365体育官方唯一入口对接市场,创新人才培养方式,国际化办学引主流媒体关注。
2015年8月10日,《环球时报》采访365体育官方唯一入口院长戴国斌及华师大二附中附属中学的体育教师李世春(2013届硕士毕业生)、三林舞龙队陈春华(2013届本科毕业生)、武术动作演员张浩(2014届本科毕业生)、国家级运动健将徐嘉雯(2014级在读本科生)并刊发专题报道。365体育官方唯一入口院长戴国斌在接受采访时表示,365体育官方唯一入口的人才培养,不仅仅学生在毕业后找到一份理想的工作,更重要的是,为学生打造一个提升学习专业知识,拓展视野的良好平台。
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http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/936339.shtml?from=timeline&isappinstalled=0
原文全文如下:
Working in wushu
By Huang Lanlan Source:Global Times Published: 2015-8-10 19:23:01
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Despite the world-wide popularity of Chinese martial arts, students of the sport are having a tough time finding related careers
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A man in a Chinese martial arts competition Photo: CFP
None of his young students would ever guess it, but just two years ago, Li Shichun, a 29-year-old physical education teacher at a local key middle school, was a student of wushu (Chinese martial arts) for 17 years.
Instead of burying his head in books and writing term papers like most college students, Li's undergraduate major in wushutaolu (literally: routine or form) at the Shanghai University of Sport (SUS) required him to kick, jump and punch his way through college.
In most countries, sports are seldom seen as university majors. Though some talented students may play for their college's football or basketball team in exchange for a scholarship, degrees offering a curriculum and a diploma in a specific athletic sport are not common.
In China, however, where athletic prowess is a source of national pride and making the Olympic team is the dream of every physically inclined student, sports are taken very seriously at the university level. SUS is one such university that offers degrees in specific sports such as swimming and gymnastics in addition to related academic studies like kinesthesiology and sports management.
SUS is also unique for its College of Chinese Wushu, which is what attracted Li, along with approximately 100 other undergraduate and graduates who enroll at SUS every year, to study this traditional Chinese sport - a sport that, unfortunately, sees only a very few of its students go on to successful related careers.
Chen Chunhua (middle) and his teammates of Sanlin dragon dance team Photo; Huang Lanlan/GT
Eight-trigrams palm
With more than 2,500 years of history, Chinese martial arts are some of the world's oldest known forms of fighting systems. There are numerous families, or styles, of Chinese martial arts, though in 1950 they were standardized under the general term "wushu." Since then, wushu has gone on to become a beloved exhibition sport as well as a major genre of cinema, with Chinese martial arts stars like Bruce Lee, Jet Li and Jackie Chan introducing billions of people to the world of wushu.
Li Shichun was one such devotee. Prior to enrolling at SUS in 2006, Li was a wushu disciple for more than 10 successive years at three martial arts schools in his hometown in Shandong Province. "I grew up at wushu schools," Li told the Global Times.
Lest anyone mistaken his athletic prowess as a way out of studying, Li's childhood was in fact twice as hard as an ordinary student. In addition to waking at 5 am every morning for wushu practice, and then again at dusk, Li's days were busy studying all the requisite primary-school subjects such as math and Chinese.
Li's interest in wushu developed at the age of eight, when the small boy first discovered martial arts movies on television. Not alone in his enthusiasm, Li and his friends often sparred together in their front yards, mimicking the moves they saw on screen. "Playing wushu was very popular in my village," he said. "Usually each family sent at least one boy to a wushuschool."
He eventually got his wish, with Li's parents sending him away to a wushu boarding school, though the campus was so far from home that he only got to see his family once a month. "Sometimes I secretly cried in the evenings," he recalled melancholically.
Teachers at Li's wushu schools told him that there were only four choices after high school: being a coach, a bodyguard, a policeman or a university student. The last choice appealed most to him. "I'd never thought that I could go to college someday," he said. Most wushu students were not good at studying, and sitting the gaokao (China's national college entrance examinations) was too difficult for them.
Fortunately for Li, the gaokao for sports major candidates is an entirely different beast than the one for ordinary students. "I prepared for the exam for six months and passed SUS's minimum requirements," Li told the Global Times.
During his four years as a wushu undergraduate, Li spent most of his spare time at the university library, where he taught himself English to prepare for his postgraduate exam. From late 2010 to early 2013, he spent three more years at SUS as a postgraduate wushu student with the intention of becoming a physical education teacher.
Li is vague about his sudden transition to a relatively unrelated profession, but he says he enjoys teaching children. "I formed a wushu team at the school and now it has 30 students as members," he said, "although 29 of them had never played wushubefore."
Xu Jiawen performs tai chi. Photo; Courtesy of Xu Jiawen
Academically disinclined
Xu Jiawen is a first-year student at the College of Chinese Wushu majoring in yangsheng (the Taoist art of nourishing life) with a focus on tai chi. She told the Global Times that despite the fact that she is enrolled in the wushuprogram, wushu is a very small part of her curriculum. "Each week we have only two wushu training classes, totally four hours," she said explaining that the rest of her schedule is filled with ordinary courses.
For the average wushu student, academic classes such as Chinese, English, computer, anatomy and TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) tend to be a bit "boring" and beyond their attention span. "Sometimes I listen to the lecturers in class, and sometimes not," Xu admitted. "You know, academic courses like English are difficult for us, and many of my classmates don't even understand what the lecturers are talking about."
Xu joked that although she passed all her final exams last year she still did not know what some of her courses were. "Before the exam, teachers just gave us a few pieces of review materials. I just needed to learn them by rote."
