The sender just gave me permission to post his emails to me, concerning his travels to Shaolin this past summer. They contain some interesting insight into the place. The names have been removed to maintain anonymity.
"Alright people, guess it's finally time for email huh? Feels like it's been ages since I've emailed, but that's probably coz 5 days of transit ****ed me up good and proper.
Alright so let's start from the start. Left Belize and Dru and Sach on Saturday, obviously GUTTED to see the back of THEM!! (sorry guys). Had a wicked time in Belize, 2 weeks of work followed by a week of dossing and diving was just right by me. Some of youse I already filled in about Belize, sorry to the others, will drop you guys a proper line soon. Getting out of Belize was no beef at all, stop in Dallas was minor and quick, and then onto LA. Damn let me try and remember LA. I don't think I can, I could feel my brain getting fairly swiss-cheesed by this point, I was glad just get the hell onto the flight to Hong Kong where I could actually get some sleep. That flight was alright except that I was sat between two portly chinese geezers for all 14 hours, but I got to watch Shrek 2 twice, obviously catching the last half first. Nothing much more to be said about that really. Hong Kong was cool if a bit mental. I arrived at like 7 am, so I basically checked into my hotel, showered and chipped out asap for some serious shopping, woohoo!! Hong Kong is a bit mental really, it's like, all massive tall buildings sqeezed together, and packed with people. Shops are open from like, 11am til 11pm, so the place is rammed the entire time, which makes for a pretty cool place. But it's a mess man, every road you go down is overhung by massive billboards and signs belonging to shops, it's like, a debauched consumer orgy... . Anyways, prices actually aren't that phat there, so just picked up a couple of toys and got the hell out. Next stop next morning, beijing.
Beijing I got in late, and was out early morn, so didn't see it at all. But when I got to my room, after about half an hour, a I gt a call. I'm like, 'who the fk's gonna call me here?' And I really donwanna have to deal with front desk coz there is like, sod-all English going on. So I pick up, and this dude goes 'ree chi gurr?'. I'm like, huh? He goes 'you need CHINESE girl?'. I was like, 'yo...no...thanks'. I was impressed, it's like, the perfect business relationship innit? And this was one of the two official airport hotels. How many people just pass through in transit and get a shag on the way? The mind boggles, well mine does anyway.
Alright, onto Zhangzhou. Obviously something had to **** up at least minorly at some point, so it did in the one place I head to that speaks ****-all English. Obviously my Mandarin studies have been less than thorough, so when I got shagged, I was shagged. Basically, my ticket had the wrong date on it. Now I wsa well aware of this, my gyel at STA had ****ed up, but she's all like 'oh it's ok, I checked with air china, you can use that and it's been registered on the system for the right date, for sheezy'. I arrive and Air China is like '**** you'. At least I think that's what they said. Either way, they weren't gonna make it easy. I finally make it on the plane, having been shunted atound like three times and paid both international and domestic airport tax (my little porter helper dude sucked, I don't even think he was official and then he wanted bare cash). So as I barely make it on the plane, my luggage obviously doesn't make it. I get to Zhangzhou and have to sit around for three hours for the **** to arrive. However, my master DID actually send a driver which rocked. Not that simple though, this dude comes up to me at the exit with a sign saying 'WED' so i was like, 'nah mate'. I then make a couple of calls going 'where's my car?' and I'm told he arrived with a sign saying WED. WHY? WHY? I still have had no answer, because I can;t ask the question. Anyways, luggage arrives, he drives me to Dengfeng. So far so good.
You know what, this is well long, and it's near my bedtime, I'm gonna finish this **** tomorrow. Later skaters.
