Before going to Shuicheng, I had imagined meeting many top players and so I put in my bag my “little gyro” of 4.5 kg. Unfortunately, once there, I discovered that the 5 or 10 kg gyro were not in the competition program: the only permitted categories were the gyros plate (Guizhou style), the small tops of less than one kilo thrown with a string for the address tests and, finally, the giant 1100 kg gyro.
Moreover, I had not carried my one metre fifty whipping pole because I knew that we would take TGV to return and I didn’t want to abandon once again my stick to the staff of China Railways. So the top was stuck in my bag, but I played whip with everyone who wanted to show me and there were numbers.
There was first, the Zhengzhou team coach who gave me a demonstration in front of the hotel and showed some movements. Later I met the coach of the Beijing team who really wanted to teach me a lesson. Then there were the youngsters of the local whip team who started to teach me how to play the whip correctly. They were half a dozen, twelve or thirteen years old and probably practiced the whip since they were 8 years old. That’s when I realized I got some bad habits.
I was static, camped on my two feet, while they where wheeling, moving from one support to the other to follow the whip’s movements. During the two days that followed, I was lost. Between the lessons of my friends Wang de and Pin, and those of the young whip players, I had lost all my bearings.
So I started to work on the body movement and support with my wife’s help. And lucky, on the morning of our departure, we went back to the arena for a last training and we met Mister Liu’s wife who gave us a special little lesson that I captured on video.
Since returning to Zhanjiang, I try to forget my bad habits and I take back the basic movements with what I learned in Shuicheng.