Kung Fu Acrobatics

Kung fu!

On Friday night one of our teachers took us to a show that was a play about a zen master who studied kungfu. The show had kungfu and acrobatics in it! The acrobatics were fantastic. The little kids in the show must have been about seven years old and they could do flips on their heads, I kid you not, and if you can try to even imagine they would flip and land on their head and then flip again…

There were so many tourists there; it was a huge tourist trap. The play was in English with Chinese subtitles. I thought it was interesting because before the show started I noticed that there was a screen for subtitles. Naturally, since we are in China, I figured that the screen was for English subtitles. Nope, the screen was for Chinese subtitles. This was pretty shocking to me, but it made sense because there were mostly tourists there. The Chinese subtitles however were in traditional characters, and China no longer uses traditional characters, they use simplified instead, so I wonder how many of the younger generation can actually understand those subtitles.

My favorite part in the show was when the kungfu zen master got really physically strong and he could break boards with his head and the narrator of the show said, “Master Chen was at his strongest, but sometimes when you are at your strongest you are actually at your lowest”. Since Master Chen’s ego was so high because he was so strong, he stopped meditating and having discipline and started to use his strength to show off. The point of kungfu was to use it for defense and use it wisely, that’s why meditation and control go along very well with kungfu.