I'm afraid I'm doubtful about this one, since such swords aren't even legal in China, but I'm in Shanghai for the next year teaching English and wonder if there is a Dojang I could visit. The only hits that "Shanghai" gets in the search function are 3 from the "Swords in the news" section, where people go crazy and get stabby with blades.

If anyone has any leads, please drop me a line.

Well, at least the swords are not illegal in China. You can carry them without a permit.

Unfortunately, the only dojang in China is in Tsingdao

You'll be in for a suprise in mainland China...martial arts are not very commercialized there. Don't forget China only started opening its markets very recently. I was there earlier this year and don't remember seeing a single school, although I met one couple whose kid was learning tkd.

Secondly, Chinese in general don't usually esteem foreign (i.e., non-Chinese) martial arts highly. Not to say that none do, simply very few. So that makes the chances even less likely.

If you are interested in finding Chinese martial arts, and you don't already know someone there who can help you look, you might try contacting a university, because often they will have teams, and have classes available for non-members. Also, search the internet. In China, the sites you can reach will differ from the ones you can reach here, I found out.

Good luck, and if worse comes to worse, Tsingdao makes some fine beers that you can't get here.

That's interesting about the sword legality. I wasn't sure about it when I stated it. I was only going off of a police poster that tells people to report if they see one of a list of weapons (one of them being a "samurai sword"), even though I see taichi or chinese broadswords all the time.

Yeah, I've only seen one martial arts store here so far. It was closed at the time so I'm not even sure if it had a practice area. I was already thinking that, for all of Aaron Jones' above reasons, that there most likely wouldn't be one, though I thought that Shanghai would be a better bet than anywhere else. Guess I was wrong about that last part.

I guess if I really want some outside training I'll join in with the old people who do taichi in the morning.

Thanks, guys.