First visit ever to Hankou/Wuchang or in short.. Wuhan..
Second time practicing Aikido with the people from Wuhan dojo after a lucky encounter in Beijing at Irie sensei seminar, and again in China not the first time people make me feel so special to the point of embarrass.
Three cities make one entity: only when I got there I could realize that Hankou , 汉口, Wuchang, 武昌, and Hanyang, 汉阳, are really cities. They got their own center, their own main areas, transportation and identity.
Take a piece of name here, take a common one there, and all together these three cities are Wuhan, 武汉 🙂
The cities lie on the Yangtze river, or “long river” according to the Chinese name (Cháng Jiāng, 长江). And Saturday after the first practice session they took me on the shore of the river, where we took a boat to cross from Hankou to Wuchang, where is located the second dojo site.
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A common and very refreshing Chinese summer product are the lotus seeds (莲子, liánzǐ), and I discovered it is actually a traditional product of the Yangtze area. I remember I ate them the first time in Beijing in 2008. The mix taste of bitter (the very seed core) and refreshing from the white part was really wonderful in the hot days of Beijing summer. The same pleasure, thanks to Mr. Yu (“crazy snake”) who bought us some, was in Wuhan, walking around along the river and eating the seeds. I also learnt a special way to open the green skin protecting the white seed: usually you bite that part open, but Yoalnda showed an effective way using the boyfriend head 😉
After the second session, in Wuchang dojo, we spent an extremely nice night first eating “Lóng xiā“, 龙虾, the typical crayfish (small lobster sort of fish), that in Wuhan and Sichuan area, but not only (Hefei and Beijing too) it can be a very spicy and always delicious food!! After that we went to KTV: Yang Bin and the other boy, Mr. Li, kung fu master (practicing, fate, the same art of Bruce Lee) and also Aikido beginner, have a wonderful voice!! In the good spirit of the evening they even made me singing (very low voice and English song of course, and together with Yang Bin!!).
Yang Bin, the guy I established the contact in Beijing, his girlfriend and all his Aikido friends gave me a really good first time experience. The weekend, besides the extremely good Aikido practice described elsewhere later, has been great time, great fun, great food.. great people, in few words! I was probably lucky as well that the weather was clement with me: not a typical Wuhan summer weekend (Wuhan is known as one of the Three Furnaces of China!) but quite fresh weather with a lovely breeze. I am pretty sure I would have enjoyed equally much even if the weather was more torrid!
Since my arrival in China, through Aikido especially (but not only), I have met really wonderful people.. starting from Shanghai and Hangzhou, now I can add Wuhan.. The pity for me is that for now the only way I can think to repay such kindness is giving my best on the mats!
We got to know each other thanks to Aikido, and that is what makes all even more special! And increase my love for Aikido 🙂
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Dreaming of... Asia 