INTRODUCTION TO CHINESE MARTIAL ARTS (WUSHU)
1400
HOWARD HAO
SPRING 2024, SPRING 2025
HOWARD HAO
Ph.D. Traditional Chinese Sports from Beijing Sport University.
Howard Hao has been teaching Martial Arts at The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies (TBC) since 2002. He has developed a completely new and systematic method on teaching martial arts.
INTERESTS
- Martial arts
- Sports
- Wushu
academics@thebeijingcenter.org
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course introduces students to Chinese Wushu (martial arts), which is a representation of the broad and profound subject of traditional Chinese body culture.
The different styles of Chinese Wushu are so numerous that no one could learn all of them. For this class, two forms from two styles of Wushu have been selected for the students to learn, one is 24-Movement Yang Style Taiji, which incorporates traditional Chinese culture, philosophy and thoughts, the other is Xingyiquan (Body- mind Boxing), which is one of the major “internal”styles of Chinese martial arts.
To encourage students to perfect the forms, students will attend a competition or a public show.
Also, to help students learn more about Chinese culture as related to Wushu, a written paper will be assigned as a mid-term exam.
COURSES OUTCOMES
Through imitating, practicing, memorizing, reading, meditating and reflecting, competing and demonstrating, by the end of the semester students will be able to:
- Learn two basic Wushu forms
- Gain the abilities to keep good balance, posture, flexibility, discipline andcoordination
- Gain the experience of how Chinese Wushu people were/are trained
- Understand correct concepts of what Chinese Wushu
- Learn useful means to relieve stress
- Understand some traditional Chinese culture, philosophy and thoughtsrelated to Wushu
- Attain a level of experience and competence so as to be able to compete and show in public.