Foshan Martial Arts & Ancestral Temple

The day

What This Day Feels Like

Foshan is holy ground for southern kung fu: home town of Wong Fei-hung and Ip Man, the master who taught Bruce Lee. The Foshan Ancestral Temple compound holds their memorial halls — gloves, wooden dummies, lineage charts — alongside one of the finest Song-dynasty temples in the south, and its courtyard lion-dance performances are the real, gravity-mocking thing.

Round the day out with the Nanfeng kiln — a dragon kiln that has been firing pottery continuously for 500 years, where you can throw a pot yourself — and the restored Lingnan Tiandi quarter’s wok-handled roofs and ancestral lanes.

Good to know

Before You Go

• Lion-dance and martial-arts shows run at fixed times — we schedule the day around them
• The wooden-dummy hall permits photos; serious students can arrange a class in advance
• Nanfeng kiln pottery you throw can be fired and shipped to your hotel
• Weekday visits mean near-empty halls