CHINATOWN

Taking kung fu out on the road

By Jenny Jiang, Globe Correspondent, 12/2/2001

t 30, Peter Kreitchet thought his days competing in the martial arts were over. But this summer, after he was laid off as a financial analyst with FleetBoston, he decided to train for his first international martial arts tournament, held in the Chinese city where many of the disciplines were born.

He and five other students of Chinatown's Wah Lum Kung Fu school surprised Zhengzhou's International Shaolin Wushu Festival - and themselves - by capturing seven medals.

''I'm kind of an old dog,'' said Kreitchet, who placed sixth in the men's hand-form competition. ''I did not expect to do as well as I did. ... When you look at the standing, it was primarily the China teams that were winning these events, and then interspersed with that would be a couple of the Americans from the Boston team.''

''Winning something from this tournament has much greater value than winning anything in the United States,'' said Teammate Taras Litvin, 24, who won the bronze medal in the men's hand form competition and placed fourth in the men's short weapon category.

Mai Du, 25, a silver medalist in the women's hand form, added that the Boston school's performance showed the team's ''level of commitment to the art is comparable'' to counterparts in China. ''We respect it the same way that the Chinese do and embrace the same type of martial art spirit.''

This story ran on page 6 of the Boston Globe's City Weekly section on 12/2/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.