OKay, this is not tomorrow, this is the day after, and I'm hitting the sack soon so I'l get on with it. Arriving in Dengfeng, my dude, whose name I managed to discern is thi, not di and not ti, somewhere in between, gets onthe phone. 10 mins later Shi De Cheng walks in the door. For those not in the know, Shi De Cheng is one of the few remaining warrior monks of shaolin remaining. I think the De denotes 31st gen, and ther are 35s about now. He like knows the lot, and my guy is international, he teaches in Italy, Vegas, has a school in France, and his one here. He is a proper don. So he busts in white pants, ecole de shaolin t-shirt, big fat smile, little bit of english, helps me sort out my room and the whole bit. I get taken up to my room, and Cheng tells me he's gonna take me out for dinner. I'm like, cool maaaan, this dude actually gives a ****, and he so does, he's the nicest guy, it's hard to remember that he is so big. Him and thi take me to dinner, we obviously get our own room, the owner insists. in the centre of our round table, ther is this big metsl dish sunk into the table, with a steel ball type thing in the center which splits around the middle, and coming out of the ball is a pipe which goes up, and out the window. A hole has been made in the window for this pipe, appaerntly with a small rock. Basically how it works is, the waitress raises the top half and in the bottom half she lights a little fire, then brings top half down again. And in the metal dish she purs water which starts boiling away, and to this is added various spices. then in come the dishes of raw veg (which i was actyallu unable to identify) and little pots of sauce. the veg go in the water, you take the veg out, dip in the sauce, and eat. I was like, aaaaah what a good idea! Then I tasted the sauce, and I was like, mmmmm, quite nice! It's like this strong savoury peanuty oily stuff. Anyway, three pieces of veg later, I'm like, this is gross. Then in comes the raw fish, which is also dumped into the water, This is after a while taken out and given to me, also to dip in the sauce. The fish (obviously) tastes of fishy water, and the peaniut sauce (to which you CAN add random things) is just not helping. I munch through this for a while chatting to sifu for a bit, and all is good, I get 'full' and we head out. The meal was filth, but it was so cool that his dude took me out, wharraguy. Anyway, I chill out for the rest of that day, to begin trainging the next day.
Bored hitting sac, continue tomorrow.
Training takes place at Shi De Chengs school, this is basically a full boarding school for many chinese kids. They live there, have all their lessons there and do ther training there. At any point there tend to be abunch of foreigners training ther too. These guys either stay at the school or, like me, stay at a hotel. The school is on a roadside, said road being big but quiet and leading up to one of the mountains which has bare steps going up, very cool not checked it out preoperly yet. Classes go from 0900-1100, then 1530-1730. This actually leavese little time for much else as after lunch and dinner and needing to be in bed by ten really, you're pretty much done - hence me taking aaaages to email, sorry. Training is drills, going through moves, drilling them, the forms, with some stretching and running scattered about. Different days we do different extra worky-outy things. I am not really onto forms at all yet. Still going through foundational moves called chi bu gong which will build up into my first form. This is harder than expected. When I last did kung fu, you basically go on into your basic froms pretty soon, and they ARE your basic moves, i think it's similar with karate (dee?), but here you have to have the basic moves down first before you learn the form, and these range from basic kicks, to low stances going into spins and lifiting into some other stance, or jump kicks, or spin jump kick things. All things whcih are so far leaving me feeling fairly uncoordinated. My legs are proving the greatest problem, they are simply not up to the task yet. But in all fairness, I've not even completed 1 full week of training so hey-ho.
They don;t speak any English. Any...at all, not a bit, nope....none. Andi speak roughly the same amount of mandarin. So we're getting on great. The dude coaching me is cool though, he jsut demonstrates and shoves me into position, it's not causing too much hassle yet. There are two other gwae lo there, an american girl and german lad, both of whom who kick ass, well compared to me anyway. They are doing a stick form and a sword form as well as their first fist form. As they have been here at least three months, with at least five months hardcore trraingin elsewhere or trainging in some other discipline, this means I will almost certainly not get to do weapons with only 6 weeks. No beef, I'll get what I get, it;s all good.It's pretty facking hot as well, that definitely don;t help, but better than cold eh? So that's training, good, just exhausting, but that was exacltyh the plan, The only shame is the fact that there is ot much spare time to be had. We only get one and a half days off, so local **** only. Thinking maybe to take few days off at end, to try and see some stuuf like the wall and ****, but even that is a significant loss of time, hmmmm, not sure bout that.
