After lunch, our delegation headed to a local Kung Fu School. At the school, we watched a live performance and afterwards we participated in a "simple" exercise.
During the performance, I sat back and enjoyed the show; I didn't worry about taking photos nor videos. There, I witnessed some really cool stunts; two really stood out to me. The first stunt was when a martial artist threw a needle through a glass wall and popped a balloon on the other side. The other stunt was when the Master brought a thick, wire pole down to the audience to view. Several people touched the pole, although I did not. When the Master went back onstage, he bent the pole around his neck. It took a while, and it looked extremely painful, and it also took quite a bit of time for him to unwind. It was something to watch and hold your own neck in fear. It was pretty cool!
After the performance, the delegation students lined up to take photographs with the martial artists. This was followed by being led outside where we were taught a "simple" *cough cough* exercise. The exercise had eight steps to it, but was surprisingly challenging! It made your body move in semi-painful and awkward positions. It required great balance (something, that I unfortunately have none of) and hand-eye coordination (again, not for me!). Haha. Nonetheless, I tried my best. Throughout the exercise, I kept using the wrong hand or the wrong foot or leg and the instructor continually corrected me. It was extremely hard and (to be honest), I was ready for it to end. But now that I'm looking back, I really did enjoy the experience, no matter how difficult it was. One day I hope to take a course in martial arts.
Probably one of the most ironic, hilarious, and humiliating experiences during our stay in China was during this exercise. While the students of our delegation struggled to complete the 8-step exercise, one of the young martial artists (he probably was seven years old), was off to the side, completing the exercise perfectly. It was funny because when he was bored, he bounded over a fence that was taller than he was.
After the exercise, we were preparing to leave and stopped to use the "happy rooms." When we walked back inside, the happy rooms were labeled by gender in Chinese. The one on the right read, 女 and the one on the left read, 男. Character lesson for you: 女(nǚ) means female (woman, girl, et cetera) and 男 (nán) means male (man, boy, et cetera). 男子 (nánzǐ) is also a popular form of male. If you look at the character that means "good" you see both components of male and female. 好 (hǎo), meaning good, depicts that you need both male and female for good to occur; just like Yin and Yang: you need balance between male and female, good and bad, light and dark. It's interesting, really.
