Diamond in the Rough

Here I am, finally. The first week went by super quickly, with so much to do, learn and more generally get used to. [Italiano a seguire][日本語訳付] Summary of the first week I arrived at the kung fu school last Tuesday at around 7 PM. The taxi driver the school had sent to pick me up at the airport didn’t speak a word of english..which later I would find out is absolutely normal around here. The flight itself hadn’t been that long - just a few hours - but the 11 hours I spent waiting in the Shanghai airport had worn me out. On a side note though, the view from the plane as I was landing was totally breathtaking. I wish they would have let me take pictures, but I didn't feel like risking it already (before even landing). Anyway, i was pretty tired that day, so I decided to go straight to bed. The next morning the students happened to have some kind of demonstration, so I had a chance to see what they are doing here right from the start. And it was amazing. I wasn’t t...

Welcome to "Diamond in the rough", the new blog on my adventure in China, that‘s just about to begin. But first, let's step back a little. [Italiano a seguire][日本語訳付] Who am I Let's start from the very beginning, shall we? Chances are you already know me, if so feel free to jump to the next paragraph. Hi, my name is Nicola, and I am a 24 years old Italian guy who has lived for roughly four years and half in Japan (at the moment of writing), and is about to leave the country to, well, move to China. In Japan I studied Japanese first, and then illustration for two years. Having worked as an english teacher for some years now, I can say that I'm pretty fluent in English, while also being able to speak Japanese to a somewhat high degree. Now I am moving to China, headed to the Wudang Mountain (Northwest Hubei) to study Kung Fu (and Chinese) for a year. I have been practicing Kung fu in Japan with a teacher who studied at the mountain for about two ye...