潜心苦修数十载，练就独门铁砂掌
Zhang Longxiang is a well-known master of Iron Sand Palm. He fell in love with kung fu from an early age and chose to learn this traditional technique after meeting a master, Yang Xinchun, in 1998. Iron Sand Palm is a traditional Shaolin kung fu technique. Learners repeatedly strike rough materials to strengthen bones and muscles and improve their striking ability. One obvious result of long-time training is thickened skin on the hands.
Zhang was deeply impressed by Yang’s powerful, thickened palms — evidence of decades of training. Determined to follow the same path, Zhang became his student. For the first seven years, Zhang focused only on building his foundation. Then he spent another eight years learning from Yang as a formal apprentice (学徒).
Zhang’s daily training was full of pain and boredom. He had to hit steel-ball sandbags 6,000 times every day and repeatedly injured his hands. To aid his recovery and speed up the thickening of his palms, Master Yang provided a special medicinal wine that prevented serious injury. Today, Zhang points out that scenes of putting hands into hot sand are just fictional — products of kung fu movies. They are never real training methods.