The 2011 Legends of Kung Fu ended on a high note
Violet Li
, Tai Chi Examiner
August 4, 2011
Over the weekend, three major martial arts tournaments took place in the North America. The 2011 Legendsof Kung Fu & Taiji Legacy World Martial Arts Championship in Plano, Texas, turned out to be a success with 550 contestants from all over the United States, Israel and Brazil, and over 2,000 spectators. President Barak Obama, Texas Governor Rick Perry, Plano Mayor Phil Dyer and other civic leaders sent in their greetings and congratulations.
Under the leadership of Master Jimmy Wong, this event has been hosted for 14 years by the USA Chin Woo Federation and sanctioned by the U.S. Traditional Kung Fu Wushu Federation in the Plano Convention Center (Plano, Texas). Each year, it features new Legends of Kung Fu and Tai Chi grand champions. After two days of highly-competitive games, this year’s titles belong to:
Beginer External Forms Grand Champion: Essay Eden (Houston, TX)
Intermediate External Forms Grand Champion: Pei Wu (Houston, TX)
Modern Wushu Forms Grand Champion: Steven Lee (Broken Arrow, OK)
Beginner Internal Forms Grand Champion: Gigi Ip (Houston, TX)
Intermediate Internal Forms Grand Champion: Queena Tong (Houston, TX)
Taiji Forms Grand Champion: Zoe Siytangco (Houston, TX)
Junior Forms Grand Champion: Ty Roberts (Killeen, TX)
Confucius Warrior Award: Lauren Yeung (Sunnyvale, CA)
Chin Woo Forms Grand Champion: Lauren Yeung (Sunnyvale, CA)
Musical Group is a unique group performance. This year’s awards go to:
External Weapon: San Antonio Shaolin Kung Fu (San Antonio, TX)
Internal Form: Red Crane School of Tai Chi (Kansas City, MO)
Internal Weapon: Red Crane School of Tai Chi (Kansas City, MO)
The Plano Centre is a full service, multi-purpose facility located near Dallas. This world-class convention center has a total of 122,500 square foot facility with an 86,400 square feet conventional hall including a large stage for performance. Master Jimmy Wong, instructors and students of J. K. Wong Kungfu Tai Chi Academy, and the members of the USA Chin Woo Federation worked tirelessly to put one of the largest tournaments in North America together. The event was well-organized and ran smoothly. It started on Friday morning (July 29) with excellent workshops and seminars hosted by masters and grandmasters. To ensure high standards, the Tournament held a “new judges and officials orientation and inquiries” session on Friday night. As usual, the Tournament amassed a group of 103 qualified grandmasters, masters and judges to judge each of the games. In general, each game was presided by one head judge, two assistants and five judges.
Saturday morning’s exhibition by 25 masters was ushered in with a magnificent drumming performance by Patty Sun. Masters Mike Barry, Kam Lee, Sam Ng, Wu Xing Ping, Donald Hamby, Florin Szondi, Sam FS Chin, Daniel Tomizaki, Chris Childs, Chun Man Sit, Yun Xiang Tseng, Paul Der Mody, Augustine Fong, Shi Xing Ying, Xueli Zhang, Huixian Chen, Andrew Chung, Johnny Lee, Blue Siytango, Ray Hildreth, Wayne Stevenson, Wuzhong Jia, George Hu, Paul Iaga and Christophe Clarke demonstrated their specialty and performed a mixture of internal and external martial arts. The exhibition ended with a lighted dragon dance.
The opening ceremony in Saturday afternoon brought all the competitors, judges, and spectators together. It consisted of an eight-lion dance, a parade of judges, and free participation of form practice. It was spectacular to witness hundreds of people practicing Tai Chi together - see a video on the left-side of the article. This year the external martial artists also got the chance to take the floor and practiced their forms. Amazingly with a few hundreds of practitioners kicking, punching and jumping in their own forms all over the floor, there wasn’t a single accident. Master Tom Gohring of Austin, TX, video-taped this and you can see it via the link here.
Saturday night’s San Shou Fight was a serious competition and the event did not end until almost midnight. It was not divided by internal, external, or style. The only division was weight class. One of the Israeli teams improvised and drummed on a plastic container which created a fun atmosphere.
This year Shifu Christopher Clarke championed a new category of sparring called True-2- Form. The goal is to promote the true arts of Chinese Martial Arts. Competitors were judged by their strikes against the opponents as well as how they applied their own art. This game won the overwhelming support of the Tournament and proved itself as a viable event. There will be a separate report on this category in this column.
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Originally Posted by GeneChing
