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Touring Shenzhen City

I’d been perplexed about why we were travelling so far to train in techniques and styles so different to SanDa. What I hadn’t appreciated, and Mr Chiu explained, was the composite nature of SanDa. By the end of our training I could see that. Stepping off the line to avoid a punch that was so intrinsic a part of the wing chun, and the stances that mattered for the sword pattern but which read across into to good footwork for effective SanDa punches and strikes.

With much nervousness, and after two intense evening practice sessions in a darkened park still full of locals exercising in their wonderful adult playground, we did our assessments with Grandmaster Lau. And much to our collective relief, we all passed.

The progress that we’d all made, some of us from scratch and some building on earlier foundations, was incredible. The role of the Grandmaster, Grandmaster Lau told us after he’d given us our medals, was to inspire. He’d certainly done that, and we’d risen to his challenge.

We worked on our SanDa for the last training afternoon, sharing hints and tips, and comparing notes on subtle differences between Eastbourne and London practice. And Mr Chiu kept his offer to hold a grading, and with Richard’s help, I was delighted to pass from orange to green belt. Most surprisingly, the Golden Sands pattern came alive: it made sense, my movements had purpose and focus. The chi kung was flowing all right.

We packed in so much more, I can’t do justice to a fraction of it. Mr Chiu took us for traditional Chinese massage - feet and whole body - initially painful but so relaxing after training. We went from contemporary retail therapy on the Beijing Road in Guangzhou, to a truly super supermarket in Shenzhen, and for a more traditional haggling experience in a jade shop back in the New Territories. Our R&R in the hot and peaceful gardens of the culture park took in a scale tour of China’s architectural and historic delights, topped off with a spectacular show by the Mongolian horsemen and women re-enacting battles, complete with their swords.

Mr Chiu was endlessly patient, organising a fantastic training and cultural experience, and bringing it to life with his skill, knowledge, insights and humour. And when asked, said he enjoyed it as much as we did, watching us get to grips with new experiences and thinking about what he’ll do differently to make next year’s trip even better.

I can’t believe I was so nervous last November at the prospect of booking. And I’m so pleased I did it for so many different reasons. (I’ve nearly finished the delicious Chinese chocolates Ros and Gary bought me for my birthday.)

Tim, Lindsay and I stayed a few extra days in Hong Kong on our way back to London. We saw the Po Lin Buddha on Lantau island, and stopped at the small fishing village of Tai O. We wandered out along a quiet back road, until we reached a temple and the local Shaolin training school. We stood in the empty and peaceful grounds, not speaking, soaking up the late afternoon sun and the school’s atmosphere. Kung fu, I thought, yeah I do this.

Rachel, Green Belt Chugarkwon Sanda Practitioner
RR 7/04/09

Kung Fu in China

Title: Food, and other things we did in China.
By Rachel Russel

With just four months of SanDa under my (barely) yellow belt, the prospect last November of a booking onto the club trip to China to train with Grandmasters was slightly daunting. To say the least. But, hey, I was hugely enjoying my training with Mr Parmar, my scant knowledge of Chinese culture could only grow, Tim’s enthusiasm from previous trips was infectious, and - one way or another - it would make for a memorable 40th birthday. I was encouraged that the group would be a mix from the London and Eastbourne clubs, with me and Ros beginners (orange belts come the start of the trip), Lindsay on her way to red belt and Richard, Gary and Tim, seniors and instructors. And of course, Mr Chiu, who had everything organised for us: flights, itinerary and checklists and much, much more.

I’ve been back for months now, and it is still hard to capture in words what was an amazing trip in so many ways. Here are a few my personal highlights.

Tim had warned us that we would be objects of interest, as foreigners, training in the park in Guangzhou. And so we were. But it didn’t take long to relax and focus on Grandmaster Lau’s instruction in the straight sword as he introduced the pattern he’d put together for us. We started with the foundation moves, working on our own and in pairs, repeating and repeating, as he corrected and improved our stances, grips, and postures, and Mr Chiu patiently provided the translation. What Grandmaster Lau made look so graceful and easy of course proved much harder to replicate. But he wasn’t going to let us slack and was exacting in his instruction, as we took the basics and build them up into the short sequences or five or six moves.

The sword work, while not high cardio intensity, was physically demanding as we stretched, balanced and contorted ourselves into unfamiliar postures. My yoga stood me in good stead. What on wet Saturday mornings in my local leisure centre passes for wobbly warrior stances, came to life as I stepped firmly forward and brought down my sword to slice an imaginary opponent. A good reminder that martial arts were originally exactly that, as Mr Chiu explained the intended effect of the different cuts, flicks and flourishes we performed with our plastic, extendable swords. Suddenly the pattern started to make sense, and I found myself simultaneously in two worlds: by a lake in a park with Chinese music drifting from the far shore as women danced their morning exercise and locals stopped briefly to smile and watch us as they passed, and on an ancient muddy battlefield giving purpose to my moves and pondering the horror of such combat.

