Leaving Beijing

Last day in Beijing was mostly waiting for uniforms, saying good byes..........and last minute lessons.  In the evening waited for Wudi(Dillon), and Steven(Alive not Dad).......for dinner. 

In the early afternoon, Glenn and I hung out with my Chen Taiji Classmate Chen Xiang, we went to work out at Beihai Park.  Spent some time working on footwork and the two man sparring form.  We found a nice spot near the Nine Dragon Wall to practice.

We finally settled for a good sushi restaurant...........the sushi was fresh...service a little slow...but that meant lots of time to talk..  Spent some time talking about Wudi's injury.....he has a bulging disc.....the problem is the surgery may not improve things and may make it difficult to do Wushu afterwards...........I advised him to try acupuncture........he said he had and it only helped for awhile...........I told him then if the injury does not bother him in normal life maybe he doesn't need the surgery...........he said it only hurts when he twists!  Well then the solution is simple don't twist............which is what he wants to do....but the school does not want him to retire.  My concern is he should quit now so he doesn't further injure himself, but that is not the concern of the school..........they worry about their reputation.........so for those of you who think the life of the Wushu athlete is cool....think again!  I have spoken to Coach Wu  about this on many occassins.....that it is not fair to the athletes to be only concern about winning medals for their team, and not caring about what happens to the rest of their lives..............

Mars, Steven and Wudi and myself found a nice Japanese Sushi Restaurant for dinner...we hoped Wudi would be able to make it to Berkeley this year for CMAT 18 in May.

Stevan and I talked about the growth of Alive not Dead....that it really took off.......and seems to be growing daily......need to keep it up and get more people reading and blogging........and we hoped the Beijing office does well!  So people keep reading and bring your friends!!

Then Wudi raised a good question: why is a sport so cool as Wushu so poorly supported?  Well that was China's fault.....the current college educated leaers of Wushu....don't really know anything about Wushu, and have been trying to take a short cut to becoming an International sport...........intead of building the sport from the bottom up they have tried to do it from the top down.......that's why the emphasis on Nandu not basics....sport for the elite.  Korea on the other hand built Taekwando from the bottom up.........uniting forms establishing the sport for all ages and genders.........Wushu still is for a very small population of elite athletes......Until you have a unified curriculum that takes the beginner to the advanced level and you have competitions at all levels can you build a base for a world sport.  Takes too long!!  But to paraphrase an old wushu proverb.............no work, no kung-fu....there are no shortcuts to mastery or the promotion of Wushu!!

Things in China are just constantly changing....this is the new Terminal 3 at the Beijing Airport, it was built for the Olympics......it is huge and has to be reached by monorail.

Left the next day for the US.....arrived after 10 hours....that was bearable, but the flight to China is just too long....two more hours and you go nuts!  Anyway arrive and the weather was worst than Beijing.....it was cold and windy.......actually cold enough to hail....and in China we didn't even see any snow!  By Wednesday had a sore throat,  went in to see the doctor at Kaiser, he told me that I might have a touch of swine flu or H1N1.........................good thing I had taken my flu shot before I left...............Okay time for class and a break.  Cya!