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, competition and/or teaching:
“The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.”
—Thomas Hobbes (15881679)
“The elements of success in this business do not differ from the elements of success in any other. Competition is keen and bitter. Advertising is as large an element as in any other business, and since the usual avenues of successful exploitation are closed to the profession, the adage that the best advertisement is a pleased customer is doubly true for this business.”
—Madeleine [Blair], U.S. prostitute and madam. Madeleine, ch. 5 (1919)
“If we focus exclusively on teaching our children to read, write, spell, and count in their first years of life, we turn our homes into extensions of school and turn bringing up a child into an exercise in curriculum development. We should be parents first and teachers of academic skills second.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)