My biggest challenges during my year in Shengjing Shan #1 Training along the seasons: Dealing with the hottest days in summer and the coldest days in winter
There is a saying in Chinese 冬练三九夏三伏 （dōng liàn sān jiǔ xià liàn sān fú）which means which means you should practice both in the cold weather and in the hot weather, because only when we train under the most difficult conditions we are able to master our skills.
And I admit Training almost every day along the seasons was quite a challenge.
As the training was mostly outside at the school’s yard we were in direct contact with the nature and the weather every day. When I arrived in April the weather was perfect for training. It was quite warm during day but still a little bit cold at night. Everything started to get green and it slowly became warmer. In June some days were already hot and we went to the sea to swim. The most humid and hottest months were July and August. I felt like sweating 24 hours a day. The training was one reason but the very humid weather made it much worse. It was actually not that hot, around 30 degrees during day, but it was very hard to cool down, even at night it was still over 25 degrees. Together with the training it really made the body tired and I felt very exhausted a lot of times.
And there was another thing: The noises of the crickets. Now you might think what should be the problem of a nice chirr. I also thought that at first, when there were only a few. But they became more and more and it got louder and louder. And it didn’t stop for over a month. One day Wang Shifu and caught a few of them and we are them for dinner. They were actually quite delicious. Crunchy like a snack 😀
It was very relieving when it finally stopped and the days became a little bit cooler. September, October and also November was perfect for training.
And then the winter came. At the end of November it suddenly got cold. As there was no heating in the building we had to wear a lot of clothes. During the training it was quite fine but as soon as the training was over and the body started to cool down it was very cold. And to be honest I was freezing a lot. During the coldest time we were allowed to use the heater for one hour in the morning and one and a half hour in the evening. But as soon as the heater was off it was cold again. I slept with four blankets and even had a heated blanket. Like this I finally wasn’t freezing anymore.
The biggest challenge was taking a shower. You can imagine there was no heating in the shower and the water pressure was not high too. I remember myself standing under the shower with ice next to me, still freezing although the water was hot. My hands were always cold and started to get swollen. I never had that before. The Chinese people knew about that, they said my hand was frozen. The German diagnosis would probably be chilblains. After I had chilblains myself and survived the winter in China, I am definitely not a chilblain anymore 😉
Finally at the beginning of March it was slowly getting warmer. And I really enjoyed wearing less and less clothes. Also my hands recovered to normal again. In the middle of the month I even was able to train with T Shirt some afternoons. The winter was finally over.