So I’m back in Beijing for more than a week now. Not much has changed – only some new buildings and the lack of restaurants I used to go. The weather is really nice and the air I got used to quite fast.

I’m staying with german friends (Hanno and Marcel) who live close to 五道口 (Wudaokou), which is my old neighborhood, so I can easily find my way around. They’re pretty cool folks so I’m most probably staying with them longer than planed. We get along quite well – training and partying together.

The first day already started quite nice. I arrived at 11 am and after getting some food and fixing my mobile, we already had Taiji training. Afterwards we invited my teacher to 火锅 (Hotpot) and had some beers. Then we went to meet some people at Lush and had more beer and some absinth And as it wasn’t too far we moved over to Propaganda for some dance action. Even this club hasn’t changed much, stll HipHop music and full of Koreans… ^^ and it was still fun, so that we were home at about 7 am.

The next day at 9 am my good friend 费艾 (Fei Ai) called me and wanted to go shopping. I was already awake so I joined her to a tour of 西单 (Xi Dan). Afterwards her parents invited me for dinner, which was very nice, even if I was really tired. In the evennig we went out with about 8 chinese friends to 三里屯 and partied till about 2 am. This made me get over my jetlag pretty fast.

So what else am I doing here? Besides one day I attended Taiji Training everyday (yesterday even twice). 张老师 (teacher Zhang) has imrpoved a lot and his teaching method, too. He now tells me lots of background info and corrects every movement very detailed. At the moment I’m working a bit on my 一路 (first form) and started out working on my 二路 (second form) intesively again, which this time really feels a lot better. I’m getting explained a lot of the 发力 (fali/fajin) movements and some of the ones I never got before, now are working at least a bit. We also did some 推手 (pushhnads) yesterday.

We also had the Birthday of my 太极 (Taiji) teacher on Monday. We just had ordinary training at the BLCU campus when one of the guys told us that it’s 张老师’s Birthday. So we asked him to get some food after training. He was happy to hear that and invited some of his friends and some other close students to have a small dinner at a restaurant not far from his place. As we were a bit early he invited us to see his home, which was a really interesting experience. 张 lives right next to a train station not far from 五道口 (which he finds very comfortable, but should also be very noisy). His home is a small hut with two rooms, made completely out of concrete. There is no flooring and there are only public toilets and showers. He lives there with his wife and two daughters (one is 5 years old the other one just 6 month). He even told us that he’s paying 700 kuai a month for it and that he can’t afford anything else cause of two kids and his only job being teaching 太极. But he’s still happy having anything he needs and doing the thing he loves most.

At the restaurant – as usual – we had lots of great food and also lots of beer and 二锅头 (Er Guo Tou). One friend of my teacher, who is a tailor mostly doing gongfu and taiji uniforms, had the great idea to outfit all attendees of the dinner with a specially made taiji uniform for free (advertisement purposes), so he took our heights and preference in color one by one even calling his wife/girlfriend to get detailed measures of us. The night ended with most people really drunk (not me) at about 2 am.

Also I feel my chinese has imrpoved a lot. I don’t have any trouble communicating with anyone and most things I wanna express get understood pretty ok. I even talked to some people about politics and other “deeper” topics.

Till now, I haven’t met up with too many people, as lots of them are working or attending classes, but that will hopefully change soon. Also I’m planing to visit my 师伯 (gongfu uncle) 于斌 (Yu Bin) in 青岛 (Qingdao) next weekend. Really looking forward to that one. This weekend I’m most probably meeting up with Rene (my kungfu brother over here) and also with some of the other gongfu teachers I know (and maybe don’t know).

Pictures of the first night

Pictures of the second night

Pictures of Zhang Sheng Yi’s Birthday

Before classes start again I decided to go back to Iran for 3 weeks (after not having visited for 3 years) to see some relatives and friends and also to pay respect to my recently deceased grandpa, who always treated me like his own son and whom we all miss a lot.

Before going I had to organize a lot of things including the contract for my new apartment in Cologne, but in the end all went pretty well and I could fly without regrets.

Iran hasn’t changed as much as I expected – at least on the outside – but if you look at it more deeply you notice quite some things, most of them not very positive. One of the most disturbing beeing the new law agaisnt shops (and with coffee shops, ice bars,..) having to close at midnight, so that streets get really empty and lonesome at nights (quite contrary to the Teheran I knew 3 years ago). Additionally the recently very popular TV series keep a lot of people in their homes from 6 pm till about midnight.

