Two weeks before I came to Hong Kong in 2005 I was at home in London, waiting for my work visa. I had plenty of time on my hands; and I visited China town, eating dim sum - trying to get an idea of what I am getting myself into by moving to Hong Kong. That month, Kung Fu Hustle was out and screening in London.

I loved the movie so much that I went to the movie theatre THREE times to watch it, and then went back two more times the following week. I loved the story, the special effects, the acting skills of the crew and, most of all, the fun side and the irony. (I think the movie was made to be a parody on a typical kung fu flick). Little did I know that four years later I will be: seriously into Chinese martial arts and I will meet, in person, one of my favourite characters in the movie.

Today, I was participating in my first wushu competition in Hong Kong. 2009 is the year when China celebrates 60^th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. Chinese government is keen on making it a big event to promote China and the Chinese culture, and there is a number of martial art events held this summer in Hong Kong. Today’s competition was one of them.

I enrolled in the competition in order to experience what it was like to “compete”, and also to get extra reason to work harder on my forms and technique. In order to make (and measure) progress, I need to set goals. I also looked forward to getting formal feedback (the mark) from independent wushu judges.

Finally, I just like to perform :-)

I didn’t know what to expect, but I at the end of the day I left with a very positive feeling. The atmosphere was of mutual respect and encouragement. At least, this is what I felt as I couldn’t exactly follow what was happening (it was all in Cantonese, of course). And I loved being around wushu people.

And the meeting with the Kung Fu Hustle actor (and an important Hung Gar style sifu) made the day even more memorable.

I was a little bit anxious when I was flying into Koh Samui. I was to join training for Muay Thai, one of the most physically demanding fighting arts. I knew I was in for tough times, but I didn't know exactly how tough it would be.

The gym is in the Chaweng area, off the main road in a small village called Laan Dara. There is a sign “2 km to Chaweng Beach” at the road junction near the turn off to the village. There are two buildings, one with gym and the rooms upstairs (that’s where I stay), another with larger apartments and a swimming pool in the coartyard.

There are two training sessions a day, the morning one (8 to 10 am) and the evening one (5 to 7 pm). Day One, I start with the afternoon training at 5 pm. I turn up in the gym half an hour before, do some kicks and stretches. Noone around, only the reception girl, until a young guy turns up a few minutes before 5. His name is Chris, he is 16, and he seems half-Thai half English (speaking both languages with equal fluency). He says it was his third Muay Thai class.  Five minutes past 5, I hear a sound of gong, and a Thai trainer who’s just turned up hands me a skipping rope. Skipping for 10 minutes is the warm up routine, but on that day we have to skip for extra 5 minutes as the second trainer is late. (We had two, sometimes three trainers, for each training session.)

Skipping rope in the 30+ degree heat (the gym is outdoors; even though there are fans attached to the walls, unless you stand right in front of them, you don’t feel much) is a new experience for me, but I carry though it as best as I could. After the first three minutes I am already skipping in a pool of sweat; but I make it a point not to stop – we in China know the meaning of ‘eat bitter’ (吃苦)  :-)  Chris keeps stopping for breath every other minute… the boy needs some toughening up!

15 minutes of hell is over, and we do knee rotations, kicking and stretching, all in the bag area, where one wall is fully covered in mirrors and the other three sides have heavy bags haging from the ceiling. This is my favourite time: no other martial art put so much emphasis on the flexible and agile body as the Chinese wushu, and I could see its effects in the mirror. This is then followed by shadow boxing, when I make my first attempts at the Muay Thai basic stances, leg work and punching.

From that evening, and for the two days that followed, I would hear consistently: “Olga, legs straight” “Olga, chin down” and “Olga, hand protection” – the three basics of Muay Thai that are new to me and my body. At first, I am tempted to argue, for example, that straight legs stance is not as stable as when you bend your legs and lower the gravity centre; and that if I stretch my arm when punching too far, I could be easily grabbed and pulled over by my opponent that would cause me to lose balance and fall. However, I quickly realize that I came here to learn, not to teach - and it’s their style that I am learning. So I keep my mouth shut and do what I am told to do.

