Wushu Notes
Is that awesome or what? Congrats to the team and their coaches! Lets see if the men can kick that much ass too! Mucho gracias to Lisa, our ace translator. But wait, my Amigo Patrick has gotten us a direct account from Beijing:The women's team captured 11 out of 16 possible gold medals!!! Their competitors included 32 representative teams from other China provinces (171 athletes). Liu Qing Hua gold medalled in 4 events: Spear, SSword Chang Quan and Eagle Claw (women's all around champion). Wang Xiao Na gold medalled in 3 events: Staff, BSword and Double BSword. (women's all around silver medalist) Han Jing gold medalled in 2 events: BaGua, 9 sectional whip (it says she got a standing ovation for that, too) She also got a silver in Spear and bronze in Ssword. Standings for Women's China National Wushu Team Competition: Gold: Beijing Team Silver: Shanghai Team Bronze: Shanghai Sports Academy Other 5 remaining gold medals: Nanquan: Ding Hui Ru (Gansu province) Taiji: Fan Xue Ping (Beijing Sports College) 3 person sparring Set: Liu Yan Yan, Cui Dan (Tianjian province) Long Tassel Straight Sword: Chen Bei (ShangHai Sports College) TongBei: Luo Zao (Qianwei province) Source: Beijing Evening Newspaper (5/26)
They totally swept the competition. They got like 11 first places. Liu Qing Hua got 5 of those (basically every time she went on the carpet). Wang Xiao Na got 2. Han Jing got 2. The team got 1. And something else I think.... Basically just about everything.
Congrats to the Beijing Team. Especially Wang Xiao Na, that's impressive for a young athlete! Liu Qing Hua too, she did really well, but thats expected of her, right? I'll try to get more info if possible, but mucho thanks go to Lisa for the info.No surprise but the Beijing Women's team totally swept the competition. Just on 1st day of competition, the team captured 4 golds. Liu Qing Hua got 2 golds in spear & ssword. Wang Xiao Na got the highest scores in bsword & staff (but doesn't say the scores), too.National Tao Lu Women's Team competition held was from 5/23 - 5/25 at Beijing's JingShan Sports arena. The team scored a total of 260.06 points (8 events), securing their 1st place position. Unfortunately, no pictures...but they did mention how powerful & amazing the team was, especially Liu Qing Hua. She got individual all-around.
The old school ones include the two coaches who came with the Beijing Team for their '98 visit. Also included is our friend Mr. Xue Xing Fu, who came with the '95 team as the women's coach. And by special request from Eric, I included TWO clips of Yan Shi Wen, the Southern Fist monster, aka Softballs for Shoulders. Check these out!
And just to even out the feature, I stuck a couple of relatively new clips up there too. One is of my man Yen Wen Qing (click here to see a picture of me and him). This one is from the first Asian games to include Wushu, held in Beijing in '90. Here YWQ busts out with the compulsory form, the way it was designed to be done (since he designed it, you know he's doing it right). I stuck up the WHOLE set, just because I couldn't pick one part to choose over the rest.
And last but definitely not least is a clip of my pal Kong Xiang Dong, current member of the Beijing Team practicing Spear at the Beijing Team's training hall in China. This video was taken in '94 when my pals Patrick and Dan went to China to train w/ the Beijing Team.
I also took out the image map from the front page. Its kind of a hassle to edit it everytime I add a feature. Don't worry, I'll come up with something else sooner or later. I also updated the Wushu Instructors directory. I am happy with the large number of listings we have there, but there are lots more wushu schools out there (particularly in that open ended category: "Around the World") so email me with your school's info!
