Chinese Traditional Martial Arts Competition Coming Soon!

The first annual International Chinese Martial Arts Competition hosted by New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV) will be held on September 27 and 28 at the Armory Track & Field Center, Manhattan, New York City.  This event will take place after a series of other NTDTV sponsored competitions which include the Global Chinese Violin Competition, the Global Chinese Vocal Competition and the Global Chinese Dance Competition.

The Armory Track & Field Center is an Olympic qualified arena, but not many sporting events use a stadium of this magnitude. NTDTV has chosen this center to set precedence and provide the best platform for this landmark event.

Sun Yueshan, a member of the organizing committee for the competition, says it also aims to promote traditional Chinese culture and illustrate to the world what the true essence and ethics of Martial Arts really are.

Sun said traditional martial arts place an emphasis on Wu De (Martial Virtue). Any gesture or a movement requires one to cultivate his/her mind. This stems from deep cultural roots.

According to the organizing committee, there are two divisions, the Asian-Pacific division and the North American division. The North American preliminaries will be held on September 27. Contestants have ten categories to choose from, including both external and internal styles. There are six External style categories: Long Fist forms, Northern style, Southern style, Long Weapon, Short Weapon, Open Weapon. Some of the various weapon styles that will be displayed include the Sword, Spear, Broadsword, and Staff. There are four Internal style categories: Taichi Chuan, Taichi Weapon, one category including Xingyi, Wudang, Bagua, etc, and another category consisting of their corresponding weapon forms. For each category, there is a junior and an adult level, adding up to a total of 40 groups. Second round finalists will continue on September 28. At this time winners from the Asian-Pacific Division preliminaries will join them.

The organizational committee plans to have several martial arts masters provide demonstrations of their styles during the intermission of the final competition. Sun said, “Demonstrating traditional martial arts is promoting traditional Chinese culture. We hope more martial arts masters can join us.”

Sun went on to say that Chinese martial arts is a pearl of traditional Chinese culture. Over the past few decades, the development of many new (modernized) martial arts forms has drawn attention away from more traditional forms. It’s also become much more difficult to find students worthy enough to inherit these traditions. He hopes those in the Chinese community who have special skills or knowledge of traditional arts can come out and support the competition, to contribute to the effort of promoting and passing along traditional martial arts.

Sun said it’s hard to find a suitable platform for martial arts practitioners to convene and exchange their skills. He said NTDTV is news media and does not endorse, sponsor, or have any connections, financial or otherwise, with any particular martial arts school. NTDTV, being fair an unbiased, will thus make an excellent host.

Read the original Chinese article