 I've
lived in China for almost 2 years, and I was always looking for martial
arts. China is different than Holland; there are very few schools that
teach openly and advertise. After searching for a long time I found this
school. As most martial arts school that have their own building,
students live on campus. Their martial arts and qigong shown on this
page is for show only; actually they are trained to become security
people or body guards. Their display of martial arts is something like
advertisement to impress future clients. |
 After
seeing their Liondance performance downtown (they do this once a year
for local festivals) I decided to pay them a visit. The school is on the
outskirts of town (see pic above) I decided to go their on my bike
(something my girlfriend wasn't to happy about ...) It took over an hour
to find the school. But they were very happily surprised by this
unexpected visitor of a foreigner. On the left the manager and on the
right the Chief Instructor of the school. The latter is a local, and
since his youth he wanted to learn martial arts. Everybody said he was
crazy and that there was no future in martial arts, but he decided to pursue
his dream anyway. Finding no serious martial art school locally he went
to Hebei province, generally seen as the centre of Northern Styles of
China. There he learnt Chang Quan, Tongbei Quan and another obscure
style which involves rapid body movements and moving fast on a straight
line while turning the body; the name escaped me. |
 It
was the end of the term and after a few days exams would start. No more
lessons and the students were resting. At my special request a
demonstration was arranged on the spot. Usually the students were military
uniforms, but for these kind of demo's they change into flashy costumes. |
| The students live on campus for one year only. 3000 Yuan tuition fee and 350 Yuan a month for rent of the room and food. Most of the students find a job after graduating. Many of them move to the harbor city of Dalian where supposedly a lot protection of rich people is needed. |
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Chang Quan |
 Qigong
exercises! Remember; everything is 'fake'. Fake in the sense that it is
a skill everybody can learn and actually has nothing to do with
development of Qi. Anyway, here chubby is doing preparational breathing exercises...
On the left there are some girls ... It surprised me to see girls in the
school, but nevertheless they were there. At the bottom of the picture
one can see the 'bed of nails' he's going to lie on. |
 Just
relax and wait... The large wooden board is hauled over and out and put
on top of our chubby friend. |
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This is it! Please note that only the girls were allowed to jump on! |
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| The grand final; two guys on top of each other, the
bed of nails and another unfortunate guy. On top of that a piece of the
mountains you can see on the background of the other pictures. It broke
in one hit!
A few months later they would appear on local television and do their Qigong act. |
Breaking beer bottles on
their heads. I was asked pick a 'victim'. And a victim he turned out to
be ... I picked a guy I saw earlier standing on guard. Wrong choice; he
looked a bit sickly. On the picture on the left it is the first guy in
line with a bottle in hand. He started to hit his head, but not hard
enough; clearly he wasn't to sure about himself. The trick here is; hit
it hard and all the energy will go into the bottle which will cause it
to break. The pick above clearly shows it; it just broke and beer and
glass is flying around. But my guy just couldn't do it and all the power
of his blows went directly into head, which happens when you don't hit
it hard enough. In order to save his face he kept smashing it into his
head he at some point he started to wobble all over the place. The Chief
Instructor intervened to save his students head, and said, to save his
own face, that the student was recovering from an illness. Then others
broke some bottles, with no effort what so ever. 