Taekwondo

I left a room on the first floor of the academic building with a very prominent limp about an hour ago. I try not to favor my slightly better right foot too much, and what hobbling I must do, I try to do with style. The embarrassment is not too bad, however. My confidence is bolstered by the fact that at least two other guys who left the same room with me are limping as well.

I’m talking, of course, about Hua Shan High School’s elite Taekwondo Club. Eons ago, when I first introduced myself during my very first high school lesson, I decided for some reason to tell the thousand curious and inquisitive students that sometime in the past, back in the glory days, I did taekwondo. Little did I realize what a mistake this would be. Inevitably and innocently a student on week two skipped by my desk after class and gave me a note with a small map showing me where that evening’s taekwondo practice would be held. Due to an elusive Chinese concept called “face” that may or may not get fleshed out over the course of several posts on this blog, I went.

I’m standing on the tail end of week 16 of my first semester now, but it didn’t take me this long to realize that the students of this school spend the greater part of the time being “intense.” Structurally speaking, a developing country is packed to the brim with all sorts of pressures and tensions, economical, political, cultural, you name it. High school students are not exempt, and I see these pressures manifest themselves in my students’ lives as a strong desire to do everything with high intensity in order to meet the next standard to overcome, the next hurdle in a no-holds bar track race. Perhaps this intensity extends beyond the classroom. Or perhaps the intensity comes hand in hand with a stress that needs some sort of outlet. Either way, the students of the taekwondo club are, despite their lack of experience, are quite impassioned when they’re doing their kicks and punches.

Especially when they’re kicking or punching another person. Among the esoteric technical terms that have somehow wormed their way into my Mandarin-learning saga are the various words for “sparring,” such as 实战 (shi2zhan4) and打架 (da3jia4). My language learning radar quickly locked onto these words because they came with an automatic sense of apprehension; not only are the students quite aggressive in the ring, not only is their style (World Taekwondo Federation, also known by its unintentionally hilarious acronym WTF) very distinct from the style I did many ages ago (International Taekwondo Federation, or ITF), but also the concept of students physically wailing on their teacher, or visa versa, is rather intimidating and hard to place both for the club members and myself. I know the students must be thinking, “Do I hold back? On one hand, this guy is a teacher. And Confucius once said, ‘no-kicka you teacha.’ On the other hand, he’s only 22 and he claims to have did taekwondo in the past.” I have no such mental qualms. Six years of non-taekwondoship have taken their toll on me and I have to put in 110% just to barely keep up with these scrappy young whippersnappers.

As we fight, the intensity of student life lingers on among the sidelines. Our instructor, a soft spoken but simply powerful young master who inverts traditional hierarchies by being both a girl and a sophomore (which in China is the youngest grade in high school) in a physically challenging, traditionally male sport, placidly observes the English teacher getting his rear handed to him. When she grins at my silly kicks or my accidental, momentary victories, I see a small hole betraying a missing tooth that I know she lost recently. Where, I’m not sure yet. Intense. One of the referees is a student of mine, another quiet yet powerful player who is out of commission for a month thanks to an ankle injury he also received while sparring – he is one of two injured students I’m aware of. Despite having over a thousand students, I solidly know his name – during my mugshot project, I was checking off photographed students yet for some reason could not find his name on the class roster. When I asked him about it, he pointed to a name that was on the roster but different from the one he identified himself by, telling me that that was him. On the roster, his name was 果果, or “fruit fruit” (though it probably doesn’t sound as silly in Chinese as it does in English). I found, however, that he despised this name (calling it 难听, or “hard on the ears,” or more simply, “ugly”) and decided to go through a mountain of paperwork to change it to the much more regal 希哲, or “hoping for wisdom.” I must say I approve of the change, though it takes a certain amount of gusto to pull off a name change at 16 years old. Finally, as we fight, a large set of stickers on the blackboard betray the room’s original use as a classroom for the seniors, who have since moved to a new building.

Even during their taekwondo meets, the students cant’ avoid being reminded of the number one driving force of their lives until spring of next year: the college entrance exam. Basically this test is the SAT from hell, a single test which produces a set of numbers that will determine with resounding finality which college you will go to and what fields you are worthy of pursuing. The sign in the taekwondo room, which should be removed but probably will never be, says “______ days until the college entrance exam,” as if the students weren’t frantic enough about it already (and they are). Next semester, other incarnations of this sign in the senior building across the courtyard will begin their inevitable countdown: 60…59…58… even the 2008 Olympics will be forgotten by 17-18 year old students across the country.

But more on that later. Today, I got to see my name written on that very blackboard twice, 孟文宁 with a number scrawled next to it. One victory, and one narrow defeat – not too bad, I must say, for an old fogy like myself, especially since, curiously enough, I was the only fighter selected to fight twice in one day. This was especially uplifting after a crushing defeat two weeks ago, my first sparring match in what must be over six years. Perhaps my mojo is coming back.

I plan to limp around as long as the other two guys I fought with are limping… once they stop, its all about the face again.