All is silent in Ritchie Coliseum as the crowd of about 100 people focuses intently on the performance mat. A small Asian man in a blue silk uniform slams a staff to the ground, shattering it into four six-inch splinters. An audience member pierces the silence with an encouraging shout of “Jiayo!”

This is Terpwushu’s Second Annual Collegiate Invitational Tournament, an event that brings together top student martial artists from across the East Coast. The event, held this weekend, included 26 students from the university, two of whom won its top titles, helping establish the university as an East Coast powerhouse for the sport.

Jason Liu, a junior kinesiology major, won All-Around Male Grand Champion, while sophomore classics and art history and archaeology major Lida Zlatic won All-Around Female Grand Champion.

Liu is on the U.S. Wushu Team, which also includes freshman bioengineering major Jonathan Chung, UMBC’s Dennis Shyu and recent George Mason graduate Jason Lui.

Saturday’s head judge, Justin Ma, a 2004 university alumnus and three-time Pan American Championship winner, identified this event as just one example of the university’s growing importance in the world of wushu. Terpwushu was rated third in last year’s National Collegiate Wushu Tournament, according to Terpwushu president junior Yuval Zohar.

“The university is gaining momentum as a major wushu hub in the U.S.,” Ma said.

Terpwushu, which Ma started during his time at the university, was rated the best sports club on the campus last year by the student groups branch of the SGA.

The term wushu encompasses fighting techniques from China dating back 2,000 years. Saturday’s event included barehand, sword, spear, staff and chainwhip competitions. It was accompanied by performances Friday and workshops Sunday by world-class wushu athletes.

Wushu was standardized in 2003 to include uniform criteria for judging, Zohar said. Liu said more than 200 countries compete internationally. In 2008, wushu will be included in the Olympics for the first time, though medals will not be awarded, Ma said.

Many at the competition believe the popularization of wushu has changed it in recent years from a practical martial art to a showy performance art.

“Wushu is a really small community, and there is not really a good relationship between traditional and contemporary wushu,” Liu said.

Ma said popularization hasn’t created any major problems because the expert judges for these competitions take into account the actual martial intent of the moves into account. Ma believes the flashiness brings attention to the art, which has “great Chinese cultural roots,” even with its transformation in recent years.

The world-class athletes who performed Friday included China’s former All-Around Female Wushu Champion Judy Wang and 2001 World Wushu Champion Jiang Bang Jun.

Students and recent graduates of the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Montgomery College, UMBC, George Mason, James Madison and the New Jersey Institute of Technology also competed, bringing the total number of competitors to 46.

Wang said the competitors were very advanced, but had trouble with being “tense.”

“They were probably really nervous,” she said.

This competition follows one the club hosted in March in Cole Field House, which was the first collegiate competition for the East Coast. The National Collegiate Wushu Tournament, which the university will also be hosting, will take place in February, marking the first time the national competition will be on the East Coast.

Contact reporter Anthony Glynn at newsdesk@dbk.umd.edu.