General points about china so far, they drive like they just got given wheels and roads and that's it, but here they take it slow so aaaall good.
Everyone spits...a lot, there s planty of hhhhnnnnrrrrnnaaaak all over the place which is prety grim, it's much worse when they do it indoors, it's even worse again when they do it while you're eating.
Weapon shopping is fun.
They eat a LOT of pork, the word for meat is also the word for pork, i have already fallen on my face in this respect several times, i prefer not to think about it.
And that is generally it I think. At least for now. If interseting things happen I will jot them down. You guys need to catch me up on all your random adventures. xxx and xxx, glad to hear you guys not killed each other yet. xxx, xx, they squabbling like b****es? tell the truth now. Did you guys get yoursleves molested in Rio or what? Now don't be shy, you know you love it. xxx, where the **** are you man? Tell me whasgwan g, has xx got drunk and molested YOU yet? xxx baby, ignore that last one, you know you da man, where you been man? Should be blazing up my inbox.
Sammer, chill the **** out man! Muchos apologies for not mailing, I've not mailed anyone dude!! what can I say? Except keep the bitches OUT OF MY BED!! Or at least clean up after...nono **** that, keep them the **** OUT! Oh and real glad to hear the interviews going well ho. You changed mind about Edinburgh, wha' happened?
Richard you were right man, Shi De Cheng is the man, I'm getting taught by Sian We (prob spelt wrong) and he is a dude also. having heard reports of some of the other schools, I owe you man.
Ali keep the porno antics live man, but where are the updates?
Isaiah, good to hear from you man, I waited for you too! Must have been stood right next to each other! Thanx for waiting, appreciate it and thank your ma for waiting too! How is home?
All the rest, one love, keep it real, you get no personals coz I not heard from youse! So hit me back, or you just ain't cool...
Alright people, thas enough for now, gonna hit the sac. Everyone be safe, miss me, and get typing,
the one
Addendum...for the more observant, the dates are out of whack, this was written a while before sending, took a while to gather all the addresses, so updates are coming soon, peaceout
"Alright people, guess it's finally time for email huh? Feels like it's been ages since I've emailed, but that's probably coz 5 days of transit ****ed me up good and proper.
Alright so let's start from the start. Left Belize and Dru and Sach on Saturday, obviously GUTTED to see the back of THEM!! (sorry guys). Had a wicked time in Belize, 2 weeks of work followed by a week of dossing and diving was just right by me. Some of youse I already filled in about Belize, sorry to the others, will drop you guys a proper line soon. Getting out of Belize was no beef at all, stop in Dallas was minor and quick, and then onto LA. Damn let me try and remember LA. I don't think I can, I could feel my brain getting fairly swiss-cheesed by this point, I was glad just get the hell onto the flight to Hong Kong where I could actually get some sleep. That flight was alright except that I was sat between two portly chinese geezers for all 14 hours, but I got to watch Shrek 2 twice, obviously catching the last half first. Nothing much more to be said about that really. Hong Kong was cool if a bit mental. I arrived at like 7 am, so I basically checked into my hotel, showered and chipped out asap for some serious shopping, woohoo!! Hong Kong is a bit mental really, it's like, all massive tall buildings sqeezed together, and packed with people. Shops are open from like, 11am til 11pm, so the place is rammed the entire time, which makes for a pretty cool place. But it's a mess man, every road you go down is overhung by massive billboards and signs belonging to shops, it's like, a debauched consumer orgy... . Anyways, prices actually aren't that phat there, so just picked up a couple of toys and got the hell out. Next stop next morning, beijing.
Beijing I got in late, and was out early morn, so didn't see it at all. But when I got to my room, after about half an hour, a I gt a call. I'm like, 'who the fk's gonna call me here?' And I really donwanna have to deal with front desk coz there is like, sod-all English going on. So I pick up, and this dude goes 'ree chi gurr?'. I'm like, huh? He goes 'you need CHINESE girl?'. I was like, 'yo...no...thanks'. I was impressed, it's like, the perfect business relationship innit? And this was one of the two official airport hotels. How many people just pass through in transit and get a shag on the way? The mind boggles, well mine does anyway.
