we had a guest come visit our school today.....

[Pk_StyLeZ]

well i just felt like sharing, we had a special guest appear at our school(shaolin jing wu yuan) today. some of you guys might of heard, the beijing wushu team is here in america doing a tour. well one of those wushu guys use to be a monk/warrior monk/performance monk/wushu monk whatever you want to call it, and he was on tour with the shaolin monks a lot back in 1998 and whenever. well the guest was Zhao Qing Jian(monk name i dont know). but yeah just felt like sharing. and it was cool. my master Shi Yan Feng know him personally before back at the shaolin temple and use to train with him. i use to always download his wushu videos online and watch his *gymnastic feats* and be so amazed. but today i saw it in person, and i can tell he wasnt even trying but WOW i was still impressed. and hes look old too, but wow he can still do all that stuff and move fast....=)

[GeneChing]

They're coming our way next. We're doing a workshop with them through our non-profit, the www.TigerClawFoundation.org (http://www.tigerclawfoundation.org/). I'll see them tomorrow, just before I work Everclear/Metallica/Stones. Yes, tomorrow will be a big day. Zhao Qingjian - I'll have to remember him. ;)

[GeneChing]

Zhao Qingjian was originally from Shandong and trained in Guangdong. He was doing Shaolin performance tours from '95-'98 under the name Xingjian. He left Shaolin to major in wushu at Wu Han Sports University, and captured the men's all around championship at the 2000 China national games, taking 1st in Longfist and Broadsword. He's now 27, making him one of the older members of the Beijing Wushu team, since most members are in their lat teens or early twenties. He was pleased that I 'recognized' him - thanks for the heads up, Pk_StyLeZ!

[Pk_StyLeZ]

no problem
my sifu had actually shown me videos of them performing together in america.
yeah this is his last year competing and then he will go to become a full time teacher i heard.
man for being 27, he can still move fast and fly....i was impressed when he showed us some stuff, and he wasnt even trying!
i should have some pictures and maybe videos if i know how to do it? in a few weeks on our school website. keep checking guys. =) i will let you know all know when it is up too.

[GeneChing]

All those BWT members are so professional. We shot all 14 members, plus their coaches, in under an hour! Some masters take an hour just to warm up. Of course, no one beats wushu champs when it comes to posing. :p

I wish I could have had the time to really interview Zhao, but it wouldn't have been fair to the others. Nice group of people - laughing and joking with each other. Very friendly. I'm looking forward to their show and will probably see them Thursday at the workshop (although I'm just going to pose there - my body is way too battered to do wushu, especially at my age).

It was great to see Cui Yahui again too. I worked on an article about him back in our Sep Oct 2004 issue (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=531).

[Pk_StyLeZ]

thats cool, i didnt get to meet all the members, only met ZQJ.

hmmmmmmmm, no one beats wushu champs when it come to posing? hmmm looking and judging by the poses done on the beijing wushu team tour wensite. i didnt like those poses very much. i think the shaolin *monks* poses better =)..well some of them....

[Ronin22]

no problem
my sifu had actually shown me videos of them performing together in america.
yeah this is his last year competing and then he will go to become a full time teacher i heard.
man for being 27, he can still move fast and fly....i was impressed when he showed us some stuff, and he wasnt even trying!
i should have some pictures and maybe videos if i know how to do it? in a few weeks on our school website. keep checking guys. =) i will let you know all know when it is up too.


Whoa man, you make 27 sound like 67. He's 27 for cripe sake of course he can move fast! Jackie Chan must be a turtle then id your surprised to see some one at that age move fast.

