A group of students practiced self-defense techniques on a lawn in the park, under guidance of their instructor, Matan Malavski, an expatriate in Chengdu, while Demy, Matan’s wife, received an interview by a reporter of GoChengdu.

“This time we have the students doing exercises here,” said Demy, “Sometimes they practice outdoor on the hard ground, and sometimes indoor on the soft.”

Matan is the founder of MixMe, launched just two months ago as an institute that provides courses on self-defense, first aid training, healthy cooking and so on to promote healthy lifestyles.

The students of MixMe are people of all ages, Chinese people and foreigners alike. Most of them come to receive the self-defense training based on a combination of Ninjutsua, a type of martial arts from Japan, and techniques introduced from Israel. “I try to make it simple, realistic and efficient. Therefore I’m using concepts from several different martial arts.”

“Martial arts are part of my life,” said Matan, “I love martial arts and I want to share my techniques with other people.”

Matan believes that self-defense is important in modern society and everybody should know about it. “The most important thing about self-defense isn’t knowing how to fight but to have the knowledge of how to avoid dangerous situations,” he explained.