Wing Chun in China

Glycerine0160

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I have been away from martial arts for a while. I will make this brief to expedite this post.
I am looking into teaching English in China. I am 23 years old, and am ultimately hoping to pursue a career in international relations.

Regardless, I want to know if it is more likely I would find Wing Chun in rural or urban China?
I assume urban China would most likely be the answer, but then, what could I expect to find in terms of martial arts in rural China?


I ask this because one program for teaching English in China asks you to choose if you would like to teach in Eastern cities or towns, or in more rural areas.
Outside of the obvious excitements of learning a new culture, pragmatically, I would love to leave the entire experience becoming fluent in Mandarin and excelling in a Chinese martial art, preferably WC.
I have done two years of a weak JKD program, and did a few months of private lessons with a WC teacher.


If all of these questions seem to be too broad to answer, let me leave with a more narrow question.
If two critical components of what I would like to gain from China (outside of the abstract gains like self-fulfillment, cross-culture experiences) are martial arts and linguistic proficiency, would a rural or urban setting make any difference?

This is an odd question, and may limit responses to people only familiar with China.
If this post is better put into another area of this forum, please let me know. I posted it here because I do want to pursue Wing Chun over other Chinese martial arts.

Thank you,

-Ryan.
 

Nabakatsu

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I would probably post this in the general CMA forum as well, you may gain some more insight over there. I'm sure you'll figure it out sooner than later, best of luck to you!
 

Domino

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I think you won't have a problem nationally but need to do some homework with regards which lineage or style you would like to learn. Personally I would head for Hong Kong.
 

bully

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I trained in China recently here :

http://www.chinashaolins.com/

It was full time ie Monday to Friday but some of the students taught English at the weekends in a local uni.

Wing Chun is not that well known in China, that statement may suprise you but it is true.

Foshan would be a good place to start, you will get very good tuition there and you can supplement it again by teaching English locally. Contacting the local Foshan kung fu association http://www.fschinwoo.com/en/a1.htm and seeing if you can train and teach at the same time.

If you want to know about the training, have a look in my thread.

Good luck, it was one of the best things I have ever done and certainly is up there on my 8 month travels in Asia.

A quick edit as I re read your post....I found a rural setting better for interacting with the locals. As with most places, the city/town people have a faster paced life and are less freindly due to time constraints. The school I stayed at had Mandarin lessons in the evenings and ample opportunitys to chat to the translators at the school. I think lots of the schools are setup in a similar manner.

As for HK, yep ,plenty of places to train but cost of living is expensive. To have cheap accomodation you would have to commute a long way to train with any of the main players. 30-60 minutes on the subway each way soon takes the shine off training etc. However Shaun Rawcliffe did it in his early days according to the book I read. Thats probably why he is well respected and dedicated....lol unlike myself ;-)
 
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