When training jiujitsu in Urumchi, my teammates and I used these four words to say “goodbye.”
When we walked out of the gym each night and stood outside the front door, we delayed for a few moments before we went our separate ways for the night. With small talk and with assurances of “I’ll see you on Tuesday at 6!” (or whenever the next training session was), we idled a bit longer than necessary, each of us reluctant to disconnect. A small part of me acknowledged the anxiety rising in my chest as I thought about the return to the loneliness of my empty home. As we started walking our separate directions, we would call out to each other, waving the entire time, in these four different languages as we parted ways: Uyghur, Chinese, Russian, and English.
We consistently conversed in these four languages. The only language I didn’t know was Russian. I always felt a bit pouty being left out of those conversations.
I guess it made sense why the Chinese people got jealous of my conversations in Uyghur, and those who didn’t speak English looked upon enviously when I chatted fluently with the Filipinos.
Training jiujitsu in a melting pot
Urumchi sits at one of the farthest points on earth from an ocean (1500 miles). But that does not mean that the city is isolated by any means. Situated along the ancient Silk Road, Urumchi sits at the intersection of many different trade routes and cultures as it has for millennia: Chinese, Turkish, Russian, and Indian, just to name a few. With globalization and modernity—the city was a hub for trade, transportation, oil, natural gas, and other industries—many had flocked to the region for school, work, or business, and I trained with Kazakhs, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Filipinos, Belarusians, Russians, Ukrainians, Americans, Ausssies, and Brits.
The question people always ask me is: What was it like to train with different cultures? As I’ve written about before in another article, the answer is: Jiujitsu really wasn’t that different across cultures. Jiujitsu is a universal language. It is a language of chess, of give and take, of submission and of defense. It is a language of vulnerability and trust. It is a language of community and support. It is a gentle art that embraces flow. We are not so different as human beings when it comes down to it. And we are all one.
The biggest difference was that being a woman in China meant that some people thought I was weird, some people flirted with me, some people ignored me, some people avoided me. But otherwise, we were there to train jiujitsu and focused on that goal.
Coaching jiujitsu in Chinese
When I coached jiujitsu, I taught in Chinese. By the time I moved to Urumchi, I had lived in China for 3 years. I was almost fluent in Chinese and very comfortable speaking and coaching in that language. I didn’t have to think about it—I thought in Chinese and therefore speaking it came very easy to me.
Most of the expats that lived in Xinjiang spoke Chinese, so this was not a problem. Their Chinese was better than their English. Many of them did not speak English at all, so it was more convenient for me to teach in Chinese than any other language. If there was someone in the class that didn’t speak Chinese but did speak English, I would teach the lesson in both languages. With jiujitsu, you have to show the technique at least three times, so I would show it in Chinese twice and English once if need be.
Training and coaching jiujitsu definitely helped me learn to speak better Chinese. From the vocabulary to the verbs, I thoroughly enjoyed challenging myself in this way. I basked in the thrill of putting myself on the spotlight in front of a group of people to teach jiujitsu four times a week. In addition to jiujitsu class, simply the everyday talk in the locker room, dinners after training, and parties on the weekend helped with my fluency as well.
Learning jiujitsu moves and positions in Chinese put a smile on my face the first time I heard them translated. For example, with the armbar in jiujitsu, the key part of the move is to position your body perpendicular to your partner, creating a cross shape with your body and your partners body. In Chinese, the character for the number 10 is a cross [十]. So, the name of that lock in Chinese is not armbar, it’s “10 character lock,” or “十字固 shi zi gu.”
Learning Uyghur
When I moved to Xinjiang, I started learning Uyghur as my third language and this added an extra dimension to my jiujitsu training.
It took about three months of full language immersion before I could start having full conversations in Uyghur, and after that, my roommate, Guzelnur, who also trained jiujitsu, and I conversed exclusively in Uyghur.
When I say full language immersion, I mean that I spent about 6 hours a day studying the language.
I took professional Uyghur language classes at the local college 4 hours a day, 4 days a week. It was there that I learned the alphabet, as well as went over key grammar concepts and vocab, forming a foundation for my language ability.
I also had four textbooks I had brought over from the United States. Using those, I self-taught and drilled the grammar concepts—conjugations, suffixes, and directional words—over and over again. I had a private tutor I met with for two hours once a week, and we came up with everyday useful phrases for me to memorize (At first, “I’m sorry, excuse me, Sorry, I don’t speak Uyghur” and later, directions for taxi drivers and conversations with cashiers), and went over the grammar for them.
I used Anki, a flashcard software for language learning, and drilled 50 new vocab words each week. I also bought some children’s books, listened to Uyghur music and audiobooks and Uyghur radio, and practiced with my roommate, Guzelnur. I also had a language partner I met with once a week for several hours. We would spend about 4 hours speaking in Uyghur and 4 hours speaking in English. He was so patient with me and never broke out of speaking in Uyghur the entire time.
I was completely obsessed with and devoted all of my time to learning Uyghur—there was virtually no other job or goal I had until I obtained proficiency enough to conduct interviews.
Learning foreign languages: A return to humanity and childhood
It was SO fun. I loved learning a new language. First of all, I felt like a child again, and that was freeing. Life became very simple. When speaking in Uyghur, I was in flow state, completely present. Frustrated at times, of course, when someone didn’t understand me, but for the most part, completely attentive. You have to be totally in the moment because you are focusing on the pronunciation, grammar and new vocab all at once. It also made me feel fun and funny, as I would say funny things that would make people collapse into laughter on a frequent basis, whether from a mispronunciation or a grammar mistake that just sounded ridiculous. For example, in Chinese and Uyghur they say, “I drink soup.” So, when I said “eat soup” as we would in English, they would crack up.
You go back to the roots of being human this way. I was young again, curious and constantly learning new things. I felt like my brain was expanding, ready to absorb everything around me like a sponge and this also made me feel young and energized again. Of course, it was exhausting too, and I needed copious amounts of alone time to re-charge. At the end of every day, I collapsed into my mat on the floor and fell asleep instantly.
Once I learned Uyghur, Uyghur people loved me. They giggled and smiled and were sometimes shocked that a foreigner could speak their language. They were fascinated by me and eager to speak to me in their mother tongues. It gave us a sense of privacy too, since if we were around Chinese people, they knew that if the Chinese people overheard us saying something politically incorrect, they wouldn’t be able to understand us.
When I was doing my language pledges (once in 2015 and again in 2016), I only spoke, listened, wrote, or read in Uyghur for six weeks. During that time, during jiujitsu class I only spoke Uyghur to the Uyghurs there.
In the end, I loved training jiujitsu in Urumchi because it brought out the diversity of the city, a cosmopolitan melting pot of many different cultures and languages. It was a privilege to be able to teach jiujitsu in Chinese while I was there, and have the opportunity to completely immerse myself in the Uyghur language during the rest of my life as well.
Most importantly, I met a diverse group of people from all around the world, young people who had moved away from home in search of adventure and a livelihood. They were all seeking work and a better future for themselves and their families and were willing to do anything to improve themselves and their lives. There was a constant feeling of energy and aliveness in the air, a presence that invoked a sense of humanity and embraced the uncertainty of our future.
I wonder what they are doing now, and if they still think of our jiujitsu club. I wonder if they remember those days as a time we were connected and celebrated our humanity and presence.
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