Simon's Occasional China Blog

[SimonM]

I completely understand but that just makes it worse in some ways.

If I didn't understand I could always just gripe about her awful mother but I realize her mother is not being awful, just trying to look out for her daughter. So I can't even ***** in good conscience. Eileen told me to go to Xihu while I am in Zhejiang...

I think that is West Lake.... I'll take some photos to share with her.

[Scott R. Brown]

Yes, it can be very frustrating especially when we come from a culture that is a bit more liberal with their girls. But even this liberality in western culture is relatively recent in historical terms. The pill as only has been around since the forties; prior to that all this concern was to provide protection from pregnancy. For you, as for me, it may just be they are trying to protect her in case you are a conniving round-eye attempting to take advantage of her virtue and then leave her.

In my case, many of the women in her family did not trust me, citing many anecdotal stories of women they knew taken advantage of by American men. Once I had proven my commitment, demonstrated a respect for the family rules and they observed my behavior as a gentleman they came to accept me. We are now happily married. My wife is a real doll!

It takes patients and it can get frustrating, but she sounds like a nice woman! Good Luck!!

[Mel]

Patience, Simon, patience. Scott is right: It wasn't long ago that our own society was just as strict and watchful--and with good reason! And who knows? Our society may become strict and watchful again: The pill is turning out to be dramatically unsafe for many women (although the effects often don't show up for many years--we now have hindsight), and many religious groups are trying to ban anything and everything that will keep a woman "safe," preferring to breed her as a cow, so to speak.

Patience! You KNOW it will be worth it.

[SimonM]

And since I most certainly don't want to just take advantage of this wonderful lady I will exercise that patience and try to win the family over. Fortunately I am a patient person.

[SimonM]

It's now the year of the Dog.

I had a good spring festival eve. Drank beer and whiskey with an old friend from England, set off a bunch of fireworks and talked with Eileen on the phone. It's fun here on spring festival eve even if the air stinks of burnt gun powder.

My trip will experience a slight delay since bus service is discontinued for the next two days.

[PaiLumDreamer]

This is a really good read. It kinda gets me wanting to live in China as well.

Which probably wont happen for a good long time. Ill probably just need a ton of vacation-time there first.

BTW, did you ever get to fight that one guy you were wanting to fight?
From what ive read it seems like most of the Chinese guys dont really know how to fight

I also love to spar. I may not be very good, but its the one aspect of my martial arts that really gets me excited. Learning things is always great, but I want to put what I learn into a live situation. :P

Anyway, this gets me even more antsy about my trip. Its only about 36 days away, now.

[SimonM]

Not yet. After the last sparring class there were exam related scheduling conflicts. However there is always next term. In the meanwhile I'm doing solo practice until I can find someone nuts enough to spar with me.

The thing about China and fighters is that there are just SO **** MANY Chinese people. I'm sure there are very impressive fighters out there, as there are everywhere, it's just that there are a whole lot of people to hide them in.

[PaiLumDreamer]

I guess I said that wrong. I mean the people you train with* dont seem to have much combat experience? You should ask your sifu to spar ! I dunno about to protocol outside of our own style, but we always fight our instructors. Now that ive been introduced to something like that I dunno how much I could trust my teachers fighting skill if I didnt see it first hand; but I would understand if he didnt see that the same way. He might take it as a challenge?

Anyway, it sounds to me you need some sparring buddies. Start a Chinese Fight Club!



I would go nuts with no sparring

[green_willow]

Not yet. After the last sparring class there were exam related scheduling conflicts. However there is always next term. In the meanwhile I'm doing solo practice until I can find someone nuts enough to spar with me.

The thing about China and fighters is that there are just SO **** MANY Chinese people. I'm sure there are very impressive fighters out there, as there are everywhere, it's just that there are a whole lot of people to hide them in.

The traditional way is to get up on the stage at the town centre and say the traditional colonialist remarks. You'll sure get the best kung fu fighters from the darkest parts of china to challenge you. Be prepared because you might be getting yourself in too deep.

And if you don't get challengers - well stage a few kung fu fights with your usual 5 kung fu friends where you quickly whip their butts. and then wait........

gook luck

[SimonM]

The new rule in my household is this: no wielding two handed swords in the living room.

I just recently bought a Spring Autumn Pear Wood Sword. I've wanted one of these swords forever and the opportunity for me to get one finally arose so I siezed it. However I don't believe in wall-hangers. If I own a sword it gets used. So what if it is 7 lbs? I'm big and heavy too!

But it's **** cold out today and I just got back from a trip way south of here so the cold is bitter... OK, I'll just practice inside...

Big Mistake

I brought a glass lamp down on my own head in the process of practicing a rather vigorous downward cut. It took me 1/2 an hour to clean up all the glass and I am still shocked that I didn't cut myself.