The art of team spirit

Grandmaster Lau interspersed our sword training with chi kung practice, helping us to build and manipulate our internal energy. As he chanted in Cantonese, and we repeated the moves, we grew confident enough to close our eyes and start to relax. (I’m pretty slow at remembering patterns, so there was a fair amount of peeking on my part for a quite while). I had been sceptical beforehand of the concept of an energy that could be manipulated and felt between your hands, let alone used to maintain or restore health.

Without going into detail - you’ll have to try it with an expert yourself - I’d changed my mind after two days of practice with Grandmaster Lau. It affected all of us powerfully - me, Lindsay and Ros, very visibly at one point - and positively. Mr Chiu’s lack of amazement and chuckles were reassuring: that always happens when chi first gets unblocked on my courses at home, he said.

It’s time for a food break now, and we had plenty. Take your pick: Cantonese, Schezwan, North Eastern, sweet fried eggy bread and builder’s brew (game for everything else, some of us just couldn’t face noodles, dumplings or congee for breakfast). After a much needed shower at the end of each day’s training, Mr Chiu took us out to eat, carefully choosing different restaurants and different dishes to introduce us to food far from the MSG experience of your local takeaway. We were truly spoilt, and teased, as miscellaneous dishes appeared and we tentatively tried the less obvious choices intended by Mr Chiu to extend our palates and surprise us. It was great.

Lindsay’s enthusiasm - she’s a real foodie - lead the way. It was hard to pick a favourite among the more or less exotic. Although I’d made a special request after seeing them early on in Mr Chiu’s local Hong Kong market, mine wasn’t the pigs ears (sliced thinly in a chorizo style hard sausage, and sliced just like streaky bacon with the rind in the middle). Nor the jellyfish in wasabi, casseroled frogs’ legs, crispy fat prawns, melting chicken sweet and sour, delicious goat or crab, and it certainly wasn’t the silk worms (even the Grandmasters looked a tad nervous there, though Tim did us proud by eating three). Nor all of the many beautiful vegetables (including unexpected aubergine in tomato sauce), succulent noodles, sticky rices, plump dumplings or soothing fish soups. My favourites were the goose tripe (imagine very chewy ribbon pasta in dark duckish gravy), and the fried tofu slabs, crispy edged but creamy smooth and silky soft, with sausage meat centres. Mmm.

Oh, and the durian.

Hightlights of the Kung Fu tour

For our training days with Grandmaster Chen, we caught the bus across the city to his flat. The rush hour traffic saw the city in full swing, with cyclists heading the wrong way into traffic flows, and the chance to take in the fronts and backs of small shops and tall flats, and people, lots of them. The public information films on the bus TVs were popular, too. I was grateful for the lengthy journey: there were so many distractions that it wasn’t until the trip on the second morning that I saw the story of the goats of Guangzhou (one for each of its five districts) from start to finish. And I can still hear their theme tune and Tim exclaiming ‘It’s the goats!’

Grandmaster Chen trains his students in the large courtyard garden at his apartment block and that was where we trained for our two days with him and Master Leung. Mr Chiu had Ros, Lindsay and me getting to grips with the basic stances, blocks, punch and deflections, while Richard and Gary built on their training and practice since last February with Master Leung, and Grandmaster Chen worked with initially with Tim who been more recently to China for some one to one training.

For a style developed by Buddhist nuns, it didn’t feel very female friendly to me! Combining a tight and counterintuitive body stance, and precise angles for fists and blocks, it felt a long way from the looser, more strength dependent punching and kicking I’d started my SanDa with, but was clearly devastating from a skilled practitioner. Grandmaster Chen safely made the point with a visiting instructor from the Praying Mantis style who’d come for a ‘friendly consultation.’ (That’s a story for Mr Chiu to tell.)

Mr Chiu worked on our muscle memory, patiently and humorously, building the basics into the start of a pattern. At one point, the three of us shuffled an entire circle of the long garden path to practice stepping, blocking and punching. I should have kept that bright suggestion to myself, but it made it stick.

Other students of Grandmaster Chen came and went, again making it look very easy. And we had plenty of interested local mums who brought their small children in pushchairs to watch and wave - mostly at us women. It was hard to maintain concentration at those points, but it was also wonderful to smile back and make a small connection just for a few moments, without saying anything.

Our lunch breaks on this side of town were at Grand Master Chen’s local dim sum restaurant. I won’t start on the food eulogies again, except to say that we passed a shop selling fruit that smelled like dust carts. Honest, and anything up to a foot long, round to oval, orange and spiky in appearance. Mr Chiu explained these were Malaysian durian fruit, to which he was quite partial. I dutifully carried our slice back on the bus all the way to our hotel. Double-wrapped, and with it discreetly tucked under my seat, my kung fu brothers and sisters wisely left me to sit on my own with the smell.