REFLECTIONS IN THE SWORD

Tiffany is 27 years old and began training wushu in 2001. Initially inspired by kung-fu movies and anime, she has since won numerous All-Around Grand Championships and made the national US Wushu Team in 2005 and 2007. Tiffany has also been featured on the cover of Inside Kung-Fu magazine (December 2006 issue) and on an Animal Planet special demonstrating wushu. A magna cum laude graduate of UCLA, Tiffany’s previous passion was dance (hip hop, Philippine cultural dancing, and ballet).  In her free time, Tiffany still enjoys dancing, shopping, snowboarding, playing video games. She is also a member of the Zero Gravity stunt team. Tiffany currently trains under Coach Ding Wei at O-Mei Kung Fu Academy in San Jose, CA, and she intends to keep training wushu for the rest of her life.

The road to success in wushu cannot be walked alone, and I have my coaches to thank for helping me every step of the way. Coach Li Jing has played an integral role in my wushu career. She understood very well how much I was willing to dedicate to the sport, and she applied herself in the same capacity to coach me to my highest potential—she always insisted that a coach works to essentially match the student’s efforts. More importantly, the most essential lessons I learned from Coach Li have been outside of wushu. By her example, I have learned what it means to truly be generous, kind, and strong, to live my own life and be confident in the decisions I make as I forge my own unique life path.

I am currently training under Coach Ding Wei at O-Mei Kung Fu Academy in Milpitas. Coach Ding has helped to bring a new level to my wushu by helping to refine what I’ve already learned. He has pushed me to work on more speed and explosiveness, to bring out the more aggressive part of my wushu. Coach Ding continues to push me to challenge myself to continue to grow and improve. He has taught me that there is no limit to what I can achieve, as long as I am willing to work hard and dedicate myself.

An important lesson I've learned from wushu is understanding that what you get out of something is directly related to how much you put into it, something best explained in the concept of “kung fu”. As simple as that sounds, it is imperative to understand that there are no short cuts in wushu, as there are no short cuts in life. In order to achieve anything of value, you must put in the time and effort to achieve it.

Wushu has changed my life in innumerable ways. As in life itself, the treasure of wushu is finding joy in the journey. Nothing worth achieving is easily attained, and the path to success is fraught with countless challenges and setbacks. However, one must keep pushing forward, and take the time to appreciate every moment, every trial, every piece of joy along the way. Learning wushu, as living life, is a slow but beautiful process of growing, developing, and learning more about yourself. And this process for me has been shared with all the people I've ever trained with--as we sweat, struggle, and spend endless hours together, these people have come to be my closest and dearest friends, whom I would have never have met had I not done wushu. I treasure every moment that I'm able to practice and perform wushu, which has become for me synonymous with the feeling of being alive.

My life has never been the same from the day of my first wushu class. I'm thankful for all my coaches who have believed in me, for all the friends and people I've met along the way, for all the experiences since my very first stretch kick. I hope to be able to share the joy of wushu with others, so that their life may be enriched in the same capacity as mine.

The film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon helped to open my eyes to wushu. It was a couple months after I saw this movie in the theaters that I took my first wushu class. One scene in particular stood out in my mind--the typical kung-fu movie device, the "restaurant brawl" scene, in which the main character "Jen" takes on various challengers: