EPThttp://player.youku.com/player.php/sid/36434567/v.swf (first fight is my teammate (in the pants), skip to about 14:00 for my fight.)
December was a crazy month for me. First I had to write all my student reports, which took me quite a few hours since I have over 150 students. Then I had some Christmas parties to organize for my private students. And then Tom and I hosted a trivia night for the foreign gang, so we had to spend some time making up our questions and whatnot. Then I hosted the Harbin Beer Cup English Competition (which is televised), which really only used up a couple of days, but I was slightly stressed about it since I had to remember a bunch of lines and there was so much else going on. The main thing stressing me out though was my MMA competition in Xi'an on the 9th. Coach (Jiang Long Yun, you can look up some of his professional fights on 优酷网-ä¸*国第一视频网站,æ供视频æ’* 放,视频å‘布,视频æœç´¢, he was the Art of War unofficial champion of his weight class--60-65 kgs-- in 2007) signed me up for that in December on the assumption that I'd be able to train day and night, not realising that I had so much other stuff going on. School finished at the end of December, so I thought I'd be able to get at least few solid days of training in, but then my end of the school year flu struck right on schedule as usual so I actually spent a day in the hospital getting IV instead to try to get over it as soon as possible. Then the Beer Cup competition had a rehearsal on the 6th, and the competition itself was on the 7th, so that was two more days shot. So I really only managed to get in about 3 days of good solid 6 hour training sessions, in addition to my normal 4 days a week 3 hours a day training. The coach was pretty disappointed about that but it was too late to back out of the competition so there was nothing we could do, I just had to go and do my best. I knew from hard sparring that my conditioning was only good for about 3 to 4 minutes tops, after which my pace was greatly reduced, which doesn't really cut it when the fights consist of three 5 minute rounds. So my plan was to win as quickly as possible.
We flew down on the 8th. We had 5 people from our team entering the competition. In total our team had 8 people; me, Yu Lei, Han Dong, Wan Shi Meng, and Ming Ming were the fighters, plus Han Dong and Ming Ming's good friend Da Ge came down for moral support, and my best friend Kent (actually a Chinese guy, Wang Ke Yu, but has perfect English so I always use his English name and speak English to him) flew in from Ning Xia to support me too, and of course our coach was there. Our fights were all on the 9th, so we had a quick meal at the hotel, checked in for the competition, turned in our doctor's papers and whatnot and got to bed early. The next morning we had to get up early to do promotional stuff for the competition. We went to get photographed and interviewed, which they would be playing for the televised competition and promos and advertising and whatnot. Our team arrived at the same time as the Guang Dong team, which was a professional Muay Thai squad that also entered MMA competitions. They were bringing up 4 guys, including two Russians, who were pretty friendly, and I chatted them up while we were waiting. My interview was extremely basic; he just asked me my name, where I was from, and what team I was representing. Then I worked the bag for about 30 seconds while they recorded me. It was all over and done with in about 30 minutes and we went back to the hotel for a nap before the fights. Yu Lei was up first, he had the fourth fight in the afternoon. The rest of us were fighting in the evening. We arrived at 2 oclock, which was supposed to be the starting time, but as is typical in China everything appeared to be a clusterfuck and the competition didn't actually get under way until 3:30. Yu Lei and the rest of the team were in the dressing room warming up while Kent and I stayed in the arena taking photos and watching the other fights. We got some nice pictures with the ring girls and Kent got all their phone numbers. He's become quite the lady-magnet I have to say. He actually ended up taking three of them home after the competition, the dog. One of them has been sending him messages asking him when he's coming back to Xi'an for the last two days lol.
The first fight was over really quickly; it was kind of a 'junior' fight; the kids were both 17 and they fought under San Da rules. One kid got caught a couple of times and the ref gave him a standing 8 count, then he got caught again right after that and the ref stopped it, about 2 minutes in. After that was another San Da rules fight with one of the Guang Dong Muay Thai fighters against a local Xi'an San Da fighter. The San Da guy was quicker but kept forgetting to tuck his chin and I thought it was just a matter of time until the Muay Thai guy caught him with a lead left hook or a short counter right, but the Muay Thai guy kept going for the thai clinch and knees, which the San Da soon learned to avoid by keeping his distance and throwing leg kicks and hard lead right crosses. He ended up taking the decision. Bad ring instructions on the Guang Dong team's part in my opinion. The next fight after that was a girl's San Da fight, I'm not sure which teams they were from. It went to a decision too and the smaller but faster girl won it.
