19th Day of Training...Rain again.
I woke up this morning and it was raining. Crap. That means its gonna be cold. I am still surprised that its not more hot in this area. All I have are shorts and t-shirts. I have nothing long to keep me warm. Oh well. My body this morning at practice wasn't working well. Not doing what I told it to do.
I worked alot on conditioning this morning and practicing Meteor Hammer, not rope dart. Its more like a steel ball at the end of a rope. Since the weather wasn't that great, I didn't run the mountain, Josh and I decided to go to Dengfeng to look for equipment and gear. Plus, I wanted to take my memory card in to get the pictures put on a CD.
We got to Dengfeng and did our little errands then went to the VCD/DVD shop that sells wushu VCDs. They got lots of stuff. And I mean lots. I picked up 2 Zui Quan VCDs, 2 Meteor Hammer VCDs, a Monkey Fist VCD, and 3 Wong Fei Hong VCDs - basically, forms that are claimed to have been used/created by Wong Fei Hong. Upon viewing them, the old guy doing them didn't look very good.
Josh got Nan Quan - which means Southern Fist and is the northern interpretation of Hong Ga/Hong Quan.
After that, we went looking at shops for equipment. No one carried Xing Bian (Meteor Hammer), at least not put together. Most places carried rope dart, but thats not what I wanted. Rope dart is much smaller rope. Some places sold the Meteor Hammer but just by itself. Aiya, can't anyone have it put together. Josh said he had seen them all put together somewhere, but he couldn't remember. Oh well. Other things I was looking for were the nice shoes that Andy Sifu had, we found them, but places wanted like 40RMB+ and I was like, hellz no. I wanted to get a positive ID on price from Andy Sifu first. Josh was also looking for practice weapons.
Other things that I saw that made me want were some wrist armor/gauntlets for Hong Quan/HongGa forms. Basically, black leather that wraps around your wrists and has studs on it. Its cool. Nan Quan uses it as well. I was haggling the price with the guy but he wasn't going as low as I wanted and didn't seem to care. So, I left, I figured I could alwasy get it later. Its a shame though, they have these great gauntlets, but they don't have a matching belt. They have belts with studs, but they don't have the leather belt with studs. Its usually like a thin band/belt thats made of fabrice with about 10 big metal circles on it. It doesn't match. I have seen pictures of the old teachers doing the forms while they are wearing the black studded gauntlets with a matching studded belt. Its really big. It kinda looks like a weightlifting belt. Where you buckle the belt, its thin, but at your hips it starts to get bigger and then at your back its the bigges and its covered in studs. I want to find one. I may just have to make one when I get back to the states cause I can't find them in Guangdong anywhere either.
At the last shop we came to, which happened to be the most expensive one, I got them down on the price of a steel meteor hammer ball for 15rmb. They wanted 35RMB for it. I laughed my ass off. They wanted 55RMB for the real fancy looking meteor hammer, which is made of brass and in an egg shape. It looks of better quality, relatively. But, i passed on it. We also asked prices for the nice Chinese Wushu shoes, and they were like 50 and we got vocal, down the street, they are like 35, and the shop people were all NO!!!. Haggling them down to 15 on the meteor hammer took a while as well. Sticklers.
After that, we snagged a box taxi back to Tagou. The driver agreed on 10RMB, but when we got back, he tried to get 10RMB from both of us. We gave a wry smile and said, "No" and walked away. Punkass.
Afternoon practice was good. The weather had cleared up and it was beautiful. Andy Sifu and I built the Meteor Hammer weapon from scratch. Got some thin rope and put it together. It was very different from the rock bag practice weapon. This one's meteor hammer was much heavier with more of light rope so it gave more snap and was much more dangerous. I was scared to use it. I clunked myself a couple good times on the knee and foot and back of the head. Nothing to bad, but I can see how this could do some serious damage if you actually could use it. It would friggin hurt.
The Shaolin VCDs say that this weapon was one of the hardest to use...yeah, they say that about every weapon. Anyway, they call it a softweapon and its one thats hidden because it can be rolled up and hid in a pocket. Its a cool weapon. It looks really neat when done well. I got all the moves down that were on the VCD, from being taught by Andy Sifu, but i just don't have the speed yet. And using speed with this is a little dangerous for me right now. Once I get more used to it, I will increase speed.
I spent all afternoon with it. I realized that when I get back to the states, I will need to use a better rope. I will need to replace it because the rope we used was beginning to unravel a bit in a certain area from all the twisting of the rope. Aiya. Why can't we have some quality here!?
Since the weather got really nice, Andy wanted me to run the mountain with Josh after practice. I had brought along my video camera this time. I ran the mountain with it and got some great footage. I was being careful and I told Andy Sifu that I would take a bit longer than normal because of the camera. He said OK. I was as careful as I could be while running with that thing. I think I got some good shots.
In the evening, we celebrated Trevor with his leaving on Saturday morning. So we went to the french fry place and I ate too much again. The food is sooooooo good there. Wondeful. Paige tried BaiJiu for the first time. He was like, That stuff is vile!
After dinner, we headed back and crashed. Goodnite.