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Stanford University hosted the 8th Annual Collegiate Wushu Championship Saturday in Burnham Pavilion.

If this was the 8th year of the tournament, how come I never heard of it when I was studying Tai-Chi as an undergrad? I was surprised by the relative lack of competitors at the tourney. It seemed like there were less than a dozen schools represented at collegiates! I also noticed that there were only a few competitors for the Yang Tai-Chi form. I joked to Rae that I should have jumped (ala Andy Lau in Running on Karma) onto the floor and competed!

The whole gamut of Rae’s wushu colleagues — Cal, Stanford, and Wushu Central — were all at the competition. In less than 2 months, we’ll see each other again at the 12th Annual Chinese Martial Arts Tournament in Berkeley. I missed last year’s tournament because I was on tour with Vienna Teng. Her new album Warm Strangers is coming out in just two more days! I’ve had the privilege of listening to a pre-release version of the album for several months now, and I tell you, it’s a keeper!

Photographing in Burnham Pavilion was challenging. In order to get a high enough shutter speed to freeze the action, I had set the camera to ISO 3200. Though I got reasonable exposures at that setting (f/2.8 at 1/250 second), I felt the need for an extra stop of sensor sensitivity or a 200/1.8 lens! Furthermore, the overall image quality is degraded at ISO 3200 but hey, it’s better than nothing!

Here’s Raffi’s recap of collegiates. Due to a prior engagement in the evening, Rae and I had to leave before the Masters’ Demo. That would have been nice to have seen and photographed. Still, I’ve got a bunch of photos from the 8th Annual Collegiate Wushu Championship at Stanford for you to enjoy. I’ll work on the captions when I have some more time.