Inaugural Australian International Martial Arts Festival

Wulong Tai Chi Kung Fu congratulates our dedicated members Lucy and Paul Keenan who won gold at the recent inaugural Australia International Martial Arts Festival held over the weekend of 1st and 2nd of December 2018. As well as a large number of Australian based competitors, the Festival attracted martial arts practitioners from China, Singapore, Hong Kong and New Zealand.

On the first day of the festival, Lucy and Paul competed in tai chi and qi gong events and won a combined tally of three gold medals and one silver medal. They each competed in Tai Chi Fan Yang Style 18 form and Ba Duan Jin Qi Gong events, achieving exceptional scores over 9 for each routine. Paul won gold for both events and Lucy gold for the Ba Duan Jin and silver in the Tai Chi Fan Yang 8 form.

On the second day Lucy and Paul returned to the Festival as guests in an exciting closing ceremony where they performed movements from the Ba Duan Jin Qi Gong for a large audience of dignitaries, competitors and spectators.

Professor Lily Sun is proud to see Lucy and Paul, as well as all the hard working Wulong Tai Chi Kung Fu students, challenge themselves and achieve personal growth and success.

Wulong Tai Chi Kung Fu wishes all the Festival competitors the best in their training, and looks forward to competing next year!

Guest Author: Helen Simmonds

Did you enjoy the Qigong Stick Workshop?

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our Qigong (Stick) Workshop, this past weekend. It was an incredibly valuable session with Professor Lily Sun, and we appreciate the hard work you put in. We hope everyone enjoyed themselves.

Here’s a small collection of photos from the day.

WTQA Festival 2018

What a day it was! With performances from the masters, lion dancing and of course the amazing competitors.

Wulong's small team made quite the impact, walking away with several Gold medals and three Champion trophies.

• Roland Heath - 3 Gold Medals

• Lucy Keenan - Overall Qigong Female Champion

• John McCormick (not pictured) - Overall Tai Chi Male Champion

• Sher Rill Ng - Overall Tai Chi Female Champion

A special shout out to Paul Keenan and Kyle Tidd for your amazing behind the scenes work. Not only did you manage our team, but you were our personal cheer squad and paparazzi crew. We thank you!

Two more Professors join Wulong as Master Instructors

Professor Yang Li from Beijing Sports University, and Professor Xiang Hanping from Wuhan Sports University have both decided offer their vast wealth of knowledge of both Tai Chi and Qigong by joining Professor Lily Sun at Wulong Tai Chi Kung Fu.  All three have vast amounts of experience across various styles of Wushu, Tai Chi, and Health Qigong.  They will all work together make Wulong's curriculum and teaching the most effective, and advanced teaching in Australia.

Professor Yang has over 36 years of teaching experience and most notably helped design the Tai Chi Fan routines (including Fan 18 and Fan 36).

Professor Xiang is one of the leading experts in Health Qigong, contributing vast amounts of research on the benefits and nuance of movements involved in Ba Duan Jin, and Yi Jin JIng among others.

Both of them joining Professor Lily, who is a multiple time Wushu champion makes Wulong one the most experienced and advanced schools in the world.

Another Successful Tai Chi Sword Workshop

October Sword Workshop participants all completed the workshop successfully

Congratulation to all those who attended the October sword workshop.  Lily took everyone through more advanced sword foundation and then progressed with the Tai Chi Sword 32 routine. Everyone made an amazing effort.

Due to the great success of the workshop, and popular demand from the participants.  Professor Lily Sun will be running a series of review sessions for people to improve and progress in the Tai Chi 32 form. Signup below!

Professor Lily Sun has practiced sword since the age of 13, it being her speciality short weapon during her Wushu career. Lily is the only master in Australia to have won gold medals at the national level in China.  The focus of her sword workshops are on correct foundation and technique, the practical applications of each movement are taught, not just simply the basic movements.

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Professor Lily Sun will be running a series of workshops.  These are open to both beginners and advanced.  To express interest please fill out the form below.

Most Successful School at WTQA

Congratulations to all the competitors who competed in the WTQA competition! Wulong Tai Chi Kung Fu emerged as the most successful school at the WTQA competition being the only school to compete across all disciplines. This is a great outcome given this is the first year Wulong has competed in the WTQA competition.

