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This is the second part of the interview with Lu Yan, Zhang Xianming, Lu Jinming
and Dong Honglin, four members of the original Beijing Wushu Team.
In this instalment they discuss what they feel the differences are between
competitions as they used to be, and competitions as they are now. They also
discuss Traditional Wushu and the Olympic requirements.
The interview has been left more or less exactly as transcribed so in places may
be a little rough around the edges. Due to its size, it has been split into four
parts:
- Part 1: Introductions, filming the Beijing Wushu
Team Instructional VCDs
- Part 2: Competitive and Traditional Wushu
- Part 3: The Rise of International Wushu, and
strains on Modern Athletes
- Part 4: Memories of the Beijing Team years
Thanks go to Andrea Falk from The
Wushu Centre for providing the interview transcript and the photographs used
on these pages.
[They have just been discussing the filming of the Beijing Wushu Team
Instructional Videos, and the Video now called "This is Kungfu"]
Interviewer: At the time of filming was the peak of
popularity of wushu, it seemed like everyone loved wushu then.
Lu Jinming: Especially as the old Beijing Team used to
go around performing abroad. It was more well known, and probably more people
learned about wushu through that. There are probably more people interested in
the videos abroad. I don’t think that there is much of a market for the old
Beijing wushu team videos in China now. Who wants to see the old Beijing wushu
team? I mean, a lot of places in China have good wushu teams, why would they
want to buy some video of the old Beijing wushu team?
Zhang Xianming: The key is that we have a lot of
contact with people who come here to train, from the U.S., Canada, Europe. And
especially those who have trained for a long time, or a long time ago, they all
feel that the new wushu isn’t as fun to watch as the wushu of the 70s and 80s.
Some people are talking like this, right?
Lu Jinming: That’s a big question right now.
Interviewer: That is one of the questions on my list.
Zhang Xianming: When we went abroad to perform. When
we went to Canada in 85-86, you saw all that, right? Have you seen the present
day competitive wushu?
Interviewer: [Can’t hear clearly]
Dong Honglin: But now, competitive wushu isn’t the
same thing. Now the emphasis is on competitive wushu. Now the emphasis is not
the same as when we performed. They are after gold medals now. You can’t compare
the two – modern competitive wushu and the wushu that we did.
Lu Jinming: The rules.
Dong Honglin: The rules are different. The
requirements are different. The events are not the same.
Lu Jinming: Actually, the old wushu of our time, the
competitive and traditional were very close. There wasn’t a clear distinction
between the two. Now, in order to spread wushu to the world and especially to
get into the Olympics, the competitive aspect of wushu has to be brought out. So
now, we are spreading the competitive wushu that has clear rules and clear
requirements. So there is a very clear distinction between traditional and
competitive, it will be separated more and more clearly. Competitive is
competitive, and traditional is traditional, a clear distinction.
Zhang Xianming: There are so many elements in wushu,
you can’t get everything into the Olympics. You have to select a representative
one, the one that more people do.
Interviewer: Recently Jet Li has said that the present
day wushu athletes don’t have the same flair as the old ones of your time, that
they don’t have the broad abilities of your time, the real kungfu. They only
know a fist, a short weapon and a long weapon. They lack experience.
Lu Jinming: Right.
Interviewer: What do you think of that?
Lu Jinming: It’s as I just said, in order for the
competitive wushu to develop, it’s just like gymnastics, some people train for
the all round, some for the floor routine, the horse, or the rings. They pick
certain specialities in order to be competitive. They can’t do all the events
and expect to be competitive. It is based on competition. Gymnastics is like
this. Athletics, too, is like, just a 100m run. They just train to run 100m. So,
there is just too much involved in wushu. If you really want to develop along
the competition line, you can’t train all those events, all those styles. You
can’t compete like this. So they have been cut down. In order to be more in line
with competitive gymnastics, the number of events has been reduced. This
simplifies training, everyone can compete together on specific skills and
events, you can see who does the best. This works well.
Dong Honglin: You don’t want to compare the two, and
say the old wushu was like this and the new wushu is like that. There is no
point to talking this way. China wants to spread wushu, right? And get into the
Olympics. In order to be in the Olympics you need to have rules that can be
followed. The rules and judging need to be clear and fair. It can’t be like
before, when the judge could figure that person was good, or that person. You
have to have objective scoring criteria. In 2001-2002, the national board has
worked out new rules. You have to have new standards for the new wushu. These
standards make everything more objective, easier to understand. The goal is to
be fair in competition. That is why it is like this. For instance, here you
should take of 0.1, here you should add 0.2. It is very clear in the rules when
you should add and when you should take off points. You can’t just say how you
feel about the performance, you have to have specific reasons. You have to be
like this to accommodate competition. The new rules are taking wushu in this
direction. The rules have to take wushu in the direction that we want to go.
That’s the way it is. You have to understand it like this.
Interviewer: Lu Yan, you’re not saying much. What do
you think about this?
Lu Yan: Me? They said it all.
Zhang Xianming: Before, the rules and events were too
complex. Now they are more simple, more clear, more above board. You have to
simplify and make them more mathematical to suit competition. People abroad, for
instance, in Canada, like wushu, but if you want to do competition you need to
have something you can understand, rules that have clear requirement, something
that can be scored. For instance, if your gongbu is bad you take off 0.1, it is
very clear. Before, there were points for style, flavour, rhythm, and skills. So
the judges didn’t really have anything on which to base their decisions, it
wasn’t clear to everyone. It wasn’t a good way to judge.
Interviewer: Some say that the level of wushu isn’t as
high as it was when you were athletes.
Zhang Xianming: When we were performing it was more
complex. We thought about what we were doing more, we considered flair, flavour,
the characteristics of styles. We developed our own characteristics. Now the
athletes, to be honest, their conditioning, their ability to jump, the height of
their jumps and the level at which they spin, is better than ours was. This is
the direction of development. But nowadays athletes don’t think so much about
what they do. They don’t have the flavour that we had – before, each team had
specific characteristics. For example, the Beijing team was known for its clean
movements, Shanxi was quick and agile, the chaquan characteristics, Shandong was
fast and strong, Hebei had pigua and steel whip, these were their strong events.
They all developed special skills. Now its not the same, the events are all the
same, now there is just the fist, sabre, sword, staff, spear, southern and
taiji. There isn’t the same regional flavour, now everyone follows the same
rules. Now it is a matter of whether you can do the move or not, can you
complete the degree of difficulty, putting in flavour has no use. The athletes
work on getting the difficult moves down. They don’t think of flavour. You can’t
look at regions any more in terms of performance.
Interviewer: You, as coaches, work this way, but now,
a lot of people abroad feel that the wushu players are kind of boring.
Lu Jinming: They just don’t know. Now, we have
traditional competitions every year. Actually, they are the same as before,
before, it was all together, and now the two have been separated. The
competitive wushu has to go the way of simplification of rules and difficulty of
moves, and the traditional styles go the way of Chinese traditional
characteristics. The traditional styles can’t develop in the same way as the
competitive, they don’t have the degree of difficulty. You see, the competitive
wushu has the National meet, the world cup, international competitions, Asian
Games and the Olympics while the traditional styles don’t have to go this route.
They don’t have to develop towards athletic excellence.
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Lu Yan: Lu Jinming just talked about why wushu is
developing along these lines. In order to develop as an international event, it
is developing at a competitive event, it is just a competitive event.
Competition, before, was just traditional wushu. Chinese wushu has a long
history. Competitive wushu was just developed around 1975, as wushu competition
started to make a comeback in China. So at that time, everyone did traditional
wushu. But now, if we want to internationalize and become an athletic event, we
have to change. The Olympic ideal is ‘higher, faster, more difficult’ . These
are the requirements, so you have to go along with that. If you are going to
jump, you have to jump higher. You have to go faster. The degree of difficulty
has to be higher. So of course it is going to change. If you have very complex
events you can’t meet these requirements, so it has to change. It has to adjust
to the needs of international competitions.
Interviewer: So you don’t see this as a good or bad
thing, just as a development? You don’t say international competitive wushu is
like this and traditional wushu is like this, you keep them separate? Each has
its own way, and each will develop in its own way?
Zhang Xianming, Lu Jinming: Right, each has its own
characteristics.
Zhang Xianming: You see, now the two are separated
clearly, the traditional and competitive. Now there are people working in both
fields. There are people working on the traditional styles in China. Here, we
are all involved in competitive wushu, and others work in traditional wushu.
Traditional and competitive requirements are completely different. See,
competitive requirements, as they just said, are working towards the Nationals,
the World Championships, the Asian Games, even the Olympics. If we spend time on
the traditional styles, well, there just aren’t those events. Winning
competitions gives you a pride, right? You feel proud if you win a gold medal.
The goal of competitive wushu athletes is to win competitions. While the
traditional styles, they are among the people, they don’t have the same
emphasis. More people do them. Competitive wushu athletes can’t place emphasis
on traditional styles, they aren’t competition events, so they can’t spend time
on them. The city, provincial, and school teams are looking for results. The
glory of the athlete, the coach and the team are all based on competitive
results, and the traditional styles are not in competitions. So this is why
teams aren’t doing traditional events.
Lu Yan: You do what is needed.
Lu Jinming: There are a lot more people doing
traditional styles.
Dong Honglin: Sure, they are separate, and a lot of
people are doing the traditional styles. They aren’t as hard to learn and do,
and don’t need special training places.
Lu Jinming: Each city has its wushu associations,
there are a lot of wushu associations, and their main goal is to spread
traditional styles among the people.
Zhang Xianming: The competitive wushu is convenient as
a representative of your city. Each city has its team. If thirty cities
participate in the nationals, how many athletes is that? There is no way to
compare the numbers with those participating in traditional styles. In Beijing,
around the country, there are so many people doing traditional styles all over
the country. Wushu is part of the Chinese culture, many people take part, it has
no limits. But, to do competition, you need the select few to do that.
Interviewer: So, does the government support the wushu
teams in the cities and provinces at the present time?
Lu Jinming, Zhang Xianming: Yes, it does.
Zhang Xianming: Wushu is a competitive event in the
National meet, a medal event, every area wants to develop it.
Interviewer: So the government takes it seriously?
Lu Yan: Yes, more and more so. For a while there were
some provinces and cities that had cut their wushu teams, but now it has got
back to where it was before.
Zhang Xianming: There are over thirty provincial and
city teams.
Lu Yan: Every province and city. There are also
many sports school teams that all participate in wushu training and
competitions.
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