It's been a long time since I...

Wow...

Just got back from Wudang shan tonight. First time in 5 years. Got to meet three of my gong fu brothers. Da Wei, Jie Fu, and Otah. Finally got to smash on some veggies and talk with Da Wei. We were pretty unseperable the whole time. Massages, shopping, helping me remember the town becasue it has modernized so much in the last five years. Getting to meet Doug, the head of the Wudang Tourism committee. We all went to Shi Yan to help me see about getting help with my Degree and becoming a doctor in Hubei. We'll see how that pans out. But Da Wei put this together. And then we ate at a 5 star restaurant. Da Wei's first time for the 5 star smash. It was great and fun. The start on the train was fun and lots of good laughs. Me Jessi and Adam bomb got jacked and high off some Pu Er tea. it was nuts. "Mini-Moy", shaft song"but, i'm just talking about cha!" and me and Jessi making insane smiling faces o the ongoing Chinese who felt the need to stare into our room hardcore as they pass, kept us laughing. We studied Chinese, talked all sorts of stuff and when everyone went to bed, we went to the dining cart and had some more good talks about I don't know what. Philosophy, China, learning, Gong fu... it was fun. When we arrived at the shan Da Wei met us at the train station and got us set up. Them at a hostel and me with Yuan Shifu's nephew Yuan Sun Jian. He drove me back to the school. The first night I went to Shifu's room and got to see him and Shi Ma. SHe left and Shifu had me come in and sit. I will never forget thepresence he has or the look of him. Last time five years ago he seemed young and not as distinguished, but now... He is like Jedi master, top of the charts, off the radar master presence. It was crazy. sAfter a little while of catching up on stuff, Shifu had me, Jeff and Da Wei in the same room and dropped jewels to us and gave us an important lecture about not losing our paths and how all of us will follow differnet paths but how we all play a role in each others life as disciples and how important our job is too transmit what he gives us and to realize how hard his job is as it is up to him to give the 16th generation the knowledge properly. He also taught us more about Dao. We all felt priveleged. It was like having your dad give you a life lecture that you just sit in awe about and think of later. It was great to share that experience with my brothers. We went to bed after that and got up early the next morning. Jeff leads the Qi Gong class in the morning and it was great to feel that Wu Dang/Hubei energy. The air is sweet and feels like the wind is kissing you. The energy is soft and calming and the embrace you feel from it is nothing more than love and serenity. The mountain, whether the top or bottom will always feel and be home to me. And it was great to be back. After the class we ate breakfast, Da Wei and I had some tea in his room. We Bs'ed a bit and then it was time for morning class which was demonstration day. Everyone performed. Jie Fu does like half the freaking system which is a pleasure to watch, Da Wei impressed me with his Baji as well as his other forms. Shifu said his Ji Ben Quan was the best out of everyones. I did a rather lousy performance of Tai Yi Xuan Wu. Shifu said I only needed to widen my horse stance a bit more, but I felt I could have done better. I didn't plan on performing, but Gao told me if I don't perform I don't get to eat. Don't piss off a 15 year old who can do two finger hand stands and penetrate your stomahc with them. not really. I was far fom nervous, but I figured it was cool that Gao wanted me to perform and be close with the class and get back in the swing of things. Everyone did great and it's great to see the structure of things and meet the future faces of those who are entrusted with carrying on the torch. It's a breathe of fresh air to know I'm not the only one now. Give it five years. I'm calling it now. We're coming like a Tidal Wave. Wu running Jiang Hu. Watch. So after that it's lunch time. I get Shifu and the two of us go out to eat at a restaurant together... just us. It was nice. We talked about all the details of my start in America after I left five years ago and went through everything. I have come to a lot of realizations and feel i'm back to "normal." I'm on my "way" again. Thanks Shifs. :)
We talked about Zhang San Feng and his disciples... he named three of them, and the difference between family temples and forest temples. How the arts got spread through disciples an dhow sometimes through generations some disciples would be lousy or they wouldnt have someone to pass the art on to, so they gave it to another pai and then eventually it came back. Wudang can never be traced back... ever. and we don't need to prove it. it's all a rough estimate guess becasue the cultural revolution, as well as the hstory not being recorded properly and passed on. But we start here with 13 generation.
After lunch, we returned to the school and Shifu helped me call school and get info about the medical college in Shi Yan. Then he took a nap. I hung with Da Wei and we had tea. Then it was back on the town. This time... massages. that is always a treat. then it was back to the school and on to bed. Next day, more training, learned ji ben quan in an hour and had it wired tight. Did some shopping and got some corrections on my forms. Poor shifu and the medicine that burns up his sotmach. I feel for him. To se my master like this cuts like a knife. The training was fun though afterwards. He made us push hands. Me and Da Wei went toe to toe... it's alike a piece of bamboo trying to move a moutnain. He is good. We both exploited each others weaknesses and had fun pushing and practicing drills. After that, Jeff and I got to talk and things were awesome. It was the first time we got to connect since I had been there. He is very busy promoting and working for the school on top of keeping up with his training. We had some good laughs, and ate lunch. In the night time we all got together and went out. Da Wei and I met up with Jeff and the others after we did some more wandering around town. We took some pictures and watched the locals dance at the town square. Da Wei is so pimp it's ridiculous. But when we all met up ogether we drank some beer and then returned to the school to watch the terrible ong bok 2. I left 15 mins. into it. studied some chinese and fell asleep. The next morning did some qi gong with Jeff leading, ate breakfast together and did some last minute running around. This was my last day here and it rained. This is the second time I leave and the second time it rained. Da Wei said it rains when he leaves and Jeff too. I joked that the mountian cries when we leave and he said they both said the same things. Good to see we are on the same wave length. We all are humble and have a great repsect for each other. I am sol glad I have these two as brothers and not two dumb asses that i would wind up hating the rest of my life but have to deal with. Jeff wound up giving me a dragon zan zi which was hand carved by a monk at jin ding. A most precious gift indeed. I went with Da Wei to eat, after syaing good my "so longs" and getting pics. At the restaurant we ate with my friends from Taiyuan andi bought a shitty bag to carry all my stuff home. I gave Jeff my Zoo York knapsack as a polite gesture as he commented how cool it was. Later he sent me a text saying he couldn't accept it, but i pulled rank and it, IMO, can't come close to the beauty of the dragon hair pin. So we leave the restaurant after they rip us off and give us foreigner prices... nothing we could do... it's a holiday, they wanted to argue and we had a train to catch... let this one go boys. So we leave and say our good byes. We agree with a woman van driver to pay her 80 RMB to take us to the Shi Yan train station. She agrees and off we go. 20 minutes from the train station, this bitch turns the van off in front of us and says the van is broke. Daniel is up front and tell s us she turnked the van off. It didn't break.. I wintesses this first hand as well as i sat to the left and watched her as it wasn't hard to freaking notice. So a guy comes up and they try to run a scam on us. Jesse is talking to her in CHinese, cause his Chinese is bad ass and Sunny, his Chinese wife starts talking to them. But before Jesse spoke, the woman driver said to Sunny, "Hey tour guide (cause that's what she thought Sunny was to us) you know how this works, help us out!" So SUnny tells us and Jesse goes nuts. Adam and I are like, lets get out, this bitch aint getting shit.... no one pays. So we get out and stop an oncoming bus. He asks if it goes to the train station, they say yes... we get on. Jesse and daniel follow up, but before they get on the woman driver jumps in the way to prevent them. After the woman driver grabs Sunny and Jese screams at the top of his lungs at her, she lets go and continues to argue.. Daniel physically pushes her out of the way and chucks her several feet away... kind of funny to see. they all get on. The woman driver gets on and the guy gets on too. They say they can fix the van in 5mins just to get on. They also fought for us to pay them and we followed with a fury of "hell no's", "Fuck No's", and "you are out of your goddamn mind if you think you are getting money from us", in Chinese and English. I start to tell the bus driver to leave, Adam omes in a second later acking me up followed by Daniel and we're telling the bus driver to "Go." Jesse and SUnny are telling the rest of the bus that these two people are cheats and swindlers and what they are doing. The bus people/natives start to get restless and the driver decides to take off. They jump off the bus and because of greed, lack of respect, and trying to short cut and not do things the right way, they are out 80 RMB and the gas and tim e it took to get there. roughly 40 mins. Sucks for them... Win for us becasue it only cost us a total of 5 RMBnow to get us to the train station.

