Recycle!

Fellow Kung Fu Dork Jaka emailed us a great tip this afternoon. He suggested rather than throwing our used feiyues into the trash that we recycle them by bringing them to a Nike store, especially since there's one located a block away from Temple at 21 Mercer St. While this blog makes no specific endorsement of Nike sneakers or the company as a whole, reusing/recycling products such as sneakers instead of letting them go to waste by sitting in a landfill is something we can definitely get behind.

Supposedly, the recycled bits don't all go towards ridiculously-priced sneakers (though these are pretty hot); they are also used towards building synthetic surfaces and padding for courts, tracks and playgrounds.

Important Note: Nike can’t recycle shoes with metal parts, so be sure to cut off the eyelets on your feiyues.

You can read more about the Nike Reuse-A-Shoe program here, and maybe you too can find somewhere nearby to drop off those grubby shoes!

Remember, every little action we take can make a difference, whether we use reusable water bottles during class, wash our uniforms in environmentally-friendly detergents, or find alternate uses for those pesky plastic grocery bags, like for stretching!

CHI!

Fashion Do - Feiyues When Not Training

I saw this picture in The New York Times Travel section this weekend. The article was about how affordable Portland is. The picture was to point out that Portland can be easily navigated by bike. But it's not the bike that caught my eyes, it was the shoes.

From NY Times

Most of us have more than a few pairs of Feiyues at home - probably a good pair for training and multiple holey and raggedy pairs. I wear these old pairs sometimes on weekends when I knew I would be doing some kinds of Kung Fu (almost every weekend). I once wore it to a physical therapy session and got a compliment ("They are cute!")

So as a self-appointed fashion guru, I say wearing Feiyues casually is a DO.

Nice Shoes!

Check out what Orlando was recently spotted wearing on his feet on the set of his latest film in New York:

(Picture courtesy of Splash News)

Usually, I'm not so keen on him -- too scrawny? -- but I think his choice of footware (or at least that of the wardrobe designer's!) ups his hotness factor tenfold. He might wear ballet slippers normally for all I know...

Short end of the sock

A while back my socks stopped fitting, or my shoes stopped fitting. Whatever the actual cause I found that my feiyues suddenly rose higher on my ankle than my sock resulting in a discomfortable irritation that evolved into a straight-up injury. Oddly, only on my left foot. Weird. So I started buying taller socks. However I still own about twice as many of my earlier brand and so often have settled for them when laundry is due. Tonight was that night and I was not half-way through my lunbi caijiaos before my left shoe had rubbed my heel raw. It was not going to be a good night.

I came to class with low chi and even coffee did nothing to get my engine running. And my attempts at head flips were even worse than usual. So when my shoe started acting up I was ready to write off anything better than struggling through the first hour so I could get to the changing room and put on the socks I wore at work. (tall and wool, not the most ideal for training, but at least they covered my ankle) As it turned out, I guess I didn't look as bad as I felt, or my ankle distracted me from over thinking my movements, because Khalid, who was teaching, asked me to demonstrate not one but TWO moves during basics. And it was two moves I never felt particularly good at, but I guess my mechanics at least were on point. While the rest of class was still pretty rocky, I used that confidence to help propel me to the end, by reminding myself, that even on the lowest chi days you can still move forward.

When do you retire your Feiyues?

I usually retire mine when they are less than perfect, i.e., their soles have started to chip, the front has started to gape open, the color has started to yellow (just kidding).

But seeing this picture from Richu's blog changed my perspective about Feiyue's life expectancy completely.


How did they do it? How did they train in those shoes?

I went home and picked my old Feiyues with a little hole under my left big toe from the trash. I wanted to see how far I could go training with a hole under my foot.

It wasn't far. I couldn't take it. I couldn't bear my toe having direct contact with the carpet - especially the sweep. It's ticklish. It feels naked. And the final condition of my Feiyues is no where close to that of those shoes in the picture.

When do you decide it's time to retire yours?

Learn Chinese -- Feiyue!

So, like, yoooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Inspired by Rob's recent acquisition of navy blue shaolin kicks (and needing a distraction whilst at work), I decided to take a gander at the Feiyue website (European version only, malheursement), and noticed this:

Seeing the pronunciation in the braces, it then occurred to me that the word 'Feiyue' is actually pinyin for Chinese characters. I consulted with our resident Chinese expert, Heng De, and he believes that the characters are 飞跃 (simplified; 飛躍 - traditional). He sent me to this online dictionary so I could confirm how it should be pronounced (1st line).

So it turns out, the proper pronunciation of Feiyue, is not fay yoo (or fay view, as some of us think it's a 'v' instead of a 'y'), but more like, fay yweh (much like Heng Yue's name)!

Oh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhh, taking dork to a whole new level!

Update (8/19): I just consulted with my parents, and both believe that the second character above (躍) is pronounced more like yao, and that the actual Chinese characters for feiyue is more probably the ones found on the second line of the dictionary entry linked above (飞越 - simplified; 飛越 - traditional).

Breaking in!

No, I'm not the victim of a home invasion; I'm talking about my new feyiues. But we here at KFDU like puns. And for how tough it is to break in a new pair of kicks, it feels like trying to break down a door. My new shoes are black (yes I'm just that cool) and they bring me great joy, but I miss doing the sweep in my super slick shoes....

Maybe there's some way to wear down the treads with something... back in GA the trucker dudes would break in new hats by rolling them up and stuffing them in a glass of water for a few days. Get that authentic, worn down, stuffed-in-a-glass-of-water look I guess... And the hippie kids would break in their hacky sacks (remember those?) by running over them with their cars several times. So I have faith there must be a way to accelerate the breaking in of my shoes.

On the other hand, it was a lot easier to get out of straddle stretch with a little friction on my feet. So maybe I'll just let nature (the nature of my shoes anyway) take its course. I'm sure I'll sweep away the tread in no time. Or five kick it away... last night I learned erluquan up to the five kicks, so it's only a matter of time. New shoes = good luck?

Shaolin Kicks

By now, you are probably familiar with our trials and tribulations for learning the sweep kick. Lately, as I've been able to make somewhat full circles (yay!), I decided that my beat-up, well-worn pair of training shoes have been a plus due to their smooth bottoms which allow me to spin around somewhat easily on the carpet. I imagine that a new pair of feiyues with their grippy ridged bottoms would render rotations more difficult.

Saturday, however, I hit a snag, quite literally. My right shoe dragged at one point (probably during fanyao or pubu chuanzhang lunbi zaquan) and ripped, connecting the hole that was at the tip of my shoe with the hole under my big toe, resulting in a gaping hole with a flap. I also noticed that when I did pubu to that side, especially during yiluquan, the lack of any grip caused me to slip even deeper into the stance. Owie!

I imagine I'll have to retire this pair very soon, as I doubt training with a monster opening on my shoe could be a good thing. The dork in me loves it, however, when I've managed to wear out another pair -- it's like a kung fu milestone, or some badge of having trained harder.

PS -- Saturday, I noticed Gombulla had some awesome magenta/pink feiyues on. At first, I assumed he might have ordered them from somewhere, like from this European feiyue website (which is bloody expensive), but then he revealed to me that he dyed a white pair himself. Awesome!