For The Silk Road Kung Fu Friendship Tour Part 22, click here.
Hanoi and Loc Yan - Interview with Vietnamese Wushu Federation Secretary General Hoang Quoc Vinh, visits with three of their national teams, to the ancient Thang Long Citadel, National Museum of History, and the beautiful neo-Gothic style St. Joseph Cathedral
Wednesday December 26, 2018
The vacation schedule at my school changes every year and this year I got a two-week vacation during Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Given the 30 below zero weather in Beijing, I decided to go someplace warm and sunny, possibly tropical and not too far away – and the answer was… b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l Vietnam!
Like the legendary martial artists of old I usually travel alone, but this time I brought my trusted friend, companion and sometimes translator Miao Hui with me. There’s nothing wrong with being accompanied by a beautiful lady and it’s always nice to have a friend there to share new experiences and adventures.
We arrived in Hanoi’s modern airport Wednesday afternoon and had arranged an airport pickup to the tune of $18, which is pretty good for the 45-minute drive to the hotel. Naturally I picked up a local sim card which fortunately one can do at their international airport, although it’s surprising that even one’s home country sim cards still usually work on roaming. But for GPS accuracy and speed, local sim cards work best.
On the way to the hotel I got the driver to help me learn a little Vietnamese – like for example I found out “hi” is – or at least sounds like “Xin Chao,” “thank you” is or at least sounds like “ca mon.” I also got him to teach me the numbers 1 – 100,000, and how to say “How much?” which sounds like “bao nhieu.”
Then we spent the evening exploring just some of the small streets in the Old-Town district called Hoan Kiem in which one can find Hoan Kiem Lake, Truc Bach Lake and West Lake, as well as the National Museum of History, and a whole lot of other amazing museums, the Temple of Literature, many ancient pagodas, the Ancient Citadel, and wow so much more.
There are lots of tourists in the winding maze-like streets of the Old Town. They are mostly Europeans but also people from all over Vietnam and Asia, giving the area around our hotel a real international flavor. There are thousands of small shops and restaurants and we couldn’t resist first diving into bowls of Pho which is a lightly fragrant ultra-delicious beef (or chicken) noodle soup with some light green leafy additions. A squeeze of lime makes it even more heavenly.
The day before I’d e-mailed the Vietnam Wushu Federation Secretary General Hoang Quoc Vinh. He ever so kindly got back to me only an hour or so later and that night I sent a text message, so we had an appointment for 3:30 at his office in the Vietnamese Sports Administrative Headquarters here in Hanoi.
Late the next morning around 11:35, we got to the National History Museum just after it closed for lunch so we had till 1:30, and – yep – it was time for lunch! Walking down a small street I saw some guys eating something that looked terrific so I stopped and asked them what it was, so I tried something called “Gong Zao” which turned out to be the perfect combination of rice, green leafy and lean beef. Again, it was out-of-this-world delicious. So far, Vietnam is batting 1000 in my gamebook of great food!
Quan Thanh Temple Gate Hanoi from inside.
Most restaurants here are on the sidewalks and people eat sitting on little stools with small tables. It’s quite comfortable and cheap – remarkable really given the healthy high quality, well-balanced, low-fat food. My kind of place!
After that, it was time for the National Museum to open and it was a spectacular tour through history. The artifacts there go back to prehistoric times in 30,000 BCE, and included things like farming equipment, jewelry, clothing, swords and knives, lots of stone dragons, and stone and wood Buddhas. Later, one can see a little bit about their long anti-colonial wars – though practically nothing really about what Americans call the “Vietnam War.” That tragic part of history was near the end of a much longer anti-colonial war against the French. The struggles for the independence of the Vietnamese people really started in 1858 and continued till 1945 which was followed by thirty years of war against foreign invaders from 1945 to 1975. There are other museums that have a lot of things about the “Vietnam War,” including the “Hoa Lo” Prison (what Americans call the Hanoi Hilton) but I don’t know if I’ll have time for all that as I never cared much for the 20th Century in general, and am much more interested in ancient history and Vietnam as it is today – a bustling, prosperous really very exciting and international place.
After the National Museum of History, we hopped a taxi for the sport administration complex to meet Master Hoang. Lucky, we got there about 30 minutes early which was just about enough time for some spectacularly delicious – no – not food this time – coffee! Oh yes, they have great super-coffee here.
By then it was 3:20, so we strolled across the street, entered the gate of the stately compound and asked the security guard where to go to meet Mr. Hoang Quock Vinh. (Luckily I had his name written down in Vietnamese because my pronunciation of all things Vietnamese is unquestionably barbarous and completely unintelligible.) The security guard brought us right to his office which was nice because we probably wouldn’t have found it ourselves. He politely introduced us to Master Hoang, who was obviously extremely busy. Nevertheless, he invited us to sit on his comfortable couch surrounded by lots of plants, several of which I think were carnations though I’m no expert on flowers.
Building with Wushu Training Halls.
At that point, I got the idea that Master Hoang is more than just the Secretary General of the Wushu Federation as the competition season is over for the year and he had pretty many people coming in asking for signatures, advice and so on. So they all cleared out when a few minutes later – after we exchanged name cards and pleasantries - the first question I asked was: “Are you maybe, in charge of some other sports too, besides Wushu?” And indeed I was right.
“Yes, now I’m taking care of 10 plus sports including Judo, Karate, Silat, Wushu and some others…” I also found out his Chinese “Putonghua” is really very good, better than mine in fact, and he and Miao were able to chat quite easily.
I then asked him about his affiliation with Wushu and found out he has a 15-year history with the Asian Wushu Federation and he was for many years the Vice President of the Asian Martial Arts Federation. He’s also trained in Wushu, Nanquan specifically and Taolu in several places in China with the longest stay in Wuhan explaining why his Putonghua is so fluent. His first real martial art training however was in boxing and he was on the National Team from 1983-1986 so he’s a real fighter, as well as a gifted Taolu master and top administrator, and I found out an International Referee too. An amazing gentleman to be sure!
“Wushu didn’t really come to Vietnam until 1997,” he said. I found out since then every year they bring a team to China for training both for competition and judging/refereeing and at this time they have two certified international referees for Sanshou and two for Taolu. For some odd reason at this point I got a little curious about his age and found out he’s 51, which surprised me a bit because he looks more like late 30s or maybe early 40s.
I asked him about how many Wushu students they have now in Vietnam and found out it’s more than 10,000 just studying Tai Chi around the country implying the total number is much greater than that, and when they have national competitions the best from each of the 32 provinces participate which adds up to around 400 or so competitors.
“So,” I asked “how are your teams doing in international competition?”
“Very good,” Hoang answered enthusiastically. “We’re ranked usually about 4th or 5th in the world, behind China, Hong Kong, and Macao, and rank about equal with Iran.”
“Yep,” I agreed, “across the Silk Roads, everyone has respect for Iran’s martial arts teams.”
“They’re very, very good,” he added.
This is something I learned back in the mid-1990s at the first international martial competitions I attended in South Asia. Iran’s Karate, Taekwondo and Wushu teams are nothing short of spectacular.
I asked about some of his champions and he first mentioned Duong Thuy Vi. She started her international competition career doing Taolu back in the 2010 Asian Games in Guanzhou where she came in 4th. Not too shabby indeed! Every year since then she’s been coming in first or second in the World, Asian and Southeast Asian (SEA) Games. He also mentioned Mui Ziang who in the 52 Kilo division has been winning big-time in international Sanshou competitions, and a few other superstars of the international Wushu competition circuit.
Before long Hoang had more business to attend to and called the General Manager of Wushu teams to bring us over to their training hall so we could meet, photograph and interview some of these great young athletes. Their national training center is a bit older but obviously serves its function well judging by the results from their competitions. On the first floor is a swimming pool; the Taolu team practices on the third floor and Sanshou training is held on the 4th floor.
