Wushu popularity spreads far and wide

When he first started going to the competitions in early 2000s, most of the participants could speak at best a few words of Chinese. However, in later years, he discovered that many wushu athletes have deeper connections with China.

"It seems that wushu, as a platform, has played an important role in spreading the Chinese culture," said Shi.

He discovered that many wushu athletes, to understand wushu better, have learned Chinese, and, consequently, gotten to know more about China.

"I could almost always find someone on a team who is able to speak Chinese. They would tell me that they have spent this or that many years in China, or that they have trained in Beijing or Zhejiang. It's amazing," Shi said.

One of his students, William Nisbett, is such an example, Shi said. Nisbett trained at his academy for about eight years when he was in primary school.

His love for wushu led him to select Chinese as a foreign language in college. "His Chinese became so good that he won the second place in 'Chinese Bridge' (competition) in the southern eight states," Shi said.

Now a marketing professional, Nisbett recently translated a book from Chinese to English.

"The martial arts have a big impact beyond the sport. I feel very gratified," Shi said.

Zheng Jutian, coach for the Chinese team, said that going back 10 or 20 years, a Chinese team would win most of the gold medals with little doubt, but no longer.

"We don't know who will win until the competition is over," he said, "I can see from this year's competition that athletes from other nations have been improving steadily over the years, and the best of them can match the best of Chinese players. This reflects wushu is indeed becoming a world sport, and I am happy to see that."

Olympics officials said there are more than 120 million practitioners of wushu worldwide, which was created to standardize the practice of traditional Chinese martial arts. Wushu has been recently accepted into the Youth Olympic Games and will make its debut at the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games being hosted by Senegal.

Because of that, Zheng said he expects wushu to become an official sport in the Olympics soon.