Jennifer Conrad reports on a new kind of martial arts studio:

I'm sitting in an upstairs loft, watching a student practice tai chi
in the open studio below. In the back loft, Feng Zhongyun works on a
large ink painting destined to hang in Beijing's Hilton Wangfujing.
Opposite me, there's a space for practicing calligraphy. Traditional
instruments are scattered throughout the space.

Built based on feng-shui principles, the Zhong Martial Arts Space
couldn't be more different from the area in which it sits: dusty Hei Qiao Cun
in Beijing's northeast, where cars scream by and vendors sell sickly
sugar-dipped fruit on sticks. Inside the space, natural light filters
in through skylights. The gray stone floor is cut by a small built-in
waterway, with carp living in one end.

...

Feng, a prominent local artist who combines traditional ink paintings
with more modern techniques, built the center because of his lifelong
passion for traditional Chinese arts. Along with commissions for
hotels and other clients, his work is often on display at his wife's
XYZ Gallery in Beijing. In addition to offering classes, the center,
which opened to the public this month, hosts monthly events and houses
a small guest room for visitors who want a more immersive experience.

"When I was young, China was very poor. We didn't have entertainment
like TV or toys, and it was normal for young boys to practice martial
arts," he recalls. "And I was lucky to meet several martial arts
masters who taught me the real practice."

He studied traditional painting at Beijing's Central Academy of Fine
Arts, explaining that he picked the major because at the time it was
the cheapest—studying modern art was too expensive.

When he graduated in 1991, it was difficult to make money from art, so
he began working in construction and interior design, spending a
decade working on the gleaming office towers and shopping malls that
were springing up all over Beijing.

"I didn't enjoy it at all," he says. In 2001, he left Beijing to study
Buddhism, visiting small temples in Shandong, Hebei, Gansu, and
Jiangsu provinces. "These are places tourists don't visit," he
explains. "I would be introduced to one temple by monks in another."

Eventually he designed and built a small temple halfway up a mountain
in Yantai, Shandong province, which monks still use today.

The Beijing he returned to in 2004 felt familiar, but vastly changed.
The art market was sky-rocketing, and his paintings began to sell.
"Many people said that setting up the temple brought me good luck," he
says. "I also think so."

In 2007, with money from his paintings, he decided he wanted promote
martial arts. So far, the center has attracted a handful of young and
artsy types who are interested in learning about traditional culture.
On my first visit, a group of students showed me tai chi moves. One
was a freelance graphic designer who visits on her days off. Another,
an aspiring filmmaker, compared my early attempts at arm circles to
the dance in Pulp Fiction.

"They have a better-off life," he says, referring to the young people
who've flocked to his center. "In the past few years, the economy has
grown bigger, but people are also becoming more interested in
promoting tradition. For a very long time after the Cultural
Revolution, we thought we had to get rid of very old things. Nobody
was interested in the kind of center except foreigners."

Li Hang, who had been studying tai chi informally since he was 8, was
introduced to the center by friends about a year ago. Initially, he
just wanted to take a look, but Li stayed on and became one of the
first instructors. "I think we have the same goals about practicing
and promoting martial arts," Li tells me. "What's in movies is all
about performing, which gets you farther and farther from a sense of a
healthy body and soul."

Feng, who mostly practices a forceful form of martial arts called
dacheng quan, also hopes to counter some of the stereotypes he sees
about Chinese martial arts.

"There's a trend of making the traditional arts look very Eastern and
magical. People think they can learn kung fu and hit 100 people," he
says. "I want to teach martial arts that are very true and genuine."

When I remark that he appears calm, despite the violent form of
martial arts he prefers, he produces a Chinese magazine and shows me a
photo of Bruce Lee's teacher, Yip Man, who also had a placid bearing.
Yip is his favorite martial arts master because he wasn't detached
from the world, but wanted to teach martial arts to others. "After
World War II, he taught everyone in his city martial arts to protect
them and help them bring out the soul again," Feng explains.

Feng, too, sees his center as a place to bring back the soul in an
increasingly modern city.

"As the city gets more and more modern, we think more of natural
things and the soul," he says. "It's just like how people in more
developed places want to go farther and farther from cities when they
go on vacation. They go to very clean, natural places."