First Competition & Hong Kong!

Brace yourselves – this is going to be another long one all about our first competition and my whirlwind of a week in Hong Kong.

The other weekend our teams competed at their very first competition, and it was great! It was definitely a learning experience for everyone involved, but we have had the mentality that we just have to go in order for the parents and athletes to really understand what our programs/teams are all about.

To give some background information, our gym is (from what we know) one of the first, if not THE first, place in China to do cheerleading and dance competitively the way that it is done in the United States. The organization we competed with is called China Cheerleading Association (CCA), and this company’s perception of cheerleading/dance is very different than it is in the U.S. for companies like UCA/UDA where our gym’s instructors/coaches are coming from. Cheerleading here isn’t at all like it is in the U.S. There is no tumbling (with the exception of maybe some poorly-executed cartwheels) and no stunting, which are the two defining characteristics of U.S. cheerleading. Here in China, cheerleading and dance are viewed as nearly the same thing. However, the routines are not similar to competitive dance teams in the U.S. either. Cheer/dance routines here are simply pom motions and aerobic movements. So literally, dancers are just running in place while shaking their poms, and then doing some very simple and slow pom motions to the beat of the music. Dance teams in the U.S. are more focused on the dance ability and showcasing the dancers’ skills and technique, while possibly holding poms if it is a pom routine. CCA has the idea of making cheerleading/dance into a business, and in doing that they have tried to get cheerleading and dance integrated into every school (which is where most of our competitors come from, rather than from studios and/or gyms). However, there are not enough people in China qualified in cheerleading/dance at the same level as there are in the U.S., so for this reason, it has been “dumbed down” to this mediocre level in order to help get more kids involved. For them, the priority is more about the quantity of people involved rather than the quality of their training.

With that being said, our head coaches here at the gym are all UCA/UDA trained instructors, so we are obviously choreographing our routines in the same way we would in the U.S. This means that our routines stick out like a sore thumb. Our cheerleading routines are packed with tumbling and there are little munchkins up in stunts nearly the entire routine. Our dance routines show off the dancers’ pirouettes and leaps and battements. Our routines aim to showcase the athletes’ training and skill level.

As mentioned earlier, CCA wants to make cheerleading/dance accessible to everyone so they have lowered the standards so that they don’t need someone super qualified in order to teach or coach these teams. To do that, CCA provides routines for each division. You do not have to use these routines, but MANY teams did. So for each division, there is one routine that someone from CCA has choreographed, recorded, and sent to all of these schools/teams. The teams that choose to use this routine have to use it exactly as it is. They have to be in the exact formations, use the same groupings, EVERYTHING. I can’t tell you how boring this was. I saw sooooo many teams performing the same bland routine to the YMCA. If I had to hear that song one more time I was going to go crazy. It’s an interesting concept because I guess it does make sense to level the playing field, but only if everybody is required to use that routine. Plus, after seeing that same routine so many times, it makes me wonder how the judges really judged any of those routines against their competitors who did the SAME ROUTINE. There are no differences in choreography or difficulty… the only differing factors would be uniformity (how clean/together they were) and costumes. The same goes for the cheerleading teams. The “cheerleading” teams were doing the same CCA routines as the dance teams.

We knew this going into the competition, so we weren’t sure how to expect our teams to perform. The judges were either going to LOVE what we were doing and be impressed by it, or they were going to be confused by teams doing something different and “punish” us for not fitting their mold. Either way, we knew that as a gym, our goal is to start trying to spread this style of cheerleading/dance in China. Regardless of the feedback that we get from the judges, we are going to stick to our style.

