Passionate performers

Ten African students joined an acrobatic art school in Wuqiao of Hebei province in May. Starting from scratch, they train eight to nine hours a day, six days a week with the ambitions to master the ancient art. Photo by Zheng Jinran / China Daily

Ndukwe Nnenna is also from Nigeria. Along with Temtope, she has been learning to balance and roll a vat with their feet. They began by learning to hold it steady for 20 minutes, which made their legs tremble, before moving on to rolling it, says 48-year-old Ma Shumin, a teacher at the school.

The male students from Nigeria have been training to group juggle straw hats, changing them rapidly between their heads. Beginners to acrobatics, they dropped the hats frequently to begin with, but they are making progress, according to Ma.

Two Egyptian students - Mahmoud Mohamed and Weam Rashed - had trained in acrobatics before coming to Wuqiao. They had long cherished the idea of coming to the Chinese city because of its connection to acrobatics.

"I want to learn to climb a bamboo pole from the teachers here," says 22-year-old Mohamed, who worked in a circus for several years.

"My trainer in Egypt is Chinese and also graduated from this school and he encouraged me to seize the opportunity to sharpen my skills and give better performances in the future."

On the advice of their teacher in Wuqiao, Mohamed has been exercising to gain muscle in his upper body and Rashed has been practicing ball performances.

Ma, who has taught at the school for more than a decade, says, "Based on their physical condition and what they want to achieve, we picked several performances that they can be trained well in within a year."

Ma says most students who come to the school are able to learn at least one performance well within a year.

This intake of African students is the school's twelfth since 2002 when six students from Tanzania were its first from the continent.

Over the past 11 years more than 300 people have trained at the school through a program sponsored by China's Ministry of Commerce.