Chinese martial arts well-preserved in Macau

The Macau Wushu Master Challenge attracted hundreds of Wushu masters from across the world to join in various Wushu competitions, and display Chinese martial arts and traditional lion dance.

According to a report by Xinhua news agency, behind all the hustle and bustle of shopping malls, casinos, hotels, and must-see tourist attractions, martial arts and lion dances are well-preserved in Macau. Many residents carry on their tradition of practicing martial arts, be it for physical exercise, challenging themselves or developing teamwork.

Every night, on the rooftop of a 14-floor building on the Rua Dos Pescadores Street, dozens of young people practice martial arts. They are apprentices of Loleong Sports Federation, which was established in 1938.

“Those young men have work to do during the daytime. They can only practice martial arts after work,” said the director-general of Loleong Sports Federation, Pan Jingwen.

Pan’s father is a master of Choy Lay Fut, a form of traditional Chinese southern-style boxing popular in the Macau and Hong Kong SARs as well as Guangdong and Fujian provinces.

“It contains a wide variety of techniques, including long and short range punches, kicks, sweeps, joint locks and grappling,” Pan said, adding that Choy Lay Fut is an effective self-defense system, particularly for defense against multiple attackers.

Under the guidance of a master, a dozen primary school students were practicing “waist horse,” the basis of learning any Wushu styles.

To a powerful drumbeat, another group in their 20s practised lion dances in piles as high as three meters, with others practised dragon dances on the ground floor.

“Sometimes it can be quite tiresome for young people to only practice the basic techniques of martial arts. Therefore, we combined the lion dance and dragon dance to make the practices more interesting,” Pan said.

The martial arts circle in Macau cherishes the principle of helping the vulnerable, he said.

They staged free performances and helped collect donations whenever the Chinese mainland was hit by floods or earthquakes. They also aided the poor and vulnerable groups in Macau, Pan added.

Loleong Sports Federation is one of 96 members of the Wushu General Association of Macau (WGAM), which has more than 7,200 registered players, plus 20 certified world-class referees recognized by International Wushu Federation and 20 local referees.

With Macau’s rapid urbanization, there is less room available for people to practice martial arts without disturbing neighbors.

About 10 minutes’ walk away from the renowned Ruins of St. Paul stands Shishan Brotherhood Palace, the oldest Wushu house in Macau. Founded in 1921, the white bungalow, covering an area of about 100 square meters, was surrounded by high residential buildings.

A trident, which belonged to one of the Shishan founders, is enshrined in the center of the bungalow. The bungalow is surrounded by wooden lion heads, champion flags, trophies, and photos to remind the younger generations of its past glory.

Lee Rihong, a senior Shishan member and an old friend of Pan Jingwen, has witnessed how the bungalow has been increasingly surrounded by high buildings.

The young martial artists nevertheless have a strong passion for the bungalow as they have been trained here from childhood, with many of them introduced to the venue by their parents or grandparents.

In such a small and crowded room, the martial artists still enjoy their practice. The rooftop of the bungalow, fenced with steel wire, provides a small space for them to practice lion dances and dragon dances. They are fairly skilled at Three Lions Piling Up, a performance of three players piling up and using a lion head to pick a silk ball hung about seven meters high.

“Our neighbors don’t like [the] sounds of drumbeats, so we use fingers to drum paper boxes instead, to make the similar sound but less noisy,” Lee said.

The older generations in Macau’s martial arts circle seldom worry about passing on the tradition to the youth, as there are quite a lot of young people in the Wushu associations. MDT/Xinhua