Nam Wah Pai Singapore success
Ohakune Nam Wah Pai Kung Fu instructors Vivienne and Gerry Bidwell have recently returned from an exciting trip to Singapore and Malaysia. They attended the World Nam Wah Pai tournament along with 16 other New Zealanders and competitors from Singapore, Malaysia, Malacca, West Germany and Australia. Despite the temperatures of 36 degrees and more and the high humidity the New Zealanders acquitted themselves wellhringing home 1 3 trophies. Vivienne and Gerry both won trophies — Vivienne for first in the women's open weight division, and Gerry for third in the men's heavy weight division. They found that the style of fighting in Singapore was different to what they were used to as it included more grappling and throwing; whereas the New Zealand style uses more kicking and punching. "But we adapted well and played their game and beat them at it," said Vivienne. Nam Wah Pai is a south Ghinese martial art and the world headquarters is in Singapore, so it was quite an honour for New Zealand 's chief instructor, Steve Kitson of Tauranga, to be made second in command of World Nam Wah Pai. Steve was also chosen to represent Nam Wah Pai at a multi-style tournament in Singapore next March. During the tournament Vivienne did women's selfdefence and tile-breaking demonstrations which went down very well. "Women don't seem to do Nam Wah Pai very much and those that do are not very good so they were impress-
ed," said Vivienne. Out of their 18 days they trained for seven and competed for two, which left plenty of time for travel, across the causeway into Malaysia visiting Malacca,
is coming out for the New Zealand annual tournament and afterwards there will be a black belt grading at which Gerry is going for a first degree. For this he will have to do
right," said Gerry. Vivienne and Gerry came to Ohakune from Tauranga two and a half years ago and have 40 Nam Wah Pai students from Ohakune, Raetihi and Waiouru.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAIBUL19851224.2.25.39
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 3, Issue 31, 24 December 1985, Page 24 (Supplement)
Word count
Tapeke kupu
337Nam Wah Pai Singapore success Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 3, Issue 31, 24 December 1985, Page 24 (Supplement)
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Ruapehu Media Ltd is the copyright owner for the Waimarino Bulletin. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Ruapehu Media Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.
Log in