Shanghai (4/21 - 4/23): The Shanghai Karaoke Team

After Jack and Pat took off for Hong Kong I spent more time cleaning and packing.  Tam and Caleb took off for James' place in Pudong for a party over there and I hung out with Zhu Wen Jun for a while until it was time to go to meet up with wushu folks at KTV.

Since Yang Yu Hong and Xie Fu Yan had been in Fuzhou since winter-time, training with the National Team, I was looking forward to seeing them again.  Along with a few other Shanghai wushu folks we were meeting up with members of the Malaysian Wushu Team who had just had a competition (or possibly some sort of testing thing) that day and were going out to relax after their hard training.

We got to the KTV place and the evening was pretty fun.  Wushu athletes + alcohol + KTV = crazy times.  I made a video of some of the highlights which you can enjoy here.

I also took lots of pictures of the festivities too ..

Xie Fu Yan

Xie Fu Yan's Girlfriend (Sorry Cass!)

Zhu Wen Jun and her wushu brother who's name I forget

Crazy Wushu People

Xie Fu Yan is energetic

Xie Fu Yan and Zhu Wen Jun. They've been wushu team-mates since middle school!

Yang Yu Hong on one of his many journeys to the restroom to throw up

Malaysia in the House!

The sultry sounds of Wendy Zhu

Yang Yu Hong sings along

YYH attempts to dance

Finally a drunk posse of wushu folks head home

After pretty much all the people had left Tam finally showed up.  He and I grabbed a cab and went back to my place and crashed. 

Sunday morning I realized I had made an error with my ticket and spent part of the day changing it to a Monday morning flight instead.  But that also meant I had more time to pack and clean.  I also took the opportunity to head out for another hair wash / ear cleaning / massage (I hadn't had one yet!).

I made my way back to Hair Culture and Liu Li Li gave me the usual excellent service.  Here are some pictures of her ...

Liu Li Li

I should get JoJo one of those shirts...

After that I headed back to my place, said farewell to Tam who was heading back to Hangzhou and then I waited around for my plane ticket delivery. 

I had called Yang Yu Hong a bit earlier and he wanted to grab some dinner so I headed to his dorms, met up with him and Xie Fu Yan and we went to Champions to grab a bit of food.  It was nice meeting up with them again, but I could tell that they had gotten burned out with all the National Team Training.

Xie Fu Yan and Yang Yu Hong

Bandit Mark and Bandit YYH

Hiding behind Xie Fu Yan's lapel

Green Veggies!

Speaking of wushu, they told me about the upcoming schedule for China Nationals.  As some folks already know, they're doing it differently this year.  Instead of just one prequalifiers and one nationals, there are a series of cummulative competitions thorughout the summer and fall months. 

They basically had one competition each month.  In May the women's nationals would be in Chengdu on the 11th and 12th and the men's in Wenzhou on the 18th and 19th.  I wasn't sure I could make it to both but I told them I would try to go to Wenzhou to see them compete.

There was another nationals in Shanghai in June, and one at some other point in Beijing.

Oh, and they also told me that after the competition the National Team would join together again, but this time they would be separated by their events.  So, there is a Changquan team, a Dao-Gun team, a Jian-Qiang team, a Taiji Team and a Nanquan team.  Changquan will be in Beijing (because of Zhao Qing Jian), Dao-Gun will be in Shanxi (because of .. shoot .. i forget who).  Jian-Qiang is in .. Cheng Du?  Meh .. I forget that one (it's not my event!).  But Taiji will be in Fuzhou and Nanquan in Guangzhou.

This is good news for me since it means that ( a ) I can visit Xie Fu Yan in Guangzhou as it's only a couple hours by train from Hong Kong and ( b ) I can possibly see some kick-butt nanquan too.

In any case, after dinner we went back to my place and I showed them alivenotdead.com a bit.  It turns out that Yang Yu Hong signed up for an account, but he hasn't been back to update it since then.  For shame!  You should all go there and leave him messages.

It started raining so I gave Yang Yu Hong an old coat I didn't neat to keep himself warm.  Doesn't he look stunning?

YYH all wrapped up and ready to go

After that it was more packing and cleaning until I went to bed.

The next morning I had to run a bunch of errands but eventually I made my way to the airport (Shanghai Hongqiao) where I had the worst experience ever.

My flight was on China Eastern .. so I waited a looong time in the China eastern line to check my luggage.  When I finally got to the front they said "Oh, wait .. this flight was moved to be checked in at the China Southern area instead" ... great!  So I moved to an even longer line to wait.  And when I finally got to the front they said "Oh .. this flight was cancelled.  You have to go to the other terminal to check in there".

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So I went to the other terminal and checked in for a Shenzhen Airlines flight.  After that things were fairly routine though.  In Shenzhen while I was waiting for the shuttle to the Turbo Jet, I ended up chatting with the guy who was sitting in front of me on the plane. 

Nice guy from Texas who was opening up a chain of restaurants in India.  We chatted pretty much the whole way back to Kowloon, but from there I grabbed a cab back to the office.

But since we're back in Hong Kong now, I'll end this blog and save the rest for another time ... (maybe one of these days I'll even catch up to the present).