Currently, only four living masters have been recognised as the highest level, Ninth Duan. The youngest of which is Grandmaster Ma Xianda of Xian, China's old capital. The most recent testimony of Ma's expertise that readers might recognise is his student, Gao Xian, who played a major supporting role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

But Master Gao is only one of Grandmaster Ma's remarkable legacy. More than twenty of Ma's close students have earned the coveted title of Wu Yin or "martial hero," a title conferred on athletes who have repeatedly placed in the top three positions in national competition.) Ma's own sons, Ma Yue and Ma Lun, are national champions and noted masters as well. Ma Xianda comments that Ma Yue got into a lot of trouble when he started at age five, but actually he was "pretty good." At age 11, Ma Yue won the Xian city and Shaanxi province all round championships and beat renowned International Wushu champ Zhao Changjun. In 1983, he won a four "gold award", placing first in short weapon and straight sword fighting. Ma Lun captured the National Sanda (free sparring) Championship when he was 17. Now he is a respected coach and international certified referee of Sanda. And of the six Sanda Wang (free sparring kings) that now reign in China, two trained under Ma Lun. Beyond his kin, Ma also coached the aforementioned champion Zhao Changjun for a while and even taught Jet Li what would become one of Jet's favourite forms, Fanziquan.

Ma was born in 1932 to a Muslim family who trace their martial arts roots back six generations. Since 9/11, Muslims have been so profiled, but it's easy to forget that there are many types of Muslims today. Chinese Muslims, or Hui, represent the largest minority of the largest population in the world and have as much connection with Bin Laden as Christians have with Hitler. Originally from Hebei, Ma learned from his father and uncle, who were both noted masters in their own right. His father was a general under famed warlord Feng Yuxiang. His Uncle also produced Zhang Wenguang, another ninth Duan holder. Ma Xianda learned many traditional Wushu forms including Tongbei Pigua, Kaimen Baji, Ba Shan Fen, and Cuo Jiao and also studied western boxing, wrestling and fencing. In fact, Ma was one of the very first Chinese to study western martial sports. In 1952, the first martial arts championship was held after the founding of the PRC in 1949. Ma captured the Lei Tai championship, a free fighting event where fighters knock each other off an elevated platform, defeating Tongbi master Deng Hongzhao and Cuo Jiao master Li Xuewen.

He also took the Short Weapon Fighting Champion and the Wushu Performance Grand Champion. He won all this at the young age of 19. The following year, Ma won the Huabei Short Weapon Tournament. This included competitors from Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia. Ma won every single bout. Ma went on to dedicate his life to the martial arts. After graduating from Hebei Teachers' College, he took a position at the Xian Physical Education College to teach Wushu, Boxing and fencing. He became a full professor there and taught for 30 years. Ma estimates that he has taught nearly 10,000 students, both Chinese and non-Chinese over his expansive career, including many national coaches and champions. Probably the most significant aspect of his career came in 1995 when he was recognised as one of China's Top Ten Professors of Chinese Martial Arts.

In 1998, Ma was recognised as a Ninth Duan holder. He says “ recently I went to the 90th birthday celebration for a master. In my speech, I congratulated him for teaching successfully since his students respect him deeply and gave him such a big birthday party. He must have told them how to respect the elderly and zunn shi zhongdao (respect teachers and philosophy.) Nowadays the society's ethics are corrupt. All Chinese society, including Taiwan, has this problem. The old common labourer doesn’t have high social class but he has good students. And his students have a lot of de (integrity.) They learned martial arts from their teacher and are now successful, so they gave their teacher such a big birthday party.

That's proof that the teacher is successful. We have to respect our parents first. Nowadays, a lot of people don't even know how to respect their own parents, so how can you show you have de? De is what we really have to emphasise. De include wude (martial ethics.) Wude is not just empty, not just a name. You must have wude. Only then you can have wucai (martial ability.) Only then you can show your martial arts ability. For all Martial Society, the question is: How do we establish a higher standard of wude? How are we going to cultivate and promote this? If wude is strong and everyone follows up on it, the whole society can be strong bringing everything to a higher level.

Master Ma is just another example of the achievements of a minority population of Muslims in the world who go unnoticed but have at the same time contributed greatly to the world of martial arts, an area of sport which has seen an ever increasing growth in its popularity for the past three decades in Muslims.