found respect for how difficult that job can be).

After returning to Shi Cha Hai I grabbed some food in the cafeteria and then went to my room to pack.  20 minutes later I decided to head to the lobby to watch “So You Think You Can Dance” with Shahaub, Lauren, Ashley and Jennifer.  We did that until my battery died around 3 AM.  Then I caught some z’s.

Monday, June 27, 2009

It was time to leave!  Boo! We all got up nice and early and headed to the lobby with all of our luggage.  There were 8 of us heading back on the plane.  Lauren, Tyler, Susan and Travis were continuing on to other parts of China, Patti was staying a few more weeks, and James would be coming the next day.

The ride to the airport was quick (that new expressway really helps) and soon enough we were all checked in to the flight and waiting at the gate to board our plane.

I slept pretty much the whole way (which is why I stayed up so late the night before) and when we arrived at SFO on Monday morning at 8:30 AM I was ready to go.

We picked up our luggage, made our way through customs (with the exception of Myles, whom they apparently thought was carrying drugs in his Panda hat) and greeted our various family members outside.

And thus ends this blog of the Wushu West trip to China, 2009.  I hope you enjoyed all of it.  Of course, if you are interested in taking wushu and are located in the San Francisco Bay Area, you are more than welcome to drop by Wushu West and check it out for yourself.

Thursday, July 24, 2009

Our bus ride from the Shaolin Temple to Xi’an was pretty interesting.  I’ve taken buses across parts of China before, but not quite like this.  A tour bus is much more comfortable than one of the long-distance coaches that you can take here.  Our journey took us through some mountains that ran parallel to the Yellow River.  Some of the views we got were just breathtaking, and I was able to grab a few shots that don’t do it justice.

We stopped a few times along the way to get gas or relieve ourselves, but 6 hours later we arrived in Xi’an.  Now, I should mention that my time in Xi’an wasn’t spent with the Wushu West group.  As a result, this blog isn’t so much about what they did.  I will ask one of them to write up what they did in Xi’an, but if the previous requests for blogs are any indication, don’t hold your breath.

Here is a look around a Chinese truck/rest stop:

I was actually just in Xi’an 8 months ago during last year’s China Wushu Nationals (perhaps you read my blogs back then?) so it was very familiar to me.  I really like Xi’an a lot for its combination of new and old, and my time this trip didn’t change that opinion at all.

We were all staying for the night at the super nice Grand Park hotel, located just across from the South Gate of the city.  The view was fantastic, since we were on the 9th floor, and the amenties were spectaular, especially in comparison to the hotel at the Shaolin Temple.

The first evening we ate dinner together at the buffet downstairs in the hotel.  Very good food, very fresh and lots of choices, so everyone was pretty happy.  The normal rate for that dinner is 118 RMB, and the rooms run around 800 RMB, so I think the tour group definitely arranged a discount.

After dinner some of us went for a walk around the South Gate.  We saw some street vendors and performances, and then walked by a wine store that James said was stocked with some of the best wines in the world.  He said that very few wine stores in the U.S. would be able to have the selection of wines this place had.  One bottle was over $14,000 USD!  A little pricey, if you ask me, but James is the professional wine expert, not me.

Ruhi had also met us in Beijing.  She lives in Xi’an and had gone there a few days before us.  Since we will be living in Xi’an after getting married I wanted to check out the apartment and see the neighborhood I would be moving to.  First we went to see her place and then we grabbed a quick foot massage, which I slept through entirely.  Then I went back to the hotel and slept.

The other funny thing that happened is that we randomly ran in to an old student of Ruhi’s, named Phoenix, who works at the hotel.  I guess living in Xi’an for 8 years means you tend to randomly run in to old friends.