But I also had lots of fun back home. Going out with my Cousines and Cousins. eating lots of great food and enjoying the warm sunny end-summer-weather of Teheran. I would like to especially thank Ali, my younger Cousines husband, for sacrificing so much of his time showing me around and having quite interesting discussions.

We also visited the Island of Kish in the South of Iran, which was really hot and humid, but also fun. But see the pictures and get your own impression

Pictures of Iran 07

As they moved the Love Parade to Essen this year and me and my friends had never been to any, we decided to take the short trip there yesterday.

Essen was stuffed with people from all around Germany (and some other countries, too), all wanting to party in this relatively small town. The Parade itself was pretty cool – with good DJs and music on the trucks and lots of people dancing (and also drinking and … ).
At around dusk all the trucks and party people met at a place between Essen University and Berliner Platz for some more partying, only that this time there were some not so famous (and at least for us not so good) DJs, so we decided to leave earlier. Tired and with aching feet we walked all the way back to the trainstation just to see that they wouldn’t let anyone in for maybe an hour or longer. Luckily, I had been to Essen quite often in the past weeks to visit my friend Fei Ai (who’s now in Beijing – huhu Ai ), so I could lead my friends around the station to the other side that hadn’t been closed and we even got the first train back to Cologne.

Pictures of the Love Parade 07

I also uploaded two clips of the crowd (and me) dancing in front of one of the trucks. Don’t laugh, you can’t imagine how hard it is to dance and hold the camera still at the same time

Loveparade 1 of 2

Loveparade 2 of 2

Finally got to upload some more of my china pictures. I’ll try to get the rest online again soon and maybe even some newer ones.

Also, I’m going to Iran in September, maybe after that I’ll have some new photos and stories to post on this site again

I just payed the $24,95 for my flickr pro account, so now I can upload all the new and old pictures I have here. First will be pictures of my stay in China. I have a lot so this will take some time, but I will start uploading gallery for gallery over time so be sure to check back here often For now at least the [http://www.tanglang.info/index.php/flickrgallery/album/72157594544340855/Hiking_the_Great_Wall.html|Gallery with pictures of the Great Wall] is up again. Have fun

So after spending a whole day testing and hacking through different gallery plugins for WordPress, I realized the easiest and most flexible way is to host my pictures on [http://www.flickr.com|Flickr]. That way I don’t need to use too much of the serverspace I rent out and there’s a really nice plugin for including everything I have on Flickr also as a Gallery on my own site. So I spent the rest of the evening uploading and organizing at least some of my pictures on flickr and integrating it all nicely into my site. And as an incentive for you to have a look at the [http://www.tanglang.info/index.php/flickrgallery/|new gallery], I even added some previously not realeased pictures that had been taken while my gongfu brothers and sisters where visiting China in summer 2006.

Only downside is that Flickr doesn’t support “subalbums”, which is ok as it suports tags. Also I’ll have to get a pro account on flickr to be able to organize pictures in more than 3 sets/albums

Nachdem ich schon gestern erfahren hatte, dass ich in Brad’s Klasse gelandet bin – man hatte unsere Klasse aufgrund von zu wenig Schülern auf die anderen Klassen verteilt – war es doch ein wenig komisch in einer Klasse zu sitzen, in der ich nur eine Person kenne. Der neue Klassenraum im Hauptgebäude ist jedoch einer der besten, die unsere Uni zu bieten hat. Jeder Platz ist mit einem [http://www.dell.de|Dell] PC inklusive [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCD|LCD] ausgestattet. Unsere neue – recht junge – Lehrerin nutzt das Medium auch direkt mit einigen Powerpointpräsentationen aus und lässt und in den letzten beiden Stunden mangels Büchern [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454914/|„如果爱 – Perhaps Love“], einen Liebesfilm mit [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0203009/|Moulin Rouge] Touch, auf Chinesisch mit chinesischen Untertiteln gucken Und da wir grad bei Computern sind – anbei noch ein Werbeplakat für Intel Dual-Core Prozessoren aus Shanghai.