First time, a trainer tied my hand wraps, and in the two days that followed I still did master the art of wrapping the fist. They would look at my self-wrapped fist, smile and re-wrap it. Considering how long it took me to learn to tie the taikwondo belt, I must have some special disability in this area. We pick up gloves, we practice with the bag the moves we learnt during the shadow boxing, and then we move to kicks. Or, one kick – the “Thai kick”, which again leaves me wondering, once again, why I must keep the leg straight at all times. After years of roundhouse kicks when you unfold the leg hip-knee-feet, and then chamber it back in the opposite sequence, it is impossible NOT to bend it when kicking or chambering. So it takes me at least 20 kicks to do my first straight leg “Thai kick”, and once I’ve driven my shin into the bag at first full-power kick, I knew my shin would be dead on the following day. Second and third kicks are more painful, as I am hitting the sore spot on my shin – but the trainer keeps saying “continue” and I know that’s what he would say, it’s his job, and that’s what the training is about, to learn to forget the pain, so I continue kicking, but cannot bear myself to kick at full power any more.

We finish off bag training with some lighter jump kicks. At the end, I take Chris through some basic stretches (the guy seemed very tight for a 16 year old). That evening, it is only two of us for the class (the Thai New Year’s Eve), and both of us  being beginners, and this being the eve of Songkran, we’ve had it easy.

Day Two, and I am not in a hurry to go downstairs to meet my friend the skipping rope. However, I am downstairs before 8 am, I hear the gong and I grab the skipping rope. There are some guys in the gym (but no Chris) but I am the only one who is skipping this morning. Never mind. On that day, I am joined for the training by a French guy who has MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) background and is going to stay here fore a month (thank you, financial crisis). This is his first day and he is still jet lagged. He is stretching while I am skipping.

1o minutes are over, a pool of sweat is again on the floor where I stand, and we proceed to jumps, knee rotations, stretch kicks and shadow boxing. The pace is still OK for me; the French guy is frequently out of breath. (I would feel the pace of training to speed up on that day in the afternoon, when I am joined by an experienced Muay Thai fighter from Sweden).

More bag work, again “Olga, chin down”, “Olga, hand protection”, “legs straight”, today followed by rounds in the ring with the trainer. My bruises are becoming more prominent, I am happy I would have something to show for my training back home in Hong Kong :-). They also hurt more when I hit the bag or the instructor’s  kicking shield :-(

We finish with a hundred of push ups , and after a short break I watch an MMA instructor to show the French guy new ways of ground locking. The MMA instructor is all muscle, tattoos and testosterone, his hair is bleached blond and he trains 6 hours a day (I asked him). They keep fighting on the ground, no flying kicks or back flips, so I get bored quickly and leave for a session at the pool. I decide that the sun heat would help to soften the pain of my bruises.  

In mid-day and after the evening training, I would go for a walk to the Chaweng Beach, to eat, window-shop or just sit in the airconditioned Starbucks with a Chinese book and a cup of coffee.

Evening training starts, I am with the Swedish fighter and the easy times are over. The kicking routine speeds up, and since it’s two of us with the two instructors, we have their full attention.  That’s when I start pushing myself to keep going through pain and exhaustion. And then, after the class, exausted but totallly at peace, I keep hanging around the gym feeling like I fully deserved the rest, and enjoying every minute of it.

Day Three is the day following the Sonkran, and the gym is full! The young Chris turns out with a bunch of friends, and the trainers are bossing them around. Plus, there is a couple of Western girls (Dutch or English) who look like they’ve done some serious Muay Thai training before; and their friend, a young English guy who I recognise from before – he fought a Thai fighter (and won) in the Chaweng Stadium on the first night of my arrival. 

The skipping area is packed, so I take my rope outside, just by the  entrance with the Buddha shrine - and I am immediately told by the trainer to go back, as I was skipping with my back to Buddha. I stay there, but turn to face him, and keep my eyes on the floor, hoping I am sufficiently respectful.

The rest of the class is just like another day, stretch kicks, shadow boxing, bag work, ring work. We alternate in the ring, once one person is in, the rest are doing bag work. Today, I am allowed to go soft on elbow strikes as my elbows are purple coloured from bruises of yesterday. We finish by inevitable 100 stomache crunches  (these few hundred crunches done over three days made me uncapable of getting up from bed without singificant help from hands and elbows for days afterwards).

After the class, I sit down by the ring, and just take everything in. I feel that I am going to miss this place. The senior trainer sits down next to me. He has been doing Muay Thai for over 20 years, and a picture of his younger self is hanging at the reception. At that picture, he is a decorated Champion fighter. He bears himself with a confidence and composure of a fighter, of someone who knows what it means to be hit, to be hurt, and how to overlook the pain and hit back.

I leave the Samui island that afternoon. This is my third time in Samui, and this is the first time that I am sorry to leave. In fact, not counting my very first trip to Thailand in 2003, this is the first time I feel sorry to leave Thailand. It looks like sweating and getting bruised, beaten and shouted at have made me feel closer to the Thai culture than any other experiences: numerous trips around the country, work assignments or meditations and temple visits .

