jet li life essay part 3

part 1
http://www.wutang-corp.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31487

part 2
http://www.wutang-corp.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31598

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life essay: part 3



http://www.jetli.com/jet/_img/jet_life_essays_3.jpg After winning that first national competition, I was no longer required to attend school at all -- not even in the mornings! They asked me to move into the dormitory at the sports school. From that point on, I lived and trained there all week. I went home on Saturday, and returned to the dorms Sunday night. On Monday morning, the training would begin all over again.
The only word I can use to describe our training is "bitter." It was exceptionally harsh.
There were about 13 of us who all trained under one coach. Every morning at 6 a.m., we would be awakened by a very loud bell.
RRRRING!
Within 90 seconds, we had to get dressed and line up outside in the field, standing at attention. After one hour of practice, we had the chance to brush our teeth, wash our face, and eat breakfast. Practice resumed at 8:30 a.m. and lasted until 12 noon. After lunch, we would get the chance to rest for a while. That didn't necessarily mean that we had the afternoon off, though. See, our sports school was quite well-known in Beijing. It became something that all the foreign tourists wanted to include on their sightseeing itinerary.
Most of us liked to take a nap after lunch. Often, just as we had fallen asleep, we would be awakened by the announcement -- "Tour group!" That was our signal to scramble outside immediately to perform for the foreigners. This happened more often than I like to remember.
We would start training again after dinner, usually at 7:30 p.m. The one good thing about the evening practice was that we could finally work out inside the gym. Mornings and afternoons, we had to train outside. There was only one gymnasium at the school, and other sports took priority during the day: gymnastics in the morning, basketball or volleyball in the afternoon, etc. Wushu was only able to get the gym at night, when everybody else had gone home! Evening practice lasted from 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. -- sometimes 10:30 p.m. Our workouts usually came out to 8 hours of training a day. It was tough.
At the time, China was very poor. Electricity blackouts were not only common -- they were mandated. There wasn't enough power to keep the entire city lit; every night of the week, a different district would go without electricity. For us, it was Friday night. The whole world went dark on Friday evenings, and we couldn't have been happier. No lights meant no training -- we loved it. Friday night never came soon enough.
This practice had gone on for a very long time. It was practically an institution.
One Friday evening, we were all enjoying ourselves when we suddenly heard a bizarre sound.
RRRING!!!
It was that awful bell! Confused, we rushed out to the field. The coach took one look at us and promptly bawled us all out. Instead of wearing our athletic shoes, we had on slippers. Our clothes were rumpled and untidy. We were like a group of ragtag soldiers and our drill sergeant was demanding to know: "Where the hell's your gun? You call those boots?"
"So," drawled the coach, "you weren't expecting to practice tonight?"
"It's FRIDAY," we all thought. None of us, however, actually said this out loud.
Our coach sent us all back to put on the proper shoes, then yelled at us again for taking so long. As punishment, we had to run several laps in the moonlight. After running for a long time, we were told to jog into the gym.
"But there aren't any lights," we thought. "What point is there in going inside?"
TO BE CONTINUED ...