Journeying to Beijing for kungfu

If you come across Liu laoshi's kungfu wrestling class at the Beijing Language and Culture University campus, you won't see any colored belts or rows of students shouting in unison.

The equipment is sparse and generic - mats, a punching bag, two bricks, a long wooden pole, and four wrestling tunics shared between the students - and the class meets in a hallway of the sports center.

But you may well see all 191 centimeters and 95 kilograms of Californian Sonny Mannon picked up like a sack of flour by his teacher, a champion wrestler known to his students as Da Ge'er (tall person).