July 22, 2010

My Chinese name is Wong Sonny (Sonny H uang) and I am a 52 year old American living and teaching Aikido, a Japanese martial art in China, the home of martial arts, in which I decide there was no better place to continue doing martial arts then. What I have learned over the past 35 years of practicing and teaching Aikido here, and all over the world is

that Aikido is much more than just a martial art, it is a conduit for understanding what we are, and also a way to bring people from different cultures and backgrounds closer together.

When I came to China in 2004 my dream was to start an Aikido school but it seemed that everyone was more interested in me teaching English than teaching Martial Arts. Maybe the reason was because they don't think that foreigners know anything about Asian culture or martial arts. I knew the only way to change this perception was to start a school and show them that we do. I found my first chance in Kaiping, a beautiful city in the Pearl River Delta. Kaiping is a small city in Guangdong province, which has strong ties to America and many of its residents have family and friends living in the States. Within a year I had an Aikido school started at a private English Academy where I was teaching both English during the day and Aikido at night. A lot of my English students became my Aikido students and everything went well for 2 years until new management wanted more English teaching and less Aikido (more money for them less money for me). The time had come to move to a big city. ±¾ÎÄÀ´×ÔÖ¯ÃÎ

I realized, while traveling around China during school holidays, that the universities in

Guangdong Province had no existing Aikido programs and thought this may be an opportunity for me. In 2006 I started teaching English at a University in Foshan and I started an Aikido club on my own where I had about 20 regular students and teachers both guys and girls who came to practice 3 nights a week in the university gymnasium. Since we didn't have any mats for tumbling we focused on boxing and forms using sticks and stand up Aikido things that you don't have to fall down. When the university made it clear that they were not going to buy mats for the students (they wanted me to buy the mats), I decided that I would try and find another university. After my year was up in Foshan I moved to the big city Guangzhou and began teaching at another university in 2007 and had another small following of students in Guangzhou and was happy that the interest was growing and stayed in Guangzhou until 2008 when I decided to go to Beijing to try and be a part of the Olympics in China experience. When I arrived in Beijing in January 2008, I found 3 Universities and many private clubs were teaching Aikido. In Beijing people were very interested in me and Aikido because I was a 6th dan, the highest ranking non Japanese foreigner teaching Aikido in China. When I was in Beijing I was able to meet an Aikido student named Mai who is a Guangzhou local. When I returned to Guangzhou with the help of my Foshan Aikido student Allen, Mai and another Guangzhou local, Kong, to get a real private Aikido program started in Guangzhou. Mai, Kong and Allen were all highly motivated Chinese martial artists who wanted the real Aikido to go to the next level in Guangzhou. They , like I, knew Aikido was very successful in Beijing and Shanghai and there was no reason it could not be the same in Guangzhou, after all Guangzhou is a great Chinese city. After the Olympics were over in September of 2008 we began the first real Aikido School in Guangzhou. Now there are 3 schools in Guangzhou. After 5 years of searching and teaching Aikido in China I can say it has been an education for me and along the way I have met many kind Chinese people who have helped me to achieve my original goal of setting up a permanent Aikido school in the heart of Guangdong province, Guangzhou. Ö¯Ãκ㬺ÃÖ¯ÃÎ