Macau (5/14): 7th Asian Wushu Championships

I had come in to the office to work on Monday (a holiday) so that I could take Wednesday off to go support several of our alivenotdead.com artists/athletes (and friends) at the 7th Asian Wushu Championships being held over in Macau.

I grabbed a Turbo Jet but miscalculated things and had to wait for a later ship.  I ended up missing several of the events in the morning session, but caugth the tail end of women's taiji.  Japan was going and was doing quite well.  I managed to take a few pictures.

At the end of the morning session I said hello to He Jing De's wife, Christine, who said that he was resting at the hotel.  It looked like several of the people I knew were competing in the afternoon so weren't there for most of the morning session.

I had a few hours to kill so I went to get a quick haircut and grabbed some lunch.  I made it back to the sports center by 3:00 p.m. for the afternoon session and women's broadsword/dao shu.

First up was Cao Jing, super nice woman from the Shandong Team, representing China.  Apparently going first did nothing to disturb her ability to win gold.  In fact, China won gold in every event for the afternoon.  I think I had that Chinese national anthem pretty much memorized by the end.

I am still uploading all the footage, but I managed to get Cao Jing's up on youtube before I finished this blog so here you go.  I will post up the rest after I've been able to get them online.

During this eveng He Jing De showed up and took me down to the V.I.P./athletes area to sit and watch.  I spent the rest of the afternoon down there taking photos, talking with friends and getting some video footage.

Unfortunately my camera's battery was a bit low, as I hadn't charged it since the Wakeboarding the day before.  I got the main athletes I was hoping to capture though, so that's okay.

As I was sitting with He Jing De and Christine, I noticed that Gogi Nebulanafrom Indonesia had come to sit with the Indonesian team members not too far away.  So I went over to sit with him.  It was nice to see him again, as the last time was a year and a half ago when we trained together in Shanghai.  Another Indonesian team member, David, who was also in Shanghai with Gogi, was there as well, so that was a pleasant surprise.

Gogi Nebulana and Wei Jian

Wei Jian, from the Shanghai team, was there competing for China and I got to watch both him and Gogi do their thing.  The cool thing was that Wei Jian got first, Liu Yang (from Hong Kong, who coached Raffi, Pat, Stephen and I for a few weeks last year) got 2nd and Gogi got 3rd!  Two of the three medalists for men's straightsword are alivenotdead.com artists!  And the other one is friends with us and represents Hong Kong.  Pretty neat.

Also up for the afternoon was women's spear.  I managed to get some photos of that and of course Ma Ling Juan from China got first place with her awesome skillz ...

But one of the main events I had come to watch was, of course, men's nan gun (southern staff to you noobies).  He Jing De had come away with a disappointing fourth place in the morning's nanquan event, so he seemed determined to do his best this time around.  And he certainly delivered.  He got a silver medal!  Only a few hundredths of a point behind 1st place China.  He Jing De definitely seemed happy to get some metal medal.

The big ending, however, was a last-man-competing 3rd place win from Iran.  Not too shabby.  I'm sure Shahaub will be happy to hear that his friends did well.

Another event I was looking forward to was women's nandao.  Of course Lin Fang, the Fujian powerhouse from China got first place, but the other competitors did quite well too.  Kudos to Hong Kong for the silver in that (their 3rd silver of the afternoon at that point).

The other event was men's staff, and Zhao Qing Jian from the Beijing Wushu Team, got 1st place.  No big surprise. 

After the competition I said my goodbyes to everyone and grabbed a taxi to the ferry terminal ad then took a ferry back to Hong Kong.  After a quick walk to the IFC and an MTR ride home, here I am, back home as if it was all just a dream.

Good thing I have lots of videos and photos to remind me it was real ...

You can view my photo album here