Ping Ponging and Bamboo Sticks

I suppose it was inevitable, being in China, that I play ping pong.  All stereotypes aside, it does seem like ping pong is pretty popular here.  There is a ping pong room at the gym I go to, and the university as it's own table as well.  As such, I have gone to play twice with some of the Chinese roommates.  He is vastly superior to me in skill, as you might imagine.  It was the most recent time, however, when I was faced with what might be China's greatest pastime, smoking.  Nearly every adult male seems to smoke here (I give it another week before I see a baby lighting up).  If you go to a restaurant, especially a smaller one, don't bother asking for a non-smoking section.  They don't seem to exist.  In this case, the small ping pong room looked like a scene from an episode of Mad Men, except instead of dapper men in suits smoking, you had old Chinese men in jumpsuits.  That was the scene, two old men playing ping pong rather intensely, while a third sat and chain smoked.  Having just taken a shower, I immediately wanted to leave, but instead had to sit and watch the two men play for about 15 minutes. The air pretty much smelled like cancer.  Call it my privileged upbringing, but I don't abide smoking very much, a position I quickly abandoned as useless once I got here.  In the end, the men were very nice, but I still had to take another shower.

As I mentioned in a prior post, I have started taking a Wushu martial arts class once a week.  So far, it's proven to be pretty great, though I can barely type this post, which I'll explain soon.  Last week we simply practiced punching and a side kick, nothing earth shattering.  That was until he pulled out the sticks.  I'm not sure at what point someone decided I was to be trusted with swinging a five and a half foot piece of bamboo, but I'm sure glad they did.  We basically just did a series of choreographed strikes with a partner, but it was quite entertaining.  This was despite the fact that I seemed almost incapable at doing it in the beginning.  Today, however, we upped the ante by adding boxing gloves and punching pads.  This proved to be good fun, even if I did get matched up with a guy who had about 60 pounds and 5 inches on me.  It was like punching at a bear standing on its hind legs, but then you have to let it swing at you.  In addition, the guys shoulder was hurt, so he kept the pad tucked in close to his body, making it quite a bit less giving, and therefore more painful.  My hands and wrists are fine now, but holding up those boxing gloves definitely tired them out.  This was followed by adding more moves to our stick swinging, which proved more successful with my new partner.  The whole exercise was made more interesting by the introduction of about 25 French girls who are studying at the school right now, all of whom seemed to decide in unison to come to the basketball court at just that time.  As a taken man, I didn't really care, but adding a group of staring girls to any activity always seems to up the stakes a bit.  This seemed true for my partner at least, as he always took a moment between punches to look at the group.  Too bad for him, he doesn't speak French.  

EJR