Finally at about 4:30 it was Yu Lei's turn to fight. Yu Lei came out first to Michael Jackson's 'Black and White' lol, and the ring announcer gave him the nickname 'Dong Bei Hu' (Siberian Tiger) since Harbin is kind of famous for our Siberian Tiger park. Yu Lei is a former soldier and he's shredded. He looks extremely imposing and he's got some vicious kicks. Nobody likes to hold the pads for Yu Lei. He was fighting in the 70 kg division which is kind of a laugh because he's more like 74 kgs.
His opponent was a little bit over weight too but he was easily giving up 2 or 3 kilos to Yu Lei. His opponent was from Xi'an, but was fighting for the Bei Jing Shao Lin Kung Fu San Da team, which is one of the biggest and most famous professional San Da teams in China, if not the biggest. His opponent also had the benefit of coming off a 30 second 1 punch KO win in the previous competition. Coach wisely decided not to inform Yu Lei of that little tidbit. He came out to a mild pop from the small crowd. The afternoon competition doesn't attract that many spectators; most people wait to come to the evening portion of the card.
The plan for everyone on our team was the same--shoot for a double leg immediately, pass guard, and submit them. All of us were facing professional San Da fighters and there was no sense playing around the feet when all of us knew we'd have a big advantage on the ground. Yu Lei is one of the better stand up fighters on our team though, and coach was worried that Yu Lei would want to test his stand up and risk getting KO'd like the last guy his opponent faced. Yu Lei stuck to the plan and shot for a double leg right off the bat though, but San Da rules do give points for takedowns (the fight gets immediately stood up after a takedown though) and so San Da guys have passable takedown defense as a rule. Unfortunately, though Yu Lei has an ok ground game and fierce kicks, his takedowns leave a lot to be desired and his double leg was easily stuffed. The San Da guy laid into Yu Lei with low kicks and punches, and Yu Lei futily kept diving into the clinch or double leg and getting stuffed. It was not going well at all. Kent and I and the coach and Da Ge and Han Dong were all screaming ourselves hoarse at ring side and Yu Lei was putting on a brave face but he was getting messed up badly. Finally coach told Yu Lei to try throwing a few kicks and Yu Lei pulled off a beautiful spinning back kick that missed the guy's head by centimetres.
If it had landed on the temple that might have been an instant death in the ring. Everyone in the crowd was struck silent, there was this awe-inspired murmer of 'ai ya wo cao's (holy shit) throughout the arena. Suddenly the San Da guy was a lot more hesitant. Yu Lei through another spinning back kick that landed solidly on the guy's chest and knocked him back about 4 steps. He shook it off but he was clearly winded and badly hurt. Yu Lei followed up with a high kick that the guy barely blocked and was knocked sideways, then a middle kick that appeared to land solidly below the ribs. But Yu Lei didn't follow up. He stalked the guy for the remaining thirty seconds of the round, the guy threw a few more weak sauce jabs and low kicks and that was it. It turned out that Yu Lei had broken his foot on the last kick; he hit the guy right on the hip bone. He sucked it up and came out for the second round without limping though, more power to him. The other guy had definitely landed way more solid shots and probably won that round, but he had to respect Yu Lei's power and by the end of the round Yu Lei was turning it around. If he hadn't have broken his foot he might have been able to put him away or at least do enough damage to steal the round.