Ruhi and Phoenix

Friday, July 25, 2009

This is the day where paths diverged.  Everyone else spent the day going and seeing the Terracotta Warriors, the South Gate or the Goose Whatchamacallit.  I had some errands to run (first of which was to post up that blog entry that we were alive) and then I went with Ruhi to Xi Gao Xin (West High Tech Zone in Xi’an) to get measured for a ring.  We also went to a nice place for a quick bite.  We did meet up with the Wushu West group during both lunch and dinner.

Here are several photos that Pierre took of their trip to the Terracotta Warriors.  Enjoy!

The lunch was at a nice dumpling restaurant next to the Bell Tower.  Amazing dumplings, of which I took many photos.  Here are a few:

At the lunch two things happened.

First, it was Travis’ birthday.  He turned 7 years old, so we had a cake and a song for him.  He seemed to enjoy it.

kent and helen with a birthday cake

Second, there was a performance/competition by children of employees of the restaurant.  It actually got started as everyone left, but while they were testing the sound system, this boy played a flute song that was freaking amazing.  I uploaded a video of it, but I’m not sure I will be able to post it here until after I leave China.  Be sure to come back to check it out in a few days.

Edit (7/28): Here are two videos of him playing.  First is a mic check, and second is the end of his actual performance.

It was actually a competition of story telling.  All the kids (about 10 of them) were judged on how well they recited a story that was pre-written about dumplings.  The skills ranged from super nervous kids reading from the paper, to well-composed, confident children that had arms movements and great vocal skill.

“my hair took 3 hours to do!”

Ruhi and I stayed to watch it after everyone left for the next leg of their tour.  Here are some videos:

And here is one of one of the girls singing.  Believe it or not, I think it is English.

We had to pick up the ring and run a few other errands.  We finally met up with the Wushu West folks again at their dinner stop: hot pot near the city center.

The meal was good and afterward we all piled in to the bus and headed across town in terrible traffic to the train station.  This was my second or third time at the Xi’an train station so at least I wasn’t super overwhelmed.  I have to say that it IS a bit more disorganized than the Beijing West station (or the central one, for that matter).

After a while we were tour-guided in to the terminal and made our way to the train.  Once again it was an overnight trip to Beijing.  We watched some videos on my laptop (Futurama, Bolt) before going to bed.

Edit: 7/26: Since I can’t access Picasa right now, I’m going to just use the default image uploader that comes with my Wordpress package.  I will provide a link to all the photos at the end of the entry so that you can see what we were up to

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

So, as I said before, we were all preparing for our trip to other parts of China.  We gathered in the lobby of Shi Cha Hai’s International Plaza Hotel and loaded up in to the tour bus that would take us to the West Rail Station in Beijing.  For each leg of our trip, Kent would be following us and helping keep us organized.  We would also have a local guide for each location, that was more familiar with the area we were visiting.  And of course a bus and driver would be with us the whole time too.

This was my first time doing a tour of any sort, so it was a very interesting experience for me.  While you might not get a great indepth look at the culture or society where you are visiting, it is a great way to get a general overview and feel for what that area has to offer, so that the next time you visit you can explore just those area that interest you the most.  I might sign up for tours more often in the future, if the opportunity presents itself.

Anyway, we all go dropped off at the train station.  It was my 2nd time taking a train from this station, so I was familiar with it, but for the others it was quite an opportunity to witness the famous Chinese train system first-hand.  It is quite a hustle and bustle of humanity.

We hung out in the Soft Seat lounge for a while before boarding our train.  For those of you who don’t know, Chinese trains are divided in to 4 classes.  From worst to best, they are Hard Seat, Soft Seat, Hard Sleeper and Soft Sleeper.  The Soft Sleeper car was where we would be staying.  It was a closed-door compartment with 4 bunks.  I would be rooming with Pierre, James and Noah on both of our train legs.

After getting on the train and acclimating to the environment most of us hit the hay in anticipation of an early arrival in Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan province.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

I managed to grab a quick video as we were arriving in Zhengzhou, so you can see what it looks like from a train in China:

After we arrived and groggily shuffled off the train, the first thing I noticed was how muggy it was.  As it turned out, that was because it was going to be raining for most of our time in Henan.