The competition was still in Guangzhou, but the venue was about an hour away. It was a long day, and Clint, Li Yen, and I left the apartment at 5:30am to walk to the gym. It was too early to even take the metro, and it should be illegal to be up that early on a Sunday. We double checked to make sure we had everything and waited for the athletes and their families to meet at the gym for the bus. We packed up the bus, got everyone settled, and hit the road at 7:00am. Once we got to the venue, we found a space to claim as our own and started getting our first cheer team ready and warmed up. They were the very first team of the day to compete! I didn’t actually get to watch them because I was getting one of my teams warmed up, but they did very well and got first place (they were also the only ones in their division, but we’ve decided not to tell them that part and burst their bubble lol).

My first team to compete was Senior Dance Team. This is the smallest of the dance teams with only four members. One of the dancers couldn’t be at the competition, so only three were competing. These dancers are ages 9-14. CCA has weird rules about team sizes. At first they had said that you have to have at least eight athletes to compete, so we thought the Senior Dance Team wasn’t going to be able to compete at all. We later found out that you CAN compete with any number of athletes, but if you have less than eight you will get deductions per athlete missing. So the fewer athletes you have, the more deductions you receive. I personally think that’s so stupid because if the size of the team is an issue then they should split up their divisions based on size so the routines can be fairly judged based on their skill level and not their team size. But whatever! So the dancers knew going into the competition that they were going to receive a lot of deductions simply because there are only three of them. I felt so bad telling them this news. This team in particular was most excited for competition so it broke my heart to have to tell them that CCA was basically setting them up to fail from the start. Despite all this, they did awesome! I had been a little nervous during our practices that morning because they kept making silly mistakes, but they pulled it together on stage and did great.

My second team to compete was Mini Dance Team. This is my youngest team. They are ages 4-7. They are my most difficult team partly because of their age, but mostly due to the fact that none of them speak English. Sometimes I think they can understand at least part of what I’m saying, and then other times I’m like “yeah… I’m just talking to myself over here, aren’t I?” They are definitely a challenge, to put it lightly… I have one girl on this team named Monica, and she is my trouble child. I don’t think she wants to be there at all, but Mom just likes having her in class to get her off her hands and exercising for an hour and 45 minutes, which is just great for me 🙂 I love it 🙂 She doesn’t know a single second of this routine. She stands in the back making faces at herself in the mirror, spinning in circles, and hula dancing (lol). It’s frustrating because without her the team would actually look pretty good! I can only go back and review so many times when everyone else knows what they’re doing. So I’ve come to terms with the fact that Monica is just going to be a deer in the headlights in the back corner. Considering all of this though, they looked pretty good and won first place in their division (they were also the only ones in the division, but again, we are keeping this information to ourselves because they are just so happy about it).

My last team of the day was Junior Dance Team. This is my best team! They are ages 6-9, and they’re my favorite to work with. Almost all of the girls speak English, and those who do speak it very well. We have a lot of fun at practices, and they always laugh at my jokes so naturally they are my favorites. Plus, they are SO cute, so even when they’re bugging me they can get away with it. I am most proud of this team – their performance at competition was the best they have ever danced! I didn’t see one mistake, and they all smiled the entire time (this is something we struggle with BIG TIME at practice). Their division was bigger (about 7 teams, I believe), and they did not place. I think this is partly due to the fact that our routine was so different from the CCA routine that all the other teams were doing. I was a little upset to see how low their score was, but then I realized what BS that is because they did sooo well. It just goes to show that the judges are looking more specifically for routines like the CCA-provided routine. Our dancers are just much more qualified than that, so we aren’t going to limit them to that simple of a routine. I’d rather have my kids learning how to actually dance rather than just marching in place and shaking their poms. It might be a while though until our kind of dance is recognized by CCA, but until then we’ll just have to stick to our guns. I didn’t get many pictures of them, but are here are three of them. I’ll take more at our next competition.

The rest of the afternoon after Junior Dance Team was jam-packed. Starting with Junior Dance Team, we had teams nearly back-to-back for the rest of the day. We also had a lot of kids that were on a dance AND a cheer team, so there was a lot of running around to switch kids between teams, change their uniforms, make sure that they had time to warm up, and stuff like that. Both of our hip hop teams competed, and our junior cheer team was the grand finale. They did awesome, and won first place!

