Martial friends and Chinese wisdom

By Sam Riley  |   2008-12-31  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

SOMETIMES it takes a terrible event to make you realize that the place you are living has become home. When Rose Oliver's husband died suddenly of a heart attack in Shanghai in 2003, her friends and colleagues at Shanghai University rallied around to help her climb out of what she describes as her "dark hole."

The English-language teacher and tai chi practitioner from Britain says the calming influence of the ancient martial art she has studied for more than 14 years and the support of friends were vital in helping her deal with the grief of losing her husband Rey Nelson.

"Without some of my very good friends at the school and in the martial arts world I don't think I would have got through it. I was really lucky," she says. "That was the time that I started to think, this is my home now because wherever you are in the world, if you have friends like this, it is home."

During the initial stages of her grief, close friends stayed at her home and also helped arrange a funeral in Shanghai.

Five years after a trauma that would have forced many expats back home, Oliver still lives here and has founded an organization that aims to make Chinese marital arts and culture accessible to people from around the world.

In 2005, Oliver founded Double Dragon Alliance, and it staged its first major exhibition of Chinese martial arts, gathering masters from different disciplines.

Since then she has held annual martial arts camps where enthusiasts from around the world can learn from experts about both the technique and philosophy of a given art.

Double Dragon also organizes regular international tours for Shanghai masters who conduct seminars and demonstrations.

The British couple came to Shanghai in 2000 to teach English and continue their study of tai chi.

Nelson, a former Hells Angel biker, discovered tai chi from a Taoist monk in the United States in the early 1960s.

The couple met at a tai chi class Nelson had been teaching in 1994. Oliver jokes that their first meeting left quite an impression on Nelson.

"He used to teach in an old school, and when I drove in there was no defined parking area, so I drove up this path," she says. "He told me later that he was just getting the class started and he saw these headlights coming toward him, he joked that he had been caught in my headlights and thought 'I'm in trouble now'."

Oliver had gone to the class because of a chronic back problem. Through tai chi she found both an exercise system that strengthened her back and a way of life that allowed her to help others.

After studying intensively, Rose went on to become an instructor and the couple's school in East Anglia, UK, offering classes to children with disabilities, behavioral issues and other groups.

"We found that tai chi really helped us with our health and we wanted to help people by passing on what we had learned," she says.

Oliver also ran women's self-defense classes to help women avoid potentially dangerous situations; it taught strategies they could use when confronted by danger.

"A lot of women don't know what to do so they panic," she says. "But a good self-defense class will give someone confidence and that confidence prevents them from becoming a victim because they know what to do."

As part of their school's activities, the couple also invited masters from around the world to give lectures and demonstrations.

Through these visits the couple developed connections with Shanghai's martial arts community and sowed the seeds for their eventual move to the city.

Teaching self-defense and tai chi seems a world away from Oliver's previous career in Britain's tax office.

While sitting in an office poring over someone's tax return may seem a long way from instructing an ancient martial art, Oliver sees a common thread.