Xue Sheng
All weight is underside
I have no idea where to post this so if the moderators feel they should move it, by all means please do
First let me say it took me a week to get use to the staring. I am not taller than many people there, but I am 61.25 and blonde. And there are NO blondes in the places I went with my wife, Tourists and foreigners do not go to these places, only Chinese and Beijing natives. Also I recommend having a much better grasp of the language than I did if you go to China. If I did I would have felt more secure if I were to get lost. Also I would have had more fun being able to interact with the people and joke with my in-laws. Dont get me wrong, I still had a great time. And just as a side note the foreign language I heard most (not including Mandarin of course) was French. Also if you are approached by vendors, and you will be, you need to know these phrases (They are spelled phonetically) "Boo Ya", "Boo yong", and best of all "mayo chen" I could have eth first 2 reversed but they are "Don't want, Dont Need and I have no money. When the first 2 fail the 3rd always worked for me.
I will also add before I go on, there were two guys in Ten Tien park (Temple of Heaven) that appeared to be somewhere between mid to late 70s and 90 doing Shaolin Long fist, The younger of the 2 was doing the form, possibly not a smooth and flowing as a 20 year old would do it, but it appeared to have one heck of a lot of power, and from the looks of it they had been doing this for a very long time. (If I could jump like that now I would be happy). The older of the 2 (80 to 90) was correcting the younger (75 85) guys form and the correction added more speed and power. It was very impressive to see.
China Beijing to be exact, part 1 maybe
I recently returned from a trip to Beijing (I spent 2 weeks there visiting in-laws) and a few on MT requested that I post something about the trip. This has proven to be more difficult than I first suspected because Beijing itself was so incredibly overwhelming to me and the subject is so immense and hard to condense to a few paragraphs or pages for that matter. For starters the age of the place is astounding there is archeological evidence of people living in the region from greater than 18,000 years ago. It has been a hub of sorts since the Warring States Period (475BC - 221BC).
Then you go to places like the 1400 years old Buddhist temple on top of a mountain and the Forbidden City built 72 years before Columbus bumped into North America and it really hits home. I know a bit about Chinese history, Society and Culture, I was a Chinese Studies major for a bit before lifes little problems forced me to quit and to actually be in the Forbidden City where all the history took palace is just overwhelming. The detail of the buildings, the detail in the way the buildings were painted, right down to the amazing detail and colors used to paint the ceilings of all the buildings, to walk where you know emperors and empresses use to walk, and yes I will admit it, being a CMA guy, I did wonder how many very good martial artist and well trained soldiers walked here as well. And then the scale of the place, it is bloody huge. It took most of the day to go through most of it, not all, at a fairly quick pace, and this is just one place.
The Temple of heaven is another in Beijing, equally as overwhelming, equally as detailed, and equally as huge and a just as old. However it was the Temple of heaven itself that overwhelmed me the most of all the historic places I saw in Beijing. I knew it was big, but I never new it was that big, I have never seen a picture in a book in the US that did it justice and gave you an idea of the scale of the place.
I could go on and on about these places, the Summer Palace (by far the most commercial), the Ming Tombs, the Great wall, a very old Taoist Temple, it was all absolutely incredible and my words could not even come close to adequately describing any of them.
I will type a bit about the Great Wall. I went to the Great Wall at Badaling; if you go I suggest going early. Luckily my Bother-in-law knew this and we did. It too is huge and when we arrived it was fairly crowded, but not that bad. As we went on the actual wall I noticed everyone was going to the right and following the wall so I decided to go to the left. After climbing, and I do mean CLIMBING, the wall going to the left I realize why most went to the right, it was nowhere near as steep as going left. A flat stone surface at a 45 degree or greater is not uncommon on this side. And if there are stairs, and there were, they are virtually vertical and there is no standardization of rise over run for the stairs. My brother-in-law, my 9 year old nephew and I were the only ones of our small group to reach our goal. My wife and her sister stopped at about half way, but they had both been there before several times. We did not even walk on 1/100th of the wall but what we did climb was amazing. I found myself wondering how anyone could climb this carrying stones on their back like the builders must of and how on earth would anyone in full battle gear climb this in the summer or winter. All I can say is they must have been much tougher than I.
Also the city of Beijing was once a walled city and the walls are gone, but the gate houses are still there and they sit on top of a huge stone platform and the building on top is about 3 or 4 stories high and all together I am guessing, at least the one2 that I saw, are about 10 to 15 stories high. And take up at least ½ a city block.
Some of the very old houses remain, possibly older than America, but many of those are being torn down in order to make room for the modern world as well as in an attempt to clean up the city. I was in a car (NOT DRIVING) in one of these neighborhoods and there were cars driving on the streets in both directions and the streets were only a car and a half wide. The worst traffic jam I was in was in this section. It turns out that there are no stop signs or traffic lights here either so at the Y intersection there was a Bus and a truck facing each other with neither being able to go forward, backward or turn and a car on the passenger side of the truck trying to squeeze between them. This ended when the truck decided it was going to drive over the car and the car retreated.
I have probably typed too much, and this is the expurgated version, you are probably all sick of it by now, I will stop now, but I will end with this.
The food was great, you simply cannot get this type of Chinese food anywhere I have been in the US, and it is everywhere from little takeout places to grocery stored to restaurants 5 stories tall. And if you want a ride more terrifying than a roller coaster take a ride in one of the 3 wheeled homemade type taxi things that are everywhere (I could have reached out a touched the grill of the oncoming bus the driver cut off and that is no exaggeration). Also the city is rather polluted and I think they are attempting to clean it up, but they do not appear to quite have a grasp on how to do that yet.
All in all it was a great trip, and I will be going back.
