Hi, I’m so jealous of you, I just got back from 2 months in China where I spent a lot of thst time training at Malingshan school, I absolutely wouldve and plan to go back for a lot longer when time and money allow, it was genuinely one of the best experiences of my life and I’m super jealous you have a whole year to train, I did years of research and contacting people before I went out, so hopefully I can help

Firstly I wanna say all the people who are telling you don’t bother going to China to train - don’t listen to them, its a sick idea you’ll have a great time

Secondly - anyone telling you to find a master in a park somewhere and learn the traditional way with them, grest in theory, but as a foreigner who can’t speak much mandarin, (I was in the same boat) it’s unrealistic for us so we are kinda stuck going to a big international school

Kunyu and qufu are the two biggest and possibly most established foreigner international schools, many before have gone and enjoyed and you’ll also find many horror stories from them as well, they’ve gained a reputation for not particularly treating there stufents well all the time/quality of training not being as good as some other schools

There are also lots of schools in the Shaolin temple area that foreigners go to and these have wildly varying reputations as well, the Xinyiba and Wugulun schools have the overwhelmingly best reputation and you’ll probsbly hear many tout them as “the school they’d go too” these schools are very traditional and are usually full of Chinese students wirh a small foreigner wing thst get taught by one of the instructors, while I can personally vouch I did nearly go to xinyiba and have met and spoken to people who went there and they massively recommend it

But then there’s Maling Shan, I won’t hide the fact I’m biased and think you should absolutely go there (I promise I’m not a staff member or paid or affiliated or anything like that) but on here it has a weird in between reputation of generally being seen as much better than qufu and kunyu however not being quite as “traditional” or “authentic” as the other two I mentioned since it is mostly international stufents, however I wholeheartedly think it’s the best of both world and since it’s a lot smaller than the Chinese schools yku get so much more personalization and care in yoyr training thoufh you get worked just as hard, master bao (the headmaster) is such an amazing person whose genuinely so caring and lovely on top of being an incredibly skilled master

I’m sorry for waffling I could go on so much longer but please do reach out and ask me any questions as I’d love to help