more on the state of kung fu in china
so before i mentioned i am doing shaolin now in shenzhen. my teacher lived in the shaolin temple for 7 years. the school also teaches ,qi gong, tai chi,and sanda all different teachers. now although i really like the class and think it is great,there is no contact training what so ever. if you want to do any type of partner drills or sparing you have to go to sanda.
now my gf started to to tae kwon do a month ago. it is pretty popular here. and the other day she went to a competition with the school to watch. they have 4 year old white belts competing in comp,fighting. and kung fu does so much as let you work an application on a partner.
i remember last time i started this discussion,some of mentioned i am not fortune cookie enough for my chinese teacher to teach me. i am just a rude ignorant foreign for asking to learn an application from a form. sorry for my french but that is pure bull ****. the chinese government has all but destroyed kung fu in china.
and as for those who have gone to china on a two week trip,and learn applications. yeah some teachers have adapted to teaching foreigners that pay them a **** load of money and get whatever they want. my teacher doesn't teach that way cause he teaches to all chinese,except me. and the chinese people have been "taught" to think in this non violent way. i guess the korean said **** that we will teach fighting and it worked.
I never had any issue about teachers showing apps in China
I trained extensively at Shaolin, but also some in Jinan (Shandong) and Beijing. Every teacher I trained under showed apps and had drills. I'm sorry you're not finding what you seek, wiz cool c.
You know, if you have a good grasp of forms, you can tell those that practice combat skills from those who don't by just looking at their forms. That's part of the point of forms, a fine point that's often overlooked because it requires a trained eye. Here in the SF Bay Area, there are so many kung fu and wushu teachers. As I've said countless times here, I can't even keep track. And many aren't combat trained. They are forms competitors. But you can totally tell just by watching their form, even when that form has 'hidden' techniques as so many TCMA forms claim. You don't have to cross hands. On rare occasions, I've met a master that could actually hide their skills enough that I couldn't tell, but never the other way. The forms shows the skills. You just got to know how to look at them.
Now, I know I sit in a unique seat in the wulin; I'm painfully aware of that fact. But I did the bulk of my hardcore training in China prior to taking this job and I still found skilled teachers (skilled at combat apps, I mean, because as we've long established here, skill at forms does not necessarily translate to fighting). Today, I'm not at leisure to spend a month training in China, but I'm sure it's still there. You may need a little guanxi to get to them, but then, you need a little guanxi to get anything good in China. Again, given my position today, I have a lot of guanxi. But even back then, when I was just a struggling freelance writer, I could manage to scrounge up enough guanxi to get by.