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Wushu Tries to Infiltrate the Olympics

Participants at the U.S.A. Wushu Kungfu National Championship tournament held at Kezar Pavilion in San Francisco. Photos by Yafone.

National tournament shows that the sport is divided

By Yafonne | Special to AsianWeek

Brandishing her straight sword in the air with flashing circular wrist maneuvers, Felicia Sze, 28, of UC Berkeley, warms up outside the rings before her turn at the U.S.A. Wushu Kungfu National Championship tournament held at Kezar Pavilion last weekend.

Calm and self-collected, Sze enters the cramped ring at the end of a long day of waiting and performs a near perfect straight sword advanced compulsory routine, earning her scores of 8.9 out of 9.0 from the judges. A 2001 contender for the U.S. Wushu Team, hoping for a last shot at the Wushu World Championships next year, Sze is just one of the few advanced wushu athletes who participated in this tournament hosted by the U.S.A. Wushu Kungfu Federation, the official national organization that represents wushu in the States.

“Having this event on the West Coast is very important,” says Anthony Goh, 47, president of the U.S.A. Wushu Kungfu Federation (USAWKF). “The last tournament in California was in 1996. A lot of times not all athletes can travel to the nationals, and so this attracts a lot of Bay Area competitors and provides good exposure for them.”

Sponsored by Master Tat Mau Wong, former host of Kungfu Theater on Channel 26 and founder of the San Francisco-based Tai Wong Kung Fu Academy and Kickboxing Center, this national tournament attracted some 700 competitors of all ages, from beginning to advanced levels of wushu and kung fu. Coming from all over the United States, individual competitors vied for national titles in wushu (northern external style), kung fu (traditional southern external style), tai chi (internal martial arts) and san shou (full contact combat/sparring) categories, which would give them a shot at the International Wushu Federation’s World Championships, to be held in Macao November 2003.

Wushu vs. Kung Fu

“This really excites me,” adds Master Wong, who is also the Tournament Director, “We have been doing this since ten years ago. Every year it is growing very fast. This year we have 600 to 700 people competing, coming from all over the country. A lot of their coaches were from China, and now their U.S. students are finally competing in this event.”

Moreover, the sport of wushu/kung fu has become a stronger contender for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. With a long and illustrious history in China, wushu/kung fu is finally coming together after a bifurcated past in America — divided mostly between the southern, more traditional sparring style, of “kung fu” and the northern, more contemporary acrobatic performance style, of “wushu.”

Although kung fu has been in the United States since the Gold Rush, Chinese martial arts tournaments really only got started in the late 1980s, thanks to the pioneering spirit of Master Wong. Since 1986, Master Wong has been at the forefront of promoting pure Chinese martial arts tournaments, which are different from the more well-established karate tournaments (Japanese martial arts) or tae kwan doe tournaments (Korean martial arts).

“Wushu is now an international sport supported by 86 countries. Actually, 80 percent of wushu practitioners are non-Asian. The popularity of this sport is not limited to race or gender,” says Goh, who also sits on the International Wushu Federation as one of its Executive Committee Members and heads up the Pan American Wushu Federation. Indeed, world-wide, due to China’s strong influence, wushu has been an official sport in all the international Asian games, including the Asian Games, Southeast Asian Games and East Asian Games, all held every 4 years.

“I will say [there is a] between 70 to 80 percent [chance] wushu will get in [to the Olympics]. But it’s difficult to say because Dr. Jacques Rogge, the new president of the IOC has a new policy — no more than 28 events in the Olympics. In the past, the host country has the right to a demo event at the Olympics. Now, even this is no longer available.”

Growing Pains

Yet there are still challenges facing wushu in America. Since the wushu explosion in the 1990s, American wushu is literally going through growing pains, with coaches, judges and athletes driven apart by internal organizational disagreements. In a country where freedom reigns, it is much harder to find a cohesive center for this sport than in China, where the one-party government runs the show. It is not surprising, therefore, that many ideas, opinions and conflicts arise as to how to run the sport of wushu. So different national groups have formed, among them the collegiate CalWushu and the U.S. Wushu Union, created by wushu athletes.

Last April’s Berkeley Collegiate tournament, for example, only had 455 competitors and 1,500 spectators, but was much more organized and more advanced competitors participated. It remains a challenge to create unity and find a way to send the team that best represents all the wushu athletes in the United States.

“A lot of the best athletes boycotted this tournament,” admits Bryant Fong, one of the tournament judges and the head of the San Francisco Wushu Team, who teaches Tai Chi at City College of San Francisco. “Even a lot of the students from Berkeley did not come to compete. So I guess the USAWKF won’t have a big group to choose from.”

In spite of these challenges, Goh is optimistic and has high hopes for everyone pulling together. “The Olympics is not only about the sports, is also about the many cultures being represented,” he explains. “China is now the third strongest sports country in the world, after Russia and the United States. Twenty percent of the world’s population is Chinese. China will host for the first time the Olympics. Out of 28 events in the Olympics, only two are from Asia and none are from China. China has a strong argument to convince the IOC that wushu should be in the Olympics.”

Philosophy of the Universe

For 1,000 years, the Chinese practiced martial arts as a form of self-defense, but they have become not only a form of exercise, but a form of philosophy of the universe. According to Goh, Chinese martial arts “have become an art, a spiritual thing and it has so many methods of cultivating different benefits. It cultivates qi (strength), improves posture for health — so many things.

“Normally for styles you don’t go to textbooks to learn them — you got to the forms, the teachers, instead of textbooks for the art. And the forms are taught by different teachers. This richness of knowledge is very good for mankind. Not every form is suited for self-defense. The many other benefits of wushu should not be denied.”

Besides Olympic recognition, Master Wong, always positive and hopeful, emphasized the main point for this tournament, which is to bring out the flavor of the Chinese martial arts to the public. “It is very rich art form, with a lot of different kinds of styles, lots of divisions, such as animal styles — you’ve got the dragon, the monkey, the snake, even that of an insect like the praying mantis. There are many different kinds of fighting styles. People can see a variety of techniques. I really urge all coaches and teachers of Chinese martial arts to join together to promote all events all over this country. That way, we will be recognized by the more general public, for the next generation’s sake.”

The next U.S. Wushu Team tryouts are tentatively scheduled for April 2003.

For more info, please contact www.usawkf.org.