PS Today, I went and bought a skipping rope. 

PPS photos are on the Facebook: Muay Thai. Gym's address: www.superprosamui.com

This month, I spent five days at Shaolin in Henan Province, China, training at the Shaolin Wushu Guan 少林寺武术馆. The Wushu Guan is the government kung fu school at the Shaolin Temple, and it provides kung fu performances at the Temple and outside it, even outside China. Anyone can come to train there, provided they can pay their way (but only RMB 50 per hour, with a minimum of four hours training per day). One little complication, they only speak Chinese…

Every day I would do basic training 基本功 followed by sword training 剑术. During my spare time, I would walk around Shaolin, sometimes hiking in the mountains, sometimes visiting nearby temples.

The place can be very touristy during the day, but is very peaceful and contemplative after the visiting hours. The monks would leave their Temple jobs to go home to nearby villages; the Chinese tour groups would have a noisy, alcohol-fuelled dinner at the Shaolin restaurant, then go back to their tour bus and leave; darkness and silence would cover everything. The window of my room was on the mountain side, and, once the darkness fell, there was not a spot of light outside. I slept with the curtains open and woke up with the first rays of light lost in the morning fog.

What I learnt in Shaolin

1. I don’t work hard enough. I don’t work nearly as hard as I can and I should. Looking at the Wushu Guan students training all day, from dawn to evening, then having a simple dinner out in the dark by their dormitory, going to bed then raising the next morning to do the same – it made me reflect on what is hard work.
2. If I work harder, I can attain better gong fu, better skill. On my first day, I was really struggling through basic exercises and kicks; on my third day, I was feeling springs in my legs and felt powerful. (That was before my legs got completely sore from overtraining and I went back to struggling with everything on day four).
3. Move your body but keep your mind still. Physical exercises as a way to quiet the mind and have it focused on one thing at a time. Challenging yourself beyond what you think you can do as a way to clear the mind even further and to explore its dark corners...
   

  
Here is my very first martial art performance at Poly U in Hong Kong... Gao Bagua Xian Tian Zhang Linking Form:
YouTube - Gao Bagua Zhang - Olga Novikova

I was very nervous and my hands were shaking but luckily it does not show on the video!
 

One very important aspect of proficiency in kung fu and in all phases of life is purposefullness – the ability to act deliberately rather than artibrarily. Most of us spend our lives in random fashion, reacting to simuli without thinking, as though we were chemicals in a compound, instead of creatures of free will. Kung fu teaches us to choose, to have the power to see all the alternatives and to act according to our own wills rather than on the whims of other people or events. This power is much more useful for self-defence than are mere kicks and punches.

А как ушу оказалось в России?

How did wushu come to Russia?

В СССР, как известно, восточные единоборства были под запретом. К тому же страна была закрытая, и идеи извне в нее проникали с трудом. Но где-то в начале 1980−х годов наш известный тренер Гусейн Магомаев уже преподавал один из видов ушу — тайцзицюань, которому его научил один уйгур. В Союзе на территории Киргизии и Казахстана были китайские деревни, где жили дунгане — китайцы, говорящие по-китайски, но пишущие русскими буквами. Что-то пошло от них. Но в основном энтузиасты подпольно занимались по книгам, привезенным с Запада.

As you know, all Oriental martial arts were prohibited in the USSR. Besides, it was closed country, and it was very difficult for any ‘outside’ ideas to penetrate. However, in 1980s our famous coach was already teaching taijiquan, which he learnt from an Uygur guy. In the USSR, in the Kirgyz and Kazakh republics there were Chinese settlements whose inhabitants also helped to bring some of the Chinese martial arts into the USSR. But most people were training undercover using books imported from theWest.

В 1985 году я как раз устроился работать в Институт Дальнего Востока (ИДВ) РАН СССР. Началась перестройка. И вот волею судеб мне в руки попала изданная в Пекине тамошним Институтом физкультуры книжка с базовыми упражнениями ушу. Мы с друзьями стали по этой книжке заниматься. Открыли подпольную секцию. И так получилось, что к нам пришел заниматься сын советника Горбачева — академика Абела Аганбегяна. Я подумал: а ведь это — шанс легализовать ушу в Союзе.

In 1985, when perestrojka started, I started working at the Institute of the Far East Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. By chance, I got hold of a book on wushu basic training published by the Beijing Institute of Physical Education. My friends and I started training using this book, and we also opened an undercover (secret) martial arts school. We happened to have among our students a son of Abel Aganbegian, then advisor to Mr Gorbachov. I saw it as a chance to legalise wushu in the Soviet Union.

