NEW YORK—Fists flew and swords slashed as the top martial artists in the world competed at Baruch College on Oct. 8 and 9.
Contestants at the third annual International Chinese Traditional Martial Arts Competition faced off in three categories: fist, southern fist, and weapons.
Baili Wang took top honors in the male weapons category, with the only gold medal awarded in the competition. According to the event rules, a gold medal is not given out if the judges do not feel that the contestants of a particular category meet the gold-level standard.
Tzu-Pei Peng, 10, from Taiwan was the winner of the “rising star” category, while a special contribution award for the preservation of martial arts went to 89-year-old Chen Rong En of Canada.
The panel of judges was composed of top experts on Chinese martial arts.
The competition was organized by NTD Television, an independent Chinese media that holds a series of nine competitions each year to revive traditional Chinese culture that has been destroyed by the Chinese communist regime.
According to the statement on the competition’s website: “Traditional martial arts masters were labeled as ’superstition promoters’ and were brutally persecuted [by the Chinese communist regime]. During the Great Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), many of them were forced into hiding; some were sent to labor camps or prisons; [and] some were even murdered.”
