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they are not very outgoing, as they don’t do much when they are kids. The problem is when they need to play capoeira, then, it becomes worse than trying to explain to a child what to do. Without rules they really feel lost. So, many believe capoeira can be of great benefit to them, as it might be good for them to have the freedom it offers, to improvise, to create, where they don’t need to doggedly follow rules. It is in the area of expression and creativity that they need most to improve. But then once they get it… I had a strong group of four Chinese students who were really getting it, then all of them stopped, now there is only one, he is also teaching in Shanghai. So what I’m saying is, once they get it, they can be as good as anyone.

      Curiosa: And how about the Portuguese language, the songs, the music? Do they understand those easily?

      Diego: Not easily; but the ones who want to learn the music, they learn, they memorize. Maybe the pronunciation is not perfect, but they learn the songs.

      Curiosa: How are they with instruments? Are they musical people?

      Diego: Some of them, yes. When I came to Italy I thought, «Oh, it will be easy now,» but it wasn’t. So, it really depends on the people. They are not worse or better that the others.

      Curiosa: What is capoeira for you? What place/priority does it have in your life?

      Diego: Capoeira is a part of my life. It has gradually become more and more important. With time I realized how beneficial it is to my mind, more than my body. My job decisions are taken based on the possibility of continuing training/teaching capoeira. It is definitely one of the top priorities of my life.

      Curiosa: How do you see the future of the group in Shanghai and Milan? Any plans or projects?

      Diego: The group in Shanghai/China will grow. It’s already growing and with the involvement of locals in teaching and promoting the group it will grow even faster. I was worried when I left, but now I see that Nico, Alex and all the others are doing a good job keeping good fundamentals. It will get bigger and stronger, hopefully not too fast, in order to be able to steer things in the right direction. With regards to Milan, I just want to continue enjoying training and teaching capoeira with my group. I am leveraging on my ten years’ experience in China in order to optimize my teaching, thereby allowing the students to improve at a faster pace. I really try to make the best out of the 90 minutes classes that we have. I want to have more advanced students in order to be helped in teaching classes and guiding other students. A strong core group of advanced students is the key to having a stable group. It will take time, but I’m not in a hurry.

      Curiosa: How does it feel not to have a teacher next to you all the time? Who or what gives you inspiration or ideas about your own training and capoeira?

      Diego: I have been teaching alone in China with less than three years of capoeira experience (where I only learned just the basics). Nowadays I have a lot of materials, I get ideas for my classes everywhere, from my own students (mistakes or games), from workshops attended elsewhere, from guests, from mestres’ sequences, from videos posted by other capoeiristas etc. What mainly guides my classes is the observation of my students, trying to understand what they need to practice in order to improve their game, what their weak points are, etc. Often their weaknesses coincide with my weaknesses.

      Curiosa: What is the most memorable or funniest moment of your capoeira life?

      Diego: I enjoy every moment of my capoeira life. I had so many beautiful and funny moments and funny students. It is impossible to recall a specific episode.

      Curiosa: Who has had the greatest impact on your capoeira?

      Diego: There are too many. I will just mention three: Mestre Marcelo, directly or indirectly through his students; CM Cipo, who was the first guest we had in 2008 and who gave three months of super hard classes: it definitely shaped my capoeira and allowed me to understand what training really means; Ido Portal: his knowledge and his way of thinking has changed my approach to movement and to life in general; I learned so much and my body has been transformed. Nowadays I’m still using his method for my own training and when teaching.

      Hong Kong

      I set off to Hong Kong in a happy mood – there are two CDO groups in the city!

      My trip to Hong Kong from Shenzhen took only 12 minutes by train. Border control – another half an hour. I spent that much time just to get from home to work on a regular day, and then I travelled to another country in just 12 minutes!

      I needed to extend my visa to China, and I left for Hong Kong for just a few hours – to wander around the city and, of course, go to a capoeira class!

      And I went to monitor Kazu. Kazu was born in Japan and studied in Brazil, where he began to practice capoeira and started working with Grande Mestre Cícero, then he moved back to Japan, opened a group there, then moved to Hong Kong and opened another group here. Fuh! Didn’t seem to miss anything. When I met to Kazu, he had been teaching for only a couple of months. At his class at the time of my visit, there was one girl from Portugal with some past capoeira experience, and 3 students from Japan, they were complete newbies.

      After the class, we went to drink coffee and chat. Kazu’s girlfriend also came along. She happened to be a student of the Instrutora Zoinho40, who is a student of Mestre Parente and has lived in Hong Kong for several years. It was she that I had planned to talk to, but I’ll speak more to that later. She wasn’t in town that week.

      Hong Kong is modern, traditional and dangerous…

      Hong Kong is a city on a peninsula, which used to be a part of China, but then the UK rented it for a hundred years. One hundred years passed, and in 1997 Hong Kong returned to China.

      Hong Kong won me over already at the train station – the contrast with China played its role. All apps and bank cards functioned here, there was free Wi-Fi everywhere, and everyone spoke English. Traffic in the city, like in Great Britain, is left sided. All taxis are painted red and white, fairly old Toyota models. And this all stands against the background of breathtaking skyscrapers, multi-lane and multi-level traffic. It’s a city of the future for sure. And this is so despite the fact that Hong Kong combines, it seems to me, the best that has been preserved from pre-communist China and that which was absorbed during the hundred years from the British mindset.

      Traditions are seen in Buddhist temples, Chinese characters and language, which, unlike the rest of China, were not simplified in Hong Kong. At the same time, it has this cute English feature to only use double-decker buses and only allow taxis of a certain color. Hong Kong has an unbelievable number of banks and corporations and the most expensive brands in the world, which causes a feeling of inferiority in an ordinary Russian person, because, I can only go to such stores for an excursion. This I did at the Gucci store. There I was met and followed by a personal consultant, who, like all consultants, was dressed in a black trouser suit. She gave me a welcome speech in perfect English and silently, but with a smile, followed me with a tired look, knowing that I would not buy anything.

      Hong Kong is a grandiose city. There you have to lift your head all the way up to see the tops of skyscrapers – I noticed I was holding my breath as I looked up. And the multi-level overpasses, which in new districts are intercrossed with shopping malls and the metro, makes your head spin and does not make tourists’ life easy. Somehow, this small peninsula also has quite a lot of greenery, mountains, beautiful views and wildlife that coexists with a crowded metropolis.

      How a trip to a temple almost ended in tragedy.

      During my second visit to Hong Kong, I decided to visit an amazing place – the Temple of 10,000 Buddhas. And everything seemed to be fine there: it is beautiful, has many steps, many golden Buddhas in different

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