Fire breaks out at Shaolin martial arts school – kills 18

This week, a tragic story broke out of Zhecheng county, in Henan province. On Friday, a fire broke out at a Shaolin martial arts school in the dead of night at 3AM. As a result, 18 people died by the time the fire had been extinguished. Sadly, most of these were children which makes the news even more devastating.

Although Shaolin martial arts training is often shown in movies, the reality is that they are also highly effective in training skilled martial artists. In our interview with Philip Sahagun, he spoke about training there and the level of dedication needed to stick out the hard but rewarding training environment.

These schools don’t just create physically athletic practitioners, they also make mentally strong humans too which is arguably priceless. This makes the deaths tragic as many of these youngsters would have gone on to lead highly productive, successful lives. Further, 16 people were seriously injured by the fire.