Today I was given one of the greatest compliments ever. A professional Wushu athlete from the Hebei Wushu team decides to visit my school today and stays to watch my teaching. He saw pictures of my old school on the Internet with all its extravagant architecture, huge carpets and amazing stunt equipment. Mind you that was all lost around July 5th 2011. He was pretty shocked to see the empty room I was teaching in with so few students was the same school(by name and instructors) that he saw online. I gave him our story and he decides to stick around and watch class.
I tell everyone, lets show him our basics, and he gives an applause after the first half hour or so. He tells me my instructions are very clear, he told the students they were learning the right way by focusing on Long Fist first and not 3 or 4 different highly advanced traditional styles all at once, he then say's I teach as if I came from the 1980's! And to top it all off he said "you could teach in China. If you could speak Chinese."
It just made me so happy I almost cried. Though I kept it together until the car ride home. It's not that my own teacher hasn't said all these things before but hearing it from another professional outsider just made me feel so justified today. Constantly people come to my class and see a non-Chinese guy and just assume what I do is half baked before even trying the class. When I don't teach people Jet Li's old routine day one they assume I'm holding them back. So when someone in the know compliments me like that I just couldn't help but feel so much weight lifted from me, as if what ever is bothering me now wushu wise will soon be a distant memory.
He told me he loved my energy and said I was better than some Chinese teachers. All his teacher did apparently was "smoke cigarettes, reading news papers all day, telling us to run faster and jump higher."
, and devil G is very lucky.