It was definitely a crazy, yet successful, day! It’s interesting because every stereotype you have heard about Chinese children being involved in a ton of extracurriculars and taking lots of classes is entirely true (at least in the kids that I work with). All of my kids take so many classes: English, math, swimming, piano, fencing, painting, singing, ice skating… whatever it may be, on top of tumbling and dance classes. All of our kids are super busy (in addition to their crazy homework load at age 8 *insert eye roll*). What’s interesting though is that it is very rare for kids here to be involved in team activities. All of their extracurriculars are individual activities. With that being said, parents here don’t really understand teams. They don’t know what they are, what the personal benefits of being on a team are, or what responsibilities come with it. I guess that’s just part of the culture, but it has been SO frustrating to deal with because parents view this team commitment very lightly. Getting our teams to competition has been such a challenge because parents/kids don’t want to commit. They find out what day the competition is and they say they can’t go, but when you ask the parent it’s just because their child has a piano lesson that day and they don’t want to take the time to schedule a make-up class on a different day. Parents also don’t understand the fact that being on a team means that your actions affect other people and every team member is responsible for upholding their commitment. For example, they don’t understand that if one person on the cheer team suddenly can’t go to competition the week beforehand, that now the entire routine has to be adjusted so all of the stunts have enough people to safely get the flyers in the air. It has been really strange to deal with all of this because, to us foreign coaches, this is common knowledge! You’re on a team. You made a commitment to this. You can’t just not come to practice or decide not to come to competition because it affects everyone on the team. But parents (and kids) here just don’t understand it. It literally is a foreign concept to them. So we have had the mindset of “We just have to GO. We have to get them to this first competition so they can see what we’re talking about and understand what the goal is for these teams.” And boy, was it a struggle getting them here, but we did leave with a really positive reaction from parents and athletes. We now have so many parents and kids that are excited for the next competition and are getting involved in making team signs and wavers for parents in the audience. We are glad that the families now understand what the whole point of all this was, but it was such a struggle getting them to trust us enough for this first competition.

Competition day had been so long, and we were all so tired, but unfortunately, Clint, Li Yen, and I had to get up bright and early the next morning (Monday) and head to Hong Kong. Li Yen and I both needed to leave the country for our visas because our stays were nearly up (Li Yen’s visa requires her to leave the country every 30 days and mine every 60 days). Clint technically didn’t need to come, but he came along anyways, and thank GOD he did.

The purpose of this trip was for me to apply for a new Chinese visa. This whole issue started back in July when I first applied for my visa. Basically, I had been told to apply for the wrong kind of visa, and I was only granted a visa for four months rather than six. The way my visa worked is that I got two entries, each with a length of 60 days. I had left earlier than 60 days after my first entry because of my trip to Malaysia and Singapore, so my four month deadline was coming up. I had been told since July that it would be no problem to go to Hong Kong and apply for a new visa. It was basically a guarantee that I could get a 10 year multiple entry tourist visa in Hong Kong, and then I’d be set. Spoiler alert: It was NOT that easy!

We left the apartment around 9:30 and took a DiDi (Chinese Uber) to the train station and took one of the newly-built high-speed trains directly to Hong Kong. The train ride is only 50 minutes, and since this was technically a “business” trip for my visa, the gym paid for our tickets so we sat first class. This basically just meant wider and comfier seats, but as long as I’m not paying for it, I’m all about it. Once we got off the train we had to go through China customs/immigration, actually “cross the border” (a.k.a. walk across a painted line on the floor in the immigration building), then go through Hong Kong customs/immigration. This actually took a long time so it was a while before we were officially in Hong Kong and free to roam. We got lunch at a world-famous dim sum restaurant in the train station. Apparently Anthony Bourdain had featured this restaurant in one of his layover shows. It was so so good, and I was stuffed. We then took a quick taxi to our hotel, and got checked in. Again, since the gym was paying for this trip we were at a really nice hotel, AND my room got an upgrade so I had a king sized bed!

