Bloody Palms

Here I'll attempt to answer questions about training martial arts in China and working in the Chinese movie industry.

Film

China is an excellent place to gain experience in the film industry. Everyone working on a Chinese film, from the director to the gaffer, is very professional and efficient. This is probably the best place in the world to gain experience doing action and martial arts films. The stunt teams are incredible and the martial arts coordinators really know their craft. Once you get on a couple productions and you prove yourself worthy to be on set, word tends to spread very fast and work comes more frequently and is easier to land. The film industry in China is a very small circle and your reputation on set is extremely important. Getting your foot in the door can be difficult. It really helps to know Chinese, even though most TV series and films here are dubbed. If you can't talk with the director and joke with the people on set you are just considered another foreign face and nobody will remember you. The language barrier really is something you need to overcome if you want to start your film career in China. It also helps to be skilled in martial arts or gymnastics (preferably both!). If you can perform your own stunts and keep up with the Chinese stuntmen you will not only gain a tremendous amount of respect, you are immediately ahead of the 20 other guys that are going for the same role. Believe it or not there are a lot of foreign actors here and competition can be very fierce. Again, the most important thing that will help you land continuous work is your reputation and attitude. If you are a nice guy on set, easy going, can follow directions and are willing to help out moving a table or chair out of the way even though that might not be in the job description on your contract you can expect to have a healthy film career in China.

Training

Training in China is a huge challenge. The old, benevolent Chinese master that most western people think about when imagining what it's like to learn martial arts in the birthplace of kung fu is very difficult to find, in fact I would go so far as to say he isn't anything more than a myth, an ideal that represents what westerners think of when they imagine the "Chinese master". What you're more likely to find in China today are wushu schools and universities that will teach martial arts to foreigners for an extremely inflated price (when compared to the Chinese students) and most teachers will teach halfheartedly, at best. You can't really blame the Chinese teachers though, most get paid a very low salary from the wushu school that employs them and they generally aren't motivated to produce exceptional students.

I trained at Shi Cha Hai Sports School along side the Beijing wushu team from 2001 to 2003. Although Shi Cha Hai is a professional sports institution directly under the Beijing government's control I attribute most of my wushu education and progress from the friends I made on the team, not the coaches. The coaches would spend most of their time training the handful of students that compete professionally and have a chance of winning the China Nationals or the Asian Games, and leave the rest of the students, including myself to basically train ourselves. Again this is a direct cause of the coaches salary, the coaches at Shi Cha Hai get most of their money from their students who compete and win, so they have no motivation to train students they don't think will compete well, let alone a foreigner. You can argue that this is actually a great system, it weeds out the bad students and allows the coach more time to focus on the truly exceptional students. The problem is when you are a foreigner in China and you pay a very large tuition to one of the best wushu schools in the world you expect to get a decent wushu education. No matter how good you are, even if you are on the same level as the handful of Chinese who compete you won't get the education you deserve, unless you give a little something extra to the coaches.

Currently I train six days per week, four of those days I train alone, the other two I am coached by a private teacher. I really think this is the best way to go in China. If you pay a coach directly you are guaranteed a much better education than you would receive at a wushu school in China. To many westerners this may sound shallow and petty, especially for a martial arts master, but you have to remember China is still a developing country and most people who live here don't have the economic security to put their ideals ahead of money.