Silk Market and Jade's Gymnastics training

Today we enjoyed breakfast cereal in our room for breakfast after a new friend whom we'd met in our hostel's restaurant brought some back for us from Wangfujing Street. I still have a full box of Special K Forest Berries from Australia which Jade has been carrying all over China for me so I had that. Jarrah had Corn Flakes and Jade had Cheerios. Paul had some bread and spreads as he's not into cereal.

Then we walked to Tiananmen Square again to the Quanmen subway station and took the train to the Silk Market. The Silk Market is a 9 floor indoor shopping centre filled with individual stalls. We entered it in the shoe section and were bombarded with people offering us shoes as we walked through. Paul said it was like running the gauntlet. We then separated so that Paul could look for silk ties and I would take the kids to look for Gameboy games. The bargaining was tough but the kids got what they wanted for a fraction of the Australian price and Paul got three ties. I had little time for myself but did manage to buy a wallet. I'll have to go back another time to have a proper look around.

Jade outside the sports training school

After shopping we took the subway back to our hostel, grabbed a quick lunch and were picked up by our guide Cecelia and driver Mr. Li and taken to the Shichahai Sports School for Jade's gymnastics training session. Jade's session ran from 2-4pm and we got to watch a bit at the beginning. Once we were sure she was OK we went on a tour of the school's facilities. The sports school trains elite sports people in a range of sports including tennis, badminton, table tennis, volleyball, Kung fu, boxing, gymnastics of course and others. We were told the school has about 600 students ranging in age from very young children to adults who have finished their schooling. We got to see a number of sports in training but were not allowed to take any photos of them. At about 3:30 we returned to watch Jade a bit more and I was surprised to find that she was still on the balance beam. According to the Chinese method of training the athletes train on one piece of equipment each training session. There are no rotations as we were used to in Australia. We hadn't expected this at all and hadn't been told about it. I asked if they could be sure that Jade trained on a different piece of equipment on Wednesday during her next training session and they agreed. In addition, they moved her to vault training for the last half hour. Jade has hardly had any training on vault and had no idea how to run or jump correctly. Her legs and arms were all over the place but the coach (through our guide) told her how to run, what to do with her arms and how to manage her jump. When Jade was later asked what apparatus she wanted to train on on Wednesday she chose the bars and vault. It seems that the Chinese methods of training involve concentrated repetition whereas the Australian methods involve variety. When I told this to our friend at the hostel tonight he said that obviously the Chinese methods are the ones that work! Why are things done differently in Australia? Is it to keep the children's interest in training that they are given variety each session? Or is there more parental pressure in Australia on the coaching methods whereas in China the coach is seen as the one who knows best? Just some questions I ask as you do when you experience different ways of doing things.

Warming up for her training session--this was the only photo I was allowed to take

We caught our van back to the hostel. Paul and I headed off to a supermarket to get a couple of things and I had an incredible find--Yunnan tea!!! I've been looking for Yunnan tea after falling in love with Twinnings Yunnan just before they took it off the market. I've looked on the internet and in the US but no luck. I didn't think to look for it in China but luckily I've stumbled across it. I'm having a cup now and wondering how many boxes I can bring back with me??