Auch zum ersten 太极 (Tai Ji) Training seit langem konnte ich mich heute endlich mal durchringen und obwohl ich in den letzten Wochen kaum die Form sondern nur 气功 (Qi Gong) und ein wenig 基本功 (jiben gong – Basis) geübt hatte lief es schon auf Anhieb sehr gut und fühlte sich teilweise sogar besser an als vorher. Nach dem Training habe ich noch ein wenig mit 张老师 (Zhang Laoshi) und einem weiteren Chinesen, der die ganze Zeit über für sich trainiert hatte und sich ziemlich gut bewegen konnte, geredet. Dabei kamen wir auf 螳螂 und irgendwie auch auf 通背 (tongbei – „Durch den Rücken“) zu sprechen, worauf sich herausstellte das der Chinese einen alten 通背Stil gelernt hat. Nachdem er eine kurze sehr anschauliche 通背Form präsentiert hatte, wurde auch ich aufgefordert eine 螳螂 Form vorzuführen. Nach kurzem Überlegen habe ich mich für meine letzte in Deutschland gelernte Form, 螳螂偷桃 (tanglang tou tao – Gottesanbeterin stiehlt den Pfirsich), entschieden, da ich diese für relativ repräsentativ und auch nicht unschön finde. Der Chinese (dessen Namen ich leider nicht erfahren habe) erinnerte sich darauf an einen Teil einer 螳螂 Form, die er mal gelernt hatte. Wie sich nach kurzem Vorführen herausstellte, handelte es sich dabei interessanterweise wahrscheinlich um eine 六和螳螂 (Liuhe – 6 Harmonien) Form.

lic/Just finished uploading the rest of the pictures of our trip. There are now about 250 pictures and even some videos online – Enjoy

Five Weeks Around China

Four more Destiations have been added to the gallery: This time there are [http://www.tanglang.info/v/LIC/FWAC/Suzhou/|苏州 (Suzhou)], [http://www.tanglang.info/v/LIC/FWAC/Shanghai/|上海 (Shanghai)], [http://www.tanglang.info/v/LIC/FWAC/Yangshuo/|阳朔 (Yangshuo)] and [http://www.tanglang.info/v/LIC/FWAC/Guilin/|桂林 (Guilin)].

Pictures of Suzhou

Pictures of Shanghai

Pictures of Yangshuo

Pictures of Guilin

Gestern sind wir mit Ben, Ronja, Mei (einer Mitschülerin aus Costa Rica) und ihrem Bruder ins [http://www.caribechina.com/|Salsa Caribe], dem Salsa Club in China, gegangen. Zu meinem Erstaunen war es dort doch recht gut gefüllt. Dazu war ein Großteil der Gäste Chinesen und konnte sogar richtig gut tanzen, was für uns Anfänger (Ronja, Ben et moi) ein wenig einschüchternd war. Immerhin konnte ich mich ein wenig an die zwei Salsa Kursen an der Uni Köln erinnern und habe ab und zu mit Mei, die mir wieder ein bisschen was beigebracht hat, getanzt. Der Club ist sehr groß und serviert anständige Drinks. Eine ziemlich gute eigene Band aus Cuba, die sich mit dem ebenfalls recht guten DJ abwechselt sorgt für Stimmung und wir durften sogar eine Vorführung der dort trainierenden Tanzgruppe miterleben. Allgemein war die Stimmung recht nett, wobei wir jedoch schon den jüngeren Teil des Publikums darstellten (was aber auch an dem Tag liegen könnte). Sehr amüsant war ein älterer Chinese, der ziemlich gut tanzen konnte und mit einem spitzbübischen Lächeln einen sehr eigenen Tanzstil verfolgte sowie ein noch älterer Herr aus Peru, der bei uns saß. Nachdem er feststellen musste, dass ich leider kaum Spanisch spreche hat er mit Ronja getanzt, worauf die beiden auch direkt von jemandem gefilmt wurden, der eigentlich später die Tanzgruppe filmen sollte.
Da es jedoch während der Woche war, haben sich die meisten Gäste schon gegen Mitternacht verabschiedet und nachdem der DJ dann mit [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggaeton|Reggaeton] so langsam das Ende einläutete haben wir uns auch auf den Heimweg gemacht.

Nachdem wir im gestern Taxi mit Ronja über die Möglichkeiten eines eigenen Ofens in China geredet hatten, haben wir uns heute bei unserem Großeinkauf bei Walmart für 459,- 元 einen angeschafft. Nur sieht unsere Küche nun sehr voll gestopft aus, da wir weiterhin eine Mikrowelle (Wohnungsinventar), einen Reiskocher (geerbt), einen Wasserkocher (meins), einen Toaster (Bens) und einen Mixer (geerbt) unser Eigen nennen.

Und wo ein Ofen ist, da ist Rauch oft auch nicht weit. Aber keine Sorge, es ist nichts passiert. Vor einigen Tagen zeigte mir mein Wetter [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS|Feed] nur eine doch etwas merkwürdige Vorhersage an. Und zwar nicht klar, bewölkt oder Nebel, sondern Rauch – In Anbetracht der Luft in Beijing ein sehr passender Begriff.