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Lisa Cam

At 89, many rely on glasses or hearing aids. Wu Bin needs neither. Daily runs and regular football games keep the legendary martial arts coach of action icon Jet Li in fighting form.
Wu is a convincing advertisement for the wellness benefits of lifelong discipline. He still travels widely and recently presided over the 18th Hong Kong International Wushu Competition, where Dragon He, the son of another of Wu’s former students, Jaden He Jingde, was competing.
A founder of the Beijing Wushu Team, Wu helped develop the traditional martial art into an elite modern sport. His eye for potential led him to the eight-year-old Li in 1971 and helped launch his career. Li’s mastery of Chinese martial arts would elevate him to the podium at championships and launch him onto cinema screens around the world.
Today, Wu’s impact extends to a third generation of disciples. Rather than retire, he travels to encourage them.

Wu was born in Huzhou, in China’s Zhejiang province, in 1937. His family fled to Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War, when Wu was around two years old. His father made bricks, including those used to build Shanghai’s historic Park Hotel, which for years was Asia’s tallest building.
If you imagine Jet Li’s master as a mystic elder armed with wushu’s deepest secrets, think again.
“It was only after primary school that I liked reading martial arts novels,” Wu says. “I was most captivated by the stories of various combat styles.”
Books such as Water Margin and The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants, which featured themes of brotherhood, martial prowess and rebellion against injustice, stirred his imagination – but he had yet to throw a punch.

From weightlifting to wushu
Wu boarded at Shanghai High School, where he served as captain of the football team for about half a year. A teacher recommended he train as a PE teacher. Wu had been offered early admission to Shanghai Teachers College when a chance bicycle ride changed his plans: he saw an advert for the Beijing Institute of Physical Education – now called Beijing Sport University – and decided to sit its entrance examination.
He was accepted into the institute in 1958 and started weightlifting. Two years later, a teacher encouraged him to diversify.
“You’d better stop practising weightlifting,” Wu remembers being told. “You’ve done it for two years, and that’s enough. Learn martial arts instead.”
The teacher reasoned that weightlifting equipment would not necessarily be available to a future PE teacher, but martial arts could travel anywhere. Wu followed the advice and retrained as a wushu coach in Beijing after graduation.
Having watched older pupils pulled away from sport by academic pressures, he decided to recruit younger children. In 1970, he began visiting primary schools. Among a group of prospective recruits at Beijing’s Changqiao Primary School, one boy stood out: Li Lianjie, who would later become known as Jet Li.
Wu remembers that Li was unusually quick for an eight-year-old. “His memory was excellent, and his ability to mimic movements was very strong,” Wu says. “Whatever you taught him, he learned very quickly.”
Li was one of around 10 children Wu coached into adulthood.

A cultural calling card
Warming relations between the United States and China in the 1970s triggered a rise in martial arts. US President Richard Nixon’s landmark 1972 visit to China ended 25 years of diplomatic estrangement and paved the way for broader, official athletic exchanges between the two nations.
In 1973, a high-profile US collegiate all-star basketball delegation became the first American team-sports group to compete in China. Beijing needed a sport that could make an equally distinctive return statement in the US.
“Track and field couldn’t beat the US, tennis couldn’t beat the US, and golf couldn’t beat the US either,” Wu says. “After thinking it over for a long time: martial arts.” The choice serendipitously put Wu’s wushu team in the spotlight.
Within a few years, martial arts became China’s cultural calling card for a sporting visit to the US, and a young Li became a crowd favourite. Nixon subsequently invited the delegation to perform at the White House.

Jaden He Jingde, a former national wushu champion, stuntman and martial arts school founder, is another of Wu’s former students. He says his sifu (master) taught him that an exceptional martial artist needs patience, exposure to different styles and respect for tradition.
More importantly, He says that Wu’s method changed the way he himself approached teaching children.
“Rigid, forced training never works,” He says. “We must first assess every child’s personality, natural talent and physical flexibility.” He has applied this thinking to his son Dragon, choosing weapons and routines suited to the boy’s strengths.
For Dragon, the inheritance is moral as well as physical. “My sifu does not just teach me martial arts moves – he also teaches me about respect and self-discipline,” he says. One teaching has stayed with him: medals and victories do not last, and what matters is becoming a better person with every contest.
Although Wu’s own daughter and grandson have chosen lives outside martial arts, he remains surrounded by the students and families shaped by his teaching.

The secret to longevity
One of the ways Wu ensures he ages well is by continuing to practise martial arts, although he says these days it is “just light activity”, not the punishing training he did when he was younger.
“Now is the time for them to teach,” Wu says of his mentees, “while I am in the stage of nourishing life.” In Chinese, that concept is called yangsheng, the everyday cultivation of health.
This entails having a routine. Wu still runs and prefers football to gentle qigong or breathwork, which is “not enough” exercise for him. He plays with mixed middle-aged and senior teams, sometimes alongside people in their twenties. He values sleep, going to bed at about 10pm and waking up at 6am without any interruptions.

The key, he says, is building habits. “Living well includes your daily personal habits, lifestyle habits and of course, what we eat,” he says.
Wu favours light, bland foods and emphasises balance and variety.
“Steamed, stir-fried, or with less oil, but you need a variety of flavours,” he says. “You can’t just eat one type of food. Hong Kong’s food culture is quite smart in this respect – it combines variety with moderation.”
Wu’s reputation helps him stay active, and he receives roughly 30 invitations a year to events across China and overseas.
In November, 2025, he visited Russia to receive the Order of Friendship for his contributions to developing the country’s wushu team, one of the strongest teams in Europe.

On his latest trip, he travelled from Xian to Hong Kong before heading to Hainan. He says that travel is “no problem … My health is great – no chronic conditions or illnesses at all.”
This year, following the traditional East Asian practice that counts a newborn as one year old, Wu celebrated his 90th birthday. The gathering brought together many of his former students, including Li and He.
Wu’s longevity is based on balance: staying active, making time for rest, eating with restraint but also pleasure, and nurturing younger people.
Dragon says: “I try my best to stay humble and keep working to live up to what my sifu has taught me. I want to make my sifu proud of me.”
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Lifestyle

Health & Wellness

Health

Martial arts legend Wu Bin talks about mentoring Jet Li and other wushu stars, and how building good habits is key to health in older life


Martial arts legend Wu Bin talks about mentoring Jet Li and other wushu stars, and how building good habits is key to health in older life.


How Jet Li’s trainer Wu Bin, 89, ages well and still nurtures martial arts talent

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Martial arts legend Wu Bin talks about mentoring Jet Li and other wushu stars, and how building good habits is key to health in older life

Martial arts legend Wu Bin talks about mentoring Jet Li and other wushu stars, and how building good habits is key to health in older life