Life, Love, the Kitchen, and the Art of Kung Fu (Part 1)
By AJ Feeney-Ruiz
So there I was, shortly after St. Patrick’s Day 2015, cozied up to a gin and tonic at about 3pm on a Tuesday at the bar across from where I lived. A few months prior, I had wrapped up work on a successful US Congressional campaign. Successful in that we won. I, on the other hand, felt completely broken. Quite unexpectedly, I was asked to take the reins during the final and crucial months of race. The following weeks proved to be amongst the most difficult of my 20-year career in politics.
While I had almost a lifetime of experience in the field, I wasn’t prepared to be pulled, overnight, from my home, my girlfriend and my life.
While I had almost a lifetime of experience in the field, I wasn’t prepared to be pulled, overnight, from my home, my girlfriend and my life. The drama that often occurs on the campaign trail was amped up to 11 with an organization that was on the verge of a complete breakdown in leadership and staff, infighting, and a constant state of fear and anger. Not typically things one would expect from a campaign running more than 20 points up in the polls.
We won. I pulled another 72-hour, pre-Election Day all-nighter as I had done twice a year, every year for the previous 6 years, and about a dozen years since I decided I wanted to get involved in politics and jumped right in at the age of 13. We won. But I knew I had lost.
My bed, in my temporary apartment, for three months when I wasn’t sleeping under my desk in the office on the final campaign.
I looked at the career that I had so diligently put together and saw that I was absolutely miserable. That misery led to a breakdown of my life, my relationships, my ambition. I looked around and realized that I know longer had anything in common with the colleagues who had climbed the career ladder with me. All that I had ever really known and been known for (my fault) was this line of work. And I realized that I had come to despise it. Every day was a struggle to convince myself to get out of bed and do my job.
She was my best friend. At times she was my only friend and family, and that had taken its toll as well.
Fast forward to that day in March 2015. It had been months since I decided to walk away from politics, from the job offers on the table, the life that I had been living for 2/3 of my existence on this earth. This caused a rift with my girlfriend, a woman whom I had loved for most of my adult life. She was my best friend. At times she was my only friend and family, and that had taken its toll as well.
We broke up, again - we had become pretty good at that, just a couple of days before a friend walked into that bar and came to me with a proposition. He had just left his job and was feeling lost. His father, living in China for several years at that point, suggested that his son come out to the Far East and enroll in a Shaolin Kung Fu school that accepted a handful of foreign students to train alongside the 800 or so Chinese students, ranging in age from 6 to 18.
He told me that he recognized that I was lost too. No job or career. Inertia. I was in the worst shape of my life (he didn’t say that, but I was). I was drinking too much. Sleeping too much. I was deeply depressed. I needed a change. He knew that I had spent some time in China (in law school and then again in business school) and in Asia in general (I had traveled a bit in South East Asia and lived in the south of Thailand working as a SCUBA Divemaster). He also knew that I had done some martial arts (if you can call Muay Thai kickboxing a martial art), and he wanted a training buddy to join him in China to study Kung Fu.
I explained that I had no money - barely enough to cover rent at that point - and he pulled out his credit card and bought us both a return ticket to Beijing, on the spot. Leaving in less than a month later and returning six months after that. So that was that. We were leaving in 25 days.
All that stuff that now needed to find a home or a caregiver. Stuff. It’s funny how much ‘stuff’ can run your life.
Twenty-five days is not an ideal amount of time to get one’s affairs in order and prepare for six months of grueling training in the middle of nowhere in the Henan Province of China. I had to break the news to my girlfriend, because we obviously got back together - as had been our pattern. Try to explain to family and friends what exactly was happening. Figure out what to do with my apartment, my car, my motorcycle, my house. All the stuff I had accumulated over the years because I thought that was what we are supposed to do as humans. All that stuff that now needed to find a home or a caregiver. Stuff. It’s funny how much ‘stuff’ can run your life.
So I did all the things, got the visa and the insurance and all the necessary checklist items to relocate myself to a place about which I knew nothing, to study a martial art about which I knew nothing, to undergo training for which I was woefully ill-equipped, and to leave a life which was desperately in need of leaving.
On its face, the plan was simple: go to China, train, learn Kung Fu, meditate, get in shape, reset and return home to Indianapolis, Indiana in October, a new man, ready to take on the world. The problem was that I didn’t know what that world was supposed to be. That world was what broke me in the first place. To what exactly was I supposed to return. The woman? The career? The friends and family from whom I had felt I had been drifting for years?
Our digs at Shaolin Kung Fu school.
Last meal before officially enrolling in Shaolin Kung Fu school.
Hopping on a plane for China after less than a month to get ready.
The uniform.
Those questions were quickly put on the back-burner upon arrival at the Yuntai Mountain International Culture and Martial Arts School. Wake up at 5am. Warm up. Line up at 6am for roll call and mandatory pre-breakfast calisthenics. Shower. Breakfast. Morning Training. Lunch. Afternoon training. Dinner. Evening calisthenics. Bed by 9pm. Wake up. Repeat.
Let’s get this out of the way, Shaolin Kung Fu is not designed for 6’2, 230lb western dudes who are built like linebackers.
It would be an understatement to say that the first months were grueling. Let’s get this out of the way, Shaolin Kung Fu is not designed for 6’2, 230lb western dudes who are built like linebackers. I struggled to keep weight on with virtually no protein in our daily diet of congee, veggies and the occasional small chicken leg.
Quickly became a bit of a local celebrity.
Posing at a local charity event.
Training buddy and I in our school uniforms.
As the pounds dropped, I got into the routine of buying two dozen eggs and hard boiling four every morning in my plug-in tea kettle. I needed protein. And tons of it. I would collect as much dried meat and nuts as possible on our day off each week also in an effort to not lose muscle. I became well acquainted with the traditional Chinese medicine clinic and Thai massages each Sunday in an attempt to try to repair my body and knees that were barely keeping it together.
Sundays were mostly body rehab days from traditional Chinese Medicine or Thai massage.
This is China. You really never know what to expect.
Knuckle pushups every day.
After about 6 weeks of training.
My friend who convinced me to join him at the school, quit due to injuries about two months into the training. His body couldn’t hold up anymore. But I stayed, and pushed. And as I saw my body transform, and the forms became easier to learn, Kung Fu began to make sense. I understood why I moved my body one way and then abruptly shifted. I saw how a shuffle resembling a break dance move was actually a way to bring down an opponent and quickly end a fight. I got Kung Fu. And then I graduated to weapons.
To be continued in Life, Love, the Kitchen and the Art of Kung Fu (Part 2)
And then I graduated to weapons.
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My first Father’s Day.