By Michael Hawkins
After months of Baduanjin training the day was upon us. Our gang of intrepid tai chi and qi gong proponents and some that knew very little of either, gathered at Tullamarine in preparation to take on the best the world had to offer at the 2nd Annual Traditional Sports International Festival and end up making the headlines.
No don’t let the name fool you – it may only be the second event but the Athlete’s Village in Kunming was positively teaming with over 300 international athletes, a welcome ceremony that only the Chinese could pull off and a three tiered judging panel that would strike fear into the heart of a Terracotta Warrior, were a mere taste of what we were about to experience during the tournament. With each comment from Master Han, that it “doesn’t matter” and “just have fun”, most of us started to think that it might actually matter a little and perhaps we should have practised a little more diligently! Some of us were interviewed by the media and miraculously escaped any sanctions. Just when we thought that you could not possibly top the opening ceremony full of walk throughs and crowd applause, lion dancing, traditional dancers and officials’ speeches, we landed at the closing ceremony which among many other things ended up as a dance around the bonfire that seemed to last for hours. Your 54-year-old correspondent slept well that night!
I can say that not one of our team or individual entries placed last and that there were in fact some silver medallions clinking around the team bus at the close of the ceremony. After 3 days of immersion as an international athlete (we have the passes on official lanyards to prove the point) hanging out with our Russian, Mauritian Korean and Indian peers, we were packing up and on our way to our next stop, Dali. Whilst there is no connection with the artist, the makeup of the place would not have been out of place in any of his artwork. Neon lights in a traditional Chinese minority village were just the start of our adventure.
Wandering through the main streets we were stopped by house music emanating from the second floor of a gift type department store. The house music was accompanied by the 2 dancers that were strutting their stuff on the balcony, of the shop, on the main street, we were definitely not in Kansas now! Fortunately, Master Han’s devotion to tracking down a massage at each stop landed us at an excellent facility where we were soothed of all our competition tensions from top to toes.
One of the more bizarre sites we witnessed in Dali’s surrounding area was a replica of the Santorini Greek island on top of one of the mountains. Replete with whitewashed walls and Greek inspired architecture it was a truly unforgettable experience. As were the tourists who were hiring traditional costumers for photo opportunities (which was a recurring theme throughout the whole tour – eventually wearing one of our own down by the time we got to Beijing – but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here readers…). I nearly forgot to mention that we nearly lost one of our team at the Three Pagoda’s earlier in the trip (but with a well drilled group of ninja-like team members we managed to track her down – or more to the point, as she slipped through our net and appeared at a different exit completely – all’s well that ends well). No one will forget Master Han diplomatically ensuring that he got his pose in front of the three pagodas either…
So, with Santorini and the Three Pagodas now safely tucked away in our expanding bag of experiences we were off, again, no time to think or change, just back on the bus and away we sped to our next destination. Which was an idyllic if not a little odd, waterside town (more people getting pics in costumes) replete with plenty of lovely encounters on the back streets of this Dali outer lying town – we especially loved the Llama sitting down inside the perfume shop and the lovely group of elderly ladies crowded into a kitchen busily preparing the evening meals (who were up for a chat until they realised that your correspondents Mandarin was a little on the light side, being Ni hao and Zi Jian).
Whisked away to our next stop – Li Jiang. Now we had the sense of wandering through a place that time forgot. Traditional Chinese buildings and people decked out in their traditional minority dress and oh so helpful and seemingly happy to have us there. Beautiful cobblestone streets lined this place that felt part Venice with the beautiful waterways but very much Chinese with the village squares and the magnificent shop fronts, and the police presence on every point of the compass. It would be remiss of me to not mention how incredibly clean China is. All through our travels from Beijing down to the South you could spot at least one person with a broom in their hand and about 50 other people flicking a cigarette butt to the ground (not judging) but on second take, there were no cigarette butts (or any rubbish) anywhere. Clean and friendly. What a place.
Friendly
Perhaps too friendly for some of us who get a bit sentimental and excited when encountering such things. In a lovely section of this town, we were the guests of one of Master Han’s friends who had just finished construction on their Tai Chi training centre and accommodation. They were very happy to host us for dinner – so happy that we had a number of bbq’s fired up inside the training centre (that was about 1/5th the size of Master Han’s training centre) and about 30 people in attendance. Cue the pea soup fog experience some 30 minutes later. The best course of action when presented with this unique experience was to follow the hosts lead, which included a rice wine drink (which probably could have powered our bus) amongst many a toast throughout the evening. Just when we thought we were winding down for the evening a birthday cake seemed to materialise out of nowhere and before we knew it, we plunged headlong into a joint birthday celebration for your correspondent and Master Han. On the basis of potential defamation I shan’t go into the finer details of the evening other than to say that there was much celebrating and more dancing and after we had exhausted our third wind (which would have been handy to blow the smoke out of the room) we were finally onto the bus and heading back to our hotel (with complimentary serenading on the bus as we snaked through the small town).
