(Untitled)

[plasticpogostik]

A lot of times it's easy to forget what I like about china. Day to day my life is pretty much the same as anyone's life: I get up, I go to work, I do a job that is really less fulfilling than you figure it ought to be, I go home and I either amuse myself in my home or call a friend to go out (it's almost inconceivably rare that a friend will call

Comments

[matisanerd]

Those pictures are beautiful!

So this may be a question you've covered before, but why do you live in this "Yibin" place if it's so crappy?

[plasticpogostik]

Honestly, because it's crappy. There are two countries jammed into this little plot of four dimensional universe, and they just happen to overlap a little bit at this time. You've got what China was and what China's turning into. The China of the big cities of Shanghai or Hong Kong, and the China of places like Yibin.
It's not that this is disappearing, but more along the lines that if there are at least two Chinas you've got to get to know, and one is fun and one is not fun, get the less fun one out of the way first.
Honesly, I've probably learned a ton more being here than being in Chengdu for a year or something. Shanghai would be fun and not really all that different from my life at home. This is sort of chucking myself in the deep end.

[matisanerd]

ah, ok. that makes sense.

so I have to ask. I know you said that not everyone knows wushu, but do you know anyone that knows wushu?

[plasticpogostik]

my friend Carol's dad has studied Gongfu, there are two taiji teachers in the school, and a Tae Kwon Do school at the university.
I've never seen anyone do Wushu ever, or met anyone who does. Apparently old people do it in the park really early in bigger cities. Noone studies martial arts.

[matisanerd]

They have TKD in China? I thought that most Chinese were pretty anti-japanese, especially when it came to martial arts.

ooooh, what kind of Gongfu?

[plasticpogostik]

The Chinese do all dispise the Japanese. Propagaannndaaaaaaaaa!!!!
But, Tae Kwon Do being Korean, no problem.
Unspecified Gongfu.

[matisanerd]

I guess for some reason I thought that since TKD has the same roots as Karate and both are IMO pretty Japanese that they might not like it, but I guess it's all just the name.