Li Yen and I dropped our stuff and went straight to the visa place, which was just on the other side of the square outside our hotel. We were going to be getting my visa processed through a third-party company. This is how I got my visa back in July too. It basically just saves you the trouble of having to actually go to the Consulate, and it’s faster. The employees here, who I saw way too much of this week, were not very friendly and it was clear they hated their jobs. So that made this process super fun! Again, I thought it would be as simple as going in and asking for the 10 year multiple entry tourist visa. I had been told it would be no problem. WRONG. There were several problems actually, the first being that I didn’t have enough blank pages in my passport. To apply for a Chinese visa you need to have 4 blank pages in your passport. I had two, but one was also the back cover, which the worker said did not count. I’m grateful to have enough stamps in my passport for this to be an issue, but it’s only an issue because my stamps have been spread out so much. I have tons of pages that have ONE stamp on them. Like… come on… if the immigration people had just put all of those stamps on the same page, I would have had a bunch of pages free, and this might not have ever been an issue. On top of that, there was a chance I might not be able to get this visa based on the type of visa that I already had. Either way, we decided to apply for it anyways, and if it got denied I would just have to pay the rejection fee. The chances of me getting this visa were slim, but it was worth trying just in case the visa gods were on my side.

This all happened on Monday. We knew that it was a 2-day service, but we didn’t know if this would include the day you dropped it off, or if it was the two days afterwards. Clint and Li Yen couldn’t remember from when they had done it themselves years ago. We had all packed an extra change of clothes just in case. We were thinking we’d be able to pick it up Tuesday afternoon and take the train back Tuesday night, but we were wrong. It wouldn’t be ready until Wednesday afternoon. (I had actually been hoping for this because I wanted a full day free to go to Disneyland, which I got, but considering the way the rest of this story goes, I really think I jinxed myself with this one…) After the stress of the afternoon, we all tried to forget about it since there was nothing to be done until Wednesday. We all went out to dinner in the square outside our hotel and sat outside eating nachos and pizza and drinking cocktails. The surrounding buildings all had Christmas/holiday lights up, so it was nice and relaxing.

The next day (Tuesday), I decided to go to Disneyland, and I am SO glad I did because it is the only positive thing that came out of this trip. I got to the park shortly after opening, and headed straight to the rides. I first went on the Iron Man Experience ride, which is exactly like Star Tours in the Orlando park, except that it’s Iron Man themed! I didn’t totally understand what was going on because “our” character (a robot sidekick? I think?) spoke Chinese, but Iron Man spoke English. It was still super fun though, and the ride takes place in Hong Kong so you feel like you’re flying through the city. I then went on Hyperspace Mountain, which is just Space Mountain, and that’s always a fun ride! I went on Mystic Manor, which is a dark-ride only in Hong Kong Disneyland. It’s comparable to Haunted Mansion, in terms of what kind of ride it is, but not at all in terms of storyline. It was fun! It’s themed around this explorer named Lord Henry Mystic who collects relics from all around the world, and he has this magical music box that can bring inanimate objects to life. His little monkey sidekick friend accidentally opens it as you’re being taken on a tour of his house to see his collections, so you get to see everything come to life. The catch is that not all of them are friendly… paintings of Pompeii and ancient Chinese warriors come to life, meaning you’re surrounded by volcanic eruptions and you find yourself under attack. It was very cute. I went on Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars, which is a rollercoaster similar to Expedition Everest, and I took a ferry to a little island that is home to Tarzan and Jane’s treehouse. This was super cool, and they had the Tarzan soundtrack playing in the background, which I loved. I also watched one of the Lion King shows, which was really good. There were nearly no lines. The park was practically empty compared to U.S. standards. And the park was decorated for the holidays so there were Christmas trees and lights up everywhere! Of course while I was there I had to get some classic Disney treats… I had some corn on the cob, popcorn, and churros. They’re just so good.