Alright, onto Zhangzhou. Obviously something had to **** up at least minorly at some point, so it did in the one place I head to that speaks ****-all English. Obviously my Mandarin studies have been less than thorough, so when I got shagged, I was shagged. Basically, my ticket had the wrong date on it. Now I wsa well aware of this, my gyel at STA had ****ed up, but she's all like 'oh it's ok, I checked with air china, you can use that and it's been registered on the system for the right date, for sheezy'. I arrive and Air China is like '**** you'. At least I think that's what they said. Either way, they weren't gonna make it easy. I finally make it on the plane, having been shunted atound like three times and paid both international and domestic airport tax (my little porter helper dude sucked, I don't even think he was official and then he wanted bare cash). So as I barely make it on the plane, my luggage obviously doesn't make it. I get to Zhangzhou and have to sit around for three hours for the **** to arrive. However, my master DID actually send a driver which rocked. Not that simple though, this dude comes up to me at the exit with a sign saying 'WED' so i was like, 'nah mate'. I then make a couple of calls going 'where's my car?' and I'm told he arrived with a sign saying WED. WHY? WHY? I still have had no answer, because I can;t ask the question. Anyways, luggage arrives, he drives me to Dengfeng. So far so good.
You know what, this is well long, and it's near my bedtime, I'm gonna finish this **** tomorrow. Later skaters.
OKay, this is not tomorrow, this is the day after, and I'm hitting the sack soon so I'l get on with it. Arriving in Dengfeng, my dude, whose name I managed to discern is thi, not di and not ti, somewhere in between, gets onthe phone. 10 mins later Shi De Cheng walks in the door. For those not in the know, Shi De Cheng is one of the few remaining warrior monks of shaolin remaining. I think the De denotes 31st gen, and ther are 35s about now. He like knows the lot, and my guy is international, he teaches in Italy, Vegas, has a school in France, and his one here. He is a proper don. So he busts in white pants, ecole de shaolin t-shirt, big fat smile, little bit of english, helps me sort out my room and the whole bit. I get taken up to my room, and Cheng tells me he's gonna take me out for dinner. I'm like, cool maaaan, this dude actually gives a ****, and he so does, he's the nicest guy, it's hard to remember that he is so big. Him and thi take me to dinner, we obviously get our own room, the owner insists. in the centre of our round table, ther is this big metsl dish sunk into the table, with a steel ball type thing in the center which splits around the middle, and coming out of the ball is a pipe which goes up, and out the window. A hole has been made in the window for this pipe, appaerntly with a small rock. Basically how it works is, the waitress raises the top half and in the bottom half she lights a little fire, then brings top half down again. And in the metal dish she purs water which starts boiling away, and to this is added various spices. then in come the dishes of raw veg (which i was actyallu unable to identify) and little pots of sauce. the veg go in the water, you take the veg out, dip in the sauce, and eat. I was like, aaaaah what a good idea! Then I tasted the sauce, and I was like, mmmmm, quite nice! It's like this strong savoury peanuty oily stuff. Anyway, three pieces of veg later, I'm like, this is gross. Then in comes the raw fish, which is also dumped into the water, This is after a while taken out and given to me, also to dip in the sauce. The fish (obviously) tastes of fishy water, and the peaniut sauce (to which you CAN add random things) is just not helping. I munch through this for a while chatting to sifu for a bit, and all is good, I get 'full' and we head out. The meal was filth, but it was so cool that his dude took me out, wharraguy. Anyway, I chill out for the rest of that day, to begin trainging the next day.
Bored hitting sac, continue tomorrow.
