Being a very powerful private higher educational institution aiming at educating practical, versatile and outward-oriented talents, Songshan Shaolin Wushu College (hereafter for abbreviation SSSWC) can rightly claim that it is the first of its kind in China as an advanced physical cultural establishment specialized in both developing research into the study on traditional Chinese martial arts and training multifaceted professional martial artists, and devoted exclusively to the cause of international cultural interflow. SSSWC is located in the west outskirts of Dengfeng City, Henan Province. The city has been long renowned in China as a “cradle of traditional Chinese martial arts”, apart from having enviable plentitude of nature-endowed tourist attractions. More than 5,000 students are now studying in SSSWC , which has a teaching staff of nearly 300 people, including more than 80 professors, vice professors and elites of martial arts. According to the current educational resources and the social needs, SSSWC offers a total of more than 30 majors at three educational levels, including three-year, four-year and five-year college education.
In 2008, “The Office of Chinese Language Council International” (in Chinese, Hanban) designated SSSWC as one of its fully qualified establishments for carrying out the task of teaching Chinese as a foreign language to peoples living in other countries and conferred on SSSWCthe official appellation of “Hanban’s Shaolin Kung-fu-Training Base for Implementing the Task of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language”. Hanban has formally defined, as the current scope of the Base’s official duties, the following four points:
(1) To hold regular summer-camp and autumn-camp activities through which young people from all over the world may learn traditional Chinese martial arts and Chinese culture.
(2) To train and educate qualified teachers from other countries who are to perform the task of teaching martial arts.
(3) To offer itinerant shows and teaching activities concerning martial arts for the Confucius institutes and the Chinese language educational institutions around the world all year around,
(4) To compile teaching materials centering around the theme of “the Chinese language and traditional Chinese martial arts” and various series of video/multimedia products.
The successive years 2007-2019 saw the inspiring completion of the mission, which was entrusted by Hanban to SSSWC to carry out, of hosting the “Chinese Bridge Summer Camp for International Students.” More than one three thousand teachers and students of SSSWC were detailed by Hanban to go respectively to America, Russia, Italy, Spain, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Japan, Thailand, Nepal, Kenya, and so forth, to do one-three years’ stint of service there in the capacity either of teaching-Chinese-as-a-foreign-language teacher or spreading-Chinese-culture volunteer. The Shaolin Kung-fu-Training Base is invited to give itinerant Kung-fu-and-Art –based shows around the world all year around. The grand theatrical performances “Wulin Hanyun” (the transliteration of the four Chinese characters “武林汉韵”, which connotes “pugilism and Sinicism.”), which were held respectively in America, Russia, Spain, Italy, Thailand and New Zealand during 2010 and 2019 are highly praised by the sponsors and the audience.
Taking Kung-fu as its peculiarity, Chinese traditional culture as its spirit, cultivating one’s mind as its mission, SSSWC is now deeply interested in developing an appropriate form of cooperation with any educational or cultural institution outside China in the four aspects specified below: creating a jointly-run establishment for (or course in) kung-fu training and Chinese-language teaching; arranging to acquire from SSSWC a hosting service for opening a “kung-fu-and-the-Chinese-language summer camp” for young people from any other country than China; arranging for “the SSSWC Kung-fu-and-Art Ensemble” to offer kung-fu-based theatrical performances outside China, and establishing a Confucius classroom or a Confucius institute at any place agreed upon by all the parties concerned.
