Zeng Yang’s Journey Through Wushu from Fear to Career

by Alexander Yu

It’s a chilly winter evening in Portland. Zeng Yang half-kneels before a student, no taller than four feet and no older than nine years of age. Inside the warehouse converted gym, the student wears a red belt over the uniform of white pants and a tucked purple t-shirt. Even as he kneels, Zeng is about the same height as the student. Zeng holds out his padded hand and gestures for the student to punch it. After the student strikes, Zeng corrects the student’s form, showing him how to use his waist and body to hit harder.

Zeng is teaching Sanda, a style of Wushu considered to be the sparring relative of the more commonly practiced art forms of changquan and taijiquan. Wushu is the general term for all styles of Chinese Martial Arts. Once used as fighting techniques by soldiers, Wushu has evolved to be a national sport in China with both artistic and sparring styles of practice. Zeng is well versed in both the artistic and sparring styles of Wushu and teaches them at the US Wushu Center.

*Zeng shows a student how to do a move.*

*The province of Sichuan sits in the southwestern region of China.*

While Zeng teaches Wushu by day, he is found reading and studying by night. As a university student, Zeng’s time teaching at the US Wushu Center enriches his studies towards a master’s degree in martial arts.

Zeng Yang was born on June 12, 1993 and grew up as an only child in the city of Meishan in China’s southwestern Sichuan province. Zeng’s family was one of countless in the province who only had onechild under the Single Child Policy.

With no siblings, Zeng’s parents worked hard to raise their only child. His father worked as an automobile factory worker. Zeng’s family lived in a factory housing complex which allowed Zeng to substitute his lack of siblings with countless other children of factory workers.

His mother, on the other hand, worked hard to foster Zeng’s interests and passions. From an early age, Zeng demonstrated an aptitude for the arts. When asked for his earliest memories, Zeng leaned back in his chair and tilted his head back as he smiled and vividly recalled drawing with chalk on the concrete pavement in front of his family’s house at the age of four.

For much of his youth, Zeng imagined growing up to be an artist: “I didn’t know what an architect was. I didn’t know what a designer was. I only knew art and wanted to be an artist”.

His mother sent Zeng to art classes. Filled by playtime with neighboring friends, school, and art, Zeng had a peaceful and happy childhood. He continued to develop his passion for art until his early grade school years.

*Zeng practicing the nunchakus at the age of 11.*

Throughout this time, Zeng’s sense of identity was quite simple and still forming. He had no strong opinions about his future, or any objections to his life. His idea of “home” was a not too unlike what kids here in America know: playdates, drawing, coloring, and video games. However, this changed when Zeng started practicing Wushu.

Zeng was first introduced to Wushu at the age of seven when his mother took him to visit a well established recreational Wushu studio in his hometown. In China, there are several levels of Wushu training. There are recreational studios, Wushu schools for slightly more hardcore spiritual and physical training, and semi-professional schools created as feeders for the professional provincial Wushu team.

Throughout all of Zeng’s childhood, his mother had always wanted Zeng to try Wushu: “She believed that as her child, I should practice Wushu. She had always wanted to practice as a child, but never had the opportunity”.

When Zeng decided to quit art at the age of seven, his mother suggested that he go and watch Wushu at a local recreational Wushu school. For several days in a row, Zeng’s mother would bring him to the studio and try to convince him to join, each day with no success. Petrified with shyness, Zeng recalled clutching his mother’s hand while standing behind her as they peered through the window of the Wushu studio.

Zeng said: “Even the youngest children there were about a year older than I was. It was during the summer, so they had their shirts off and it really frightened me”.

Two years later when Zeng turned nine, he reluctantly agreed to try martial arts at a different recreational facility than the one his mother showed him two years ago, because the people at the new facility seemed nicer.

Zeng started training in Taekwondo, but quickly transitioned to Wushu: “I was training in Taekwondo, but I could see the Wushu class right next door. The instructor was very tall and strong. As the young impressionable child I was, I thought to myself ‘Wow. If Wushu can make you look like that, I want to do it’”.

*Zeng poses for a photo while visiting his childhood Wushu studio.*

And thus, Zeng began training in Wushu.

When Zeng started to formally train in Wushu at the age of nine, his sense of identity had started to solidify. Training became a daily aspect of his life: “I trained a few hours every evening. I would get out of school, eat something on the road, train for hours, and then go home to do homework”.

Wushu became an integral part of Zeng’s life. Even though he had no intentions of competing professionally for the province of Sichuan or for China, Zeng’s training regime was nothing short of professional. Practicing at the foremost recreational Wushu studio in the Meishan municipality, Zeng trained to compete at professional levels of competition.

By the time he reached 15 years of age, Zeng was ready to compete in the Sichuan provincial Wushu Championships. It was Zeng’s first time competing at such a high level. Because there wasn’t much Wushu competition in Meishan, Zeng’s team was automatically chosen to represent the city in the provincial championships.

However, his team did not seed well. Zeng recalls: “At the awards ceremony, our coach stood behind us as each award went by. We won nothing. None of us got even top eight for any event. However, the coach still patted us on our backs and said he was proud”.

In those moments, a fire ignited within Zeng. He went home and trained everyday, harder than he had before. By his last competition before college, Zeng was able to medal, and his passion for Wushu had turned into something greater.

When Zeng was deciding what to do for college, he could have easily been admitted to a top-tier university in China based solely on his university entrance exam score alone. Zeng said: “I got the second highest score in my class, which never happens. I was quite pleased with my performance. I could’ve gone to a great university just based off that. However, I decided to take an exam for Wushu as well. Such an exam meant I had to attend a sports university regardless of my university entrance exam score”.

Like his university entrance exam, Zeng breezed through the Wushu exam and was admitted to the Shanghai University of Sport, where he is now studying for a master’s degree.

Today, Zeng considers his progression through Wushu as an integral aspect of his idenity. As he practices the physical art of it, he is also studying the history of the sport. For his master’s thesis, Zeng is researching European martial arts: “I hope to expand the scope of my martial arts knowledge. After each industrial revolution, and especially after the invention of the gun, so many martial arts died. However, Wushu has not”.

When asked what home means to him today, Zeng remarked: “It’s where Wushu is. Any Wushu community feels like extended family to me.” In a time of change both globally, and personally, home is where Zeng feels comfortable and familiar. Since he was nine, Zeng’s practice of Wushu has slowly but surely carved out his character, molding his personality to what it is today.

Living a rather ordinary childhood, Zeng could always remember the countless hours he spent training and all the excitement and passion he felt competing in Wushu. When asked to give one last remark about his life in Wushu, Zeng gestured at himself with both hands and said: “This is something people cannot take away from me. This is something people cannot lie to me about”.