Unless you grew up in a house that made its own kimchi, you would not have had the privilege of eating it before it is fermented. My mother’s fame spread throughout the Washington DC area because of her kimchi, the recipe for which many women of the Korean community tried to pry from her. The preparation and fermenting process were rather tricky and no jar of kimchi ever came out the same, and yet every Korean house would be famous or infamous for its own unique flavor. My mother happened always to have the right balance of sweet, salty and sour.

As a young girl, I loved kimchi before it fermented because I wasn’t particularly fond of the sour aspect of kimchi. If kimchi was to be more on the sour side, I strongly felt that it should have a little more crunch to balance the pull of the tongue. Sour sends the tongue into withdrawal, but crunch lifts it (or so it feels like). I had a particular fondness for Chinese cabbage kimchi for this reason (There are many different roots and vegetables used for kimchi: Korean cabbage, Chinese cabbage, cucumbers, radish, and apparently 180 others).   Kimchi with such a crunchy texture kept the tongue uplifted as it went through the tornado of sugar, salt and spice. Getting this right before the fermenting process almost guaranteed that two months hence the sour would come out just right.

Using a two ft diameter steel bowl filled with freshly chopped-up white cabbage, my mother, would begin her first of five rounds. She poured in the fish sauce, the salted shrimp, sesame oil, sugar, the grated garlic and onions, leeks and then the red pepper and mix it all with her bare hands. And I, the official taste tester from the tender age of eight, would stand by at the large kitchen table waiting with a gallon jug of ice water. My mouth would water from both the sight of the orange colored cabbage and smell of the converging spices.

I was not breastfed as a child, but my mother fed me while mixing, and this experience surely made up for it. Her burning hand to my burning mouth. She would hold a piece of drenched red-speckled cabbage and my mouth would reach for it.

“More shrimp!” I would declare, and she would add more and then mix with her hands. Then hand me another piece.

“Fish sauce,” I would shout and she would pour it on. The pungent whiff of the sauce would linger in the air for a moment before it lost itself into the mix. My mouth possessed a highly efficient sprinkler system that sprayed saliva all over my tongue to prepare me for each subsequent piece.

“More sweet,” I would say and she would pause and look at the bowl of sugar and the packets of sweet and low. And I would help her with the sweet and low because her hands were too numb from the burn.

Once, I shouted, “Coca Cola!” And her eyes lifted in surprise for a brief moment, and then she nodded for me to grab a can of coke from the fridge and allowed me to pour a quarter can in. We held our breath as we watched the bubbles sizzle over the cabbage, not knowing how this bin would turn out in two months.

I should note that I always felt proud that she relied on my taste buds. She never once tasted it herself, she entrusted the tasting to me. Her hands possessed the wisdom to know quantity and my mouth possessed the wisdom to know quality. And in our communion we made the best kimchi in town. How could she ever explain to those curious, nosy women that her secret was ME!!!

By the fourth piece, it was time for a drink of water. But just a small sip because water is filling! And I needed room in my little tummy for more cabbage. My tongue always reached a state that I call coasting because I liken it to the experience of that point in running or swimming at which the body finds a method of cruise control. More red pepper didn’t necessarily make things hotter, but rather sent the tongue in a perpetual state of fieriness and salivation. We repeated this process through five bins, each bin filling up three one gallon jars.

After the fifth bin, my stomach, swelling from water, cabbage and red pepper would be in an extreme state of discomfort and would be for the ensuing 6-8 hours. My only consolation would be an ice cube that could cool my mouth without taking up space in my stomach. My mother would put ice on her hands and down two cans of beer. The final results would arrive two months later after the jars sat in our backyard. We would scoop out of the jar the lower layers of cabbage that had been drenched in the juices. At the dinner table, my mother and I would watch my father’s expression as he picked up the kimchi with his chopsticks. He was oblivious to our observation, oblivious to the effort. If his movements were fluid: rice, chew chew, kimchi, chew chew more rice, chew chew, we knew we did well.

Tornado kicks in Tae Kwon Do are crescent kicks with a 360° turn. The leg swings laterally from outside to inside to strike the target in front. In combat, this kick is not particularly practical, but rather, it’s a fancy kick that displays jumping, spinning, coordination and speed. The final part of the kick is usually demonstrated with the palm of the opposite hand smacking the underside of the kicking foot to emphasize impact.

Tornado kicks in Wu Shu are even more challenging because the kicking leg must land first which demands a longer air-time suspension and greater height, speed and momentum. On paper, I notice this seems like a small detail, but this detail changes the whole look, speed and power of the kick. The supporting leg aids in greater elevation by lifting into a very tight knee tuck. Even the final smack of the hand becomes more like an extended clasp and highlights the kick’s peak moment.

When I switched arts from Tae kwon Do to Wushu at the “old” age of 21, I couldn’t land with my kicking leg. I struggled with undoing 17 years of executing a tornado kick with my non-kicking leg landing first. My patient instructor gave me certain tips to give me the momentum. To acquire the height, she instructed me to skip forward (non-kicking leg in front), swing my arms in opposite directions like wings, then step with the kicking leg forward and down, the arms following and allowing the whole body to whip around like a tornado and using the ground off which to spring up and around.

I became obsessed with learning this and a host of other fancy Wu-shu kicks which demanded greater jumping power, fluidity and grace. I decided to take off from a whole semester of school so I could go to Guangzhou, PRC to learn from the Southern Fist masters. I arrived in late January and although it was quite cold, the southern portion of China that fell below a certain latitude did not get enough coal in the winter for heating anything other than food. Even my showers were cold. I was expected to warm myself with hot tea. Smacking my hand with a rubber-soled sneaker in cold weather was far from pleasant. Practicing was physically painful to my hand, physically frustrating, and physically ungratifying. For three months, even as the weather turned excruciatingly hot, I spent an hour everyday just on this kick. I remember the dizziness from twirling around. Sometimes, I would just jump, or jump and spin, or jump, spin and land with one leg. I visualized the kick as my instructor demonstrated it for me, before taking off. I watched children 8 years of age executing the kick with astounding height and aplomb. They were so green and pliable. And I was green with envy. I walked around with ankle weights 8 hours a day to build my calf muscles.

When I left China in June, I still could not execute the kick. I went to Tokyo, to study Japanese for a few months and then returned to the States where my father eagerly awaited me to see what I had learned. We were in our back porch and I was showing him some katas I had learned. Then I explained to him my frustration about the tornado kick.

“Try it,” he said.

“I can’t do it,” I said. I had come close a couple of times in Guangzhou, but I did not practice the kick at all in Tokyo. I just filed it away as N/A to Tae Kwon Do has-beens.

“Just try,” he persisted. So I closed my eyes and once again, visualized myself executing the kick. I suddenly realized that something had shifted and that I didn’t feel the doubt that usually accompanied the visualization. I would even go so far as to say that I embodied the visualization. I felt it right in my gut. My body knew it could execute the kick, although I can’t say for certain that I knew. So I took off and WHAM! I did it!

The feeling was so exhilarating. My father clapped his hands enthusiastically.

“Wow! That way is so much better!” he exclaimed.

“I know,” I said, beaming. “Isn’t it just the best?” And I just started laughing. It felt so good.