Zi Long is a 21-year old Chinese living in England. He loves martial arts and shares with us his passion.
I was born in England and have lived here for almost my entire life. When growing up, I was in an almost entirely English environment with very small Chinese community around me, being raised with only the English language and little in the way of Chinese customs and culture that I'd have experienced if I'd been raised somewhere else. More recently however, I have gotten more in touch with that aspect of my heritage and one of the most significant ones for me has been my martial arts.
My first contact with martial arts was when I was living in Singapore for four years. I come from a family of many martial artists however my parents were concerned that I'd get hurt and so wouldn't let me initially train. However, they relented when shown the absence of aggression but great effectiveness of the art of Aikido. I joined the Ueshiba Aikido Association, the world's largest Aikido program for children and trained there for four years. Aikido is a style of fighting that involves almost no force and utilises gentleness to manipulate the other person by graceful, sweeping movements. The core skills ingrained into me as a small boy have remained to the current day for me to incorporate in to my fighting style.
When I returned to England, I followed after my sister in commencing training in Shorinjikan Jujutsu, the parent style that Aikido descended from. The training was slightly rougher as it incorporated the Judo aspect as well, the other half of Jujutsu but many similar principles held true for both arts and they laid the foundation of my reactions and movements that could then be built upon. I trained Jujutsu for another few years before my interests finally settled on Chinese martial arts.
My first experience with Chinese martial arts was learning Shaolin Nan Bei Quan Kung Fu. I wanted a change from the purely defensive style and I was drawn to it by its inheritance from the Shaolin temples and the fact that it shared principles with my original two styles in that it utilised lots of deflecting and redirecting techniques rather than straight force, but combined with a variety of striking techniques drawn from Northern and Southern Shaolin styles. During my training, I’ve learnt both empty-hand and weapon forms, self-defence and sparring techniques, alternating between both very hard and very soft techniques, allowing me to integrate all the martial arts I’d ever learnt into a single, cohesive style.
I supplimented my main style of Nan Bei Quan with Chen and Yang-style Taijiquan. I accompanied my parents to a training session originally to help them learn the forms faster but soon I found that despite its widespread reputation as a form of exercise for mental and physical health, there was also a very strong martial application to each movement, centred on the exact same principles as Aikido and Jujutsu, utilising the flow of the opponent’s movements to turn their own energy back on the attacker. Its calm manner of training also helped me gain a better understanding of the internal force that can be channelled for both health and combat, complimenting my external strength that came from physical exercise.
When travelling to Hong Kong over the summer for a clinical exchange with Hong Kong University, I took the opportunity to explore one of the core locations for learning Southern Kung Fu. I found a master and undertook a month’s intensive training in Ye Wen Yong Chun, a step away from my other training with a much higher stance, a greater emphasis on hands rather than feet and a greater effectiveness when very close and entering the opponent’s area of control. It was an amazing experience, very traditional in dingy, run-down block of flats in a poorly lit room practicing forms and hand exercises like ‘chi sau’ or sticking hands, that develops hand sensitivity, similar to ‘tui shou’ or pushing hands in Taijiquan. The training was very different from the format martial arts are taught in the West and so it was an interesting and rewarding experience to see how things occurred in the home country of Chinese martial arts.
And so that is a summary of my experiences with martial arts. To this current day, I am a practitioner of Shaolin Nan Bei Quan, Yong Chun and Taijiquan though I’ve had some experimenting with the likes of Bajiquan and Changquan to supplement my training and add new techniques that can be used in future. The variety of Chinese martial arts is almost without limit and in this modern day, with the racial diversity in England, many of these are already available within the country. However, my aim in future is to travel back to Asia and undertake a far longer period of time training in China so I can improve myself overall and gain a greater understanding of the Chinese martial arts.