If you come across Liu laoshi's kungfu wrestling class at the Beijing Language and Culture University campus, you won't see any colored belts or rows of students shouting in unison.

The equipment is sparse and generic - mats, a punching bag, two bricks, a long wooden pole, and four wrestling tunics shared between the students - and the class meets in a hallway of the sports center.

But you may well see all 191 centimeters and 95 kilograms of Californian Sonny Mannon picked up like a sack of flour by his teacher, a champion wrestler known to his students as Da Ge'er (tall person).

Mannon, like many of the regular students in the class, which meets at 5:30 pm, six days a week, belongs to the small group of foreigners across Beijing who moved to China in order to study martial arts.

From beginners who have never been to a class before to students who have practiced for a decade, they train hard.

Mannon spends one hour every morning practicing alone as well as three hours in class in the evening. Liu's students spend an hour every day lifting cinder blocks and practicing thrusts with a 3-meter pole before working on Beijing-style wrestling.

Mannon said he decided to move to Beijing in 2007 in large part because he thought he would have more time to practice.

"I was leaving work every day at noon so I could go to the park and train, and that wasn't going to work," he said.

"So I figured if I come to China, I can find the time. I didn't know where I was going to study, or with who, but Beijing is about as good as it gets for martial arts."

The rigors of training can form close bonds between students and their teachers.

Che Garcia, an English teacher who has lived in China since 1993 and Beijing since 2004, describes his tai chi teacher as a second father.

A 75-year-old retiree, master Wang said he has no other students. Garcia added that his classes cover all aspects of life, turning to his teacher for advice about raising his children and renewing his visa as well as training. They practice almost daily, he said, from midnight to 4 am, meeting in a public park even in the dead of winter.

"He thinks he is teaching me to be a man," Garcia said. "But in my mind, he's teaching me to be Chinese."

Although many Beijing kungfu classes do not appear traditional, meeting in parks and other public places, students say that forming close relationships with their teachers brings them closer to the history of Chinese martial arts.

"Tai chi comes from I Ching, so I can pretty much find something in common with any kind of artist, chef or calligrapher," said Garcia, referring to a Chinese classic on divination.

Marco Brun del Re, another of Liu's students, said traditional martial arts were taught informally.

"If you want to talk about what's traditional, there was none of this business with a class and students all wearing a belt and all these systems - that's Japanese," he said.

He said in China, martial arts were usually passed down within families, from father to son.

When choosing a teacher, the students advise that forming a rapport is more important than choosing a style of marital arts.

"For most people, the way they choose a teacher is to say 'I want to do this style of martial arts', but that's really not the right way to go about it," Mannon said.

"When you find a teacher, the most important thing is to be comfortable with them because the relationship you build with a teacher can be a pretty deep. If you're there and people are smiling, that's a pretty good situation."

China Daily

(China Daily 10/13/2010)