The second round was alright though. The guy came out throwing lead right straights at full power and, after being reminded by the coach, Yu Lei finally remembered how to do a proper double leg. He got caught a couple of times by that right hand, but finally was able to duck one and get a takedown. Instantly our whole team went apeshit screaming at him to mess that guy up and finish him. Yu Lei landed in half guard and started throwing some elbows but in his excitement he totally forgot how to pass teh half guard. After about 30 seconds of weak GnP in half guard it was totally obvious that his opponent had no ground game whatsoever but that Yu Lei had completely forgotten everything and was just fighting on pure rage. Finally the coach ran all the way around the ring to go and stand right beside Yu Lei to yell instructions and raise his trapped knee and push himself through the half guard, and Yu Lei listened and did it and got full mount with about a minute left in the round. Then the coach started yelling for an arm bar but Yu Lei was still fighting on rage and elected to just drop bombs on the guy while he covered up helplessly. I started screaming at the ref to stop it but Yu Lei was kind of gassed so although he was landing good shots he wasn't throwing at full strength and the ref elected to keep it going even though the San Da guy was obviously totally helpless. The round ended with Yu Lei still beating on the guy. In the third round, the guy was obviously scared of the raging Siberian Tiger and backed up for the whole five minutes, but the ironic thing was that Yu Lei had basically nothing left himself. He couldn't throw a decent kick any more with his broken foot, and he had dislocated his shoulder at some point as well so another takedown was out of the question too. Luckily his opponent didn't know that, and might have been badly hurt himself, and just backed up the whole time while Yu Lei pursued him with a crazy-looking grin. The third round ended without any significant shots landed, and Yu Lei took the hard-earned decision. Needless to say our team was greatly elated by Yu Lei's gutsy performance and ultimate victory. I was up next.
I was scheduled to fight fourth for the evening competition. We went back to the hotel for a nap before my fight, and I ate some fruit, bread, and chocolate before we left. We arrived back at the arena at 7 oclock and went through my warmup routine. I was nervous, but I was confident that my fight would be a lot easier than Yu Lei's. Unlike Yu Lei, I have some good high school wrestling experience to my benefit and am probably the strongest wrestler on our team, even including the coach, and the 100+ kg guys as well. Aside from me, wrestling is a real problem area for our team and our coach had tried to rectify that in our last month of training but you can't learn good takedowns enough for it to really matter against professionals in only a month. Not that my takedown technique is exactly smooth, but at least I have the basic concepts and habits down pretty well. I had watched my opponent's previous fights at an internet cafe the night before and had spotted his weakness pretty easily. He liked to throw an overhand lead right at full strength coming in and was very vulnerable to a takedown at that point. The competition was choosing music for all the fighters but I did NOT want to know what pop crap they wanted me to come out to, so I gave my MP3 player to Kent and he managed to talk them into letting me use my own music for my entrance, thank goodness. I came out to Rob Zombie's American Nightmare mostly because that's the song that plays in Wamrage's MMA top 20 greatest comebacks highlight video while Mark Coleman is totally wrecking shit, and that was the image I wanted in my head before I fought this guy: one of MMA's most powerful and imposing wrestlers shooting in unstoppable double-legs and dropping elbows from hell on his unfortunate opponent. Also death-metal would provide a dramatic counterpoint to WestLife and the Backstreet Boys and whatever other crap those guys were coming out to.
I came out with my music pumping and Kent at my side, totally blankfaced and emotionless. While everyone else had come out jumping around throwing punches and kicks at the air and waving to the crowd, I elected to take the Fedor approach and save all my energy for the fight. I came out first, did my circuit around the ring, and stretched a little bit. My opponent was local boy Du Sheng Shu, a San Da fighter originally, but with 6 MMA fights under his belt. It was expected that he would be experienced and well rounded enough to be able to use his stand up advantage to knock me out dramatically and get a big win for the Xi'an team, especially since this was my first official pro fight. Luckily I have some tournament experience in Canada that I neglected to mention to anyone. Oops. As expected, he came out to some pop crap music bouncing around excitedly slapping the crowds hands and jumping up onto all four ring posts to celebrate before the fight. I offered to shake his hand as he ran past my corner but he ignored me. I decided to cut him for that. He was shorter than me but pretty well built and with broader shoulders. Normally as a ground fighter I'd prefer to be the more stocky and solidly built guy, but I decided I was happy to have a solid reach advantage; it would force him to dive in all the further to throw that overhand right he liked. Although he had a lot of experience, he had never fought a solid ground fighter like me and was always able to get right back up again when taken down, so being vulnerable to take downs didn't seem to bother him that much.
