Everybody was Kung-Fu Fighting

Sarah Jane Rood

Li Ping Wang is a Chinese Shao Lin Hamster. She has been a student of kung fu for almost 40 years. She loves to do Tai Chi. It is the one thing her 52-year-old body still does well. She is fierce with Nun chucks, or a Kwan Dao sword. She is a friend to you and me. She is here to teach young women everywhere how to take care of themselves in any situation. It always helps if you are aware of your surroundings. Don't walk around like a victim, or a tourist, she says. If you are looking for your car, have your keys ready and be looking all around you. It's best not to be surprised if someone should approach you. If you are injured or handicapped and are walking at night you should ask for an escort unless you are Li Ping Wang. Walk with a friend. Carry pepper spray if you can. That can give you confidence, but it is best to learn some commonsense self-defense. In any and all situations you must fight. Kick at knees, groin, shins, ankles, pull hair, go for the throat and try to take the offensive, if you can drive your attacker to the ground. And by all means, leave them with something to remember you by. For example, stomp on a knee when your attacker is on the ground. He will not pursue you. A kick to the ribs is just as effective. You just want to be sure you can get away successfully and be safe in the end.

Plans for Li Ping Wang Kung Fu Warrior Princess

How to make your own Kung Fu Hamster action model

Make a frame for the body with armature wire. You will want to measure out approximately 2x the length of the height of the model.

Wrap the armature wire with thin wire to secure the position into place. What you are doing is creating a skeleton for the body of the model. Consider an interesting action pose for your model that is realistic and stable. When you have wound the wire around the shape of the armature enough to be satisfied you can start to add aluminum foil until it fits snugly around the body of the model. Then you can begin to add Sculpey clay.

Accept no substitutes. Sculpey really is the only clay that will bake in an oven and be workable and pliable enough to manipulate throughout the creation process.

Firstly, you want to build the outer shape of the figure before you start working on features or clothes. Make sure to use tools to manipulate the clay for textures of clothing etc. The more detailed attention you pay to clothes and accessories the more realistic your action figure will be.

Bake in oven on 375 for 45 minutes and be sure to watch to make sure it is not burning or collapsing. Remember, Sculpey does not defy gravity. My hamster tail would not stay on.

Click Me

I created Li Pi Wang out of my very own image. She was narcissistic form of play and self-worship that I could justify. Growing up with such a low self-esteem as a fourteen-year-old, I was used to being laughed at and ridiculed because I was so sensitive and seemingly powerless. I was painfully shy, and I was the antithesis of the character of Li Pi Wang who is confident and fearless with or without a weapon in her hand. Over the past 40 years I have retained most of what I have learned because it is interesting, and I want to stay involved. And much like Li Pi Wang, I love Tai Chi because its mostly all this old body will do anymore. But do not get me wrong. Don't cross to my side of the street from a long way off because I can see you coming. And I will leave you something to remember me by.

When I was 14 years old, I was awkward and troubled and overly sensitive. I had family issues, body issues and self-image issues to be sure. I was teased by boys in class who would sing out all of the songs that carried my name such as “Sarah” and “Sarah smile”. They did this to torment me because I was so painfully shy and did not like the attention. My parents had divorced years ago, we lived in sketchy apartments near the otherwise rich school I attended and as I was starting to look a little “chubby” and put on some teen-aged weight, my oldest sister was concerned that I needed some extra activity in my life, so she suggested I take up Kung Fu or martial arts training.

I did as she suggested. Terri was always looking after me, it seemed. I began classes with white belt classes where I learned to punch and kick and some self defense techniques for beginners. We learned something called Chin Na which meant to capture and to hold. These were easy techniques of grappling and gaining control of a situation before it is too late. I enjoyed classes and I progressed quickly and easily.

In no time I was learning short forms, long forms, weapons forms such as nun chuck, short stick, cane, bo and working my way up to a brown belt which was serious business. I was a brown belt by the time I was 15 and this was so exciting to me. I also made many friends and companions along the way.

Despite how much I learned, it never took away the fears I had of the dark man in the limousine which was a recurring nightmare I often had, or the fear that I would have to defend someone being attacked in public, a woman perhaps. What if I failed?

In the neighborhood where I lived and took the bus to work and home after school, we had an unknown rapist who was using chemicals to silence his victims in the bushes on the path between the Waffle House and the path to the neighborhood street. The knowledge of this terrified me. I always walked down the street with my eyes open and alert, carrying my nun chucks, ready for anything.

I continued to learn from brown belt to black belt to second degree black belt to the time that I was in college at Georgia Institute of Technology, and it was becoming harder to keep up with my training and school. I learned many varieties of Kung Fu including Tai Chi Chuan which is known as meditation in motion because it is done slowly and methodically as you are breathing each breath. It has the same potential for training in martial arts and for martial capabilities because it prepares you to be ready when the moment arrives and to explode with energy therein.

Despite all that I have learned and tried to keep up with throughout the years with my car accidents, my arthritis, my experience as a martial artist, nothing takes away the fear inside that nothing will ever be enough to save you from the evil that is outside in the world. There is a pervasive fear that I have that I am powerless to help others besides myself and even more powerless to help myself.

This 52-year-old body of mine can still do some Tai Chi even while it remembers so much more of all of the forms, techniques, Chin Na of all the past years' muscle memory. I have spent a lifetime as a Kung Fu Fighter.

What is it to be brave? What is it to have courage as a fighter? It is to keep on fighting. No matter the form, no matter the function. At my age, I resemble more of a Kung-Fu hamster. In the Shao Lin temples, the students imitated the animals and learned to fight according to their styles. For example, there were tiger forms, crane, monkey, praying mantis, drunken monkey styles. No one ever mentioned Panda style.

Working on a class project a couple years back we were asked to create an anthropomorphic character with a back story, so I created Li Pi Wang out of sculpey clay. When I studied Kung Fu, I was a good little mantis or a good little monkey or a drunken monkey or even a bird of some kind, but I never was a tiger by nature. Though I liked learning those forms tremendously in class. They were fun play.

No matter how much I learn in life I will still be that awkward fearful child. I may graduate with a master's in architectural history and be the most outstanding 53-year-old to have done so, but I will still be a scared little girl inside afraid of the limousine man. But if I have to fight him I will.