[GeneChing]

Modern wushu, like gymnastics, has a very limited window for practice. It's like human years are seven dog years. Wushu years are quite short lived. That's my main beef with it. I'm way to old for the flying aerial into splits. And I'm just a bit past 27...;)

[Pk_StyLeZ]

Whoa man, you make 27 sound like 67. He's 27 for cripe sake of course he can move fast! Jackie Chan must be a turtle then id your surprised to see some one at that age move fast.

wushu espcially in china, MOSt athlethes stop competing around the age of 22 in china in WUSHU. 18-22 is like their PRIME age and best time to compete. and also if u saw ZQJ face, he looks older then 27. that why i was impress when he was still moving fast and i dont know if i mentioned it or not, he wasnt trying when he did his stuff so i was really impress. he did it so effortless, slipped on his feiyue shoes, no warm up no nothing. went straight into the form moved fast and clearly and lots of power and fly high didnt break a sweat or start to breathe hard like many of the SHAOLIN MONKS i seen. and i can tell he wasnt trying at all so yeah.

jackie chan most fast?i dont know?i never seen him in person?so no comment on him =)

[GeneChing]

... I saw him again last year in April when the Tiger Claw Foundation (http://www.tigerclawfoundation.org/) helped support his showing of Traces of the Dragon as a benefit for Self Help for the Elderly (http://www.selfhelpelderly.org/index.php). Jackie's still as animated as ever and quite fast to help old ladies across the stage - seriously that's a great application of kung fu skill if you think about it. He may not be as fast as he used to be, but come on - he's 50 and takens some hard hits. I doubt I'd still be standing if I survived some of those.

But back to the BWT - I checked out the workshop (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37378)
last night that we did (again through Tiger Claw Foundation - gotta plug our non-profit arm) and if there's one thing that wushu is, it's fast. Freaking fast. It's so fast that it sacrifices power, but if you have a sharp, you don't need power. Anyway, it tripped me out a bit. I remember taking a wushu seminar with the BWT with Yuen Wenqing (http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazine/article.php?article=80) back in '97-'98. Most all the participants were TCMA - only a few actually practiced modern wushu. Last night, people were opening with aerials into splits, barrel rolls - these young'ens, they know wushu well.

[wall]

Zhao Qing Jian is a really great guy and great wushu athlete, one of the best in recent years IMO.
As a kid he studied under Shi Xing Hong at Shaolin; SXH was about 4-5 years older than ZQJ and was his senior / coach. He eventually left Shaolin to enter the national wushu team, where he still is at 27 ... I think he'll retire after the Hanoi World Championships in a few weeks time.
He's a rather short guy (even by modern wushu standards) with huge legs :) ... here he is next to me, I'm 5'11".
http://www.shaolin-wushu.it/img14.jpg

[Pk_StyLeZ]

Zhao Qing Jian is a really great guy and great wushu athlete, one of the best in recent years IMO.
As a kid he studied under Shi Xing Hong at Shaolin; SXH was about 4-5 years older than ZQJ and was his senior / coach. He eventually left Shaolin to enter the national wushu team, where he still is at 27 ... I think he'll retire after the Hanoi World Championships in a few weeks time.
He's a rather short guy (even by modern wushu standards) with huge legs :) ... here he is next to me, I'm 5'11".
http://www.shaolin-wushu.it/img14.jpg

holy shiet
u look like a giant compared to him
hahahahahaha

[GeneChing]

He was clearly one of the main stars of the BWT tour this time. I caught their show last night. He stood out, or maybe jumped out, amongst all these much younger kids. It's fascinating to see the older veterans of the BWT move on. I would love to get his story someday, just to get in his head a little. The wuseng-to-national-champ tale would be very interesting. Most of us would settle with just one of those roles in life.

[dimmakseminar]

Dear Readers:

So much for the supposition that Monks are second rate Wushu performers. However, it appears that there may be some validity to the possibilty that the inverse is true.

Respectfully,

DMS

[richard sloan]

warm ups...?

the body should be treated as one muscle....

[Pk_StyLeZ]

warm ups...?

the body should be treated as one muscle....

??
dont understand the comment
sorry

[richard sloan]

what I mean is quite a few of the monks I have trained with require no "warm-ups," because the philosophy is to treat the body as one long muscle...hence the source of their somewhat insane powers of flexibility.

so when I read that some masters and monks need extensive warm ups or run their breath out in short exchanges it seemed odd to me, hence the comment.