I wasn't as nervous as I thought I'd be before the fight. When the ref called us up to give us instructions I thought my stomach would be in knots but I was actually feeling pretty confident. It helped a lot that my training involved trading punches and kicks with Wang Lei and Xiao Wu, who are both professional San Da fighters on the Hei Long Jiang team and outweigh me by a good 10-12 kgs. I figured if I could take punches from those monsters and still submit from my guard, taking a punch from this little guy would be nothing. Plus I was confident in my game plan. The only thing that bothered me was gassing; I knew that I'd have to finish him quickly because there was almost no way I'd be able to last 15 minutes with any kind of decent pace at all, and from watching his fights I knew that my opponent favoured a hard-pace and had the gas tank to keep it up for the whole fight.
The ref signalled for us to start before I expected it, which I guess was kind of a good thing. It all started to happen really quickly. He closed the distance immediately, and I circled cautiously away from his right hand and watched his left foot carefully. As soon as he took a half step forward to set up his lead punch, I dove in for a double leg. He may have been expecting that, especially after watching Yu Lei diving in for takedowns constantly in his fight that afternoon, but ready for it or not I was determined to finish the takedown. He had a decent sprawl but I managed to keep the single while he furiously tried to punch me in the face. I had my head down though and everything landed on my forehead. I managed to sweep his leg and I think he landed mounting me, but I immediately bridged and wound up in his guard without taking any damage. I went to work on his face, trying to cut him, and I did land a really solid elbow on his brow ridge but I'm not sure if he was actually cut by it. In any case I didn't get any blood on me.
There was a scramble of some sort as he squirmed trying to escape and I wound up in mount; I guess I passed his guard, I can't really remember clearly and I haven't watched the tapes yet. I still wanted to cut him but he kept throwing up his arms actually trying to punch me, and generally just begging to be armbarred. I got in a few good punches on his face and started travelling up his chest to try to trap his arms with my knees and really do some good damage to his face, but as I moved up his body his flexibility surprised me and he actually managed to hook his feet into my armpits and escape out the back door. There was another scramble and I think he caught me on the cheek with a really hard shot at some point because the crowd went totally nuts and I remember briefly losing my balance as we stood up and I had a little bit of swelling inside my mouth after the fight, but I immediately got a clinch, got double underhooks, swept him, and landed in mount, or passed to it immediately. I was already feeling a little bit tired so I decided to stop fooling around and just finish him. This time I faked a punch, he threw up his arms to block it as before, and I just grabbed one and transitioned into an armbar instantly. It was a little bit loose unfortunately, probably because I'm used to armbarring guys at least 10 kg's heavier than me; this is the first guy I've ever fought that was smaller than me. He was pretty flexible too. Luckily he had no clue how to escape an armbar, and I just put his hand into my armpit in order to get the leverage to finish it. He was forced to tap out, and I was declared winner by armbar after I guess about a minute or so of fighting. Pretty much everything went exactly to plan for me, except losing that first mount. My face was basically completely unmarked except for some minor bumps and bruises on the top of my forehead which didn't hurt at all. Kent got some pretty good pictures of me getting my arm raised and holding my trophy, so I'll post the address those are posted at when I get it. All in all it was a pretty ideal fight for me, and our team was now 2-0. Now it was Wang Shi Meng's turn.
Before her fight, I watched one of the Russians on the Guang Dong team fight. Apparently the other Russian, a really tall skinny guy, had lost after jumping into guard to finish a guy he had stunned, got swept, and pounded out in the mount. I warned them to avoid the ground but they didn't seem to take me, or the competition itself for that matter, very seriously. They were just fighting part time while they studied Chinese and for that matter only really trained in Muay Thai. So MMA was a sideline of a sideline for them.
The other Russian didn't speak any English and hadn't learned much Chinese yet either so I had no way to communicate with him, but he was built like a mofoing tank. His opponent was some skinny Chinese soft-body looking guy. It looked like quite the mismatch. It turned out to be as bad as it looked, as the Russian landed three lead left hooks flush back to back, and dropped the poor Chinese guy with the third one. Like his teammate, he hastily jumped into guard to finish, but unlike his team mate, he landed about 3 or more 4 flush shots to the chin and totally KTFO out of the Chinese guy. When the ref waved it off, it was actually to stand it back up and give the Russian a warning for holding the Chinese guy by the throat with his fingers, but after the Russian stood up and the Chinese guy grabbed onto the ref's leg in a death grip, he decided to just call the fight. Which was good, the Chinese guy was as out of it as anyone I've seen, and couldn't walk without assistance for several minutes.