But first it was time for breakfast.  Meals are included as part of our tour package so we were escorted to the first and only time we would experience fast-food; a quick bite at KFC.  Of course, at this point most of us didn’t mind the taste of home.

After breakfast we piled in to our tour bus and met our local tour guide, Jackie Chen.  He was very familiar with the Shaolin Temple and surrounding area and would be showing us around.

After the 1 hour drive to the mountainous area where the Shaolin Temple was located, we were first taken to a Daoist Temple, where we explored and took lots of photos.  The temple, originally burned down, was rebuilt in the style of the Forbidden City.  So if it looks like that sort of place, that is the reason.  They call it Xiao Gu Gong (at least that was the local name), “Little Forbidden City”.

After that we went to check in to our hotel.  It was a very opulent school located just down the road from the Shaolin Temple.  In this area there are several dozen martial arts schools, each with anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand students who live and train there.  The best of these students are chosen to become “Warrior Monks” at the Shaolin Temple.

Warrior Monks are different than other types of monks, in that they are not subject to the same rules as Buddhist Monks.  A the Shaolin Temple there are around 300 monks, with only about 80 of them being “Buddhist Monks”.  The requirements for Buddhis Monks are what you would imagine; no meat, no drinking, no sex, no spouce, etc. and they are never leave the temple until they die.   The other requirement for the Shaolin Buddhist Monks is that they be over 80 and have graduated and studied at an official Buddhist University.

Buddhist Monk

The Warrior Monks on the other hand are allowed to leave the temple at a certain point in their lives where they can go on and live a “normal” life, with meat, alcohol, and the rest of life’s various sins.  Most of them go off to teach at the same schools they came from.  Some others become bodyguards or security officials.

Warrior Monk

Anyway, enough of the lecture.  The hotel was actually owened by one of the larger martial arts schools in the area and had its own practice carpet right off of the lobby.  You could sit and watch people training, which a few of us did while waiting to check in to the hotel.

Our hotel lobby

I was rooming with James this time, and after a quick shower we went down to meet up for lunch at a Buddhist Temple only for women monks.  It was a delicious vegetarian meal and we were soon full and satisfied.  But it was time for us to walk off all that food with a trip to the Shaolin Temple.

The temple hadn’t changed since my last trip there in 2007, so at least I felt a familiarity with the surroundings.  Fortunately this time there were considerably less people there.

We walked through the entry yard with all the shops, got our tickets (while waching “Nan Bei Shaolin” on the big screen TV) and then walked down to watch a demonstration at the on-site school.  It was your typical Shaolin demonstration with some hard qi gong and various essoteric forms.  You can probably youtube something similar.  I did take the opportunity to take several pictures though, thanks to the good lighting.

After the demonstration we took a shuttle bus to the temple itself.  Having a tour guide was a nice change for me, as I hadn’t really gotten much of the history of the temple the last time I was there.  Jackie did a great job of sharing some of the history of the temple with us.

Ashely Riveted by Jackie's Discussions

Mandatory Group Shot

After the temple we walked up the street to the Pagoda Forest and then caught an electric shuttle back to the entrance.  All in all we spent about 2 hours walking around the temple.  Our feet were certainly due for a rest.

Back at the hotel we rested up before going out for a nice dinner.  It was a local restaurant not too far away.  They really have the meals down pat with these tours.  They have pre-set menus at pre-arranged restaurants and the food is basically ready as soon as you sit down.  You are pretty much in and out of the restaurant in under 45 minutes.  Very efficient.

I used to live next to this restaurant in Shanghai that I would see tons of foreigners go in to with tour groups on a daily basis.  “It must be pretty good” I thought to myself so I went to check it out. The food turned out to be so-so and super over-priced, but now I realize that those restaurants aren’t really set up for individual diners.  They cater to the tour groups and have set menus that they specialize in.  As a result, the tour groups get pretty good meals, but if you walked in off the street you would get an overpriced, so-so meal.