After an early morning Qi Gong class with one of our hosts from the previous night (most impressive they were alive, let alone taking us through a class) we were off again at pace to see another market – where you could buy just about anything you could imagine, including a very fetching deconstructed denim jacket!
One of the more visually jaw dropping components of the trip was our jaunt up the Jade Dragon Mountain – where we scaled the mountain via a cable car (that required the coordination of a ninja to enter and exit without being flung off the side of the mountain) and were treated to more waterfalls than you could poke a stick at throughout the most magical and bluest of blue, Blue Lake region. Never thought I’d get sick of a waterfall, but – well there you go – too much of a good thing…
Yep, a world heritage listed forest of naturally occurring stone outcrops that just had to be seen to be believed. Everywhere you looked there were stones, some the size of mountains and one that looked like a massive gorilla peering wistfully into the distance – a truly remarkable visual feast where we could have easily spent a few days just wandering around this majestic area – but no time for that – we had to hustle away to the next stop – back to the city of Kunming (where we competed recently) but this time we were fortunate enough to have another of Master Han’s friends – the owner of a tea house – to host us for an traditional tea ceremony.
We were educated about Chinese tea culture, entertained by traditional Chinese instruments and generally transported to a most magical space where time seemed to stand still and joy reigned supreme. Chock full of Chinese culture we were ready to head to the big smoke – Beijing.
And boy was there a lot of “smoke” around on the evening we arrived! Combining the suspicious air quality with a 2-hour bus trip to travel about 15 km’s from the airport to the hotel and your “hardy” correspondent was ready to turn the bus around and take the next plane out of Beijing! Talked down by my comrades, we lit out and explored the local area where we witnessed locals burning paper for their departed relatives, tried to make our way to the telecom tower but instead found ourselves in a very dark park with a very dead end (that I am pleased to be able to tell the story about) – not complaining about the person leading us along at that point, Jayvourite. But after a full night’s rest and an almighty wind that blew yesterday’s air quality somewhere else, we were greeted with a magnificent blue sky to explore the city. We made our way through Tiananmen Square, astonished by the number of tourists happily taking pics as if they were wondering through Disneyland, not past Mao’s mausoleum or the museum or any of the other major landmarks nearby. Safely negotiating that eeriness, we then wandered through the Forbidden City (to be clear we wandered through part of the Forbidden City, which is just massive, a city in its own right that sprawls as far as the eye can see).
The architecture was stunning, and the crowds were on their best behaviour as we made our way through various segments of the city. Then we were off again to the Summer Palace (with our feet threatening to form a union to go on strike) only to be struck by a most magnificent garden and what looked like Sydney Harbour in the middle and a load of stunning buildings where the Empress used to hang out. Totally cooked and seemingly running on fumes by day 2 we were whisked off to the Temple of Heaven (there may have been a grumble or two about another temple) but when we got there, it was a clearly well named place. The temple was a stunning structure, but the sky was also putting on its own show with the cloud formations providing an unforgettable visual – a thing of beauty.
Phew (grab a glass of water) – we are nearly there.
So, it’s been an amazing time so far, with more memories than we would collect in a lifetime, squeezed in to a 2 week sprint up and down China. Surely, we cannot fit anything else in – my cup already runneth over…
One of the wonders of the world for a very, very good reason – it is simply wonderful. If you haven’t had the privilege of wandering along said Wall, just do it, doesn’t matter how you do it, just do it.
Flitting past the souvenir stalls and the hundreds of security cameras, we made a late afternoon dash up to the JuYongGuan section of the Wall. Our guide very cleverly gave us the directions to “head to the right hand side section” of the wall as everyone else was heading to the left section. So not only were we on this wonder of engineering and human perseverance, but we had it almost to ourselves as we somewhat smugly looked over to the left section of the wall where it was bumper to bumper tourists…
The Wall is first and foremost a defensive structure. It’s incredibly wide – you could march a garrison along it, its incredibly steep in parts (your sneakers are clinging on for dear life in some sections) and the views are truly breathtaking (quite possibly where the word was first coined), and you’re on the bloody Great-Wall-of-China with 2300 years of history. Bonus points for some of us: managed to find a watchtower on a section of the Wall which accommodated eight Tai Chi Australia students doing both the 24 and 42 forms. Now that is a memorable way to have a Tai Chi class folks – on the Wall, at the golden hour, with your teammates friends and family. Talk about a burst of energy – we had chi emanating from every orifice that afternoon!
After a final day wandering around Beijing with our free time (and chancing upon a local Tai Chi class that were happy to have us join) it was time to hop aboard Air China’s finest and say goodbye (but I suspect only temporarily for most of us) to the most magnificent country of China.
A massive thank you to Master Han for coordinating the trip and keeping your cool (amongst many questions about the nearest Bank of China and even when you couldn’t find the train tickets) – the Chi is strong in that one folks…
