An amazing opportunity
Hi everybody,
I’m starting a new thing. It’s a blog about travelling to China . Some of you might say that this is gonna be another standard tourist blog about food and cultural/historical landscapes. Well there’s going to be some of that but I’m not going there as a tourist. In China, the most common occupation for foreigners is teaching English but im not there to teach English either. I’m there to teach martial arts!! Yes, you read that right, I’m going to the cradle of martial arts to teach martial arts. I can’t think of a more improbable way to make a living but the opportunity presented itself and I took it.
Why me ?
Ok I guess that if I want to explain how I went from mowing lawns to pay the bills this summer to teaching martial arts in China, I have to talk about me a little bit. My name is Mathieu Dubois. I have this very French sounding name because I’m from Sherbrooke, (Québec, Canada). The province of Québec, in Canada, is the only one who’s not populated by a majority of English speakers (70% French Canadians). My native language being French, some mistakes are gonna fall through the cracks and some sentences are going to sound funny but I believe that content is more important than the container (French Canadian expression translated to English). I learned my English while learning the main skill required for the job. For the last 5 years, I have been training almost full time under Richard Martens in Sherbrooke. I chose to drop out of school to focus my efforts on martial arts. From that point on, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Every single job i got was just a temporary thing to pay the bills while i continue to train, teach and compete. It was just a matter of opportunity and this is why a trip to China makes total sense. But why do Chinese people in Foshan, China need a white boy to teach them something they are known worldwide for? I am an advanced student (brown belt) in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, an art that focuses on ground fighting and I have fought a few MMA fights. That’s why !!
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I always saw competition as a tool to get better. Some people compete to win medals and there’s nothing wrong with that. Everybody trains for different reasons. As long as they train they are awesome! But my goal in BJJ has always been being able to defend myself. With that in mind I wanted to test my jiu-jitsu in different formats of competition. I wanted to know if my jiu-jitsu worked when punches started flying. This is why I competed in mixed martial arts. MMA having so few rules, it made it a perfect test for my jiu-jitsu. All that being said, when I compete I still want to win. I’m a very competitive individual but I understand that you learn way more when you get your butt kicked than when you run a clinic on somebody. So why do I get an amazing opportunity to teach my passion in China? I think
1- I committed to train full time even when there was no money to be made
2 - I put my ego (nobody likes to lose in front of hundreds of people) and body on the line to get better.
3- This is the most important one. I just LOVE BJJ and I think it shows when I teach and talk about it.
If you have any suggestions, comments or questions, it will be my pleasure to answer them.