We started learning the tai chi 108 this week. It's really cool. I'm surprised we started it now because it was scheduled for next year but Shifu said he wants us to fix our stances and 108 will help. He's got us doing super low stances while we do it and man is it killer on the legs! Although it is very difficult I can feel it making my legs stronger and my knees healthier already. I can't wait to show my mom how low we do it when I come home, she's going to flip out! haha.

I am getting pretty sick of China. Maybe it's just that I'm homesick and I need a break but I've definitely been noticing more and more things that really suck about living here.

1.No matter how long you live here or how fluent you are, if you don't look Chinese, you're a foreigner. Even to people you've gotten to know quite well, you're a novelty to be stared at and puzzled over. Like an animal in the zoo.

2.When a lot of the people here see foreigners, they see dollar bill signs and will try to get whatever they can out of you. From the guy you've bought noodles from every week for a year suddenly trying to scam you out of an extra 1 RMB to the parents of the really young Chinese kids pressuring the school to offer FREE Chinese classes taught by foreigners, it just seems never-ending. I understand that people are often struggling financially but not every westerner has money to burn and it's tiring to be cheated all the time.

3.Why is the food always drenched in oil? I can't escape it even by eating simple vegetable dishes. The least oily food I've found here is plain bread and noodle soup with a greasy film on top. I won't go into details but I don't think it's very good for the digestion. Every foreigner has stories to tell about getting sick from eating the food here and that's not even including the food poisoning stories.

4.It's so loud! Fireworks, car horns, construction sounds, karaoke, it's hard to escape even in a small town like this. Even just people talking on their phones feel the need to scream everything. I could walk around with earplugs in all the time and not miss a thing. It'd all just be at a more reasonable volume.

5.The Government. I don't even know where to start with this one...I used to complain about corrupt politicians and bureaucrats at home but trust me when I say this: You have no idea. I've never seen a system so completely disorganized and inefficient. The ONLY way to get anything done involves greasing plenty of palms while you do it. It's absolutely a matter of 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours'. If the government tells you to jump, your only choice is to do it quickly or pay the price.

People think that due to oppression, Chinese people never complain about the government but it's not true. Everyone knows that the system is unfair, in fact there are almost weekly protests all over the country with thousands of people but we never hear about them in the media. The participants are often beaten or thrown in jail without trial and it's all kept hush hush. I think it's ok to write this here because blogspot is already blocked by the Chinese firewall anyways.

Another thing is that there is just so much emphasis on 'saving face'. I know that this is a cultural difference but I didn't realize how frustrating it could be until now. It's almost impossible to speak directly on many topics, instead you must word things so carefully and talk circles around the issues. Almost no one takes responsibility for mistakes or oversights, instead it is pushed on to 'someone else' and if you press the issue it is considered extremely rude. Even getting a simple question answered is sometimes a huge ordeal.

There is much about the 'authorities' here to complain about but one of the most ridiculous is the love of flamboyance and pomp in all official affairs. Every time someone of high standing in the government does anything there are fireworks, red carpets, processions, speeches, flowers, gifts, etc. I believe that after the fall of the Qing dynasty, all of the reverence placed on the imperial court was simply transfered over to the communist government. At least it's entertaining.

Well, I'm pretty much spent now. Thanks for reading my rant, I feel better for having written all this down. Only 2 more months until I get to have a break from all this stuff. yay!

Next week is the "4th International Wushu Competition"....thing....in Shiyan (the nearest big city) so we've been very busy. Once again we're doing some opening ceremony performance with Jackie Chan and some other performance on the mountain. We still haven't even seen Jackie Chan but it seems like anywhere he goes the government just scrambles to find any foreigners they can and throw them on stage with him. Any way they can think of to exploit both him and us.

Well we've been very busy practicing for 2 separate performances but at least we get to do real forms so it's not a complete waste of our time. Soon it'll be over and everything will be back to normal, hopefully we can avoid any more of this stuff until after the break. I thought training internal kung fu in a mountain town would be peaceful! haha

I'm really starting to itch for the break, not because I need to rest from training, because I'm getting kind of sick of living in China and I really miss Canada. I'll write more about why Canada is a better place to live in my next post.

There are some weeks that I just don't WANT to blog. I don't WANT to write about myself. I'm tired. I'm sore. I just WANT to be alone. When it comes right down to it I don't really WANT to train either....but I do. I train and I write even though I don't WANT to do it and it's those weeks that really build me up. I can look back and say that I did what I said I would do. I kept that promise to myself. This is one of those weeks.

This week was the second stat holiday we've had in the last 3 weeks. It's been great. A few weeks ago was the moon festival and we had an extra 2 days off and then this week was "China's National Day" so we got another extra day off. Now there are no more holidays until our Christmas break so it's been a nice time. Shifu bought a fancy new karaoke machine so we used that a few times already. If they can afford it, every celebration here has karaoke and it's always on full blast!

Well the extra rest days have been needed. We've been training really hard since the weather cooled off a bit so everyone is kind of tired. Although my knees are giving me trouble at times again, I'm really enjoying the stuff we're doing now. It's tough but we've mostly been working on things which are my weaknesses so I feel like I'm improving a lot. Since we train several times almost every day, it can be hard to see improvements in yourself so I really like being able to see that right now. We're practicing a lot of speed drills for kicks, forms, etc as well as working a lot on sparring training, especially the footwork. This morning we spent a good 45 minutes just doing high side kicks (another weakness) and it was really helpful.

There's not much else to say....I really hope we change the schedule soon. During the summer we have meditation in the afternoon and then train in the evening until 9:30/10pm but the rest of the year we have that class in the afternoon and then after dinner we just have meditation so we can go to bed as early as 9. When you have to get up at 4:50am, early bedtimes are a good thing! Maybe this week we'll change it....I hope so.