24/08/2026
I’m increasingly asked by people:
“I really want to go to China and train Kung Fu. I found this temple in the mountains…”“I saw this Shaolin school on social media…”
My answer is usually the same.
If you want to go to China, train hard for a few weeks, experience the culture, the mountains and the atmosphere of Chinese martial arts — go. You might have a fantastic experience.
But understand what you are buying.
Most of these places are martial-arts tourism. They are designed to give foreigners an accessible version of the Kung Fu experience they imagine: temples, mountains, monks and long days of training.
There’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is confusing the experience with access to serious traditional instruction.
Proper training is usually far less glamorous. It develops through a relationship with a good teacher, consistency over years, endless repetition, correction and gradually being taken deeper into a system.
So go to China. Train, explore, enjoy the experience. Just don’t confuse proximity to the birthplace of an art with proximity to its depth.
A mediocre teacher on a mountain in China is still a mediocre teacher.
Go to China for China. Go to a teacher for Kung Fu.
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