If I said that I did martial arts in China I don't think people would be that surprised. After all, who doesn't think of Kung Fu or Chinese martial arts when they think of China?! But my anomaly was that, of all the highly trained kung fu masters in China, I learnt from a white guy.
Jake is one of the most interesting people I met in China. He and his lovely wife, Becky, were some of our colleagues at Aston in Yinchuan and had come over from the US for a bit of adventure.
Jake had a fascination with Asian culture and threw himself into the cultural experience. I really respect the way that he would practice his Mandarin with everyone and anyone while I stammered and hid behind my Chinese boyfriend. Jake also was really passionate about martial arts and was even developing his own style which I believe was a mix between MMA and wing chun (correct me if I'm wrong Jake!).
Jake kindly offered anyone who wanted to learn the opportunity to train with him, and I thought why not! Martial arts are useful for discipline and self defence right? So when someone offers you free classes you don't say no, especially when you get to hit stuff with big sticks!
We used to practice in a variety of places, but the most common was in the park. The part is great for practice because there is so much space, but in China the problem is that, no matter now quiet the spot you find, eventually a Chinese person would show up and once they realised two white people were practicing martial arts they would definitely stop, stare, and most of the time ask what the hell we were doing.
I remember a couple times when Jake would end up showing the locals a few moves because they would not leave us alone until they'd had some interaction! But in the end it was just another day where a crowd would gather and see what the weird 外国 (foreigners) were doing!
Unfortunately I am inherently lazy, so I didn't stick at my martial arts practice for long, but it was a really fun thing to do and something I wish I'd done more of. I learnt how terrible my coordination is (good luck asking me to do anything with both hands at once), and how fun and satisfying it is to do drills with sticks (there is nothing like the sound of wood on wood smashing together in a forest), and I'll always appreciate Jake's kindness as teaching me some of his moves.
I may not be the next Bruce Lee, but it sure was fun to pretend for half a second!
I would pay lots of money to see you doing this
ReplyDelete