Asia Update #42 - Sumo and People's Liberation Army

I was in China on September 11.  Came home from a business dinner and turned on CNN shortly after they went live.  Saw the second plane crash and the Tower's collapse.  Shocking, depressing, maddening, and many other words just won't cover the feelings I went through.

The following weekend, I flew to Tokyo. This was the first flight United was making to Tokyo, and thankfully that was as far as I wanted to go, as that was as far as they were flying. Still no flights back to the US at that time.

On Sunday, I got to go to see a sumo match. I had seen it on TV before, but this was my first chance to see it live. Interesting stuff. A lot of history to it, and also a lot of procedures and dramatics for what is often a very short match.

The match starts with the wrestlers entering the ring. They go to their corner and do this stomping act, followed by throwing some salt into the ring (supposed to ward off evil). Then they go and face off. But wait, this is still just show, as they have to go back to their corners again to do some more stomping and salt throwing. Then they are back to the face off and now they are really ready to go.

The match ends when one of the participants is knocked over (any part other than their foot hitting the ground) or is knocked out of the ring (any part of their body touching anything outside of the ring). Some matches are very short (seconds), where others may last a minute or two. The whole time, there is this guy in a kimono who is yelling something in Japanese (something equivalent to "still good! still good! still good!").

Definitely an interesting process and sport, though I don't think I would start following it regularly.

It is a month later now and I am back in China right now. Went to the Great Wall again. This is a different area than where I had visited the last time, and the wall does look a little different. I've heard that many areas have much different styles and were built at much different times.

Had an interesting experience. There are a lot of People's Liberation Army soldiers on the wall sightseeing. Saw one PLA guy taking a picture of his friends, so I offered to take the picture for him so he could get in the photo. Guess he didn't understand this, so next thing I know he still has the camera and I am in with his friends for the picture. Then it switched around and some other PLA members were with me. A few more versions of PLA soldiers, and then even a non-soldier stood next to me to have his picture taken. Had about a dozen pictures taken of me. Felt like I was a movie star or something.

 

Note - This is the last update! Fun while it lasted, but I left this position, so nothing more to write here... But there is more stuff like this in my other Blogs.