Tora Shotokan Karate Seminar with Sensei Ana Xepapas

This weekend, I have finally got the opportunity to be taught by Ana-Sensei from the Tora Shotokan Dojo in Tasmania. Senseis Catharine, Ben and Andrew are methodical and thoughtful in the way they teach. But it's also great to have different Sensei come and teach us new exercises 'cause they all have a different perspective on teaching. ; Sensei Arie focused on strengthening and flexibility exercises; and Sensei Ana showed us  exercises that are good at showing the weaknesses of all the belts.

As 9th Kyuu, the kata that I will be grading in when I return to Australia will be Heian Shoudan. I'm not sure what shoudan means, but 平安 means "peace," which always confuses people. The first character can mean "flat" or in the broader sense, "unchanging," and is a simple character with no further meaning  one can derive from radicals. The second character means "safety" in both Japanese and Chinese. The components of the second character are a woman under a roof. Despite all this knowledge about language, I have no idea why the first kata of karate is a peaceful one.

I will try to explain the kata and what the movements mean to me. I invite any other practitioners of Shotokan to comment, because there is never enough time to discuss this sort of thing in the dojo.

• Zenkutsu Dachi (前屈立ち）: Front stance (first character means front, third character means stand). The purpose of the stances is to have the correct balance of stability and movement. The lower and wider your stance is, the more stability you have, but if it is too wide or low, it may become too slow and irresponsive.
• Gedan berai (下段べらい）: The low block. You are turning to the side and covering the region from your legs to your stomach from kicks or punches. You are moving your hips forward because you want to prepare to punch or kick and use the force from your hips, legs and feet to do so. You are timing your breathing with the moment so that the breath is as fast as the movement.
• Churn chokuzuki（中段直ずき）: The power of the forward mid-height punch depends a lot on the previous block.
• The high block after the first 180° turn: grabbing free of an attacker who is clutching your arm and hitting them on the head with the edge of your forearm.
• Ageuke (上げ受け/lit: rising block): Using the edge of your arm to drive away strikes directed towards your upper body.
• Koukutsu dachi (後屈立ち: lit back bending stance): a very narrow stance that can be stabilised by lowering, but enables one to approach their attackers from various angles (the two 45° stances in the kata being a good example).
• Nukite block: the block that accompanies Koukutsu dachi. 

In the Seminar, we did blind katas. This was interesting, because even some of the black belts froze or hesitated mid kata due to being unsure. And despite this, as Ana commented, most of us stuffed up our kata at some point and then recovered, before finishing. This reminded me of when I was a white belt and I was told to close my eyes whilst doing movements so that I could focus on what my body was doing. This had involved being guided into the perfect starting and ending positions for movements. This hadn't entirely worked because my problems arose from the way I moved and lack of arm/leg coordination rather than the static positions. But doing the movements blind worked from the point of view that I attained the concept of trying to do a certain thing with my body, but in such a way that I do not lose too much stability in my stance.

We also did katas in which we dragged two people either side of us. One thing I noticed was, how it was more effective to drag the people after stepping into stance and how similar this was to how the Senseis are always telling me to punch or block after I step.

Another thing we did was punch into the open hands of our partners, who had to push against the punch once it became stationary. I felt that if I pushed my blocking hip forward, my stance became stronger.

Doing the katas in the opposite direction was confusing for nearly everyone.

My biggest challenge in Karate at the moment is hand and feet coordination. I understand that in many movements, unless there is an exception specified, that the hand that is blocking or punching should be on the same side as the active leg (forward stance = active forward leg), and that the best way to block someone is to begin by matching the position of their forward leg. But I'm terrible at listening to instructions, often mixing up my right hand with my "other right hand."

Mandarin Review: 宿舍 (dormitory/hostel)

宿舍 means “dormitory,” or  “hall of residence.”（I'm writing this with with the pinyin keyboard and trying very hard not to inadvertently write characters).

It is pronounced sùshè, which, if one wants to be clever in the literary sense, has the same pronunciation as 速射，which means "rapid fire."

宿 on its own means "stay," basically, as in 借宿一晚, to rent for or ask for a night (of lodging). 宿 can serve as a phonetic marker (as in they all have the same pronunciation) for 缩（contract），樎（rare character），蹜（also rare).

舍, on the other hand, does not have its own meaning and generally comes at the end of words that are associated with some kind of building, such as a hotel 旅舍，school building 校舍, personal home 舍下，or a humble abode 寒舍.

The two of them combined together come to meaning something like "a building to stay in."

Other means include use as a precursor for younger siblings (Oh! now I can say 我有三个（個）舍弟妹 — I have three younger siblings), or with a third tone, "give up," e.g. 舍药（藥).

