Kung Fu and Chinese Culture

(Andrew)

It has taken me a while to fully grasp the immense culture that China presents. Prior to my participation in the China Exchange, I had always thought America’s two hundred thirty five year old history had been unique. And, that America, a nation that heavily influences those developing, could pride itself on its rich culture. This was assumed after many years of US history lessons of course, and obviously I had been wrong. The fascinating five thousand year old Chinese culture extends its roots so deep into the man’s history that I have often caught myself wondering throughout this trip why people don’t learn more about it.

So far, we have been exposed to the Chinese culture by connecting with various Chinese ethnic groups, touring museums fraught with ancient Chinese artifacts and painting, and visiting historic locations. But, trying to understand the complexities of this culture has presented many obstacles, such as language barrier. Though the obstacles have been hard to overlook, the addicting challenge of tackling this culture has made me constantly seek more information about the Chinese culture. Luckily, Hangzhou High School provides us with private classes (which are taught in English) that shine light upon various aspects of China’s culture.

The first day everything started to click in regards to my growing understanding of the Chinese culture was during team goat’s first Kung-Fu class. As Allen, Emily, Mel, Emily (A senior at the high school who applied to American colleges), and I entered the gym, roughly 1.5x the size of DS’s gym, we were greeted by the sound of a rip stick rolling along the gym’s hardwood floor. Gazing into the distance, we could barely make out the outline of our Kung-Fu teacher. When he, teacher Liu, finally rode his way to us, he appeared hip, athletic, and certainly not a person into Kung-Fu. In fact, he introduced himself to us as a football (soccer) player whose passions are Kung-Fu and Tai Chi.

To begin our first lesson, teacher Liu gave a demonstration of a basic Kung-Fu form. The moves were pretentious, and did not seem to have any pragmatic use. In all of the Chinese “Kung-Fu” movies I have seen back home, Kung-Fu was always used to physically protect or harm people. Here, it seemed to be more of a ceremonial art, and I was quite confused. However, the moves were elegant, and our football playing gym teacher appeared to be a living representation of the past.

After the demonstration we began to learn the form, and I realized how much balance and concentration were required for perfection of the moves. The more I concentrated the more I learned about the significance of each movement. Each arm motion or kick is a literal preservation of the Chinese culture. This will sound very cheesy, but if you made the slightest mess up you completely destroyed the harmony of it all. Although it may seem showy, it is a part of the Chinese culture that remains a crucial piece to China’s five thousand year long history. It was neat to perform the same exact moves millions of people have before me. It sounds corny, but true at the same time.

I have found this to be true especially with our other classes for more obvious reasons. Classes such as traditional Chinese watercolor painting class, Calligraphy, and Chinese culture class all present ways to physically connect with China’s culture. In Chinese watercolor painting class our teacher usually begins the lesson with a quick demonstration of a particular theme. When we last had class (which was last Monday), our teacher had chosen the theme of leaves/fruit. It was so intriguing to see our teacher paint in the same style that has been displayed in the priceless ancient Chinese paintings we have seen in museums. It was even weirder to actually paint ourselves. Some of the pictures that we drew are pictures on the blog.

For Calligraphy, it is self-evident that the traditional form of Chinese writing has presented itself in practically every form of documentation preserved from ancient China. It takes an enormous amount of self-discipline and patience to achieve perfection with each stroke. This self-discipline and patience, although tedious at times, has kept calligraphy a living tradition.

In Chinese culture class, we are able to decipher ancient Chinese tales of love and tragedy. Just the other week we watched a movie called The Dream of the Red Chamber. Apparently the novel is so complicated that there is a field devoted to deciphering the novel called Redology. Our teacher’s teacher is a redologist, so we were able to learn much about the matter.

In general, our classes have been a blast besides the fact that they are imparting us with so much knowledge. The teachers are engaging, humorous and helpful. For those of you wondering about our classes/daily schedule in general, we normally have one to two Chinese classes per day. Each class is normally an hour and forty five minutes long. They usually take place in the morning. At around eleven thirty we go to lunch. At twelve thirty we go to something called English Corner. It is basically where people come to practice their English. For the past couple of weeks we have started an American Slang lesson that kicks off each English corner. We have taught words that might help the Chinese students understand some everyday terms such as “swagger” and “boss.” Normally around fifteen people come. Then, in the afternoon we are free to either study our DS homework or attend our host siblings’ classes. At five school ends, and we go back home with our host siblings. Oh, by the way school starts at seven thirty, and students normally arrive at seven. It is a pretty long school day, but it is such an awesome experience to spend time the whole school day with people who are genuinely curious about what you say/do. With only a little over a week left for our stay in Hangzhou, hopefully I will be able to keep on learning, so that I can share more of China’s culture with you guys. For now, bye!