EPIC WIN O_o (to quote the infamous Joe Nelson)

So, we got screwed at dinner, but saved on taxi. Nature balances all things accordingly.

So we get on the train and that madness starts. Jesse and I are laughing becasue at Wudang the day before we left (my continuity is a litle off) we saw a woman who wound up calling "Grill." She stared at us for, not kidding, nearly thre minutes. We kept talking to each other in English and she kept staring at us. She had only two teeth. the molar type ones after the canines on the bottom. The rest of her mouth was a black hole. It was kind of funny looking and we kept mimicking the face. And of course laughing at it. So on the train this madness continued. We starting screaming "Dou Sha" (red bean cake) and that was pretty nuts. On top of the other random madness it was a pretty crazy ride home. Jesse finally called the Grill woman an Ape and we cried we laughed so hard. She looks like a close up of a national geographic show of apes. Just her face and grill going. Too funny. We met two girls from Denmark who were nice and they joined all of us for tea. Jesse and I shared a beer together and had some talks about lots of other cool stuff in life, but the highlights are "dou sha", "grill, the ape woman", playing xiang qi at the train station and having an entire cult following of chinese men watching us, eating at the dining cart and talking shit on the people there who stare and talk shit, and the tea parties involving pu er madness... "deez nuts, and saying things your mama can do in chinese involving inappropriate topics. Making SUnny laugh when we switch to guandong hua and all that madness that accompanied it.

Getting home was great and giving Jessi her gifts. I can't wait to see baby dragon in the morning and start my new life as Dao Shi. Adam calls me the prdigal son of Wudang and that's kind of nice to hear. Overall, everyone there respected me and its nice to have a long group of gong fu family and friends. I can say...

I'm happy...