However, for us, the restaurants were located in a smaller town and not Shanghai, so they could accomodate both tours and smaller parties.  In any case, the food was pretty good.

After dinner it was back to the hotel to rest and sleep.  We needed it!

Thursday, July 23, 2009

In the morning I saw a very large contingent of students from the Shaolin School next to the hotel practicing outside. It was pretty neat.  I hadn’t seen anything like that since the 2006 trip to the Temple.  (I really need to post up a blog about that sometime.  It was pretty amazing.)

Before leaving for Xi’an, we had arranged a practice session with some Shaolin Monk students (not warrior monks quite yet) in the hotel wushu practice area.  There were five of them, and their skill level was actually pretty good. There was one in particular from Anhui who had some really strong basics and very good jumps.  The level is certainly going up at the Shaolin Temple schools.  Hopefully it continues to do so over time.

training with shaolin monk students

At the beginning of our practice they were a little shy and didn’t say much, but by the end we had broken the ice and managed to have some good conversations with them.  I told one of them (the one from Anhui) that if he could give me his email address I would send him the photos.  “I don’t have an e-mail address,” he replied “but I have a blog”.

I can only imagine what he writes about.  But we exchanged contact information and hopefully he will get the photos once I am back in the U.S.

action pose

After the practice we showered and everyone got ready.  We checked out of the hotel and headed for a nearby restaurant for lunch.

This was also goodbye to Jackie, as he was done with our Shaolin leg of the tour.  After lunch we rode the bus the 6 hours through the mountains to Xi’an, Shaanxi, home of the Terracotta Warriors!

goodbye to jackie

And our last day of training had arrived.  At the last moment our location changed from the Multi-Purpose Hall to the upstairs wushu hall, so we got to train up with the professionals.   Liu Qing Hua’s group was there training, as were a few others such as Liu Xiao Lei and Wang Xi.

We had a good practice, although I spent a fair amount of time trying to get photos and videos of the professional training.  I hadn’t really spent much time doing that during this trip so far, but wanted to at least capture what I could while I was able.

Unfortunately, the Middle Kingdom has prevented me from accessing my usual format for uploading images and what not to my blog.  So, I am going to have to come back and re-edit these blogs later with all the photos once I am back in the U.S.  I read somewhere that once National Day has come and gone, that all of the usual sites will be viewable again.  This is the 60th Anniversary of the PRC, which is a pretty big deal here in China.  I’m sure it will be quite exciting.  In fact, I will be back in China then, so I’ll try to blog a bit about it, time permitting.

After practice we all had to check out of our rooms.  We stuck the stuff we weren’t taking with us to Zhengzhou and Xi’an in a storage room, and the rest of our thing we put in Patti’s room, which she had arranged a late check-out for.  The afternoon was ours to enjoy as we liked.

I took Pierre and Jennifer across the street to the bing restaurant, and they seemed to enjoy the authenticity of the food there.  After that I visited Shahaub’s room and then took my cameras to the wushu hall to capture some more of the training.  After the practice I was even able to learn the 3rd section of Xie Zhen Hao’s nanquan form and record him walking through the other sections too.  I’m very excited to integrate some of his techniques into my form, although it is going to take quite a bit of thought on the best ways to do it.

Here are some cool pictures of Xie Zhen Hao doing his thing:

For the other Wushu West folks, most of them spent the day either going to Ya Xiu for some shopping, or hanging out at the hotel playing around and taking naps.

But soon it was time for us to head out.  Our tour-guide for the trip was Kent, from Shanghai.  It was really nice to have someone besides me, Patti or whomever to be in charge of the group for a change.  I happily gave up stressing over whether everyone was in our group and just tried to enjoy the trip.

But I’m going to save the first leg of our trip to Zhengzhou for the next blog.  In the meantime, I can upload this one photo for you to view until I am able to incorporate the rest of them here: