Iron Crotch

[Greg]

I filmed a video back in 2017 of Iron Crotch aficionado Ye Wei. The video currently has 93K views on YouTube.



This got me thinking that I have a lot of Iron Crotch video. If Ye Wei can generate that many views, maybe a full movie will generate even more.

So, I've started gathering all the lost ducklings to me to see what I have and I can actually put a narrative together. For instance, I spent about two hours today going through a hard drive looking for an interview with Jimmy Tu, son of GM Tu, that was made back in 2013. I found the three clips just after swearing I would look for only a minute more. Now I have to find out if Jimmy Tu is in the country. He'd make a good interview.

So much work.

[Drunk Monk]

As we (and by 'we' I mean Patrick and me) used to always say:
Milk that Iron Crotch!

[King Bob]

Or that dolphin.

[Drunk Monk]

[Greg]

Blech.

I'm going through the interview I did with GM Tu to get to know him. He had a fascinating life. I'm a terrible interviewer.

[Greg]

In the mornings, I a 90 minute walk with the dogs before a I do 45 minute walk with the dogs. It's where the thoughts come.

I had three thoughts this morning. The first was how do you protect yourself from groin kicks?



The second was about using the scene from A Few Good Men that ends with Jack Nicholson screaming you can't handle the truth.

The final thought was this line from Reel Genius.

[Greg]

One of the obstacles I've been currently mulling over is the fact GM Tu currently lives in Taiwan and I really kind of need him to do an interview. I was very excited yesterday when an announcement from Master Tu popped up in my feed saying he would be doing an Iron Crotch class in Los Angeles. Since the FB post was in Chinese and the translation didn't give any dates I wanted more information on when Tu would be in Los Angeles. If he was there, maybe he would agree to an interview.

I commented on the post, asking when Master Tu was going to be in town. Several hours later Sandy Tu, Mrs. Master Tu, responded with warm greetings and said Master Tu was currently in town. Excellent. Now I just have to write the perfect letter to get them interested in working with me some more to finish out this film. I'm pretty sure in the twelve years since I laster interviewed Master Tu he has learned just as much English as I have learned Chinese. I tossed and turned a lot about how I would accomplish this. It was the first question on my mind when I popped awake at 1:30

Still moving forward.

[Drunk Monk]

I had three thoughts this morning. The first was how do you protect yourself from groin kicks?

 

Srsly? U gonna wear that every day?

Because you never know when your gonna take one to the oysters

You never know…

[Greg]

Epiphany day. Maybe I'm the last to know. But I can go to Google Translate and use it to translate a picture I've taken with my camera of a foreign language, not just a text document that I paste into the text field.

I've spent the last fifteen minutes translating GM Tu's book.....

[Drunk Monk]

Be very careful with that. Tu writes obscurely, using ancient Daoist terms in an old way that evades modern translation. If you don't have a Mandarin reader double checking the googtrans, it could be very, VERY wrong. 

Googtrans is weak for Mandarin to English. Here are some better translators:
https://www.mandarintools.com/chardict.html (Good character radical breakdowns and it also does Yale Canto transliteration which no one uses but me)
https://www.babelfish.com (more for sentimental value)
https://translate.yandex.com/en/translat...se-English
https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-englis...ionary.php

There's another I use that's on my workmac, but not on my PC here.

Also note, you can grab text using your iPhone. The camera function will select Chinese text just like it does with English text. Copy that and drop it into an online translator. 

I'm told the WeChat translator is good but my WeChat is still on lockdown.

[Greg]

But do those do the translations from a picture? That's what was amazing to me.

I have a painting on my wall that Tu did as a wedding gift. The painting has a bunch of Chinese characters I was able to translate using this function.

[Drunk Monk]

But do those do the translations from a picture? 

Also note, you can grab text using your iPhone. The camera function will select Chinese text just like it does with English text. Copy that and drop it into an online translator. 

I'm told the WeChat translator is good but my WeChat is still on lockdown.

When my Shifu visited in 2018 (I think) he came with an assistant who used her phone to translate museum captions in real time. I think that was a WeChat plug in.

I took my Shaolin monk master to the Rosicrucian a few years ago... One of his students was with us and she had this translator app on her phone where she could view all the display descriptions and get them instantly translated to Chinese. That was impressive and made it more fun. 

But yeah, the photo trans has been going for a few years now. What did you get when you translated that painting caption?

[Greg]

The painting capture was a poem about love. Not a great translation but at least I got a sense of what was there.

[Drunk Monk]

Take the characters and toss them in the bottom slot of this translator:  https://www.mandarintools.com/chardict.html

It'll give you the literal character translations. If you want to pass me the characters, I'd love to see if it maps to some famous chengyu, as these things often do. 

All I ever got from GM Tu was a paper mache gourd to ward off evil. And a helluva lot of great stories. Some of my best. Plus he gifted me that Jerry Garcia print, which is one of my most treasured pieces of art. I miss his presence in my life. Whenever he and Sandra were in the office, we ate well and the place glowed with qi. Sandra makes the most amazing health cookies. So delicious and fortifying. And GM Tu is simply inspiring on so many levels. He's one of the reasons to improve my Chinese. But even Gigi had issues with his Chinese because he used a lot of old daoist terms (and she is well educated). 

I realize I haven't said this out loud but I figured you probably take it for granted - I fully support this work and will do whatever I can to assist you in this. Let's milk that Iron Crotch together. It is such an epic tale, truly epic. Iron Crotch for the win! ICFTW! Oooooh, that's good. We should make T-shirts. 

Just got to figure out how to get Gigi behind it. If she's in, your road is paved. We're in a really good relationship right now - China was very bonding and we both had a great time.

[Greg]

If anybody asks, tell them I'm growing my Shen Baby.