July 11th Guest Bloggers Jakiya, Yukari and Ryan

For today’s excursion, we learned about and participated in martial arts, also known as 武术. Before doing any activities, we learned the meaning behind “武”. 武 is supposed to mean "to stop war" which you can tell because of the characters "止" and "戈." Afterwards, the four instructors put on amazing performances for us, with each instructor performing a different form of martial arts that they specialized in. They performed yang style taijiquan (Tai Chi), chen style taijiquan, wing chun kuen (yongchun quan), and jianshu (Chinese straight swordsmanship). After their performances, we separated into groups to learn some moves from our designated instructor. The instructors demonstrated martial arts techniques and taught us step by step in order to prepare us for our own performance. We also played a few fun games to help us learn the techniques. When we were done practicing, it was time for the performance. Some of us were a little nervous at first, but our instructor taught us well, so the moves came naturally! We learned some valuable attack and defense skills that can help us back in the U.S.! This was a very fun activity as most of us got to experience something new and gain a better understanding of Chinese culture.