Instead of studying books, the 20-year-old said she prefers to spend her free time practicing tai chi, which she took a liking to at age 13. Tai chi is considered a discipline of wushu and is popular with elderly folks who enjoy it for its slow, fluid movements. Despite its appearance as a relaxing, meditative exercise, tai chi requires outstanding balance and strength, which Xu boasts.
After graduating junior high school, Xu studied accounting at a local technical secondary school, but she didn't enjoy it. "I don't think I can be a good accountant, I wasn't born for that type of thing," she said. In 2012, after hearing that wushu students could directly apply to the SUS program, Xu decided to have a try. "Wushu enables me to get a diploma," she smiled.
Not surprisingly, however, Xu was met with fierce competition in one of China's most competitive majors. "That year more than 900 candidates applied for sports majors at the SUS, but only 200 were accepted," she said, adding that among the candidates 80 were wushu majors.
Passing the gaokao was also a large hurdle for the admittedly academically disinclined Xu. Apart from having to test in Chinese, English, mathematics and politics, wushu candidates must also receive a national second-level athlete certificate. "We can get the certificate by getting good results at some national wushu competitions," Xu explained to the Global Times.
Despite her disinterest in classroom academics, Xu revealed that she plans to apply for three more years of postgraduate studies at SUS - not so that she can actually learn something, but just to obtain the hallowed master's degree that will open more career doors for her down the road.
"I've no idea what to do after that, it's too far away for me now," she said. "But holding a master's degree I will be more competitive and I can undoubtedly enjoy more job opportunities."
Zhang Hao (second from right) poses for a group picture with other actors. Photo; Courtesy of Zhang Hao
The fortunate few
On a hot afternoon in late July, at a non-air-conditioned basketball training hall of a secondary school in Pudong New Area, a group of sweaty men are practicing the traditional Chinese dragon dance with an 18-meter-long nylon dragon above their heads. The literal and proverbial head of the dragon is Chen Chunhua, an SUS wushu graduate who has been performing in dragon dances for more than 10 years.
Dragon dancing, one of China's most iconic folk heritage performances dating back to the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220) and often performed at cultural festivals such as New Years Day parades, involve a series of fundamental wushu movements such as somersaults, kicks and headstands. It is therefore considered a discipline of the craft.
In 2009 and 2010, SUS regularly enrolled dragon dance students in their three-year wushu program. "It (SUS) even has a campus dragon-dance team," Chen said. Around that same time, while Chen was studying medicine at a local technical secondary school, he declined a job recommendation and instead secretly applied for an internship on the Sanlin Dragon and Lion Dance Troupe in Pudong New Area.
He later applied directly at SUS and was one of just four dragon dance students to be admitted. "I was so excited when I learned that dragon dancing would enable me to get a university diploma. I also learned computer and the school provided me opportunities to organize some events on my own. All these were very precious experiences to me."
Today, Chen is the head of the Sanlin dragon dance team, from which he earns a living, but sadly SUS stopped recruiting new dragon dance students in 2012.
Twenty-four-year-old Zhang Hao, a martial arts actor, is another one of the fortunate few to go on to a related career in wushu.
After enrolling in a two-month basic training course outside of the campus that cost him a mere 5,000 yuan ($805), Zhang found steady work at a Shanghai-based film and television production company. He currently earns 300-600 yuan per day playing supporting roles in various kung fu films. "When there are no movies in production I make no money," he acknowledged. "But being a wushu actor enjoys more leisure time than being a policeman, and is much more interesting than teaching kids PE lessons."
Nonetheless, Zhang feels there is more to the craft than hanging on wires for low-budget movies. Earlier this year, he applied for a three-year postgraduate major in wushu at SUS to study the performance side of wushu. To pass the postgraduate application exam, Zhang stayed at home for two months teaching himself the history of Chinese kung fu movies. "I hope that my performing skills can be largely improved after three years of postgraduate study."
Uncertain futures
The Shanghai University of Sport was the first-ever university in China to establish martial arts as a college major, with it's first graduating class in 1952. "To date more than 40 other universities have followed our lead, opening wushu majors for their students," said Dai Guobin, head of the SUS's College of Chinese Wushu.
Every year, SUS enrolls eight wushu doctoral candidates, some 25 master candidates and 50 to 70 bachelor's candidates. "Doctoral students tend to stay at the university to research wushu theory and history while students with master's degrees mostly become PE teachers," said Liu Jiayu, a former counselor at the College of Chinese Wushu.
"In Shanghai, middle schools only recruit teaching staff, including PE teachers, who have a master's degree or above," Li Shichun explained. "It's not easy to get a good job in this city with only a bachelor's degree."
Among the 25 wushu graduates with master's degrees this year, 20 are now teaching PE at schools in and outside of Shanghai. But for undergraduate students, Liu was frank in saying that they have limited career choices. "Some 15 percent will sit tough tests to become policemen, 20 percent become PE teachers in lower-tiered cities where a master's degree is not needed," she added. "Among the remaining, most will look for a coaching job at wushu clubs."
While wushu graduates who go on to coach at the private level are fortunate to be doing what they studied, those master's students who enter careers in police work or in physical education have little opportunity to put their wushu skills and knowledge to use.
Dai agrees that it has long been a problem for wushu graduates to obtain jobs related to martial arts. "But I believe that getting a job is never the only goal for college students," he told the Global Times. "A college education not only offers students a diploma and skills, but also a platform where they can learn academic knowledge and broaden their horizons," he added.
Wang Beibei contributed to this story
Posted in: Metro Shanghai, City Panorama