TROY'S TEAM: The Way of the Fist
#016 - The Way of the Fist | Troy’s Team
Welcome back to Big Fish in the Middle Kingdom! I'm Brendan Davis, your host, and this week’s episode features Troy Sandford plus Myra Mala and Mayela Magrou, who are core members of Troy's Team. Troy's Team is a martial arts and stunts team here in Beijing who also offer training in what they practice. Troy and his team members have distinguished themselves in many ways with their contributions to action filmmaking in China, and their work is really fantastic. If you like impressive action and martial arts sequences, you will want to check out their videos, and if you’re in or visiting Beijing, contact them to take a class!
This episode was a first for me in that I got to interview three people at once. The resulting conversation was fast-paced as well as being very thoughtful in places, and the four-way interchange made it more dynamic than usual. As much as I enjoy the regular one on one interviews, the experience of doing this one makes me want to seek out more small groups and teams to speak with in the future as well. Links to find Troy’s Team online and learn more about them are available in the show notes. You can also visit my website, crazyinagoodway.com, to learn more about me, the show, to make a donation and support my efforts here, or just to say hi and let me know what you think. Any support or feedback is always greatly appreciated.
Also, in the show intro I also talk a bit about my recent trip as a cultural ambassador to Dunhuang, in Gansu Province, which was pretty amazing on many levels. I was a guest of my friend Amy Chen and her team at Global Communications and Cooperation Company, led by Bruce Huang. I’ve previously participated in other events for Global in Gannan, also in Gansu Province, as well as at the Zambia Embassy to China here in Beijing, and there’s never a dull moment. In Dunhuang, I got to ride a camel in the desert, tour grape vineyards and participate in an official kick-off ceremony for the season, and appear onstage at an event and make a few thousand people laugh, which was awesome and a load of fun - but the most profound moment was getting to visit the Mogao Caves and stand inside Buddhist temples dug into the hillside, some dating back more than a thousand years, in the presence of priceless antiquities. These kinds of opportunities are just one of the benefits I’ve found of being local here, making friends of all kinds, and remaining open to new experiences. I’m very grateful for the unexpected gift of this trip, for seeing my old friends Amy and Bruce and making my new friends Chen, Koen, Jean, Larissa, Liu Yue, and everyone else, and I'm excited to see what comes next.
Thanks as always for listening, I hope you enjoy, and I’ll see you next week!
Troy’s Team links:
Web - http://www.troysteamaction.com
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/troysteamaction
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/troysteam/
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/troysteam
WeChat - detroyt99
Dunhuang and the Mogao Cave Temples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunhuang
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mogao_Caves
Brendan Davis on Twitter:
@VeritasInLux
BFMK website:
https://www.crazyinagoodway.com
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https://www.facebook.com/BigFishMiddleKingdom/
SUPPORT BFMK via PayPal or WeChat:
https://www.crazyinagoodway.com/donate/
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https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=K5W6EANCYSQHU
Other links to LISTEN:
https://www.crazyinagoodway.com/podcast-links/
Carl King (composer):
http://carlkingdom.com
