My name is Scott Bird and I was born in 1982, Birmingham England. From a young age I became interested in Martial Arts and it wasn’t long before I started my training in Shotokan Karate at the age of 11. After 6 years of training I achieved the grade of 2nd Dan black belt and was successful in numerous Kumite & Kata tournaments including the nationals and international matches in Europe.

1999 – Lived in Portugal for 2 years and taught Karate privately.

2001 – Returned to England and had a short spell in the British army.

2003 – I found a Shaolin Academy on the internet and within 1 month I was in North China learning Shaolin Kung fu. Although I stayed at the Siping Academy for just over 1 year many westerners cut their time short because of the bad management and lack of communication. After my time was nearly up I thought it would be nice to open my own Martial Arts School in China and put things right where many other Chinese owned schools go wrong.

So I and one of the masters from Siping got together and decided to open our own Martial Arts Academy in a city called Yantai, Shandong Province.

After several months of working with “Master” Su I soon realised our views were different on how to run a Martial Arts School for westerners. When I left the Yantai Shaolin Academy I carried on living in China trying different businesses and training by myself.

2006 – I married my girl friend who is Chinese and went on holiday to a place called Taining which is a UNESCO global geo park. After staying in Taining for a few days I thought it would be an amazing location to set up a Martial Arts School. My Father in law used to be top government in Taining so I was introduced to the Mayor and other top government who was all very supportive in me opening a Gong Fu School.

I spent over 1 year building and renovating my school and 3 months travelling around China interviewing and searching for good masters.

Now I own the only western owned Chinese martial arts school which can accommodate nearly 100 students and it is always being improved.

To own and run a Martial Arts School is a dream for me but another reason I wanted to open a school is for westerners to be able to come to China and get the training they want and not worry about being ripped off.

Here are a few reasons why you should choose the Rising Dragon Martial Arts School over others:

Thank you for taking the time to view my website, I hope to see you soon!

Yours Sincerely, Scott Bird

P.S. If you have any questions at all feel free to ask and I will try my best to answer them as soon as possible.

Although you can learn a lot in 1 or 2 months you are barely touching the surface of the basics in which ever style you choose to learn. Sometimes it can take weeks just to learn the stances and be able to do them correctly. You may be able to pick the movements up but your real aim should be to perform the movements correctly especially in styles like XingYi & Taiji Quan where it is vital to have the correct body alignment in order to benefit from it. If you would like to perform hard Qi gong in 1 – 3 months it is possible to do some of the basic ones in that time but you will still have to train very hard to get your body ready. After a few months training you will know if Chinese martial arts is for you or not and decide whether you would like to continue your training or come back in the future to improve yourself.

(One of the very first students here practiced Shaolin & hard qigong for just over 1 month, John King had little martial arts background and broke an iron bar over his head on his last day of training).