We're HOOOME!

It feels so good to be back (despite the jetlag) and at a different time of year. Autumn has always been my favorite season and now I get to catch the tail end of it. Wish there were still some leaves on the trees but at least you can smell them in the air. The air is so clean here, it's funny because I just read an article about northeast Edmonton having really bad air quality but to me, it's pristine. I love walking outside and just taking deep breaths, hopefully cleaning out my lungs a bit.

This break feels special because I know in September, that's it. I am so looking forward to that time. It's so exciting to think about. I can start preparing a bit now and it just feels really great to be doing that kind of thing.

yay....

It's been so nice to be here training without having a 'class' like I usually do. There's still about half of us here but we've been doing lots of solitary training, which I love. I think doing forms as a group really did help me to get faster but at this point, I think they do more harm than good. We've all developed bad habits (sloppy movements) that need to be corrected and I'm just starting to really make the forms my own and fully express their flavours. I'll never move the way shifu does so trying to copy him exactly is an exercise in frustration. I need to just find my style and make it great. So anyway, that's mostly what I've been working on. I'm also getting ready to leave here (eeeee, one week) and so I'm organizing and tying up loose ends.

About 2 weeks ago I started painting lessons. My teacher is this tiny old Chinese man who is very talented and also very sweet. I've really been enjoying it, it's challenging but not too hard and the time just flies by when I'm there. So far I've painted a pine tree, some bamboo, and another scene with mountains and another tree. Good times.

Sometimes I come up with really good, insightful ideas but then I sit down to blog about it and realize I have no idea where to start. It makes sense in my head but I can't get it out right. What I wanted to write about was the concept of mastery.....I'll give it a shot, apologies if it ends up in a bunch of rambling.

The idea of a kung fu master that most people have (and I used to have) is so different from the reality. It's so much fantasy about mysterious, otherworldly people who've achieved super-natural powers or who are hard-core traditionalists passing down this pristine lineage of an art that hasn't changed in hundreds of years. The more educated you become on martial arts and the more teachers you meet, the more you get to know one, the more you realize how ridiculous this all is. Kung fu is a hodge-podge that people have been mixing around for literally thousands of years. Teachers/masters are people, just like anyone, with flaws and personality quirks, who have stuck with it. They are not always the most talented, the kindest, or the smartest. I often feel frustrated with Shifu, he leaves me floundering a lot of the time and I wish he'd spend more time teaching us and less time irritating us but the closer we get to the end of the program the clearer it is to me that having to figure things out for myself has been one of the most valuable things I've done here. If he was spoon-feeding me everything, I'd be totally lost upon returning home and realizing that I was on my own. Now I feel confident that I can figure most things out myself (maybe with occasional help) and become a master myself.

The grand-master (my teachers teacher) tells people that he was not a stand out student, many of his kung fu brothers were much better than him but they all left and he kept training and now he's the grand-master of Wudang. Every time I see him, I'm struck by what an amazing martial artist he is, and it's all because he never quit. When I'm feeling very unhappy about our training and contemplating why I'm still here, it comes down to one thing: I'm not a quitter. It can seem like a personality flaw at times, I wonder if I'm more stubborn than smart and if I'm not 'flogging a dead horse' but flaw or not, that's the way I am and really the only difference between me and some of the people who I've trained with in the past. I don't know if this is just the way I am or if it developed over all the years of training. I am not the fastest, the strongest, or even the cleverest, but I am still here and I hope I can end up like our grand-master in the end, being able to look back and be so glad that I stuck it out.

So I guess what I want to say is this, instead of glorifying those who have achieved mastery (in kung fu or in other pursuits), get your head out of the clouds and take a look at what it really took to get them where they are.

per·se·ver·ance

ˌpərsəˈvi(ə)rəns/

noun

1. 1.

   steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.

I haven't blogged in 2 weeks and it's been a pretty weird 2 weeks. We went to Beijing for that performance which was also a competition of sorts apparently, sort of like China's Got Talent, and we won...unfortunately. Which means we have another round and then if we win that too, we appear on the Chinese New Year special. It's a huge deal actually, 800 million people watch that show, I just can't get excited. As a result of all this, we've all had to re-organize our Christmas breaks (some people are going to miss Christmas at home) 2 times already. It's incredibly awkward because it's obviously really important to Shifu but most of us would really rather not deal with the hassle. We've all been quite respectful but there have been a few uncomfortable conversations and he pointedly reminded us that we signed a contract for this program where we agreed to do performances and interviews. So after all this mess, I finally have a clear idea of what to write here: I'm coming home at the end of October and leaving just after Christmas! I'm sure it's obvious but I can't wait to get out of here, this has all been pretty stressful and I can't wait to see my family and friends again. Yay!

Only one month to go now...

Reading last weeks post makes me cringe a little but it was true for me at the time and I'll probably feel that way again in the next year. This week shifu taught us a new qi gong called the Crane Standing Qigong and it's amazing what a difference that has made for my state of mind. Learning something new is cool, learning this in particular is awesome. It's pretty difficult actually and requires tons of focus but is very calming, just what I need right now. I know I will be practicing this every chance I get for the next little while. It's definitely something that if I was to practice it alone in a park at home, people would think I was a little crazy, but one of the great things about China is that people do all sorts of weird things in public and they're completely unselfconscious about it too. There are many things I don't like about living here, but that is one of the pluses, people really don't care too much about looking foolish. It can be quite refreshing.

It's been raining off and on this week which is great because we got to sleep in for 2 days (YES!) and also because it's really cooled off. I started sleeping with a sheet covering me instead of just a thin sarong and I no longer wake up at night all sweaty.

We've been roped into doing another of those performances that I love so much (she said with heavy sarcasm) so I'll probably be heading off to Beijing for a few days in about 2 weeks. In the meantime, we'll be wasting (ahem, I mean spending...yeah...) our time on preparations for said performance. Half the class just got back from a big performance on Thursday too. This year has seemed like a big time waster in a lot of ways so I've been trying to focus on what I need to work on as much as I can when I get some time. I also try to spend my time outside of class on fruitful things like studying chinese, learning about the history and theory of martial arts and daoism, and not going crazy! Staying positive is the biggest challenge right now, I perform these mental gymnastics to force myself to see some benefit to what we're doing, but it's impossible to maintain that mindset in the midst of the relentless disappointment that we're all facing right now.

Looking back on my blog posts from this year you can really see the ups and downs. I think to some extent that is natural in a situation like this....but that doesn't comfort me anymore. I've become an expert at latching on to some little thing to keep me going through the hard times but I think I've pretty much realized that any optimism is only a temporary pick-me-up until the next disappointment comes along. The best way to deal that I've come up with is to stop caring at all, but it's not natural for me to be apathetic, I have to force myself to feel that way in order to just get through it.

This post is a downer I'm sure but some posts you write for others and some are for yourself, this one is for me. I feel like all the things that are important to me, in training and even in life, are fundamentally different from what is important to shifu. This means that what our training focuses on is rarely what I feel I need anymore and shifu is really not interested in hearing what I think or in changing anything.

We only have 1 more year left, I constantly question whether it is worth hanging on or should I just cut my losses and leave? I know I have a tendency in life to keep going for far longer on a certain path than I should, is this one of those times? I don't know.....

I've never been so open about these feelings before. We all question why we're here when times are tough but tough times are starting to run together to the point where I wonder if there are any good times left.

We learned the fan form this week (Heaven and Earth Fan) while the rest of our class was in Beijing doing some T.V. appearance. It was a nice week, nice to learn something new and also to have a break from being part of the "class" which can be pretty trying at times. The training format was a lot more relaxed and doing fan is actually really fun. I have to admit I wasn't super excited about learning this form, it's not part of our curriculum and it's from another mountain in northern China, Gansu province. It's also a form that tons of Chinese women learn because it's pretty and feminine (at least in their minds) and so it seems a bit silly to me at times. After learning it though, I can see the appeal, it's fun, not too hard, and there's something satisfying about the sound the fan makes when you open it. I'm not under any illusions as to its applicability "on the streets" but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. 

It's started to cool off slightly at night now so the early (6 am) class is actually comfortable for practicing. Hallelujah! The end is near....