I may post more later about the city itself and or martial arts if any of you wish to hear more about it. Just let me know.
First let me say it took me a week to get use to the staring. I am not taller than many people there, but I am 61.25 and blonde. And there are NO blondes in the places I went with my wife, Tourists and foreigners do not go to these places, only Chinese and Beijing natives. Also I recommend having a much better grasp of the language than I did if you go to China. If I did I would have felt more secure if I were to get lost. Also I would have had more fun being able to interact with the people and joke with my in-laws. Dont get me wrong, I still had a great time. And just as a side note the foreign language I heard most (not including Mandarin of course) was French. Also if you are approached by vendors, and you will be, you need to know these phrases (They are spelled phonetically) "Boo Ya", "Boo yong", and best of all "mayo chen" I could have eth first 2 reversed but they are "Don't want, Dont Need and I have no money. When the first 2 fail the 3rd always worked for me.
I will also add before I go on, there were two guys in Ten Tien park (Temple of Heaven) that appeared to be somewhere between mid to late 70s and 90 doing Shaolin Long fist, The younger of the 2 was doing the form, possibly not a smooth and flowing as a 20 year old would do it, but it appeared to have one heck of a lot of power, and from the looks of it they had been doing this for a very long time. (If I could jump like that now I would be happy). The older of the 2 (80 to 90) was correcting the younger (75 85) guys form and the correction added more speed and power. It was very impressive to see.
China Beijing to be exact, part 1 maybe
I recently returned from a trip to Beijing (I spent 2 weeks there visiting in-laws) and a few on MT requested that I post something about the trip. This has proven to be more difficult than I first suspected because Beijing itself was so incredibly overwhelming to me and the subject is so immense and hard to condense to a few paragraphs or pages for that matter. For starters the age of the place is astounding there is archeological evidence of people living in the region from greater than 18,000 years ago. It has been a hub of sorts since the Warring States Period (475BC - 221BC).
Then you go to places like the 1400 years old Buddhist temple on top of a mountain and the Forbidden City built 72 years before Columbus bumped into North America and it really hits home. I know a bit about Chinese history, Society and Culture, I was a Chinese Studies major for a bit before lifes little problems forced me to quit and to actually be in the Forbidden City where all the history took palace is just overwhelming. The detail of the buildings, the detail in the way the buildings were painted, right down to the amazing detail and colors used to paint the ceilings of all the buildings, to walk where you know emperors and empresses use to walk, and yes I will admit it, being a CMA guy, I did wonder how many very good martial artist and well trained soldiers walked here as well. And then the scale of the place, it is bloody huge. It took most of the day to go through most of it, not all, at a fairly quick pace, and this is just one place.
The Temple of heaven is another in Beijing, equally as overwhelming, equally as detailed, and equally as huge and a just as old. However it was the Temple of heaven itself that overwhelmed me the most of all the historic places I saw in Beijing. I knew it was big, but I never new it was that big, I have never seen a picture in a book in the US that did it justice and gave you an idea of the scale of the place.
I could go on and on about these places, the Summer Palace (by far the most commercial), the Ming Tombs, the Great wall, a very old Taoist Temple, it was all absolutely incredible and my words could not even come close to adequately describing any of them.
I will type a bit about the Great Wall. I went to the Great Wall at Badaling; if you go I suggest going early. Luckily my Bother-in-law knew this and we did. It too is huge and when we arrived it was fairly crowded, but not that bad. As we went on the actual wall I noticed everyone was going to the right and following the wall so I decided to go to the left. After climbing, and I do mean CLIMBING, the wall going to the left I realize why most went to the right, it was nowhere near as steep as going left. A flat stone surface at a 45 degree or greater is not uncommon on this side. And if there are stairs, and there were, they are virtually vertical and there is no standardization of rise over run for the stairs. My brother-in-law, my 9 year old nephew and I were the only ones of our small group to reach our goal. My wife and her sister stopped at about half way, but they had both been there before several times. We did not even walk on 1/100th of the wall but what we did climb was amazing. I found myself wondering how anyone could climb this carrying stones on their back like the builders must of and how on earth would anyone in full battle gear climb this in the summer or winter. All I can say is they must have been much tougher than I.
Also the city of Beijing was once a walled city and the walls are gone, but the gate houses are still there and they sit on top of a huge stone platform and the building on top is about 3 or 4 stories high and all together I am guessing, at least the one2 that I saw, are about 10 to 15 stories high. And take up at least ½ a city block.
Some of the very old houses remain, possibly older than America, but many of those are being torn down in order to make room for the modern world as well as in an attempt to clean up the city. I was in a car (NOT DRIVING) in one of these neighborhoods and there were cars driving on the streets in both directions and the streets were only a car and a half wide. The worst traffic jam I was in was in this section. It turns out that there are no stop signs or traffic lights here either so at the Y intersection there was a Bus and a truck facing each other with neither being able to go forward, backward or turn and a car on the passenger side of the truck trying to squeeze between them. This ended when the truck decided it was going to drive over the car and the car retreated.
I have probably typed too much, and this is the expurgated version, you are probably all sick of it by now, I will stop now, but I will end with this.
The food was great, you simply cannot get this type of Chinese food anywhere I have been in the US, and it is everywhere from little takeout places to grocery stored to restaurants 5 stories tall. And if you want a ride more terrifying than a roller coaster take a ride in one of the 3 wheeled homemade type taxi things that are everywhere (I could have reached out a touched the grill of the oncoming bus the driver cut off and that is no exaggeration). Also the city is rather polluted and I think they are attempting to clean it up, but they do not appear to quite have a grasp on how to do that yet.
All in all it was a great trip, and I will be going back.
I may post more later about the city itself and or martial arts if any of you wish to hear more about it. Just let me know.
