Labour Hotel Yantai

... service industry. Whereas in Yantai I felt like a traveller, here I feel like a tourist. Perhaps this dichotomy is illusory (and even pretentious). In Qingdao you are supposed to enjoy yourself because everyone knows how beautiful it is. And being a contrarian, this elicits the opposite response in me! The prominent visibility of tourists also lends the place a somewhat artificial feel. The domestic busyness of Yantai is here replaced by persistent hawkers and ...

... definitely on the lonely side. I have discovered I'm capable of taking a language class entirely in Chinese, though; and frankly, it's about time. The group of people is great though, and from all over and from all different backgrounds (we have one sorority girl and a Honduran guy from the Bronx whose mom only went to school through 3rd grade). It's actually become a lot of fun to speak in Chinese - using English actually ...

... out. Turns out the song was playing real loud on some Chinese guy's cell phone, he was trance-dancing right there in middle of the mall! I said, "Say man, what's the name of that sweet song?" That boy didn't even stop dancing, he just said,"Bing He Shi Dai". Needless to say, now I jam to it on my iPod. For the best China travel information and tips on the Internet check out: www.askreddragon.com

... learning a bit of Chinese, snacking and drinking tea - taking it easy until training starts again tomorrow! Our group has a week until we're to be tested on the first proper fist form that we've been taught so I imagine this week will be a tough one. That's about all there is to report but will hopefully start updating sometime this week

... while bending it towards the victims head. It was not not painful. After a while of power stretching one realized that the benefits after (you can kick a lot higher because of it although on particularly harsh stretches you generally lift your leg, spasm and fall over) are definitely worth doing it to the maximum amount of pain you can take (when you either break out into hysterical laughter or cry, the first usually takes place to cover the second). You ...

... Sanda sessions were usually the most tiring because they involved a lot of activity, running drills, frog jumping, jumping around on one foot and animal walking were pretty common in the middle of the punches and kicks. A nice part is also in enduring about 3 minutes of holding your leg as high as possible in a side kick position. It hurts but you learn to ignore it when you have your master walking around with a staff ready to hit your leg ...

All the masters in the academy trained in the Shaolin temple roughly from when they were 10 till 20. Every single one of them has their own style, amazing ability and approach to teaching what they know. There is no real way to summarise them as a whole because of how different they all are so I think it's worth giving little profiles of each. I was lucky enough to have Du Shifu as my main Shaolin master. He's the oldest shaolin master at around 28 (no ...

... and it turned out that I would be the English speaker welcoming everyone at the beginned and thanking them for coming at the end. Fine. I could do that. I agreed to meet to rehearse it on Thursday. On Thursday, I met with the Chinese "host" of the show, and met my cohosts - a Japanese boy and a Korean girl, all with much much better Chinese than me. They've all been here for a couple years... We wound up rehearsing for 2 hours, and I was given a ...

Well folks, it's been an interesting few weeks - I'm really loving it here. The time is flying! O.K. going back a few weeks... I still occasionally get woken up at crazy o' clock. Stupidly answered the phone on a Sunday morning (so wasn't happy) and had to get up to see a visitor from GVN - don't people sleep in China? Anyway, was informed there would be a new volunteer in the shape of Mhairi (Scottish version of Mary - pronounced Mar - e) - a very lovely girl from Glasgow. It's ...

... room of a finger nail's length let alone an arm's out distance, the record of "how many people fit on a bus" is broken daily, the car horn is a symbol of power; the louder and longer the better, crossing the road is a life/death situation - I've found the best method is to walk blindly as pausing just surprises the car, the 'green man' is just for show and doesn't mean anything, a vodka-orange costs more than a pair of shoes, but measures ...