After that, I went back to the dressing room to help warm up Wang Shi Meng. Wang Shi Meng is the only female member of our team, and she is a very recent addition. She only joined us immediately before this competition and had only been training with us for about 2 weeks. She has a decent background in judo, tae kwon do, and boxing though, and she's a natural athlete who learns really quickly. She actually tuned up a couple of the new guys in sparring sessions, much to their chagrin. She's not a small girl either; 90 kgs, but she moves surprisingly quickly and smoothly for all that. I was pretty confident in her chances. Like Yu Lei and I she was facing a local pro San Da fighter. I expected her to do what I did; get the takedown, pass to mount, and finish with an armbar or at least GnP.
Kent and I escorted her out the ring. I was feeling pretty stoked to be on the Harbin Long Yun MMA team at that point, what with us being 2-0 with a couple of impressive victories. Unfortunately, the fight went a lot more like Yu Lei's fight than mine. Like Yu Lei, she was unable to finish any takedowns in the first round, and took a pretty bad beating standing up. Luckily she has better conditioning than I do and we were still confident that once she got a takedown, she'd be able to finish the fight and get the win. Working against us was the fact that women's MMA fights are only 3 minute rounds, so she'd have less time to work with.
In the second round, as we hoped, she was finally able to get a takedown. She passed quickly to mount, delivered some minor GnP, and went for an armbar, but her opponent was quick and had better defence than we gave her credit for and was able to escape to standing. Wang Shi Meng immediately dove into another takedown and was able to finish that one too. She passed to side control immediately and then into scarf control. Wang Shi Meng was taking a not-insignificant weight advantage into the fight. Since it was the girl's heavyweight division, there was no weight limit, and Wang Shi Meng had about 10 kilo's on her, most of it pressed right into her opponent's solar plexus as she held her in scarf control. The girl clung on for dear life while Wang Shi Meng delivered some nasty punches on the head. Wang Shi Meng doesn't have enough Jiu Jitsu experience to know how to break an opponent's grip though, so everything she threw was just landing on her opponent's forehead, not doing much damage. Inexplicably, the opposing coach kept yelling at his fighter to open her grip, but unfortunately she was smarter than her dumbass coach and maintained her death grip around Wang Shi Meng's body. Wang Shi Meng landed about 20 unanswered shots, but the ref refused to stop it. Finally she waved it off after at least 30 seconds of beatdown, and Wang Shi Meng raised her hands in victory. But for some reason, the between-round music came on and the ring girls hustled into the ring with cards. According to my watch, there was at least 20 seconds left in the round! But the ref decided not to do anything except stand there like an idiot, and the fight was continued despite the fact it should clearly have been a TKO victory for Wang Shi Meng. When she realised what had happened to her, the fight went out of Wang Shi Meng like air out of an inflatable mattress. She answered the bell bravely but she was badly gassed. She tried a few more takedowns in the third but she didn't have much left in the tank, and she took another beating standing up. When it was over, the judges gave the decision to the local Xi'an girl, which was fair enough since she was giving up so much weight I guess, but it was a bullshit non-stoppage. That result took the wind out of our sails a little bit, and Wang Shi Meng was extremely pissed off, which was hard on all of us because she's normally such a bright and sunny-natured girl. She had been cheering all of us up the whole time, joking and laughing and generally being really cute, and none of us liked to see her so dejected and pissed off. We hoped that Ming Ming would get us back on track, but he had by far the steepest hill to climb.
