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

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In 1999 Scott moved to Portugal and taught Karate privately but returned to England 2 years later and had a short spell in the British army.

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2003, Scott found a Shaolin Academy while searching the Internet and within 1 month he was in North-East China learning Shaolin Kung fu. Although Scott stayed at the Shaolin Academy for just over 1 year many westerners cut their time short because of the bad management and lack of communication. After his time was nearly up he had the urge to open his own Martial Arts School in China and put things right where many other Chinese owned schools go wrong.

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Scott and one of the masters from Siping got together and decided to open their own Martial Arts Academy in a city called Yantai, Shandong Province.
After several months of working with "Master" Su, Scott soon realised that their views were very different on how to run a Martial Arts School for westerners. After Scott left the Kunyu Mountain Shaolin Martial Arts Academy he carried on living in China getting to know the culture better and of course keeping up with his own training.

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2006, Scott went on holiday to a UNESCO Global Geo Park called Taining Town. After staying in Taining for a few days he knew that it would be a great place for kungfu study in China and so he started looking at possible locations to build a school. A big bonus about Taining was that Scott was already friends with the Mayor and other top government who was all very supportive in him opening a martial arts school in China.

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Scott spent over one year building and renovating RDS and 3 months travelling around China interviewing and searching for good masters. Finally everything was completed and he had his first students in October 2007, becoming the first and only westerner in China to own and manage a residential KungFu School for foreigners.

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After 6 great years in the Taining location that he put so much hard work and effort into creating certain new challenges arose in the area and with government change overs things did not run as smooth as they first did but funny enough from Scott's WuDang Daoist connections he was given the oppurtunity to move RDS into two 1200 year old Daoist Monasteries in Jiangsu PR, Zhenjiang City. After long consideration he made the move at the end of 2013 and spent the year of 2014 in Zhenjiang which although was on the out skirts of mountains it wasnt the same feeling as being in the mountains amongst nature and so he started looking for a new location back in the mountains.

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Returning to Taining was not an option as Scott gave his land and buildings to the local run down orphanage which did not amuse certain local authorities who had been after the land for some time.

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After visiting over a dozen possible new locations for RDS Scott finally found a great location in Yunnan Province which can accommodation over 300 students, all with en-suite bathrooms, TV's, and ready WiFi. There is ZERO pollution like most parts of China these days and the nature/ wildlife is 2nd to none. Rising Dragon's new beginning started January 2015!

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To own and run a Martial Arts School is a dream and way of life for Scott but one important reason he started RDS is so other westerners are able to come to China and have a life changing experience in an amazing friendly environment and not have to worry about being ripped off as many are.