Сын Аганбегяна устроил нам аудиенцию у своего отца. Тот нас послушал и говорит: «Но карате же запрещено!» Я ему: «А я и не предлагаю карате. Я предлагаю культивировать китайскую гимнастику ушу как элемент советско-китайского культурного обмена». Это был хитрый ход с моей стороны — тогда советское руководство как раз начало искать точки сближения с КНР. И Аганбегян согласился: только, говорит, давайте без спаррингов, кулаков и всего такого. Я, конечно, не возражал — важно было принципиально сломать запрет. Аганбегян говорит: «Пишите письмо на имя Горбачева». Я написал, оно через Аганбегяна пошло наверх, и все завертелось.

Aganbegian’s son arranged a meeting for us with his father. He said “but karate is illegal!’ I said, “I am not talking about karate; I am offering to promote Chinese wushu gymnastics as part of the China-USSR cultural exchange”. It was a shrewed move as, at the time, the USSR were seeking to get closer ties with People’s Repulic of China. And Aganbegian agreed, on a condition that there wouldn’t be fights, sparring etc. I did not object, what was important was to lift the ban on martial arts in principle. I wrote a letter to Gorbachov, Aganbegian helped to move it to the right places, and we kicked off.

Хотя, конечно, по тем временам это было очень опасно. Была же статья 219 УК РСФСР, прямо запрещающая занятия карате. Когда я открыл первую секцию при ИДВ, в газете «Труд» появилась статья на целый разворот под заголовком «Карате под маской ушу». Ко мне пришли из Прокуратуры СССР и из ОБХСС, и спас меня тогда только случай. Вскоре я создал Федерацию ушу СССР. Наша первая школа при ИДВ называлась Центр изучения оздоровительных систем Дальнего Востока. Естественно, все, кто подпольно занимался карате, хлынули туда. Так все и началось.

Although at these times it still was dangerous. There was a specific article in the Criminal Code which prohibited karate training. When I opened the first wushu school, one of the central newspapers published an article  “karate masqued as wushu” and I received many unwanted visitors, but chance saved me. Soon I created the Russian Wushu Federation. All undercover karate practitioners came to our school. This is how we began.

В 1989 году мне удалось съездить на полтора месяца в Китай. Приняли нас радушно, отвезли в пекинскую школу ушу, представили тренеру. Я и семь бывших со мной учеников прошли там подготовку, получили дипломы инструкторов по ушу, вернулись в Союз и начали преподавать уже более-менее системно и профессионально.

In 1989 I and my seven students spent 1.5 months in the Beijing Wushu School. We got certified as wushu instructors there and afterwards we have been training on a professional level.

Китайцы как раз в то время начали создавать Международную федерацию ушу. В 1991 году под ее эгидой прошел первый чемпионат мира. Мы к нему подошли уже с полноценной командой и заняли шестое место. Сейчас Международная федерация ушу объединяет более 100 стран, а мы входим в тройку сильнейших: Китай, Вьетнам и Россия. То есть даже Гонконг с Макао позади нас. Хотя выступают за эти команды те же самые китайцы.

At that time the Chinese set to establish the World Wushu Federation and conducted the 1^st wushu tournament in 1991. We came 6^th in that. Nowadays there are more than 100 countries in the Federation, and we are among top three (China, Vietnam and Russia). Even Hong Kong and Macao are behind us.

Занимались мы на Херсонской улице в Москве, в здании школы легкой атлетики, 13 лет находившемся в состоянии ремонта. Я ушел из института, потому что совмещать его с тренировками стало невозможно. Тогда время было такое — появился шанс заработать много денег, купить квартиру, машину. Большинство так и делали. А я свои первые деньги — 7 тысяч рублей — вложил в школу. И машины у меня не было до 93−го года, пока я не купил себе «Оку». Потом пришла комиссия и удивилась: «Как это так — школа больше десяти лет ремонтируется, из пяти этажей сдан один, и там дети занимаются?» В результате меня сделали директором всей школы. У нас появился постоянный зал, мы положили там ковер, нарисовали шаолиньскую фреску, сделали душевые, и к нам стали приходить ученики. Занятия были бесплатными. Вот из этих детей и выросли наши первые чемпионы мира.

