Kevin shares his experience training at the Yuntai Mountain School in China.
Training Kung Fu in China:
My name is Kevin, I’m 24 years old. I’m from Germany and I study in Berlin. I trained Kung Fu here for over 2.5 years. But my dream was always to go to China to practise Kung Fu at its roots. I searched the internet for a while and came to the conclusion that the Yuntai Mountain International Culture and Martial Arts School was the best choice for me in terms of cost, training and school conditions.
The website describes how they provide English-speaking trainers (Shi Fus), comfortable rooms, other international students, a nice school area, Chinese lessons and Wi-Fi. I decided to stay for four months.
So I booked my flight and arrived in China on 15 August 2013. As promised, I was picked up from the airport and arrived at the school at around 11:30 pm. Everyone was already asleep because early morning training starts at 5:40 am in summer and at 6 am in winter. The next morning, I was expected to start training right away. Welcome to the tough life of Chinese Kung Fu! Over the next few days, I got to know everyone. There were around 40 international students split into two groups. Both Shi Fus can speak English and provide good, hard training. The rooms are nice and, by Chinese standards, very good. The mattresses are quite comfortable, and every room has an air conditioner, which is very important in summer because temperatures rise above 35°C and it is simply too hot at night without air conditioning. The air conditioners run from 1 pm to 2:30 pm and in the evening from 9 pm to around 3 am.
Every room is shared by two people and has its own bathroom with a toilet and shower.
The water in the bathroom is always cold, which is no problem during the summer.
In winter, you can get hot water for drinking and showering at the place where you wash your bowls and chopsticks.
There is one computer with free internet access, although it sometimes has problems. If you want Wi-Fi on your own laptop, it costs 60 Yuan per month.
There are three meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner. The breakfast provided by the school consists of rice or corn soup, some cabbage and something I don’t know. It wasn’t for me, so I decided to make my own muesli every day (oatmeal, fruit and milk). You can buy fruit and other things every Wednesday and Sunday at the market in the nearby small town, which is about 10 minutes away.
Lunch and dinner always consist of rice or rice noodles and three to four dishes of vegetables, tofu and sometimes meat. The food is seasonal, and the kitchen offers something for everyone. You can always ask for bread or leftovers. For additional things like sweets and other snacks, you can visit one of the nearby supermarkets or the school shop. At the school, you can also buy training shoes, weapons, nice Kung Fu suits and the school uniform: a short version for summer and a longer one for winter.
Let’s get back to the reason why we all come here: the training.
There is one hour of early morning training before breakfast, followed by three hours of morning training until lunch. The lunch break is about 2.5 hours. Afternoon training lasts another three hours. After dinner, you can continue with one hour of free training and practise whatever you like.
I’m not going to lie to you: don’t expect any sports-science-based training. This is good old-fashioned, hard Chinese Kung Fu training. During the first few weeks, and from time to time afterwards, you will have a lot of muscle pain. But you will be surprised how quickly your body adapts to this kind of training.
You will quickly notice improvements in all areas of your training, especially your stamina, because you will do a lot of running and other leg exercises.
Leg and hip strength are essential for becoming good at Shaolin Kung Fu.
At certain times during the day, before and after training, there are meetings. Don’t be late! One part of experiencing real Kung Fu is strictness and discipline, so if you’re late, be prepared to do lots of push-ups.
In general, you will do a lot of stamina and fitness training, acrobatics and, most importantly, form training. This includes all kinds of weapons forms and fist forms. If you stay for a while, you can also learn animal forms such as tiger, mantis, monkey, etc.
There are also Chinese Kung Fu students at the school, around 80 children aged approximately 6 to 16. They practise a lot and also have regular school lessons. You will see that even the youngest ones are already able to do amazing things. Most of the children are very open and straightforward. They try to talk to you in Chinese or use the English sentences they have learned at school. Sometimes they just want to play with you during the breaks. I really enjoyed this and became friends with some of them.
What I didn’t expect was that the air would often be polluted and foggy, even here, far away from the big cities. Another thing I didn’t expect was how close you would become to your Shi Fu, especially in winter when there are far fewer people around. He will motivate you when you’re feeling down and talk to you if you have any problems. Together with the other students, you become like one big family. That is a wonderful thing to experience when you’re so far away from home.
To conclude, I can say that, of course, you will have some difficult and unmotivated periods during all the hard training and while being far away from home. But I can promise you that there will always be a friend or a Shi Fu around who can cheer you up and encourage you to push your limits and achieve your goals!
I had a tough but great time here. I made a lot of new friends, pushed my limits several times and, last but not least, I will never forget this experience. I will take a lot of new experiences and impressions back home.
So never give up and “jia you” (a Chinese expression that means something like: keep on fighting).
Written by Kevin