This is the second time in my life I've done something like this (the last time it was back in Canada with a staff) and I think this time I've learned my lesson. Two handed weapon practice is relegated to OUTSIDE regardless of the temperature.

[SimonM]

And I couldn't be happier. I've had a good vacation but it was too long and I spent WAY too much money. Now I have Eileen's birthday (today) and mine (thursday) and then a month of almost nil spending...

That aside the return of school means the return of Gong Fu classes (FINALLY) but I'd rather not wait through weeks and weeks of wushu and taiji before getting back into the San Da. So I'm thinking about talking to Zhang Yong Hong about starting a sportive fighting club.

My idea is this: Take the guys (and gals) from the PE dept. who are interested in continuing to pursue sportive fighting aside mabey one or two extra days a week for a combat-centered training session. Classes split between conditioning, technique drills and full contact sparring. Start with the (rather restrictive) San Da rules which we already played with last term but slowly add in more techniques (such as elbows, knees, a real clinch game and a ground game) as the participants become comfortable for more rigorous (and risky) training.

I DO want feedback on this idea but I'm going to start a second thread for that. Coach Ross and other people currently doing sportive combat training would be most welcome to give advice but no trolling please.

[SimonM]

Eileen is finally back in town. It's also her birthday today. A day ago she told me that she had never had a birthday party before. I intended to fix that and I succeeded. Her best friend and I took her to her favorite restaurant. Meanwhile Wang Bing (someone who has been very helpful throughout this whole situation, I often call her my "little sister" - no offence intended Sheil, you are still my flesh and blood baby sister, but it's a Chinese thing.)

Anyways...

She got together with a bunch of other friends of Eileen and headed over to the KTV bar with the birthday cake. As we finished supper I contacted Wang Bing and learned they were ready at that end so Lake and I walked Eileen over to the KTV bar for some karaoke, just the three of us, Eileen had never had any birthday party before, a surprise party nearly blew her stack. She was grinning from ear to ear (and blushing terribly) as we sang Happy Birthday in two languages.

After that we lit the cake with a candle that had a small firework in it and then played "happy birthday" over and over again. It was still singing two and a half hours later when I said goodnight to Eileen.

Then Wang Bing sprayed everyone with Budweiser. I sheilded Eileen from the worst of it... So Lake decided to put some icing on her nose. Everything after that becomes a bit of a cakey blur. About a half an hour later we all crammed into the bathroom to scrape the cake out of our eyes, ears and hair.

So we sang some songs, drank what was left of the beer, ate what was left of the cake and had a really good time!

It was a good night.

[SimonM]

So I'm at my birthday party and the phone rings. I go to answer and (yet again) there is nobody there. This has been happening all day. One to two rings and then hangup, same number each time, won't answer when I call back.

I tell my friends about this and one of them (Wenli) decides to tease my girlfriend and I by saying "mabey it's a pretty girl". Thanks Wenli.

Anyway we eventually decide to find out who it was who had been pranking me. So Wenli calls their number from her cellphone. It's a girl from one of my second year speaking classes. I don't know which because Wenli pretended to be calling for somebody else, sorry - wrong number, and all that jazz. Anyway shortly after this girl calls again, twice, and I am getting annoyed.

So I call her from my cell phone and let it ring about 20 times. No answer. But the girl calls back. Normally I answer the phone with "hello" but I've been drinking some beers and I'm also a bit annoyed with the prankster so I instead say:

"Wai?"

and she says a bunch of stuff in putonghua that I'm not making the effort to listen to.

"Wai?"

blah blah blah

"Shenme?"

blah blah blah

"Ni huei shoa lishi hua ma?" - of course I don't speak Lishi Hua but neither do most of my students. And in Lishi there are plenty of people (especially in the poorest income brackets) who don't speak any more than minimal Putonghua. They speak Lishi Hua almost exclusively. And my story seems to fit. At least she doesn't switch to English and call my bluff on the whole thing. Rather she hangs up, calls once more to my house phone five minutes later and then stopped calling.

I had a lot of fun with that call though and my friends and I had a HUGE laugh about the whole thing afterward. Eileen tells me my Chinese accent was passable enough that if the girl wasn't from Luliang than I might just have pulled it off over a cell phone connection. However the next time I have that class I think I'm going to find out who it is calling me constantly.

[CFT]

多小tien你想要? Duo xiao tien ni xiang yao? I think my pinyin might be a bit flawed here because I can't get the right character for tien to appear. Oh well, I know how to say it and how to draw it.

Nice to read your adventures in China.

You probably know this by now. The pinyin you are looking for is "tian", meaning days?

[omarthefish]

I'm pretty sure from the context the character he wants is 钱 and he can't find it because the pinyin is wrong. It's "qian".