Week 13 (30 March - 4 April)

Tuesday 30 March we left Siping in the morning and were surprised to see that all the snow had melted. When we got back to the academy we were welcomed and I met some new students, I was told there were 4 new students, two guy and and two girls. I was kind of excited because it would be nice to have some female company around. The two male students Chris (24) from Scotland and Samir (26) from Syria had been at the academy for less than a week and had joined the shaolin group. The two girls could both speak Chinese really well as they both had a Chinese parent and had previously gone to the british school in Taiwan. Anoushka (24) was from England/Taiwan and Gillian (23) was from Australia both girls had also joined the shaolin group. Other news was that my shaolin shifu had left and that we now had a new shifu, I was kind of disappointed because I liked the old shifu for the reasons the others disliked him, however I was willing to accept the new shifu.

31 March at 5:30 we had to run down to the T and back (the road that leads to the academy comes to a T-junction and we call this the T, the distance is about 1,8km there and back but very steep on the way back), we then did Qi gong afterwards. I was really amazed, everybody was out and about in the morning, this huge and dramatic change in behaviour was obviously due to the female presence.





The almost 3 weeks away actually did me some good and my flexibility had improved despite the fact that I had only occasionally stretched on the trip. The morning training was less intensive than before but I assumed it was due to all the new students. In the afternoon we trained with the kids which was quite pleasant and motivating. I started learning a new form called Tong Bei Quan and I had 11 days until test day to get it right.

I also noticed a huge difference in Chinese class, whilst on the trip I had to speak Chinese wherever possible and had learnt a lot which made the classes a lot more pleasant.

348 stairs up to the castle

1 April, this morning I ran to the T and decided to run along the lake and up the 348 stairs to the castle, I had never been able to do this before because of the snow. So I decided to give it a try, I must say it was a killer and I got about half way before deciding to walk the remainder, I then did some Qi gong with master Liu. The rest of the day we did some meditating and just practised our forms. In the evening a new student arrived, Alex (36) from England.

2nd April, I ran to the T and then took the extended run along the lake to try running up the stairs again, this time I had made it a little further than the previous day. For the rest of the day we did some basic training with the kids.

On Saturday I went to Siping with Alex (the new student) to show him around and help him buy some basics. He was really impressed at how cheap everything was. Before returning to the academy we went to the Jin Li Hao for a sauna, afterwards we went to the reflexologist for a message.

The rest of the weekend I just relaxed and did some reading.