In just 7 days from today the next wushu competition in China will be held in Hangzhou. I am planning to attend, although I may miss a few events due to other obligations. Of course I will try to film as much as I can. (I’m actually behind on my blog from the Hong Kong -> Xi’an leg of my last trip, but I’m going to cut ahead a little bit to today’s wushu class.)
The Shaanxi Wushu Team is hard at work to put on some finishing touches on their forms. I’m actually on the temporarily injured reserve list (my knee is acting up making walking, let alone training, rather uncomfortable) but I had to go talk to Xiao Yu about a few things so I headed out to the wushu guan to check out their form run-throughs during the evening practice.
The first thing I noticed is that Zhang Yang is back from her Guangzhou training with the National Youth Team. Whatever they fed her down there sure did the trick because she was much stronger and her wushu had improved since the last time I saw her. Unfortunately I didn’t get her footage on my camera. Why? Because the people I did manage to film would come up to me after their forms and ask to watch what they had done. Coach Zhang used my camera to check out Xiao Yu’s nanquan form too, which was sort of neat. I felt handy! 
So there were maybe 3 or so athletes I wasn’t able to capture. But I did get a few so I’ll show you those right now …
First up is Yue Xiao Yu sporting a nice new silk that she had ordered from Beijing. i definitely like this one better than the one she wore during the All China Games. Red is a better color on her. This is her nanquan form:
Second we have Zhang Yuan Biao who performed his daoshu form. He didn’t go full out on the nandu, but I still think he has some nice moves in his form. He’s definitely the strongest non southern/taiji athlete on the team right now. I hope he does well in competition.
And third was Yang Zhao, a young man who does changquan and who I don’t really show much on my blog. He’s sort of one of the athletes that hang out in the background of my blogs and videos, but his stuff is actually pretty good, as you can see. During the middle of his form my camera ran out of room so I had to quickly delete some older files and then start filming him again.
Next up was Ren Zhang Tao, the hardest working kid in the group. He was practicing staff, and doing a pretty decent job of it. Not bad for a 15 year old. (Or maybe he’s 14 … I forget … )
After that it was time for a quick break while 3 more athletes did their warm ups. As they were trying to mirror the competition experience as much as possible, they next group was going to go at 8:00 PM and included two male nanquan athletes and one male jianshu athlete. But first, here are the athletes hanging out / preparing to go:
The first is a young man who is one of the only 2 or so male jianshu / qiangshu athletes currently training on the team. I really like some of his flavor, and his one slash with the sword at the beginning of his form can be felt through the whole wushu guan. Very nice.
And then was Yuan Min. He was the second person who got the “memory card full” message in the middle of their form. So unfortunately you dont’ get to see his nandu, but you can trust me that it was pretty nice. While he was warming up and would go full bore on some of his combinations, I have to say that it was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen. For the full form he tapers his energy just a little bit to last the full minute 20 +. But when he is just going for it on a single section it is really something to behold. Anyway, here is his nanquan form:
And last but not least was Tian Jing Fang. He busted out his nanquan form and did a pretty nice job of it. I’m not sure if I’m the biggest fan of his style, but I must say he has the craziest buffest legs of anyone on the team. Dude is seriously maxed out.
The team is leaving for the competition on Thursday so that they can spend a few days acclimating to the environment. I will most likely go on Saturday or Sunday. If it is Sunday (i.e. arriving on Monday) then I might miss some of the first events. Hopefully not, but I might not be able to help it. From what I’ve been told it is in the same sports arena where the 2006 Women’s qualifiers were held. I’ve finally been attending enough competitions to repeat attendance at a venue! Time to get a life?
Who am I kidding. This is my life. 
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Wow. I’m reminded of the gap between China and the rest of us.
Yue Xiao Yu’s stances are pretty high though. And her jumps barely make it. It’s kinda dangerous.
She is usually the first to say that her wushu has defficiencies. She never claimed to be much of a jumper (quite the opposite, actually), but to be honest that isn’t really her strength in wushu. Her wushu is really about her intensity and explosiveness, as well as her techniques. She has really cool yells too (they make my blood curdle when I hear her do them).
A lot of earlier wushu athletes aren’t known so much for their jumping (Li Xia comes to mind) but the main difference is that these days the rules require the crazy jumping so what an athlete might be good at is overshadowed by their ability (or lack of ability) in jumping.
which is kind of too bad, since it means that a lot of the more impressive elements of martial arts (power generation, proper technique, execution of movement, etc) are always pushed to the wayside while people check out whether or not a person has any “hops”.
Hops are impressive, of course. I guess I just wish people didn’t focus on them so much. (not you, specifically, just people in general)
Ah well …
Yeah. Actually what I meant was without adequate jump height she’s barely rotating fast enough to do 720s. Hence in competition if she just screws up slightly she could fail to make the rotation or worse still injure herself due to the lack of air time and an uncontrolled but incredibly fast rotation.
And yes, I saw her intensity and it outclassed Tian Jing Fang. Yuan Ming is still the sickest of the 3 though, but Yue Xiao Yue would have been top-class in the 90s just based on her Wushu alone. But in terms of yells, Huang Chunni still has to be the best one. (: