Recently in kungfuology.com Category

Just a quick note to tell you all that I fixed the bug in the mp3 player for the theme music page. It works now. Did I say bug? Maybe I meant that I went into the code view and saw the stupid mistake I had made myself ... and then I fixed that.

We interrupt your usual programming with a service announcement.

After a bit of consideration, I've decided to open up commenting on the posts. So, you no longer need to register. Select 'comment anonymously' and the usual form will appear with spaces for name, e-mail and an optional link to your own blog.

I haven't really promoted the site much aside from posting to my facebook page but now, in month three, i'm getting close to 800 individual visitors per month. I think some of you might comment if you didn't have to register. Also, I think it's not enough readers to include a bunch of bigot type commenters. Well, I hope not. To keep things in perspective, when I posted music reviews at Shanghaiist, they had 200 000 individual IPs on a bad month. To be fair, Gothamist is just a tad more established than a three month old personal blog.

In other site news, the kungfuology main site has been very slow lately. This is unfortunately down to the well documented ex-pat woes this summer. My partner in crime for that site has been jumping through hoops for weeks and making vids about kung fu has been way down on the priority list. Hope you all understand. Talking of ex-pat woes, let's finish with this disturbing update on the previous post ... gulp.  

Me and Cam were in People's Park today shooting our second film for the kungfuology mainsite. We got the orignal lead from an old kung fu training buddy of ours JQ Whitcomb. JQ also happens to be a celebrated jazz musician here in Shanghai. Check out his site here.

JQ was hooked up with his current teacher through the Double Dragon Alliance. This organisation does cultural exchanges, focusing mainly on martial arts. I met the boss, Rose Oliver, and one week later we've completed a shoot with them.

Rose is a Taiji teacher from the UK who came to China to improve her knowledge. In the shoot we will show her training Tong Bei Quan with master Wu Maogui in People's Park. It was a scorcher, temperature in the upper 30's and their class at 2.30 in the afternoon. The video should be edited and up within a couple of days.

Following our first two vidcasts, I have now kicked off our Box of Shaw feature. The first movie is 1982's Human Lanterns.

check it out

I will be doing a movie a week in the live blogging style (but not technically live) on each Sunday. With around 90 movies in the box, it could take some time.

In other news, I have to go to Hong Kong tomorrow to sort out my VISA for next year. It's the first time in 6 years that I have to do the infamous Hong Kong run. We are in the middle of a VISA crackdown too so I hope it goes alright, otherwise I could get stuck there. I'll be there for about 5 days so no posts until I get back.

This morning the rain finally held off and we filmed our double header of vidcasts for our new site.

Pu Laoshi and his student Shaun Hogan were really nice and open and no one bothered us at all during filming. Pu Laoshi was worried a bit about the look of it and that they didn't have performance clothes but we soon got the idea over to him.

We had a funny moment when he called me by my Chinese name when I very first arrived, but he has such a strong Shanghai accent that I didn't catch it. He then ribbed me about not knowing my own name for ten minutes.

You can find the vidcasts here:

part one
part two

 

Today was Kai's birthday. Kai Uwe Pel is my Kung Fu teacher and every year on his birthday we go to Paulaner Brahaus, a German brewery and restaurant. Kai is German, you see and it's his yearly treat.

We usually go to the Fen Yang Road branch near my house but this year we went out the 'Bin Jiang'. Bin Jiang Da Dao is the tourist riverfront strip on the Pudong side of the river. It has a riverside park, walking area and a selection of bars and restaurants with river views. I actually liked it. The Puxi side of the river where the older buildings are is packed with touts, vendors and assorted annoyances. The Pudong side was quite relaxing.

All the usual crowd were there and afterwards me and Phillipe, my couchsurfing guest, went back across by ferry.

   

Above: Diana, Vanessa, Mel, Helen, Kai, Cameron and Nathan.

Left: Bo, Kai, me, Phillipe and Helen. 

Me and Cam went down to Zhongshan Park at 7.30 this morning to follow up a lead for our first Kungfuology vidcast. My friend Sharon Tan tipped us off about a traditional teacher there called Pu Laoshi.

Pu Laoshi is 70 years old and teaches among the racket of radios and millions of Taichi and dance groups that fill out Shanghai parks in the mornings. His style 'cha quan' was traditional and he showed us weapons, hand forms and even a two man set.

Of course, you can't just demand a teacher to perform for you as strangers then make videos so we had to oblidge with performances and a bit of training ourselves first. No worries, it was a beautiful morning and the locals largely left us to it. We took turns in between his other students, Sharon trained some straight sword too.

Next week his overseas student comes back and we will film for our first vidcast.

 

Me and Sharon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cam, Pu Laoshi and me

Me and Cam are not far away from starting our Web 2.0 Kung Fu magazine and we have this nice software in our new space (Movable Type 4). So, I have a personal blog again. Well, I stopped the last one because I was too busy to actively market it and Facebook is fine for social stuff.

For those of you who don't know me I'm from Liverpool UK, I graduated in drama and have worked the first ten years of my career in writing and education. I will stick up an about page soon. I am based in Shanghai and get up to all kinds of stuff.

This post is mainly for me to start of the site widgets so I can have a think about them.

Tarra for now.