New sport sounds like a lot of bull

– When 21-year-old Chinese martial artist Li Zhen first stepped into the ring to wrestle an adult bull he was naturally intimidated.

“I was pretty scared. It’s a bull, after all,” he said.

He risked having a leg snapped under the animal’s weight, being gored, or trampled.

But Li’s training got him over those fears and he is now one of a group of Wushu, or kung fu, athletes who train in bull wrestling at the Haihua Martial Arts Centre, about 100km southwest of Shanghai.

A traditional sport of China’s Muslim Hui ethnic minority, the practice has come under fire from critics in China who say it constitutes animal cruelty.

The centre’s master Han Haihua disagrees.

“Our bull wrestling is not bloody or cruel,” the burly 65-year-old insisted. –

Jiaxing