I was there during an inter-school competition conducted at the high school level. San Shou is now a pretty regular physical education class at middle school and high school level. That is fairly new. The coaches are also training women now, that is really new and somewhat surprising based upon my previous experiences. Many US athletes remember when female athletes were not given medals after competiting!

The competition was between students of the institute, students from Shanghai area high schools and several private martial arts clubs who had high school age students. Obviously, this was not A-Level San Shou, but it was fun and intersting to watch. There is a huge movement towards fighting without any equipment now in China. This tournament did NOT use the IWUF chest guard. In addition, shin guards and head gear was optional and very few actually wore it. I am not sure what this means for formal international competition on the amateur level.

Coach Zhao indicated there are three "new directions" in San Shou and San Da in China. For ALL levels and competitions they are working more on power and less on points. This I strongly suspect is a result not only of the fights against Thailand but the fact that China has not been doing well in the world championships against the former Soviet Union athletes for similar reasons.

The next "new direction" is working on more boxing. In this case, the specifically mentioned the recent matches with the US. While China won all 5 matches, with better side kicks and throws, they had trouble with the US hands and felt that boxing is a major weakness in China.

The third "new direction" was a need for the professionals to study more how to use their knee. I have absolutely no doubt this is an immediate response to the matches with Thailand.

Another thing I was able to do was pick up a few issues of "Jing Wu" magazine, a very good martial arts magazine. There was a lot of San Da coverage, especially in the issue that came out after the Guangzhou event. There seemed to be a lot of respect for Muay Thai, a feeling that everyone involved on both sides fought hard and that the events were good for everyone. One of the Muay Thai fighters, in Chinese "Po Ta Wa Cai" (that is how it is written, I have no idea who the fighter is but can scan the picture latter in the week), was the cover of one issue.

There were over 4 pages of coverage and my translation of it would probably bore you all to death, but I thought I'd cover a few key points;

The event was called a once in a century type of event, a real test of the 5000 year old (their description, not my opinion) tradition against Muay Thai, which they described as "today's #1 in the world". They asked the question of how with only 100 years of development (again, ther description, but I think they mean that it has been a "ring sport" for 100 years more or less) Muay Thai can defeat all the traditions which are supposed to be thousands of years old.

The writer observed that Chinese martial arts had "beautiful quality" combining spirt with motion in kicks and its many "fast throws", and that Muay Thai in many ways was "not asthetically beautiful" (not as an insult however when you follow the whole argument). Muay Thai focusses only the "three big weapons" of round kick, knee attack and elbow attack. But it uses the "three big weapons" to many "big victories" and "quick victories"

Beginning in the 1990's of the 20th century, San Da (actually San SHOU in the amteur competition, but they do tend to blur the lines in China now) raised up in China with many competitions and set as it's goal winning Muay Thai's reputation (if my grammar is seeming strange now, it is because I am sitting here reading Chinese and translating LOL!)

The opinion of at least one of the Chinese coaches, that at present the Chinese could not compete with Muay Thai in terms of power. For this reason the Chinese should avoid the "three big weapons" of Muay Thai. China's strength would be the side kick. China also benefits from many throws, more than Muay Thai. Thus, the Chinese strategy would be to avoid the power and to throw if they could not move

Another interesting point, not a criticism in the article at all, was the different way the two teams acted before the competitions. The Chinese team did all their practices together and shared one single coach and strategy. The Thai team didn't act much like a team, they trained hard and showed "true heart and spirit" (words of author) but practiced separately and seemed to each have a different approach.

Click here to view some pictures from my trip