So I guess I finished off 2009 with a bang by quitting my desk job, winning gold at worlds, and then taking off to live in Taiwan for 2.5 months. I finally broke free of this “path” that seemed carved since birth. Once I had walked this path of getting good grades, graduating college, and getting a corporate job, I felt I could finally venture into what the rest of the universe had to offer. I just started truly discovering the endless possibilities of life towards the end of 2010.. but 2011 was the year that I would start learning more, questioning more, and pushing the envelope on what is capable in life.

Let me take a look back at the fruits of my labor for 2010.

It was definitely a year of meeting people! Not that I ever cared too much about merely “meeting people” but if there were ever celebrities or idols that I wanted to meet, I more than definitely got that out of my system this year. So to start out.. right after watching the fireworks at Taipei 101 I finished my enjoyable trip to Taiwan and headed back to LA. I headed straight back to LA just in time to rehearse and perform at a demo for Jackie Chan!

Jackie Chan at the Lionsgate's Movie The Spy Next Door Premier

Immediately after the demo before my body had even cooled down I caught a flight back to SF bay area to perform with my brother at an event my mom was helping out with around the Civic Center in San Jose.
Here I am with my brother working on our fight choreography for the performance.

Aside from all these demos, 2010 was also a new year for “wu shu” for me. Taking a gold at the world games was as far as I could have ever hoped to go with competitive taolu wushu. Immediately when I got back to LA I started training with world games sanda medalist Jason Yee. I was really excited to hear that he had moved to LA and was also working in entertainment. Including some wushu private lessons that I started teaching, I basically trained every day of the week – sometimes 2 times a day. My training would consist of sanda with Jason, wushu at LA wushu, tricking at white lotus, and gym time at LA fitness.

Me and Jason

A little sampler of my training at White Lotus.

For me, it was also a really meaningful year for wushu in another sense. 2010 was my last year doing competitive wushu. I was invited to the 2010 Sport Accord Games in Beijing, China based off of placing top 6 in a qualifying event at the world games.

My Last Wushu Competition

After more than 10 years of training wushu and competing, part of me looks back and thinks, it’s hard to believe that this part of my life is over. A couple years ago I couldn’t imagine a day where I wasn’t focusing on making the US wushu team. Of course everything has it’s time and place. I am so happy to have finished off my final competition at the Sport Accord Games. It was a high level first of it’s kind event recognized by the IOC to be held like an olympics for martial arts. I got my chance to compete in Beijing – a birthplace of modern wushu. Best of all I got to spend this trip with my US wushu teammates Sarah Chang and Peter Dang as well as my Canada wushu buddies. =)

Plus I finally got some espn-like wushu coverage with one of those high flying dolly-ing cameras. Check out my final performance.

Jackie Chan even congratulated me after the tournament. He ended up being an honored invited guest performer for the 2010 Sport Accord closing ceremony. You can still see my competitor badge below.

Alfred Hsing and Jackie Chan

It’s amazing how things are all connected. Before getting a job in Beijing, I was going to fly to China anyways because I was invited to compete at the Sport Accord games. Then I happen to attend the games to compete AND for work because Jet was an honored international wushu ambassador. Meanwhile Jackie Chan was singing as an honored performer.. and I had just happened to perform for him earlier on in the year for his movie premier at The Grove in LA.

As I mentioned earlier, this was a year of meeting people – part of that was because I became a News Correspondent / Interview Host for Pac Rim baby!

I had the opportunity to interview a lot of artists and performers that I have a lot of respect for.. such as: Mike Shinoda, Cung Le, Tia Carrere, ABDC dance crews, and many others.

Cung Le Interview

Mike Shinoda

Outside of meeting some awesome peeps on the Pacific Rim team and on the red carpets.. my celebrity streak didn’t end there… but first! let me do a little summary on my business developments.

2010 was actually a very interesting year for WushuKicks.com – my online martial arts business. Aside from acting projects and training all my other time was focused on WushuKicks. WushuKicks went through some good clean ups. The site design and functionality was improved; it was the first year we were incorporated; sales increased month to month; vendor relationships developed; and I grew new lines of business. WushuKicks was also a sponsor of CMAT this year. Overall the scale of WushuKicks definitely grew.. and in fact I am looking for another person to possibly join the team to help out in a learning and assisting capacity (contact me at alfredrocks(at)gmail.com).

WushuKicks sponsors CMAT 18

Martial Arts Complete

One of the new lines of business under WushuKicks was Martial Arts Complete. My good homie and buddy Adam McArthur and I had this idea to promote martial arts nutrition. I started talking to him about this in 2009. Finally in 2010 our idea came to fruition and was finalized. We set up the site www.martialartscomplete.com (after being scammed by some guy who only half finished our site). Then we finished the designs, product pictures, legal work, certifications, and got our first sale not too long after our product was completed. =) Look forward to more development for 2011.

I guess the most interesting part was that in the middle part of the year I ended up moving to the other side of the world and still fully remotely managed WushuKicks. With less time spent I even noticed sales continued to increase! Life is good!

NOW.. why did I move to the other side of the world? I guess most know by now. I got a life changing email (and skype call) that landed me a job to work for my childhood role model Jet Li.

andy alfred jet clinton

The job has had it’s ups and downs in terms of how draining and demanding it can be… but I never regret making this decision to up and move from LA to China. Oh yeah, so the picture above is with Clinton at a Clinton Global Initiative event in Hong Kong. Also the reason I shaved my head is because I landed a small role in a movie WITH Jet. I shaved my head to play a monk. I actually got lines, a close up, and some work with the stunt team as well. I mean.. wow.. from driving hours in traffic just to audition for scattered roles in LA to working with China’s most famous directors and being in a scene interacting with Jet Li… this alone made 2010 an amazing year for me! Unfortunately I’m not allowed to post up pics from the set yet, but when the movie comes out I will definitely post up some news.

Some other good memories on the job include: meeting other celebs like Rob Cohen, Ekin Cheng, Jay Chou; working with top entrepreneurs and philanthropists like Jack Ma, Wang Shi, Ma Hua Teng; emailing Bill Gates and Warren Buffet; shaking hands 6 times with Bill Clinton; helping choreograph Jet’s Adidas Q4 clothing line poses; hitting up movie premiers; changing history (watching the One Foundation achieve status as a public NGO in China).

Jack Ma and Alfred Hsing

adidas front kick pose

Despite all the cool people and fun sounding events… moving to China and working for Jet was one of the most draining and demanding jobs I have ever had in my life. For the first 3 months, every day I passed out from exhaustion. Within the first 3 weeks on the job one time in Shanghai I woke up in a hotel and didn’t know which city I was in for about 2-3 minutes. When I got here, I couldn’t read Chinese as well and I was much more unfamiliar with how everything works. I am so thankful that my reading ability has improved and my listening comprehension for business and philanthropy terminology has increased as well. I still feel I have a ways to go, but I sincerely want to make a push to improve my Chinese to a near-native level this year.

It has definitely been a year of accomplishing goals. I got the chance to work with both Jackie Chan and Jet Li this year.. and that’s a goal I had set upon achieving since the 7th grade. Also I had always wanted to move to Asia and live here for 6 months – 1 year and now I’ve made that happen as well.

I rounded up the year and made everything come full circle as we finished up 2 movies by the end of December and I took a short vacation to Taiwan. So again, for the second time I spent my New Years Eve watching the fireworks at Taipei 101. This year was a 100 year celebration for Taiwan and it was also 2010, a nice round number, so apparently double the money was spent on fireworks. The firework display was in fact AMAZING this year! Fireworks zigged and zagged and flooded up and down the 101 building. It also lit the sky with all kinds of shapes and lights! I think this was a great great great way to kick off 2011.

Taipei 101 2010 NYE

New Years in Taiwan with homies

It was great to spend the end of 2010 in Taiwan with friends. Ngan, Sarah, and I joked about all the former US wushu team members moving to Asia and kicking it in Taiwan. It was a fun vacation and my Taiwan trip will surely have it’s own post.

Overall this year I think I reached new heights in my understanding of the universe. If last year I pushed physical limits of the human body (training and training and more training till it hurt all over) this year I started to push the limits of the mind… my mind.. human minds.. and questioning more deeply on how our human minds limit ourselves. I hope and sincerely believe that the relationships I have developed this year were many and far reaching. I believe the fruits of labor that will be sown in 2011 will be seismic!! even in comparison to past years. I hope for success in the acting and entertainment field for 2011. Even beyond acting developments.. I think I am growing in knowledge around spirituality and life’s truths. I know there will be further developments in this area as well. If 2010 was pushing boundaries.. 2011 is where we break the tipping point for goals and possibilities.

I hope you enjoyed my recap of 2010. Welcome 2011!
- Alfred Hsing

Essentially reposted from www.wushukicks.com

Alfred Hsing Sport Accord Combat Games

The US and Canada national teams were in attendance at the 2010 sport accord combat games held in Beijing China among many other countries such as Russia, China, Malaysia, Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Brazil, and Japan. The US Team sent veteran wushu athletes Sarah Chang, Peter Dang, and Alfred Hsing.

Aug 28 Changquan Alfred Combat Games Competition

Changquan was the first event of the entire Combat Games held at 9am on August 28th, 2010. There was significant media coverage and the event was in part sponsored by Samsung. I was 2nd in line to compete.. I didn’t make any major mistakes and given that I have been focusing on work in Beijing the past 2-3 months I am pretty happy with my performance today. This will be my last major wushu tournament and I am glad I got to share it with my good friends and teammates in Beijing – the land of wushu and where I always dreamed I would be on the main stage competing in front of hundreds. My dreams as a wushu athlete were finally completed today.

My Longfist – 2010 Sport Accord Combat Games

An Interview with Tom.com – in Chinese (please dont judge my Chinese.. im still practicing)

Peter Dang rocked the house when he took 3rd in the staff competition beating worthy adversaries such as Russia and 2 other Asian countries.

13 Combat Games Ambassadors

In addition the Opening Ceremony held on the evening of the 28th spared no expense as a dazzling display of physical prowess and beautiful music filled the stadium main floor. 13 Ambassadors for each sport were in attendance – among the ambassadors were Don “the dragon” Wilson, mma fighter Fedor “the last emperor” Emelianenko, and many other legends of martial arts. The final closing song of the evening was sung by Jackie Chan who was surrounded by dancers and acrobats as the ceremony came to a close.

There are many more events such as kick boxing, sambo, jiu jitsu that are still occurring since the Combat Games just started. Look forward to these amazing sports broadcasts featured online. I wish I had more time to watch all the other events. =)

It was nice hanging with the US and Canada wushu team peeps… but it’s back to work for me!

Me and Jason - Final Sanda Training before China

This may be my last post from the US in a while because for those of you who don’t know.. I am MOVING TO CHINA TODAY! I kind of can’t believe it myself that I am re-locating to China. I’ve always wanted to live out there for over a year, but I’ve always had various reasons why I had to be back in the US. Now I have the perfect reason. I got an amazing job opportunity in China and there is no better reason or time to be out there than NOW!

That being said, I still want to update you guys on everything I’ve been up to aside from the move. I’ve honestly been so busy the past 3 weeks that I haven’t even had time to sit down and spend 20 minutes updating my blog.

The Move
I’m not even sure where to start. Let’s see – So about 3 weeks ago I get a call on a bright and early morning. I’m still half asleep when I get a phone call. I pick up. It’s an international number. It ends up being an interview for a job that I applied to. Fast forward a few days later; I got the job and I am told that I need to fly out to China in about less than 3 weeks! Yikes! In less than 24 hours I decided this was the right thing for me to do… and I decided to make the move.

I now had to cancel my trip that I had ALREADY booked for August for the 2010 Sport Accord Combat Games, which I will still be competing in, and I had to get a visa rush processed since there was so little time. I turn my passport over to my travel agent.. and gadzooks! my passport pages are FULL (darn all that other traveling) so now I have to do an expedited “add pages” to my passport. Meanwhile I also had to get a visa done on my Taiwan passport, but I needed my US passport in order to process some paperwork.. which made things cut very close!

There were sooo many other things I had to do. To list a few, I had to find a new roommate to take up my room, sell or have someone look after my car, work out logistics with wushukicks, say farewell to friends and family, pack, buy new luggage because my old one broke, purchase new airline tickets, and clean out my place since I was moving out.

WushuKicks
For my online business, I had to make it fully functional while being on the go. It was close, but still needed some crazy intense upgrades to be done in 3 days. I created an auto-responder for customer support because I noticed a lot of people were asking the same questions so I forwarded people to the Frequently Asked Questions part of my page.. which I also heavily updated to reflect the most common questions. I then created 2 more team emails where one person would be a backup to handle order processing if I was not available and another staff would handle customer support questions only. I changed a few policies of the business so that things were more clear cut and less dependent on my personal decision making.

I spent 2 weeks negotiating with UPS and my merchant services for better rates. I got them, but I don’t think it was as helpful as I had hoped for. At least I got my shipper account set up with automated billing. I also put my inventory in the hands of 2 trust worthy people and voila…! Let’s see if wushukicks can run while I am traveling, in china, and internet-less (from time to time).

Farewell Party
I had a small going away dinner with some former co-workers and friends that I have and haven’t seen in a while. All I can say is I had a good time seeing all my friends in one place and the positivity and support lit my face up in uncontrollable smiles.

Sweep the leg

The Karate Kid Demo
The next day let’s just say I was the worse for wear and had a long night… but I still had to be up early. I think I was up by 8am (which is how early Ive been getting up for the past week despite sleeping after midnight). I ended up running around doing all sorts of errands only to finally muster up the strength to drive out to Whittier to do a DEMO for a theater’s opening night of The Karate Kid. It took an hour to get there in traffic and I almost fell asleep twice. My buddy Adam was not helping either because he was practically falling asleep as well. We have both had crazy schedules and he booked a voiceover on a Disney show as a lead/regular… so congrats to him too!

We got there and demoed. It was cool… just a standard demo.. and afterward we got to watch The Karate Kid for free. A lot of people are talking about the name and how it’s just a marketing ploy. In the movie itself it does justify the name the “karate” kid to some degree. Also, it stays true to the premise of the original, but yet still is its own unique movie with its own powerful cast that holds its own. The movie definitely struck a cord when Jaden gets on the Air China flight moving to a place so far from home… I knew that a few days later I would also be boarding an Air China flight and making a very big move in my life. I liked Jaden’s performance and the relationship development between him and the girl that he likes. I would recommend watching this movie.

Nor Cal
So I stumble home after the movie around midnight.. because the movie is kinda long and I went to eat pho with Adam afterward. I start to pack for my drive up north AND pack for my move to China.. but I don’t make it passed 2 socks and I pass out asleep on the floor of my room. I was THAT tired! I wake up at 4am and continue packing. It takes me super long because I am not just packing to go up north I am sorting out what I want to bring to China and what I want to bring home and leave at home. I finally start driving up north at 9am but have to make 3 stops just to rest my eyes because I was starting to fall asleep by 11am.

At 3:30PM I run into the Kung Fu Magazine Tiger Claw tournament to support the Wild Aid event. I performed part of my longfist with a few ditang falls! The registration money was donated to help save Tigers for the Wild Aid foundation. I was glad to support my friends at Tiger Claw and the Tigers. Also ran into Dean, Kunyu, Emilio, Cao Yue, Peggy, and other wushu people. I had to cut out soon after the Wild Aid event because I was dead tired and my house was in my car. That night I hung out with my boys E and Hue. The following day I did a photoshoot for Kung Fu Magazine. The last day up north I visited my friend Mike at Google. Google has an amazing campus. The vibe is very casual and cool! I had some lunch there and was surprised (though I shouldn’t have been) that they even do google analytics on their dining halls! Then my bro took me to the airport to return to LA.

Google Campus

Brothers

My good friend Rel picked me up from the airport.. then I jammed over to teach my last wushu lesson with Geeta. She has learned a ton in our few short classes.

…well that pretty much leads up to where I am now.. a few hours away from meeting up with some so cal fam and getting on board my flight in a few hours. I am going to continue doing some last minute packing, but before I close this final US post… please keep updated with me everyone. I am so grateful for all my friends and I don’t want to just disappear, but this is definitely a journey I need to undertake! I hear that facebook and google are relatively inaccessible in China so keep in touch with me via my blog, email, or any other means. If you don’t hear from me it’s probably because I am traveling or in a place with limited access.

Today is the day I make my move to China! Let’s see what’s in store! =)