We trained at a sports school building on Herson Street in Moscow. I left my job at the Far East Insitute, because I could not manage it with the full time training. My first real money – 7 000 roubles – I invested in the wushu school. (I didn’t have a car until 1993). A statutory commission came to inspect the school building and found out that it was being repaired for the last ten years. They eventually made me the director of the wholel school bulding and we have secured a permanent training hall. We laid a carpet, made shower rooms and started to receive our first real students. Training was free of charge. These were our first world champions.

Так за какие-то пять лет, прошедшие с момента снятия полного запрета на восточные единоборства, мы стали к началу 90−х годов одним из лидеров мирового ушу. И остаемся им по сей день. Когда мы регулярно стали привозить медали с международных чемпионатов, на школу обратило внимание государство. И сейчас мы не бедствуем: тренер получает у нас официальную зарплату более 90 тысяч рублей.

In mere five years, from lifting of the ban on the Oriental martial arts training, to early 1990s, we have become one of the world leaders in wushu, and we remain it till now. When we started to bring back medals from the world tournaments, the government has finally noticed us and started to support. Nowadays, a wushu coach receives over 90 000 roubles per month.

Но ведь в Россию ушу пришло позже, чем в большинство стран мира. Чем можно объяснить такие успехи?

If wushu came to Russia much later than to most of other countries, how do you explain such success?

У нас сложилась своя тренерская школа. Если почти во всем мире пошли по пути приглашения китайских специалистов, то я начал воспитывать своих, российских тренеров. И сейчас у нас есть тренеры такого уровня — например, заслуженный тренер России Татьяна Куприянова — что, скажем, национальная сборная Казахстана перестала ездить в Китай и в прошлом году подписала контракт с нами: они теперь будут тренироваться в Москве. Здесь же, у нас, тренируется спортсмен из сборной команды Англии, приезжают финны, итальянцы.

We have our own coach community. In most other countries, they have Chinese coaches, but I started to develop our own. We now have coaches of such high level that some wushu teams (eg Kazakhstan national wushu team) has stopped training in China and will now train in Moscow. We also have athletes from England, Finland, Italy training here.

У нас и школы свои успели сложиться. Сильнейшая в стране школа мужского саньшоу — дагестанская. Она дала сборной удивительных ребят. Например, Муслим Салихов, завоевавший в профессиональных боях титул «короля китайского саньда» (свободных поединков в полный контакт), — первый в истории некитайский чемпион. В Китае его на улицах узнают. Еще бы, высадил всех китайских профессионалов!

We also have our own successful schools. The strongest sanshou school in the world is Dagestan’s. For example, Muslim Salikhov, who has been crowned as the “king of Chinese sanda” is the first non-Chinese champion in history. They recognise him on the streets in China.

Или Джанхуват Белетов, недавно награжденный в Кремле национальной премией «Золотой пояс» в номинации «За волю к победе». Парень в 1/8 финала чемпионата мира сломал руку. Ему наложили гипс. А он ночью его разгрыз, снял, пришел на четвертьфинал и победил. А потом победил в полуфинале и в финале. Со сломанной рукой выиграл три схватки и стал чемпионом мира! Победил китайца, иранца и египтянина — самых сильных спортсменов — одной рукой, левой.

Or Dzhanguhvat Beletov, who in the 1/8^th of the World championship had his hand broken. His hand was put in a cast. Overnight, he took it off, came to the quarter-final and won the fight. Then he won in the semi-final and final – a Chinese, Iranian and Egyptian opponents – the strongest ones – with one left hand.

У нас вообще нормальная национальная сборная. В том смысле, что, к примеру, национальные сборные США, Канады, Аргентины, Малайзии, Индонезии, Сингапура состоят сплошь из этнических китайцев. Они наряду со сборными Китая, Гонконга, Тайваня (тоже все, естественно, китайцы), а также Вьетнама и Японии и есть наши основные конкуренты. На олимпийский турнир в Пекине российские спортсмены полностью выбрали всю национальную квоту — восемь мест. В действительности прошли десять человек, но двоих нам самим пришлось убрать. А из остальных европейцев квалифицировались только двое: итальянская спортсменка Сю Хуйхуй из китайской провинции Сычуань и англичанин Ричард Дивайн, который тренируется в России.

We have a true national team, in the sense that, for example, the national teams of USA, Canada, Argentina, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore all consist of mainly ethnic Chinese. These teams along with the China, Hong Kong, Taiwan teams (also all Chinese) and Vietnam and Japan are our main competitors. For the Olympic tournament in Beijng all our athletes (ten) have qualified to participate in the tournament. From other European teams, only two athletes qualified: an Italian athlete who is a Chinese girl originally from Sichuan, and an English guy who trains in Russia.