Competition and Teaching
In 1929, the central Chinese government sponsored the All China Fighting Championship, a general competition in Chinese boxing. Each province was to send two participants – one for the armed division, one for the unarmed division -- to Nanjing, the then capitol of China, to compete. Zhang, whose occupation as a fur merchant had required that he move to Shanxi in 1925, entered and won the regional competition for that province. He went on to win the national championship in the unarmed division later that year.
After Zhang moved to Shanxi, he began search for a student to whom he could pass on the Yang family teachings. In all, Zhang is known to have taught ten students, although only a subset of those was taught anything beyond the publicly known Yang style. Wang Yen-nien, who moved to Taipei, Taiwan in 1949 where he lived until his death in May 2008, was the second and last student of Zhang’s to receive the entirety of the Yangjia Michuan Taiji Quan system.
Read more about this topic: Zhang Qinlin
Famous quotes containing the words competition and/or teaching:
“Every sect is a moral check on its neighbour. Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce.”
—Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864)
“For good teaching rests neither in accumulating a shelfful of knowledge nor in developing a repertoire of skills. In the end, good teaching lies in a willingness to attend and care for what happens in our students, ourselves, and the space between us. Good teaching is a certain kind of stance, I think. It is a stance of receptivity, of attunement, of listening.”
—Laurent A. Daloz (20th century)