D
r Jon Xue Zhang is a man of many talents — not only is he a highly skilled martial artist, he holds a Phd [more about that later], a musician, stuntman, actor and author, but above all… he is simply a thoroughly nice guy!
I had the pleasure of meeting Jon in 2021 at The Japanese Martial Arts show, held in Wolverhampton and was introduced to him by our mutual friend Lucci Del-Gaudio, who was hosting the event and had co-organised it. Some souls you take an instant liking to and Jon is such a soul. Softly spoken, he is immensely knowledgable, highly skilful without a bone of boastfulness or ego, and always eager to muck in with the rest. We had a brief chat and spent a few minutes together on stage handing out certificates during the evening event. I had to leave a little early, so we exchanged numbers and promised to keep in touch — I had already told Jon, that I would love to feature him in Lift Hands and he was happy to oblige. We stayed in touch and I sent a few back issues of Lift Hands to Jon over the Christmas period and finally managed to catch up with him in Cambridge in April, where our friend Neil Kirkland from Adaptive Martial Arts had organised a workshop with the man himself!
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