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Page 1 of 4 This trip was originally planned as a small group of Master Chen Zhonghua's disciples accompanying him to China for two reasons. The first was his formal acceptance of an award from the Hong family. Master Chen had been awarded the status of International Standard Bearer by Grandmaster Hongs family and disciples and wanted several of his own disciples to attend the award ceremony. A great honor for those involved.
The second reason was to film a documentary on the life of Grandmaster Hong through remembrances of his family and disciples. Grandmaster Hong died in 1996 and many of his disciples are now (2004) in their seventies and eighties. It seemed that if this information was not captured soon the opportunity may be lost forever. Again for those involved a very exciting opportunity to meet and talk with some of the best martial artists of our century and to sit at the lap of 'The Masters' and hear stories of a time and place we can only imagine.
Grandmaster Hong Junsheng
For me the trip started in Victoria with a very short (10 min.) jaunt from Victoria, over the Georgia Strait to Vancouver airport. Most of the Canadians were taking the same Air China flight and we all met in the Vancouver airport over the course of a few hours of impatient waiting. |  |  | | | | Jesse, Kee and Jerry confer | Jim, Scott and Jesse
Jim and Scott are students of Ronnie Yee | | | Finally in the air and on our way. The trip from Vancouver to Beijing takes between 10 and 12 hours, an awful long time to sit. On the way there our airplane was a bit small and the seating was pretty cramped. Roy Dawson and I spent quite a bit of time blocking the bathrooms (unintentionally) just so we could stand and chat. At one time we had quite a crowd as other passengers got the same idea and joined us.
When we landed at Beijing it was early morning (our time) but early afternoon Beijing time. It was hot and humid. The temperature hovered somewhere in the high 30s C or in the high 80s F.
As there was both an American and Canadian contingent the first thing to do was to get us all together and meet up with the Chinese guide that was supposed to meet us to take us on the next portion of the trip, an overnight train ride to Jinan. In the photo you can see us all milling about, jet lagged and trying to get our bearings. When we finally connected our guide had a small bus waiting to transport us and our luggage to the Beijing train station. |  |  |  | | Aboard the airline
watching Vanilla Sky | Meeting in Beijing airport | | |  | | | | The bus is small
and we are large, a tight fit. | | | | The bus tour through Beijing was incredible. Stop lights, Stop signs, the very lines on the road are taken only as suggestions. Some people drive with their hood ornaments lined up with the lane lines. Pedestrians and motorists play a game wherein if the pedestrian shows that he sees the motorist he's considered fair game. If he pretends ignorance of their presence the motorist will move or stop, just enough to avoid collision.
Bicycles are still very popular and its not uncommon to see a bicycle or motorcyle with 2 or 3 people on it wobbling through a busy intersection. Several times we saw what appeared to be whole families on one small motorcycle.
Our tour guide first took us to pick up Yaaron Seidman who had arrived early and was staying in a very nice hotel. Yaaron speaks Chinese like a native, he also speaks Hebrew, German and English and is quite proficient at Chen style taiji. After picking up Yaaron and his fiance Taly we headed off to a restaurant for some lunch (breakfast?).
I guess we were pretty lucky because most of the time in China we avoided the types of bathrooms I had been warned against. This was our first encounter with one that announces its presence well before you can see it. But the food was good and the host was gracious and in all it was a good meal. One of the dishes served was fish that looked as though it had been bronzed. Odd until you ate it, then it was just delicious.
|  |  |  | | Beijing train station
at night | a kiosk in the station
| Same shot with a flash
| |  | | | | Ronnie Yee, Roy Dawson and the author
in our costly but comfortable berth. | | | | Beijing train station does not allow parking with a half mile of it so the bus dropped us off on a busy street in a small parking lot with all our luggage to tote by hand. We joined a stream of other travellers heading in the same direction and made off, in the street, up and down the curb, dragging and carrying our luggage.
The train station was like any other large train station I've been in except for everything being in Chinese. I was thankful many times that we had several interpreters in the group. We found a comfortable waiting area and settled in to stretch, snooze and wait a couple of hours for our train. The temperature was still up in the high 30s so we all were buying cold tea, water and juice and visiting the bathroom. In case you've never seen a 'traditional' Chinese toilet I should mention that there is no porcelain involved, but there is a lot of squatting in the venture. If you are extremely lucky there may be a few sheets of tissue somewhere in the vicinity but if you haven't brought your own (tissue), most likely you are SOL, literally. Oh yeah and don't forget that you can't brush with or drink the tap water. Use bottled, always.
We finally did catch the train and all of us had very nice soft bunks.. that is, 4 beds in your quarters instead of 6. The beds were nice and firm and we could finally lie down. What a relief! Keep in mind not to wear socks to the bathroom in the middle of the night as one of our party did. Shoes are required.
Recollections of the night trip. Lights at every town we stopped at. A radio on in our quarters squawking what sounded like Communist party music. We had to call the conductor to find out how to turn it off. Normal click clack of train travel plus other fellow adventurers in the corridor. Finally blessed jet lag reducing sleep. On to Jinan!
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