Early career Yuan started practicing wushu around the age of eight. At the age of 10, he entered his city's amateur sports school and in 1977, he joined the Shanxi Provincial Wushu Team and began to train under Pang Lin Tai and later Zhang Ling Mei.
Rise to stardom In 1982, he won his first national championship gold medal which was in
shuangdao. After having several more national championship victories, he was chosen to compete in the
1989 Asian Wushu Championships where he achieved a gold medal sweep to win the men's all around title. Yuan was then chosen by the
Chinese Wushu Association to aid them in choreographing the first set of compulsory routines to be used by the
International Wushu Federation. The CWA used his
changquan and
gunshu routines and made minor adjustments to make them easier to execute, and the routines were later recorded by Yuan the same year. A year later in 1990, Yuan competed in the
1990 Asian Games in Beijing, wushu's inaugural debut at the
Asian Games, and won the gold medal in
men's changquan. Yuan then competed in the
1993 National Games of China with much success. Later that year, he competed in the
1993 World Wushu Championships and became the world champion in men's daoshu. He briefly retired from competitive wushu and acted in
Iron Monkey 2 alongside
Donnie Yen in 1996. where he became the world champion in changquan. His last competition was the
1997 National Games of China where he won gold medals in changquan and daoshu/gunshu combined. His students competed and achieved many victories at the Hong Kong International Wushu Grand Prix in 2007 which marked the 10-year anniversary of the
return of Hong Kong to China. == Competitive history ==