Well, the second competition day is also at its end now. It’s 22:33 and I am sitting in the hotel lobby writing this. The competition was only in the morning and it went well for the Kiwi team. All together we had 9 medals (the Aussies only had 7 and were a bigger team than ours, although they had mainly older adults who were doing Tai Chi).
Tessa and Rangi competed against three other teams doing the bare handed combat form and they came first, however as there were only so few competitors in that form, they were thrown in with other combat forms that included weapons and so overall they placed 4th, which meant they missed out on a medal for this one.
The demonstrations at the end of the competition were fantastic, as expected and once we had come back to the hotel and had our lunch we were whisked off once more, to yet another venue, the theatre/opera house. There we had the closing ceremony which was an amazing showcase of all things Chinese, drumming, martial arts, classical singing, a Chinese pop song with some mild hip hop moves thrown in, a bit of dancing with a martial arts flavour, ‘sleeve’ Kung Fu demo (who saw ‘The House of Flying Dagger” will know the sleeve Kung Fu, the main character did a drum dance with her sleeves…go and get the DVD) and two well known actors from Tianjin singing a ‘dragon song’ with a snake and dragon dance going on in the back. Oh and a traditionally dressed actor with a ‘monkey pole’ but it was combined with amazing modern visuals in the back including a transformer….hard to describe but it was a great blend of modern and traditional…I was impressed that they managed to combine the two so well without loosing integrity.
Then when we left the building (it was dark by then) the lake immediately outside the sweeping steps down from where we excited erupted into fountains whooshing up to the rhythm of beautiful music. The fountains changed colour too….an amazing display, clearly the whole event had a lot of money thrown at it!!
We were then driven to another new venue for dinner which was very grand in deed and proceeded to have a feast. Endless dishes turned up, even when people had stopped eating. The food waste was phenominal.
Once people had some of their dinner they started getting up and drinking with people from other tables. So it would all start at their own table, on which everyone had some soft drinks, a bottle of red wine (a joint French and Chinese venture!) and a bottle of fire water, 38%. So glasses were filled with fire water, everyone around the table would stand up and start making a loud noise and then shout ‘Kempe’ at the end of it. Encouraged by the first few tables doing that many others followed and soon people took the bottle from their table and walked to other tables to repeat the ritual. This resulted in waiters bringing food to virtually deserted tables while all the guest were wandering around the room, meeting and making friends, drinking, being loud, exchanging little gifts they had in their pockets and taking a million photos with their own team hugging another team all looking more and more red in the face.
Tessa, Nick and Ben thought it was a great joke and together with Rangi and Jenny they followed suit wandering around, handing out the rest of their little NZ souvenirs they had on them. They had Sprite in their glasses I might add…
There are now photos of my three children on dozens of iPhones of many Malaysians and Chinese martial artists, not to mention the waiting staff and the police around Tianjin.
Had I mentioned that we have a police escort whenever the bus takes us anywhere?? No kidding, there are at least ten police officers at the venue, four or five soldiers and three doctors. Had I written that before? Honestly can’t remember now.
So whenever the bus approaches a big crossing there is a police officer positioned, stopping all other traffic so that the four buses can pass and drive on without traffic holding them up, unbelievable.
One plain clothes police officer asked if he could pick up Ben and take a photo (he did all that in Chinese but I got the idea) as well as photos with all the children. That was the day we visited the tomb before the competition. I didn’t actually know he was police then, but did notice that he had a uniformed police man following him everywhere. Ben was in a huff over something so he didn’t smile on any of the photos and first off didn’t want a photo with the guy, but later changed his mind and actually went up to him by himself to offer his own camera for a photo as well as the guy’s camera. The plain clothed police man was very pleased with that and last night at dinner he gave a Chinese police badge to each of the boys and another one to Tessa. That was really nice of him. Did I mention that he was very good looking?
Today I asked one of the ‘official’ ladies why we had so many police here and they told me that it is because there are so many foreigners here at the same time and children amongst them and everyone wanted to make sure we are safe. Ok.
These two ‘official’ ladies are here with us…just in case we need them. Once I spoke with them I realised how good their English was and they told me they both have business degrees and majored in English and have just been employed for this job ‘in case’ they can be of help to any of us. They also told me that Tessa was on the six o’clock news last night being interviewed at the tournament venue.
My kids will find Germany sooooo boring when they look like anyone else around them and nobody wants their photo taken with them or tell them how ‘cute’ they are!! It’s amazing how many people here know about Harry Potter and think that Ben looks just like him!!
Off to bed now so I can cope with the mass shopping expedition tomorrow.
Gute Nacht (am getting ready for the next leg of our journey)
Tanja
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