First we met Nguyen Van Chuong who is the General Coach and is usually called something like Zhang Jiaolien which means Coach Zhang. Fortunately most of the top competitors and coaches with the national teams speak Chinese fairly well. They have several lady coaches with two coming from China, one being Ju Jinyi, from Chenyang. She was on the Chinese National Team from Shanxi Province. Later in the evening I met another lady coach named Nguyen Hi usually called My Duc who mainly teaches Changquan or Long Fist. She trained at Shichahai (the national training center in Beijing) and one of her teachers was the legendary Wu Bin! She’s teaching the juniors these days with no doubt the same vigor and skills she learned in China’s National Training Center. Now she’s married with an eight-year-old daughter, and teaches P.E. during the days at a private international school in Hanoi. But back in the day she was the SEA Games champion five times, won bronze in the Asian Games in 2002, and two golds in 2004. My Duc’s introduction to Wushu came when she was eight years old. Her parents decided she was just “toooo thin!” and so brought her to a Wushu club to strengthen her up. She speaks English fairly well.
Also at their National Training Center on this amazing Thursday we got to meet some of their top Taolu competitors, including two amazing young ladies, “Vi” (Duong Thuy Vi), and Hoang Thi Phuting Qiang as well as a young man Pham Quoc Khanh all of whom demonstrated precise, powerful and beautiful technique. After taking a few photos of their and other team member’s training I was fortunate to get at least brief interviews with these very talented Taolu master competitors. I was curious about how and why Vi got into Wushu in the first place. “My cousin is very overweight,” she said, “so his parents sent him to Wushu classes to lose weight. I went with him just for fun. He dropped out after a month but I loved it so much I just didn’t want to stop.”
The next afternoon we came back to visit the Sanshou Youth Team which was divided into roughly three groups. I had the great honor to be allowed to lead a stretching routine, teach some kick-punch combinations and then introduce slow-motion sparring to them. It was huge fun and they’re all very good natured young men.
That evening we went out with My Duc, her husband and daughter for coffee as she has friends in Luk Yen, a small-town brimming with precious stones, (spinel, sapphires and rubies, tourmaline and garnets) we were planning to visit later on in our adventures in Vietnam. Across the street from the Starbucks, we went to was the lovely neo-Gothic style St. Joseph Cathedral completed in 1887 by Monseigneur Pigneau de Hehaine. About 12% of Vietnamese are Buddhist, and 6.2 million or about 7% of Vietnamese are Catholic. Vietnam is very pluralistic as houses of worship of all major religions can be found here though the most popular belief systems are folk religions which include Gods, Goddesses and ancestor religions.
8 b Small section of front_piece above door in Quan Thanh Temple.
Saturday December 29, 2018
On this day, Miao had to study for exams at Beijing University, so I flew out solo and discovered that Vietnam does have a “winter” of sorts. The weather changed from a daytime sunny 78 degrees to about 45 and it rained pretty hard. Fortunately, I’m an outdoor sports guy too and it’s still heck a lot warmer than Beijing.
I visited Thang Long Citadel – the Capital City of the Great Viet during the Ly, Tran and Le Dynasties, 11th – 18th Centuries and also High Command Center during the anti-colonial wars. For a long time the histories they’d uncovered at the Citadel only went as far back as the year 1010 when King Ly Cong Uan moved the capital city from Hoa Lu to Dai La which was then renamed Thang Long, but in 2002 workers found archeological remains under the new National Assembly building going back to the 7th Century. The Citadel once was a fortified city within a city with three concentric walls; the outer wall defined the fortress, the middle wall housed the Imperial Citadel and the inner wall protected the “Forbidden Citadel.” Touring inside one can see archeologists at work meticulously brushing away the centuries from even more ancient ruins underneath, and be invited to drink water from one of the ancient wells as wooden ladles are provided. This location is literally a time capsule into the most ancient Vietnam.
For The Silk Road Kung Fu Friendship Tour Part 24, click here.