Training takes place at Shi De Chengs school, this is basically a full boarding school for many chinese kids. They live there, have all their lessons there and do ther training there. At any point there tend to be abunch of foreigners training ther too. These guys either stay at the school or, like me, stay at a hotel. The school is on a roadside, said road being big but quiet and leading up to one of the mountains which has bare steps going up, very cool not checked it out preoperly yet. Classes go from 0900-1100, then 1530-1730. This actually leavese little time for much else as after lunch and dinner and needing to be in bed by ten really, you're pretty much done - hence me taking aaaages to email, sorry. Training is drills, going through moves, drilling them, the forms, with some stretching and running scattered about. Different days we do different extra worky-outy things. I am not really onto forms at all yet. Still going through foundational moves called chi bu gong which will build up into my first form. This is harder than expected. When I last did kung fu, you basically go on into your basic froms pretty soon, and they ARE your basic moves, i think it's similar with karate (dee?), but here you have to have the basic moves down first before you learn the form, and these range from basic kicks, to low stances going into spins and lifiting into some other stance, or jump kicks, or spin jump kick things. All things whcih are so far leaving me feeling fairly uncoordinated. My legs are proving the greatest problem, they are simply not up to the task yet. But in all fairness, I've not even completed 1 full week of training so hey-ho.
They don;t speak any English. Any...at all, not a bit, nope....none. Andi speak roughly the same amount of mandarin. So we're getting on great. The dude coaching me is cool though, he jsut demonstrates and shoves me into position, it's not causing too much hassle yet. There are two other gwae lo there, an american girl and german lad, both of whom who kick ass, well compared to me anyway. They are doing a stick form and a sword form as well as their first fist form. As they have been here at least three months, with at least five months hardcore trraingin elsewhere or trainging in some other discipline, this means I will almost certainly not get to do weapons with only 6 weeks. No beef, I'll get what I get, it;s all good.It's pretty facking hot as well, that definitely don;t help, but better than cold eh? So that's training, good, just exhausting, but that was exacltyh the plan, The only shame is the fact that there is ot much spare time to be had. We only get one and a half days off, so local **** only. Thinking maybe to take few days off at end, to try and see some stuuf like the wall and ****, but even that is a significant loss of time, hmmmm, not sure bout that.
General points about china so far, they drive like they just got given wheels and roads and that's it, but here they take it slow so aaaall good.
Everyone spits...a lot, there s planty of hhhhnnnnrrrrnnaaaak all over the place which is prety grim, it's much worse when they do it indoors, it's even worse again when they do it while you're eating.
Weapon shopping is fun.
They eat a LOT of pork, the word for meat is also the word for pork, i have already fallen on my face in this respect several times, i prefer not to think about it.
And that is generally it I think. At least for now. If interseting things happen I will jot them down. You guys need to catch me up on all your random adventures. xxx and xxx, glad to hear you guys not killed each other yet. xxx, xx, they squabbling like b****es? tell the truth now. Did you guys get yoursleves molested in Rio or what? Now don't be shy, you know you love it. xxx, where the **** are you man? Tell me whasgwan g, has xx got drunk and molested YOU yet? xxx baby, ignore that last one, you know you da man, where you been man? Should be blazing up my inbox.
Sammer, chill the **** out man! Muchos apologies for not mailing, I've not mailed anyone dude!! what can I say? Except keep the bitches OUT OF MY BED!! Or at least clean up after...nono **** that, keep them the **** OUT! Oh and real glad to hear the interviews going well ho. You changed mind about Edinburgh, wha' happened?
Richard you were right man, Shi De Cheng is the man, I'm getting taught by Sian We (prob spelt wrong) and he is a dude also. having heard reports of some of the other schools, I owe you man.
Ali keep the porno antics live man, but where are the updates?
Isaiah, good to hear from you man, I waited for you too! Must have been stood right next to each other! Thanx for waiting, appreciate it and thank your ma for waiting too! How is home?
All the rest, one love, keep it real, you get no personals coz I not heard from youse! So hit me back, or you just ain't cool...
Alright people, thas enough for now, gonna hit the sac. Everyone be safe, miss me, and get typing,
the one
Addendum...for the more observant, the dates are out of whack, this was written a while before sending, took a while to gather all the addresses, so updates are coming soon, peaceout
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