The Legend of Kung Fu

As far as I can remembered, Ryan has always been interested in kung fu and has been demonstrating and posing with his self taught moves in a lot of his pictures as far back as when he was only two. He was agile, flexible and above all, focus and passionate for the art.

Ryan, his friend Slevin and his head coach posing with the performers on stage after the show 'The Legend of Kung Fu'

Hence, as I have posted in one of my earlier post, we wasted no time, in registering him to one of the Shaolin kung fu classes for children his age when we finally found one bear our place. He has been practicing and learning his Shaolin kung fu for a couple of months now and had learnt quite a number of impressive moves which include his signature eagle, tiger and snake stance, all of which he is just too eager to demonstrate whenever he has a chance. Chenya is picking up her kung fu `moves' too, imitating his brother, watching from the sidelines.

Ryan going through his kung fu moves during training every Sunday afternoon.

His head coach seemed to have a special liking for him and at times, pushed him to practice with some older kids or used him to demonstrate some moves to the younger ones, all of which Ryan was just too please.

Ryan with his kung fu stance, taken during our holiday trip to Club Med Bali in 2011. We had always wanted him to learn wushu properly. Little did imagine, that he is now learning Shaolin Kung Fun in BEIJING, CHINA!

Recently, his class organized an evening to watch the well received 'The LEGEND OF KUNG FU' performance at the Red Theatre in Beijing (www.redtheatre.cn). Ryan was over the moon. Honestly, so was I as I have always, always been amazed with the`seemingly super human' feats that this monks could do. It was a family affair. We got special discounts for our seats and only had to pay RMB260 (RM130) for the RMB325 seats and it was 90 minutes performance.

Right from the word go, Ryan was sitting at the edge of his seat, eyes glued to the stage as the monks of all ages, leaped, jumped, somersaulted and `flew' with amazing flexibility and ease, occasionally yelling in recognition, some stance that he could identified with... "Tiger!!! Monkey!!! Eagle ...!!!"

Pictures from The Legend of Kung Fu website

The show was spectacular both as far as the stage production is concerned as well as the high quality of performance from the performers, bringing forth the message of the true value and meaning of practicing kung fu, their quest in training their body likened to rock and steel, as protectors of peace.

And where was Chenya in all this? Silently being cuddled by her mommy, hanging on to her trusty napkin, her thumb comfortably in her mouth, and her eyes peeled, constantly on a lookout for performers dropping from the ceiling or coming out from the side doors.

They must have been impressed by the performance. Why? Because I caught Chenya that night, smiling and with her eyes still closed, laughed and yelled "Very good (in Cantonese) and clapped" and continue sleeping.

And Ryan? He now inspired to be as good and wants to be able to break a metal bar over his head!!!!!! Not wanting to disappoint him, we told him that he could do that in due time and he need to practice harder and eat more to build up enough muscles and strength.

I just found out that they organized special tours to visit the Shaolin Temple. Emmmm...that would sound interesting, don't you think?