After I left Disneyland, I met up with Clint and Li Yen for dinner. We went to this burger place, and I honestly wasn’t even hungry so I don’t know WHY I ate so much. I got this portobello burger and it was GIANT. Plus I had gotten guacamole nacho fries… again, I don’t know what I was thinking. I couldn’t move. But on our walk back to the hotel we saw an Emack & Bolio’s, which is an ice cream place that we have at ISU, so I couldn’t NOT get some… I have never been more full in my life. I only regret this a little bit.

The next day (Wednesday) we got up and checked out of our hotel at noon, and just hung out in Starbucks (needed to stay somewhere we could have WiFi) until it was time to pick up my visa at 4:30. When we went to pick up my visa, it turned out there was an issue, and the consulate was requesting to see documentation from my university. At this time, it was the middle of the night in the U.S. (and on Thanksgiving break) so I told her I wouldn’t even be able to try to get anything until the next morning. This also meant I wouldn’t be able to get my passport back until the next day at the earliest. Clint and Li Yen had to leave to get back to Guangzhou since we had already missed the first day of our work week. The gym booked me another hotel room until Friday, and I went back to my room with some snacks and stress cried a little bit. It seemed like the chances of me getting this visa were slim to none, and I had no idea how I’d be able to get back into China at all. I was really regretting not packing more (I’d only brought my backpack) because I was re-wearing the same outfits over and over again, borrowing the hotel outlet adapters because I forgot mine, and sending a bunch of emails and doing a lot of research off of my phone rather than on my laptop. I also just really wished my pillow pet had been with me because I was sad and a little scared. 😦

On Thursday, I spent most of my time in the visa office. Happy Thanksgiving to me! I was unable to provide the necessary documentation from ISU, so I had to write a rejection letter to the Consulate so that I could get my passport released back to me. Once that was done, we decided it would be best for me to apply for a 30-day visa at the border. To do this, I fill out the application at this office, and they process it all for you at the consulate. The next day, you pick up your passport, take the metro to the border to pick up your visa, and then cross over into China from there. I spent HOURS at the office filling out all of this paperwork and getting all of the documentation from the gym in order to apply for this visa. Funny story: I had to keep filling out this one form over and over again, because the employees at the office had told me that I needed to change the wording in my job title. This was really no big deal, except it was annoying that I had to re-fill out the WHOLE page and re-write all of my personal information, the gym’s address, my Chinese contact’s information… It was just a lot. So right before I was about to fill out the form for the third time, I asked the woman at the desk if they had a white out pen that I could use since I only needed to change the one thing on the form. I explained it too in case she didn’t know what “white out” meant (her English was fine, but it was clearly not her first language). She got all worked up and very loudly said that no, no, they don’t have such a thing. Here is a new form, just fill out #1, 2, 3, not 4, 5, 6, but yes 7, 8, 9… and she’s saying this all very quickly, aggressively, and loudly… Like okay, lady… calm down, sheesh. So I sit down and fill out the whole form for the THIRD TIME. I finally bring it up to the desk to have her check it over, and it should be the final copy… She says it looks good, except that I put in the wrong port of entry. AND WHAT DOES SHE PULL OUT TO CHANGE IT? A WHITE OUT PEN. Oh man, it took everything in me to not say something mean and snarky because I was just cranky. I texted Clint and Li Yen about it afterwards and used a WeChat emoji with lasers coming out of its eyes to describe how I looked watching her use that white out pen.

Anyways! I submitted that application, went back to the hotel to shower, and then went out for dinner. The cool thing about Hong Kong, is that it is a former British colony, so there is a lot of British influence here. They drive on the left side of the road, they have British outlets, and there are tons of British food/shopping chains. I had dinner at Pizza Express, which is a sit-down pizza place that I went to a lot in London. I got a mushroom pizza, and got some ice cream on the walk back to the hotel. I got caramel ginger ice cream, which tasted like a gingersnap cookie. It was very yummy.

