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DENGFENG, China: Not far from a Shaolin monastery, the cradle of
Chinese martial arts, a wall poster exhorts people to “cherish the
culture of kung fu, strengthen the Olympic spirit.”
The slogan stresses the importance of wushu to
the national heritage but fails to mention that the sport, better
known outside China as kung fu, will not feature on the program of
the August Beijing Olympics.
The poster stands at the entrance to Tagou
School, one of China’s most famous martial arts centers whose
students share the same mountain valley in central Henan province
with Shaolin monks.
The students leap, twirl, thrust and parry,
punctuating their lunging attacks with loud shouts that cut through
the cold morning air like a steel blade.
At rest, other students gaze at posters that
show off the Beijing Olympic logo and give detailed information
about the August 8 to 24 Games.
But any link between wushu and the Olympic Games
is purely wishful thinking, at least for now.
Despite appearances and the efforts of the
Chinese side, kung fu, popularized in the West since the 1970s by
films and TV series, will have no place in the Beijing Games.
Wushu was left out in the cold despite a
China-led campaign that won the backing of the Olympic Council of
Asia, the region’s top sports body, that included wushu in its own
version of the Olympics, the Asian Games, in 1990.
But the International Olympic Committee (IOC)
has turned a deaf ear to the more recent appeals on behalf of wushu.
-- AFP
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