Phil and Red's Excellent Adventure

Man, its the afternoon only, but I needed to get this down before I forgot most of it. It was an interesting morning. I met with that Gong Fu Sifu from dinner on Friday nite. I gave the card he gave me with the name of a resturant on the back to a motorbike guy and he took me a long way away. Its like the opposite side of Xiaolan..almost on the outskirts by all the farms. This started out interesting. I sat down on the curb and called up the guy. I told him where I was and he came an picked me up. He then drove me out of the city proper into the farming ghettos. Boy, and I thought I got stared at alot in the city. I got it worse here. But I think I am at the point now where it doesn't bother me anymore, but anywho, the people I saw stared at me.
He took me over small bridges thru the foliage and etc. Finally got to a complex. It looked like a small cafe/beer hangout. A nightime thing. It turns out, thats his little business. The party are for the locals. It was this building completely built out of bamboo. Its the type of building that all those hip tiki bars try to imitate. It looked ragged though. Really ragged. And so did the dog. It had a limp. Sad. I tried to pet him but he was afraid of me and wouldn't sniff my hand.
So, the guy showed me his place. In front of the bar area there were a couple concrete locations, not very large, that looked like practice areas only they haven't started practicing on them yet. He showed me this set up where he will hang heavy bags and then showed me to a squared off area where he said a Wing Chun wooden dummy would go. At this point, I was laughing in my head. All this talk about him being the #1 Gong Fu Sifu in Xiaolan, i knew it was utter bullshit when he said it, but man...this just hit it home. He doesn't have a practice area. It looks as though he is setting the place up, but it also looks like he isn't putting in much effort either.
Then we sat at one of the card/mah-jong tables and we had a disjointed conversation in Chinese and English. I was picking up some of what he was saying. He called around for people telling them he had an American Friend with him so come on over. Here I was thinking they had practice on Sunday morning like I do in the US. But nope. One of his students, a 19 year old girl, showed up. Her english sounded really good, I understood all that she said, however, she just lacked versatility in it. She has been studying for 1 year with him. But all she does is play the drums... What? Ok. Another girl showed up with better English and another guy with rotted thru teeth as well.
Why I said he was arrogant in the headline was because how he just talked about himself and how he referred to Guo Sifu and other things. He brought to my attention many times that he has been studying "real" Gong Fu for 35 years. He then would say Mr. Kuo (Guo) has been only doing gong fu for 10 years. Throughtout the morning, the length of time Guo Sifu has been studying gong fu had dropped from 10 years, to 9 years, and then finally to 3 years. He was bascially saying that Guo Sifu isn't as good as he is and that Guo Sifu isn't good at all. This is where he just really started to piss me off. It just got on my nerves. He just kept mentioning it. Then he would go on to say that what I am learning at Yongning isn't gong fu, its just for show. Its not "real" gong fu like he is doing. Well, DUH! Its wushu, its performance gong fu. But its still hard and has its basis in real gong fu. I'm sorry, but Wong Fei Hong did Hong Quan and other long fist forms. He kept on saying that gong fu that I have been learning is not typical of China... Funny, its all I see in this country. He just kept on harping on the fact that he teaches real stuff.
He said he is opening this school soon. He also said he has a couple partners. He kept mentioning his partners as well. One of them is the #1 Gong Fu man in China. Pardon me, but if he really is the #1 Champion in China, he wouldn't be hanging out in the ass end of Guangdong. His other partner is very famous in Taiwan. Sure. I bet he is. He made sure I knew this because he mentioned it five times. From what I gather, his group teaches Wing Chun, Taiji, and Lan Quan (whatever that is - not Long Quan).
And then he would say, "So you will start coming everyday, right?" It took me a while to get it into his head that I will be gone all of August. He also finally understood that I have to work the rest of July and that if I make it to his practice it will be when I have time. Talk about me feeling uncomfortable.
I think he wants me to leave Yongning and Guo Sifu and just practice with him. LOL! Hell no. Despite the fact that Guo Sifu hasn't been teaching me all that he could, he has still been quite nice to me. I won't disrespect him like that. I felt like those chinese guys in the old gong fu movies. "You disrespect my teacher! I must give you a lesson. I alone am best!" I mean there were times I wanted to just stand up and leave. I couldn't believe this guys audacity. If he was a real decent gong fu teacher, he would be humble, like Gabriel was. Never once did I hear Gabriel say spiteful things against another teacher to make him look better.
After about 1.5 hours just sitting and doing nothing, he finally decided to have everyone go to brunch. At brunch, an English teacher at the school Ben teaches at, showed up and helped with interpretting things. So, again, I had to listen to all his bullshit again in better English. This is where Guo Sifu's gong fu education had reached the low of 3 years. "Mr. Guo has been studying only 3 years where I have been studying for 30 years." The fact that he has been studying gong fu longer may be true but who has the school and who is teaching? Guo Sifu is really good and I haven't heard him sound arrogant like this fellow. His arrogance may be just pure self-confidence, and who knows, maybe he is right, but I was just disgusted with him.
He said I could start practicing on July 25th. Hmmm....5 days before I leave for the Shaolin temple. Hell, i could give it a try just to see what he is like.
"If you want to learn chinese gong fu, you better learn from me."
I came home and posted a bunch of fotos from yesterday online. Check them out.

This evening Yumi and I met up with John and Jolene around 7pm to go to dinner. First we headed out to this other Hunan place. It was packed so we went to th Yunnan place. It was good food. Only down thing is that John and Jolene got in an arguement during dinner. Don't bring it to the dinner table, please. This is where I heard that Echo had gotten into another motorbike accident. I think this is the 6th or 7th. And I found out that she broke her arm on this one. She hit a car. If this doesn't make her get a drivers licensce, I don't know what will.
Afterwards, we all went to the Beer Gardens at about 9pm. A bunch of folks were there and Yumi and I stayed till about 1130pm. She has to work tomorrow. Peter was there and it turns out that Echo got in this car accident about 2 days ago and didn't tell Peter until last today. He was really pissed off about it. He mentioned that after this, the relationship is over. I also found out it was Nick's last day pretty much. I learned some things about Moses and Amy that were mind blowing. Unbelievable. Mostly about Amy though.
Apparently she made Megan cry two times because of some of the stuff she said about Nick. She was saying things like, "Don't date a foreigner, they are only interested in sex." "You shouldn't date a foreigner younger than you because he will go to college, become smarter than you and then leave you." "You should find an old man to take care of you. (Moses)". And various others. Apparently, she did this every day. It was a complete mind job to me. Here i thought Amy was a really cool woman. Very progressive, very smart, and very different and then this sets her back into the realm of closed minded chinese culture. She seemed so great and then this. I sat there, with my mouth hanging open just dumbfounded. I couldn't believe it.
Nick mentioned the whole selling of stuff in their room as they were leaving. As they were leaving, they were selling their laundry detergent and other little things. I didn't think to much about it at the time, but after Nick mentioned all the stuff they tried to sell, i was just like, jeez. And they still left their room in a pigsty.
Craziness. Well, i am outtie.