The only other school to come close to Wulong's medal and Trophy tally was Professor Lily Sun's other school: Melbourne University Tai Chi Wushu club (MUTW).

With a final overall medal tally:

• 42 Gold Medals (21 Wulong, 21 MUTW)
• 9 Silver Medals (6 Wulong, 3 MUTW)
• 3 Bronze (1 Wulong, 2 MUTW)

The following champions trophies were also awarded:

• Best Overall Female Qigong Practitioner (Lucy Keenan – Wulong)
• Best Overall Male Wushu Practitioner (Xingda Chen - MUTW)
• Best Overall Female Wushu Practitioner (Veronica Li - MUTW)

With Sun Han Xiang (Lily) coaching both teams in the competition it is easy to see why the WTQA consistently awarded her the best overall coach for multiple years.  Lily also gave an amazing display of her sword prowess with a performance of the Sword routine from her recent 8th Duan Examination.

Wishing all the competitors the best in their training, and we look forward to competing next year!

Professor Sun Han Xiang (Lily) awarded 8th Duan in Wushu

Many congratulations to Professor Sun Han Xiang (Lily), a well-known Chinese Wushu professional and the founder of Wulong Tai Chi Kung Fu for her great success in achieving 8th Duan in Wushu from the Chinese Wushu Association at the Official Duanwei Grading on July 21, 2016 in Beijing, China. She was the only master awarded such a high level of Wushu Duan Wei at this international event. Professor Wu Bin (Jet Li’s coach in the Beijing Wushu team), an honourable member and leader of the examination committee, called Lily personally to congratulate her 8th Duan award, he told her he had not seen such an impressive show of Piguaquan in recent memory.

In her application for her 8th Duan, Professor Lily Sun had to complete a series of written and oral examinations. Her grading preparation started before the official examinations in Beijing. She was required to submit videos of her weapon and bare hands forms, 8 different routines in total, to demonstrate her technical abilities. Lily fully satisfied the selection committee with her sound contributions to Wushu and Tai Chi in both China and Australia, which included both her written contributions in form of articles and thesis and her contribution to the Wushu community by helping grow the Wushu community internationally. In her technical examination, Lily belying her age, completed two high energy and impact routines in Piguaquan and Jianshu (Straight Sword) impressing both the Judging panel and her fellow coaches. After seeing her performance, head coaches from Spain, Italy, Japan and many other countries all invited Lily to run seminars and training courses in their respective clubs.

We sincerely congratulate this well deserved and long anticipated achievement. Lily was the youngest, and one of a very small number of the Wushu community granted a 7th Duan in the first round of national Wushu Duanwei examination in China in 2001. She went through the whole process of the 8th Duan examination a few years ago, but could not receive her 8th Duan because she did not meet the age requirement of being over 50 years old! Now with her sights on 9th Duan, Lily finds herself again too young, and having to wait a further 15 years before she is old enough to apply.

Wulong goes Gold at 2016 Beijing International Wushu Festival

Wulong goes Gold at 2016 Beijing International Wushu Festival

Wulong Tai Chi Kung Fu represented Australia at the 3rd Beijing International Wushu Festival 2016 and achieved an exceptional 14 golds, 2 silvers and 1 bronze across 6 events.

With over 1,100 competitors, the Beijing International Wushu Festival is one of China’s largest competitions open to "foreigners".  A truly International event with competitors competing from around the world, including Japan, Taiwan, Italy, Spain, USA and of course China.

Luminary figures of the Wushu community including Wu Bin (吴彬) (Jet Li's coach during his time in the Beijing Wushu Team) presided over the competition.

Wulong’s Founder and Coach, Professor Sun Han Xiang (Lily) recounts, “In the beginning, many of them did not want to go, they were not confident and felt they were not good enough to compete on an International level.”

“But I believed they were ready, I knew! They just needed confidence!”

“So we trained very hard. It was not easy, they had full time work and family commitments. But they were dedicated.” Professor Lily explained,

“I told them if they get medals, good! But not important. Challenging themselves and achieving personal growth – that is the most important thing.”

Wulong Tai Chi Kung Fu team completed in several Wushu styles, such as Bajiquan, Changquan, Gunshu (Cudgel), Yang Taijiquan, Yang Taijishan (Fan), and group Yang Taijishan.