A synonym includes 招待所 ／ Zhāodàisuǒ ／ guest house. I suppose the 所 is generic term for some sort of place, but whatever place it is, because of 厕所, it sounds like it might be a hole. But it is certainly not! They are much like the the famous Japanese 旅館/ryokan, usually very upmarket, and sometimes especially marketed for sexual deviants. It seems that 所 is just a very generic word for "place." This is mirrored by the Japanese 宿屋/yadoya which is specifically a Japanese style 旅館 (nice to know! Even if the etymology is Chinese *evil grin*)

Another synonym is 旅店, which means hostel. It literally translates as "travel spot," but it actually seems to mean "motel" based on a quick Google Image search I did.

In terms of writing, I always found 宿舍 difficult to remember because it has few phonological similarities with other characters. This, however, makes it easy from the point of view that you can't confuse it with other words. When I was first learning it,  I always remembered 宿 as the character that had "100 people under a single roof" and 舍 as a tongue wagging under a different type of roof. 宿 means "inn," which is self-explanatory, but 舍 actually means "cottage," and it is a type of place in which communication occurs.

Alas, there is no written equivalent in Cantonese (or my dictionary, which only offers 饭店 for "hotel," just sucks). Like, how am I supposed to talk about my awesome international dorm with the new Cantonese friends I make?

Mandarin Review: 年级 / 年級 / niánjí / level, grade

While I'm in Hong Kong, I will be studying Mandarin/Pútōnghuà. And my Chinese final exam is on Thursday. So every day this week, I will do an article on a new Chinese word with pronunciation, example sentences, character meaning, etymology, usage, special notes on stroke order, and if I can manage it, usages in popular media, twitter and/or literature where they are relevant. I want to learn Traditional characters, so wherever the traditional commonly differs from the Simplified I shall include them after the simplified or in brackets where there is only one or two different characters in a sentence. My assumption in these articles is that they are not for absolute beginners of Chinese: Ideally, they are suited for people at my level: People who have been studying Mandarin for one year outside of China.

My first object of analysis is niánjí 年级, which is the word that you use when you're talking about which "year level" or grade of school you are at. It's a counter word, so it always comes after numbers and before nouns, as in the sentence 你几年级？／ Nǐ jǐ niánjí? ／lit: you how many year level? / trans: what is your year level? 是三年级学生 / Wǒ shì Sān niánjí xuéshēng / I am a third year student. Next year, after I complete my exchange, I will be a 四年级学生. 我的妹妹唸几（幾）年级？Wǒ de mèimei niàn jǐ niánjí? 我想。。。我的姐妹都在TAFE唸一年級。

Synonyms include 等级, Děngjí, which I guess, since 级 means "level" by itself and 等 can mean "grade/class" on its own e.g. 共分三等 /Gòng fēn sān děng / (something that has been) classified into three grades, indicating a more general meaning than 年级, which literally means "year level." 品级 / Pǐnjí can be used for "grade" as well, but since 品 means goods, it may refer to the quality of merchandise or something. 级别 / Jíbié refers to one's level within an organisation as opposed to their year level within the marking system, e.g. 教授级别 / Jiàoshòu jíbié / professor level. or 学生级别 / Xuéshēng jíbié. For instance, 可以申请教练级别的对应关系 / 可以申請教練級別的對應關係 / Xuéshēng jíbié kěyǐ shēnqǐng jiàoliàn jíbié de duìyìng guānxì / Students may choose the teaching level curriculum (That's not the literal translation, but if you check the website, which is one of many martial arts schools in China, you can tell the meaning from context.) 年度 ／niándù refers to the the calendar year, e.g. 年度计划 / 年度計劃 / Niándù jìhuà / annual plan.

Now for the characters: 年 can be tricky for beginners to write nicely because they don't realise that the vertical line through the middle must go last. But as a basic character with a similar pronunciation to the Japanese nen, it is self-explanatory. 級 has the phonetic component ji which it shares with 及 and极 (as in 好极了）, and the radical means "silk," which I have no idea how to explain. I mean, why on earth would you use a wood radical for 极？

You may notice that a lot of words have two characters with the same meaning, such as 等级. I'm not sure myself yet why this is the case, I think it has something to do with how Classical Chinese has had to adapt to European style writing. Another thing you may notice is that when reading Chinese and trying to get the meaning, you often have to read the entire sentence (at the very least) to get the meaning of the various components. This is because Chinese, like English, is highly inflected, meaning that meanings are dependent on the location in the sentence.

The meaning is the same for written Cantonese (pronunciation: nìhn4kāp1), but not for Japanese (nen), which omits the 級. The first part of 三年学生　sannen gakusei sounds almost similar to Mandarin!

＊Note: Example sentences are taken from the Cambridge Chinese dictionary or scribe origins.