On Friday, I picked up my passport at 1:30pm along with the paperwork to hand in at the border visa office. I then took all of my stuff and got on the metro to take it to the northernmost stop at the Hong Kong/Chinese border. After getting off the metro, I went through Hong Kong customs/immigration, walked across the border into China, and went up to the border visa office. I had to turn in my application with my passport and then wait for the visa to be issued. The women at the office in Hong Kong had made it sound like it would be such a quick process… NOPE. I had to take a number when I first got there. I was number 181, and they were on number 151. I sat down and read on my phone until I finally got called up to actually apply for my visa. Then I sat down and waited again until it was time to collect my passport with my newly issued visa. This all took an hour and a half. I could finally go back downstairs, through Chinese customs/immigration, and BE IN CHINA!

Crossing at the border meant that I was in Shenzhen and would need to take a train back to Guangzhou. The gym hadn’t bought me a ticket in advance because there was no telling what time I would actually have my visa. The plan was just to have me buy my own ticket and get reimbursed. Li Yen had even sent me the Chinese translation for “One ticket Shenzhen to Guangzhou first class” that I could show at the ticket window. The problem was I couldn’t find any ticket window! The only thing in sight were automatic ticket machines, but they were only in Chinese… I tried calling Li Yen, but she was at the gym teaching one of the tumbling classes. I ended up on the phone with Mavis, who works the front desk at the gym and had been the one booking my hotel rooms and everything like that. She is Chinese, but her English is very good. There were no workers in sight, so we ended up FaceTiming in front of the automatic ticket machine with Mavis trying to tell me what to do. I’m sure this was very comical for everyone around me. You needed to tap your ID card, which for me is my passport, but the machines only worked with Chinese ID cards. So after 8 minutes on FaceTime, we realized it would be best for Mavis to just buy me a ticket and then I would get it issued once I got through security. This ended up working fine, and Mavis was the best. She was on the phone with me the whole time offering to talk to anybody at the train station that didn’t speak English. Luckily once I had a ticket, I was able to figure it out, but the offer was greatly appreciated. My train was 45 minutes delayed, and the ride itself was an hour and a half. By the time I got back into Guangzhou and took the metro to my apartment, it was 9:00pm. It had been a long day, and an even longer week. I had never been so happy to be in China in my LIFE.

So, while it’s good that I was able to finally get a visa, the one that I got is only for 30 days. If I were to apply for a new visa again, I would first have to get a brand new passport here in Guangzhou, and then go back to Hong Kong to reapply for the visa I already tried applying for. The chances of me getting issued this visa are so slim, that I would have to pack up all of my belongings and bring them to Hong Kong with me in the event that I don’t get issued a new visa and have to fly back to the U.S. right then and there. Clint, Li Yen, and I talked and just decided that it’s not worth the hassle, especially since the likelihood of getting this visa is so slim.

With that being said, I have to be out of China by December 22nd, and then I’m headed home! I’m only bummed that I can’t stay longer because I wanted to travel more and I have a paying job here, but that’s okay. I’m so excited to go home. I really like China, and I love the city I’m in, but I don’t love my life here so it kind of worked out. The next 30 days are going to FLY by. We have our national competition in Shenzhen this weekend, and I’m still going to try to get to Beijing and Shanghai before I leave. I mean, you can’t go to China and NOT see the Great Wall, right?! I also plan to stop in Thailand on my way out of China before heading to the U.S. It’ll be a fun and busy few weeks, but I’ll be home before I know it.

If you read all of this, thanks for sticking around because it was SUPER long. Again, be glad you’re not my mom because she got even MORE details on FaceTime (at all hours – even 3:00am on Thanksgiving!) all while I was stress crying thinking I was stranded alone in Hong Kong forever. Love you, momma!!