His opponent was Liu Wen Bo, from Chinese Top Team (perhaps affiliated with the former BTT and ATT?) who's the unofficial Chinese heavyweight champion. He has several years of experience fighting as a pro and has competed in several international competitions, including in Malaysia, the Phillipines, Russia and Europe. He is not only a professional calibre San Da kickboxer, he has been training his ground game with a BJJ black belt for 2 years as well. Our coach had trained with Liu Wen Bo before though, and said that his wrestling was shit and that he was weak for his size in general. We hoped that Ming Ming would be able to take him down and work top game, avoid any submissions or sweeps from the bottom, and grind out a tough win. Ming Ming was giving up a lot in both experience and size though. Ming Ming is solidly built, but only slightly taller than me. If you've seen my BJJ tourney videos, Ming Ming was my second opponent. He's about 95 kgs, which isn't small, but it isn't big for a heavyweight either. His opponent is well over 6 feet, and would have a commanding range advantage.
Ming Ming went out cautiously, looking for a takedown but trying not to overcommit and wind up in a bad position. He took some leg kicks that did nothing and some nasty punches that hurt a lot while hunting for his chance. Finally he got a deep double leg and was able to get the takedown about halfway through the first. Liu Wen Bo has a pretty solid guard though, and was able to keep Ming Ming from doing anything. If anything, Ming Ming gassed himself out uselessly, and actually stood it back up for some reason. The round ended with Ming Ming taking another beating on the feet. His face was pretty badly messed up already, by far the worst of any of us.
In the second round, Ming Ming basically went out with the sole goal of not getting KTFO on his feet. He dove in for a single after eating some hard punches, but got reversed mid-takedown and wound up in knee-on-belly. Liu Wen Bo had good balance for being a big guy, and was able to finish it with a TKO GnP win from knee on belly. All in all it was another decent win for him, and an extremely rough start for Ming Ming's pro MMA career. It wasn't really fair to throw our guy out with no real fighting experience at all and only about 6 months of semi-serious training against a well-rounded professional champion with years of international fighting experience under his belt. Not sure how they justified that one in the fight build up...
Last up was Han Dong. Han Dong is another heavyweight, a jovial guy with a good sense of humour. He's bigger than Ming Ming, but not strong for his size. He's 29 too, a little bit old to be getting into the fight game. He has some San Da experience though and moves pretty good for a big guy. He's also one of our more intelligent fighters; he's good at setting things up, and generally keeping his head in a fight. His opponent was another local Xi'an kickboxer with some MMA experience. Despite Wang Shi Meng's and Ming Ming's bad luck, I was optimistic that Han Dong would be alright and be able to replicate my performance, or at least Yu Lei's.
Han Dong came out pretty strong, and got a pretty deep double leg before taking much damage standing, unfortunately his opponent had good balance and a great sprawl, and Han Dong retreated to buttscoot position. He chased his opponent around in the buttscoot, waving him in, while his opponent wisely retreated. It was Shinya Aoki vs Eddie Alvarez all over again, and the crowd laughed in delight at the spectacle of the standing fighter backing away nervously as Han Dong chased him around the ring sitting down. Finally the ref had enough and forced Han Dong to stand up. In the next exchange, Han Dong took a brutal body kick that I thought little of at the time, but it turned out he had broken a rib. For the rest of the fight, Han Dong fought in survival mode. With a broken rib he couldn't throw anything with power and takedowns were even more excrutiating. He retreated to buttscoot a few more times, but the ref had long since decided the novelty had worn off and forced him to stand up quickly. To his immense credit, Han Dong actually finished the fight against a professional San Da fighter despite having a broken rib for two full rounds. He lost the decision though, and we were forced to go back to our hotel rooms with a mediocre 2 and 3 record.
Yu Lei and I were happy with our performances, but we also felt bad for our teammates. Yu Lei had a broken foot and a dislocated shoulder, and a nasty mouse under his eye. Wang Shi Meng made out alright except for having a black eye and a few other marks on her face. Ming Ming fractured his orbital bone and has been unable to open that eye for 2 days now. Han Dong got a broken rib and has been in a lot of pain for 2 days too. I had no injuries at all; in fact no part of my body hurt at all. But I felt kind of bad about that; I had come out unscathed with an easy victory but my teammates had suffered terribly, and three of them lost on top of that. To add insult to injury, my purse as a foreigner was 5000 rmb, theirs, as first time Chinese fighters, was a lousy 1,500. By the time they coughed up their thirty percent to the coach and their airfare (the tournament only paid for train tickets; since we flew in we were on our own for that) they were only taking home 600 rmb each. Pretty shitty for all the training they put in and all the beating they endured. My take home was 3,300 rmb, which is practically nothing to me, I make a lot more than that in a normal work week, but to them it must have seemed a pretty decent sum. Han Dong in particular seemed bothered by it and made a lot of cracks about me treating them all to dinner and him winning my purse in a game of cards and whatnot. I really like the guy so I felt bad about it.
