Lei Fan, an instructor at the O-mei Wushu Center in Fairfax, Virginia, competes at the 2016 US National Wushu Championships in Lubbock, Texas, on Aug 13 with his students in red closely watching. Fan won three gold medals at the tournament. O-mei students won 28 gold medals at the national game as well as the Pan-American Wushu Championships, which was held at the same venue. provided to China Daily

After two years of wushu training, Cengiz Ciner was victorious at his first two competitions — the 2016 Pan-American Wushu Championships and the US National Wushu Championships, adding three more gold medals to the championship collection of his school, O-mei Wushu (Kung Fu) Center, in Fairfax, Virginia.

“I was tired but still had a lot of fun,” said the 9-year-old Ciner of the two Texas tournaments that concluded on Aug 14.

Ciner was sent to the US martial arts school by his Chinese mother. Ciner’s Turkish father owns a granite shop next to the school at the same shopping mall.

Wushu, also known as kung fu, a term more prominent in the West, is the collective term for martial arts that originated and developed in China and is the wellspring of all Asian martial practices, according to the International Wushu Federation.

More recently, wushu has developed into a global competitive sport, practiced and enjoyed by thousands of people worldwide because it helps with self defense, physical fitness and natural healing.

Ciner looks up to his role models who walked the path before him at O-mei and dreams big.

“What I really want to do is make it to the US wushu national team,” Ciner said. “And I want to go to the world’s wushu championships competition.”

In 2008, Xiaolin Lu, or Master Lu, founder and lead instructor of O-mei Wushu Center, sent two students to the Beijing Olympics who finished fourth and fifth.

In the 2014 Nanjing Summer Youth Olympic Games, O-mei students won a gold, silver and two bronze medals.

O-mei, founded in 1993, used to have more than 95 percent non-Chinese students, according to Lu. With an increasing number of Chinese immigrants in the past two decades, parents started to send their children to wushu for both exercise and cultural heritage. The majority of O-mei’s students are now Chinese Americans.

“The US is such a sports-oriented nation,” Lu said. “Influenced by that, Chinese parents here pay great attention to their kids’ physical education.”

That American sporting dominance was once again on display at the Rio Olympics.

“Before I went to Wushu (center), I wasn’t in that good of shape,” Ciner said. “So wushu helps me a lot in that.”

One of O-mei’s current instructors, Lei Fan, who won three gold medals at this year’s US National Wushu Championships, also credited his physical fitness and coordination to practicing wushu for more than 20 years.

Fan was invited by Lu from Sichuan province in China to teach at O-mei due to his well-recognized excellence in the field.

“Wushu is multi-dimensional. It’s not only a competitive sport but also a performing art as well as a lifelong health practice,” Lu said. “Students learn self-discipline, self-improvement, hard work and respect, just to name a few,” she said.

Despite challenges with having wushu more commonly recognized in the US, Lu and other instructors have been actively promoting the art in the US for decades.

Wushu is not taught the same in the US as it is in China because of different student motivation and goals.

“Wushu is much more professionalized in China,” Lu said.

Growing up in a wushu family in China, Lu had won numerous national titles before landing in the US in 1989 to accompany her husband, who came to pursue his PhD degree.

Alan (Qifei) Huang, one of Lu’s students, started taking wushu lessons for fun in New York at age 4. He didn’t take wushu seriously until experiencing what it is like in China.

Huang, 11, took part in a one-year program last year at Beijing Shichahai Sports School, where he was inspired by many talented wushu practitioners.

Huang was further trained by Lu for 10 days upon returning to the US. He then competed in the 2016 Pan-American Wushu Championships and won three medals.