The visa situation has improved!
I’ll fill you in with the back story. Because of the Olympic games getting and extending visas for China was made a lot harder. This meant that I couldn’t get a 90 day visa to cover my entire trip, I could only get a 60 day visa which is due to expire at the end of September. Extending a visa when the Olympic games were on was a major hastle, you had to open a Chinese bank account and have a minimum balance of 21000 Yuan – which is about 1500 pounds. Not only does this mean that you have to have 21000 Yuan but you also have to navigate the rather confusing waters of international money transfers.
Fortuantely now that the games are over extending a visa has gone back to ‘normal’, just in time for me! Now all I have to do is give the owner of the academy my passport, two passport photos and 900 Yuan (roughly eighty pounds) and he can post it off to some official somewhere and it’ll all be sorted with the minimum of effort on my part.

This is a bit out of date as it was last Sunday that I went cycling but never mind. Having been admiring the views on our weekly trip to Taining, the local town, I decided to finally get out there with my camera and try and get a few pics.
I got about half-way to Taining before turning back – that was my plan all along so not biggie. The trip there was pretty easy as it’s mostly down hill…..
Here are a couple of the pics I got:


My plan is to do some cycling exporation every Sunday and hopfully I’ll get to know the local area a bit better and what kind of times in the evenings are the bast to capture the more scenic views 🙂

I also got a signed DVD from my master along with a ‘secret’ mantra to cultivate chi. And it’s only 8 in the morning, things can only get better 🙂

If this works there’ll be a cool slideshow below.

If it doesn’t click this link. I advise that you change the options and disable ‘Embiggen small thing for this screen’ It blurs the pictures. You may want to click on the link regardless, it brings up the pictures bigger than they appear in the slideshow above.

I had a sudden and surreal realisation when I was eating dinner a few days ago. I haven’t used, or even seen a knife and fork for over a month now. It’ll be a bit of a novelty when that comes round again!
The internet at the academy has been on the blink but is hopefully sorted out for at least a little while. There is however only one computer at the moment so the demand is quite high.
Luckily at the moment there are only four students (including myself) which makes the tuition very intensive but also very good! I’ve started learning bagua sword, which to be honest is vicious. The first move, other than picking up the sword is a stab to the unmentionables… I’m loving it. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some more pictures up over the course of the week.

Chinese is a very harsh sounding language to my western ears. A simple example is when we were walking up the mountain, an old Chinese man was on the back of a motor cycle and was shouting something at us as he passed. Then he was dropped off by his friend and waited for us, still shouting something and sounding quite angry. We were all a bit taken aback and not really sure what to do, it looked like an open and public road so we couldn’t be trespassing. Fortunately we had one of the translators with us. It turned out that this old guy was telling us about a short-cut off the road if we were walking. Without the translator we wouldn’t have had any idea that he was being nice to us.
Strange strange country 🙂

In the UK it’s generally excepted that the line in the middle of the road is a separator. It keeps cars, busses and bikes that are going in opposite directions from crashing.
In rural China the line in the middle of the road is more of a guide that is used to tell you where to drive (assuming there is a line). When there is a blind corner, just use your horn. Simple.
This makes any kind of taxi or bus ride an excercise in mental strength as much as a means of transport. I don’t even want to get started on the roads in towns thats just a hellstorm of chaos.

Shopping for food in China is an interesting experience. When looking at a foodstuff, bread for example your mind calls up a mental preconception of what it’s going to taste like. Based on this you then decide if you’re going to buy it.
The only trouble with this is that here in China the idea of what the food will taste like is usually completely wrong.
We end up with squidgy dough when we’re expecting hard sweets strange beans when we’re expecting chocolate ice-cream and all manner of other wrong tasting foods. It certainly makes things an interesting experience!

When I first arrived I thought that I was getting some pretty damn good training. I’m being taught by a 3rd level diciple of Sun style Tai Chi, Bagua and something else (I’ll edit if I remember). There are only five 3rd level masters in the world as the guy that invented Sun style only taught his daughter, and his daughter taught five people, one of which was Dung, who is my master. This is the story anyway, not to sure if it’s all true. So I’m getting some damn good training.
Then at the beginning of this week we got a new translator, who is much much better than the last one. Now Dung is able to tell us a completely new level of detail about the history, theory and philosophy behind the Sun style and Tao in general. Which is fascinating and awesome. The moment he started getting into these details I thought ‘Three months is never going to be enough!’
Now yesterday he told us that he’s going to be much more strict about the moves, which kicks everything up a gear again. I’m liking it though, it forces me to try and rise to the challenge and put my best in. It’s all pretty kickass.

Rumour also has it that Sun style is what Jet Li uses, but I really want to check that out before I start banding it about as fact.