My Last Chinese Wushu Performance
Today was a wonderful but long day. In the morning, I planned to do more packing up operations and ship things out, but that didnt happen as I was talking to some friends and family online. Then Yumi came home for lunch so we cooked some good food.
I realized after hours of searching for my electric razor power cord, that I prolly threw it out into the trash by accident. So, i used what remaining power I had and only got half my face shaved. Poop. So I went out and bought myself a razor and some shaving cream to finish the job. I must tell you now, believe it or not, but I have never shaved like this before in my life. I have always had an electric razor. So, it was a new experience. I dont know if I will go back to electric. Who knows.
After that, i did some more stuff around here and then headed out to the practice studio at 4pm like Guo Sifu said.
Once I got there, we left about 10 minutes later. Alot sooner than I thought. I thought he said we would leave at 5pm. This is gonna cause some trouble because Yumi wants to come to the performance tonite. I messaged her because she was in class and told her what has happened. She apparently called Guo Sifu to ask about coming by herself and Guo Sifu told her it was very far away from Xiaolan and very hard to get too. Bummer.
It took us about 1.5 hours to get there or so. We stopped off in Ban Fu city proper to wait for more directions from our hosts. We then took a convoy there. It was in one of the poorest neighborhoods I have ever seen in China. It was very dirty, cramped, and just poor. I was amazed. There were old men and women bathing in the brown colored river going thru the town. Icky. In addition to that, the old men and women also looked like living mummies...without the wrappings. I mean, i had seen older chinese folk like this before, but not so many in one place.
Once we unloaded the truck and got things set up, we headed to get some dinner. I noticed that there were many dogs running around the area. I sure hope we arent having dog tonite. The food was quite good. One of the truck drivers wanted his picture taken with me and he was very protective of me as well throughout the night. He was just watching out for me I guess. He was a cool guy though. Spoke to me as best he could with the language barrier.
As we headed back to the performance area, which was the blacktop area of a primary school, Shou Wei Xiao Xue, it had gotten dark and they just started the small firework show. Then as I was warming up and changing, they started the big fireworks show. They were launching the big fireworks off the top of the school. It was very impressive. Really cool. They sure know how to celebrate a gweilos last performance. ;-)
The fireworks were exploding so low that the ash was falling down on everyone. And only the last one, in which the ash burns and glitters gold on its way down, did it pose a fire hazard. Some of the audience had to dodge burning ash. Also, it was quite hot tonite so we were all sweating while smacking at mosquitos.
Then the performance started and it was a fantastic show. Basically the same thing as before, but it was much more fun. In addition to the Yongning Long Shi group, there were the Yongning Xanda group of about 6 kids and then four 14 year old wushu kids from BanFu strutting their stuff. They were good.
During the inbetween stuff, i was off practicing my forms in the back and behind everyone. I was getting some onlookers paying more attention to me than to the show. Oh well.
I did four things. Hong Quan #2, #3, YinYang Gun, and Xing Bian/Fei Tau. My performances were ok, enjoyable, not marred by mistakes thankfully. I was more playful in these performances as well. At one point near the end of HQ#3 i bungled on it and just started running around in circles. It was quite funny. The audience loved it. Also, during #2, I got really close to the audience and that got some laughs. Also, the performances by the other guys in the dragon and lion dances were very good. They were on their marks and I didnt really notice any mistakes. They added some new things to the show as well. A guy stands at the top of a 20 foot pole with a lion and does his thing up there. The pedestal show has been extended, more pedestals this time and more complicated. It was a very good show.
Then we packed everything up and headed out around 11pm. I didnt get back here until 1230am and then I couldnt fall asleep and boy was i tired. I just couldn't sleep.