Vietnamese wushu martial artist Nguyen Thi Bich (R) competes at the 24th South East Asian Games in Thailand in 2007, where she won a gold medal in the sanshou category

Powerful and determined as she is in the arena, wushu artist Nguyen Thi Bich doesn’t like to talk much about herself.

Bich says it was a late start because most girls begin learning the art’s complicated movements as young children, some just 4 or 5 years old. But as a child, Bich had just liked playing marbles and reading comics.

She became a professional wushu athlete mostly by chance.

At Bich’s high school, martial arts became a popular trend with many of the young students. Bich’s friend Lan was particularly adept at wushu and Bich would watch her practice for hours, mesmerized by the graceful moves and poses. She soon decided to join a class.

But school was still her number one priority and when Bich’s parents found out she was studying marital arts in her free time, they tried to persuade her to stop. They didn’t want her to pursue the hobby, fearing it would jeopardize her grades and career opportunities.

But Bich proved to her parents that she could still do well in school while practicing wushu.

But in 2004, she began making the transition from playing just as a hobby to practicing wushu competitively— and she found it wasn’t that easy.

It soon became an obsession and she wouldn’t eat or sleep right when wushu was on her mind.

“Some of the moves were too hard for me and I felt uncomfortable about the whole thing,” Bich said. “Sometimes, I had nightmares and woke up suddenly thinking I was in the middle of a competition.”

But she soon began winning local competitions and her efforts paid off when she won an official position on the Hanoi Wushu Club later that year. Almost three years later, she became a member of the national team.

Big winner, small goals

Bich led her team to the gold medal in the wushu competition at the South East Asian Games in 2007 by beating Si Si Sein from Myanmar in the final.

“It was an unforgettable experience for me,” Bich says. “It was difficult to compete in the 48kg category because there were more competitors than in other categories and I had to play more matches.”

Despite her big victories, Bich says it’s the little wins that count.

As a child, her parents, who were farmers, could never afford her first love: comic books. Now, she sends them money after every tournament win and can buy and read her favorite comics all the time.

“I don’t have to borrow them any more,” says Bich happily.

Reported by Phan Hau