Kent took us out to see some of the sights of Xi'an the next day. The first thing you notice about Xi'an is the incredible air pollution clouding the sky at all times. This is normal for Xi'an; apparently they don't actually ever see blue sky. The next thing I noticed was the large number of buildings done up in the traditional Chinese architectural style. Although they are mostly clean new buildings, they are done up in the traditional style with the tiled roofs and whatnot, which gives the city a Chinese charm that Harbin certainly lacks. Harbin looks more like a Russian factory/slum city than a Chinese city. So I give Xi'an points for that. Xi'an loses a lot of points for its taxi drivers though. Of the 10 taxi rides we took, 6 of the drivers tried to cheat us by driving a long route, and then arguing with us about it rudely. We were able to keep them honest because we always travelled in two seperate taxis, there being 8 of us, so wherever we went, someone in one taxi called the other one to confirm the fare prices were the same. Where there was a discrepancy, we wound up calling up the taxi company to complain and wound up paying the proper fare rates. It was damn annoying arguing with these cheating assholes every single time though. Hopefully there's some kind of penalty they have to pay for trying to cheat us. Frankly they are damn lucky none of them got their asses severely beat, considering they were carrying a professional MMA team around. I don't know how they had the balls to do it; we were all wearing our team sweaters that say 'Harbin Long Yun Professional MMA Team' in Chinese on them. Han Dong and Yu Lei ended up threatening one driver, he pissed them off so bad, and they are two of the nicest and most even-tempered guys you'll meet.
Anyways, Kent took us to the Drum Tower, which is kind of cool. There's a touristy shopping place where you can buy little trinkets and what not, mostly Terra Cotta Warrior-themed. I bought a bunch of little key chains for presents for my students, and glass encased carving I liked. It was all pretty inexpensive so I felt good about it. We had some traditional Xi'an food at a nice restaurant Kent knew from his time working in the city, and although he warned us that Xi'an food sucks in general, the food at this place was actually pretty good, if a little bit too spicy. Central and South Chinese people just love spicy food. Can't get enough of it. I have never been able to understand why anyone likes spicy food at all, anywhere, ever. Spice is not even a real taste; it's just the sensation of sharp particles making thousands of miniscule cuts on your sensitive tongue. And it doesn't stop with your tongue; it slices up your stomach and intestines too, causing your body to expel it as rapidly as possible before it does serious damage, resulting in you having nasty diarrhea that stings your anus as it comes out. People who like spicy food are like bizarre fetishists in my book. As a now professional MMA fighter I don't feel my manhood is in jeopardy by saying that I don't like spicy food, which I'm half convinced is the main reason most people do say they like it. They probably feel the same way I do about it, but there's a massive conspiracy to make guys feel like pussies if they don't gobble down the spiciest food at the table with a smile. Well fuck you all, spicy food eaters!
Anyways, with our team feeling so banged up, we went back to the hotel after that, but not before I stopped into Subway to pick up four sandwiches for the 36 hour train right home. I didn't know what the rest of my team intended to eat, but I didn't want to be forced to find out the hard way. I was going home with my food situation under control regardless.
It turned out that Wang Shi Meng had bought a crapload of shitty snack food for the train ride home. We had a box of little pies and chocolate wagon wheels, potato chips, beers, and instant noodles. At least she also got some apples. I was damn glad I had some sandwiches to eat while my team ate that garbage. At least I didn't feel guilty about it because I knew they wouldn't want my 'foreign food' anyways haha. They actually love that junk food garbage.
So, I just made it back to Harbin, had a nice loooong shower, and that's about it. Hope you enjoyed my report!
...almost as good as your Protoss guide from like...2003 XD
