Year One Done: Go Team 外教 （Waijiao）

Learn to live in China Lesson 984: Peace signs and smiles at Longji Rice Terraces

I will begin my nearly-48-hour-voyage to New York (to visit HermHana) on Wednesday at 8 a.m. Here is a rough map of my trip:

Nanjing flight to Shenzhen (11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.)
Shenzhen bus to Hong Kong airport
Hong Kong flight to Seoul (12:45 a.m. - 5 a.m.)
Seoul flight to Chicago (11:30 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.)
Chicago flight to New York (2:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.)

By the time I arrive on my sister's stoop, I will undoubtedly be burnt--it will be somewhere around 6:30 a.m. on my internal clock which may or may not get rewired somewhere over the North Pole.

I have had a roller coaster year that shifted my state of mind from excitement to confusion to heartbreak to disillusionment to isolation to engagement to intrigue to acceptance to complete enjoyment and back to excitement. That last excitement is for how last year ended as well as for this coming year (and for this). I have moved to Nanjing, and my first impressions are promising ones. I am hesitant to get ahead of myself (learning from my past), but I hope to continue the latter trend of this past year's states of mind(s).

Here's to reverse culture shock:

Movies, Music, Books, T.V.:Defiance, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Rango, Bobby Bland, The Carrels, Thunder from the East by Nicholas Kristoff and Cheryll WuDunn, The Wire (finished and really liked--especially season 4), Freaks and Geeks, It's Always Sunny.

Sights and Sounds of Tai ji

After two weeks of study (thirty hours per week), I have learned the base eighteen movements of Chen-style tai ji. N.B. I am far from mastering these movements.

I am still amazed at how exhausting the subtle movements of shifting one's hips and rotating ones arms can be. The martial art form does not require any particular level of athleticism, but daily practice definitely guarantees some weight-loss (through sweat) and increased upper leg strength. Each movement requires only a slight knee-bend, but each movement requires firm rooting in the ground. Surprisingly, this rooting derives in comfortably sitting into one's hips and letting the hips begin each movement. At first, pronating and suppinating through hip movements seems counter-intuitive; eventually, one learns how to bend their elbows using their hips. At least, one supposedly learns this. As one of my fellow students pointed-out (in one of the more appropriate but obscure references I have ever heard), learning tai ji makes one feel like their doing the awkward jolts and jitters from Jamie Lee Curtis's strip tease in True Lies (see below for more details).

Waterbending (see below for details)

That's a video of my master （师傅, shifu) singing my favorite Chinese country song; the lyrics are something to the effect of: "Singing a song,/ I am on this side,/ the river is on that side..." It is a particularly popular song in Yangshuo, where there is an overdone light show involving hundreds of actors on boats and featuring the song as part of a love story between a village girl and a fisherman.

That video is of me doing the base eighteen movements with my master. I am sure you will see as many flaws in my form and postures as I do. Here is a clip of Jamie Lee's dance (the clip is only relevant to the point between 3:08 and 3:17, outside of that I cannot "speak" to the remainder of the clip): compare as you see fit. And after that, some vintage waterbending from one of my favorite TV shows ever.