Sarah's travelling blog

Well, here I am with only two weeks left! A lot of my practice time over the last couple of months has focused on the sword form. After the initial super-fast learning week with Sha Wei, there was a period of three or four weeks when I was more or less practicing it by myself, with the odd bit of help here or there. Then about three weeks ago (it really is hard to remember exactly when things happen!) another sword group was made, this time with Yan Fei teaching, and we started going through it from the beginning. I hadn’t worked with Yan Fei for a while, and had forgotten two things about her. One is that she is hilariously funny; the other is that she makes you work really, really hard. You definitely know you’ve done some practice after an afternoon with Yan Fei. “Za lai! Again!” You repeat whatever you just did. “Za lai! Again!” You repeat it once more. “Za lai! Again!” You repeat a third, fourth, tenth time. Whole mornings pass like this! It’s not a complaint of course, because it’s the only way to learn the form and there were a lot of new details to add, as there always are. Just to add to the fun, Yan Fei decided we should also say the posture names aloud as we reach them. This is not too tricky for a Chinese person as they are written on a wall near where we were practicing, but apart from ‘horse’ and ‘chicken’ I can’t read them. So I had to memorise all 49 posture names, which is a lot of strange vocabulary. I now know that a ‘na zha’ is a demon with three heads, and it’s surprising how many times I have said ‘ xian ren’ (heavenly being) when describing my tattoo of a Thai angel! Saying the posture names aloud in Chinese while practicing a form I wasn’t too familiar with was initially very tricky. It meant that not only did I have to think about what I was supposed to be doing with the sword (and my body), I also had to think about Chinese words and pronunciation, and I found myself thinking more about what tones the next posture names used than concentrating on the actual posture. Spring is over and it is now officially summer. Hopefully all thermal layers have been removed because it is frequently over 30 degrees, and it’s only May! July and August are even hotter apparently, which can’t be a lot of fun for training. The good thing is that we get an extra half hour at lunch time because it’s too hot to do anything very enthusiastically. The not so good thing is the early morning run is supposed to happen half an hour earlier to make up the time, but this school is so relaxed about when something happens, or indeed if it happens at all, that it really isn’t worth worrying about. It’s getting light by about four, the birds are all up and singing before five, and just after that the man selling tofu is making the rounds. How do I know this? Because I am awake! Chen Jia Gou, is full of people selling or buying things. In order to attract potential customer’s attention, they have little megaphones attached to their weird three-wheeled vehicles or electric bikes announcing their presence. Usually these messages are a garbled mess of noise that even Chinese people from other provinces can’t decipher, so to us foreigners they mostly make no sense at all. The tofu man’s is not too bad. It’s a bit noisy for five in the morning, but I do understand what it says; ‘mai dofu, mai dofu.’ Some of the others have a more abstract quality. There is a lady on a bright orange scooter (it’s very cool. I’m quite envious.) who comes around every afternoon selling milk and yoghurt. I now know that the first part of what she says is ‘niu nai’, which means milk. The rest sounds like she’s saying ‘turn left!’ to someone who persists in going straight on, and it gets louder and louder through the message, so what I hear is this: ‘…….niu nai, turn left, turn left, TURN LEFT!!’ Food cravings are also becoming increasingly abstract and often bear no resemblance to anything I actually used to eat. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve wanted asparagus, pavlova with passion fruit sauce (yes, that specific!), apple strudel, anything with chips and roast lamb. Cheese! My God, I just can’t wait to eat some cheese (Mum, did you get that?!) . This is definitely the longest time I’ve ever been without Western food. I realised yesterday that I haven’t used a knife and fork since December, hopefully I won’t have forgotten!