Over 30 years of teaching · Senior Disciple of Dài Shìzhé
From Caracas to the Lineage — A Complete Martial Education
Yuri Jimenez is the formal disciple and student of Grandmaster Dài Shìzhé — one of the most complete repositories of Wu Tan martial knowledge outside of Taiwan. His formation spans more than five decades and two distinct phases: an early foundation in competitive martial sports, and a deep, decades-long immersion in traditional Chinese martial arts that ultimately produced a practitioner of exceptional breadth and philosophical understanding.
What makes Yuri Jimenez's profile uniquely valuable is the combination of rigorous academic training — he graduated as a Physical Education professor from the Instituto Pedagógico de Caracas (UPEL) with expertise in motor skills development, sports, and recreation — with a martial arts education of extraordinary depth. These two disciplines reinforce each other: the pedagogical understanding of how bodies learn, move, and develop informs his transmission of Chinese martial arts in ways that go beyond mere technical reproduction. He does not just practice the forms — he understands why the body learns them in the sequence it does, and how to communicate that understanding to students of different backgrounds and physical profiles.
Today, Yuri teaches at his school Yun Hai Wu Tan Venezuela at the iconic Parque del Este in Caracas, and holds private classes in San Antonio de los Altos where he resides. He is a member of the World Wu Tan Kuoshu Federation. He has formed two groups of disciples through the formal Bàishī ceremony, with Luis Mendez as his senior disciple — carrying the transmission from Venezuela to the United States of America.
The Foundation Years — Tae Kwon Do, Judo & the Turn to Kung Fu
Yuri Jimenez began his martial arts journey at age twelve, training in two disciplines simultaneously: Tae Kwon Do under Master Armando Chavero, and Judo under Master Gerardo Marrazzo. These two arts — one emphasizing dynamic kicking technique and linear explosive power, the other the principles of leverage, throwing, and grappling — gave him a broad athletic foundation and, crucially, an early understanding of how different combat systems approach the problem of controlling and defeating an opponent.
At age eighteen, Yuri made the transition that would define his life: he began studying traditional Chinese martial arts under Grandmaster Dài Shìzhé and Master Fu Song Nan at the Sheng Long Wu Tan School also known as "La Danza del Dragon" school in Caracas, Venezuela — where Dài had already established a thriving teaching community during his eleven years of government-sponsored cultural mission. This was not a casual introduction: Yuri threw himself into the training with total commitment. He regularly arrived before class and stayed long after it ended, using every available hour to deepen his understanding of the forms, their applications, and the philosophy underlying the system.
In 1989, Yuri received his black belt in the Wu Tan styles — a credential covering the complete curriculum of six arts: Táng Láng Quán (螳螂拳 — Mantis Fist), Bājí Quán (八極拳 — Eight Extremes Fist), Pīguà Zhǎng (劈掛掌 — Splitting-Hanging Palm), Tài Jí Quán (太極拳 — Supreme Ultimate Fist), Xíng Yì Quán (形意拳 — Form-Intent Fist), and Bāguà Zhǎng (八卦掌 — Eight Trigrams Palm). To hold a black belt across all six of these distinct arts represents a genuinely uncommon breadth of technical mastery.
Accepted as Official Disciple of Grandmaster Dài Shìzhé
Following years of dedicated training, Yuri Jimenez was formally accepted as an official disciple of Grandmaster Dài Shìzhé through the traditional bàishī ceremony (拜師 — "bow to the teacher") — the ritual act that transforms a student into a lineage carrier, with the master pledging to transmit the complete knowledge of the tradition and the disciple pledging lifetime commitment to the art and its preservation. This ceremony places Yuri within the formal transmission chain that runs from Li Shu Wen through Liu Yun Qiao to Dai Shi Zhe — and through him, now to his own disciples including Luis Mendez in the USA and other students around the world.
The classic portrait of Yuri Jimenez alongside Grandmaster Dài Shìzhé — an image that encapsulates the depth of the teacher-student relationship that formed during those intense years of training in Caracas in the 1980s.
Through this relationship, the complete Wu Tan curriculum — Baji, Pigua, Bagua, Mantis, Xing Yi, and Taiji — passed into Yuri's hands, being one of the few disciples who learned all the styles from GM Dai.
Physical Education Professor — The Pedagogy Behind the Practice
During the same decade of intensive martial arts training, Yuri Jimenez attended the Instituto Pedagógico de Caracas (UPEL) — one of Venezuela's most prestigious teacher training institutions — where he graduated as a Physical Education teacher, trained in the development of motor skills, sports, and recreation.
This academic formation is not incidental to his martial arts career — it is integral to it. The study of human motor development, kinesiology, and pedagogical methodology gave Yuri a scientific framework for understanding precisely what happens in the body when martial arts techniques are practiced and internalized. He understands the stages of motor learning, the difference between explicit and implicit knowledge acquisition, and how physical skill is transferred from teacher to student across different ages, body types, and learning styles.
This combination — the depth of traditional Chinese martial arts transmission from one of its finest living custodians, married to a formal academic education in physical pedagogy — makes Master Yuri Jimenez genuinely rare within the international Wu Tan community. He is not only a practitioner of exceptional technical depth but a teacher of exceptional methodological sophistication. His students benefit from both dimensions simultaneously: the authenticity and completeness of the traditional transmission, and the clarity and adaptability of an academically trained instructor.
Bagua Zhang — Training with Grandmaster Dài
These four photographs document Yuri Jimenez and Grandmaster Dài Shìzhé practicing Bagua Zhang together in Caracas, Venezuela during the 1980s — a rare visual record of the transmission taking place in the field, outside of Taiwan, in the context of Dài's extraordinary eleven-year mission to Venezuela. The practice of Bagua Zhang — the Eight Trigrams Palm — is the art that Dài identified as one of his supreme specialties, and these images show its principles being transmitted in real time.
International Certifications & Institutional Membership
Over the years, Grandmaster Dài Shìzhé and the international Wu Tan community have formalized Yuri Jimenez's standing through several significant acts of certification and institutional recognition — spanning from his 2006 credentials granted directly by Dài, to his school's 2025 international memberships within the global Wu Tan organizational structure.
Chinese Taipei Tang Lang Chuen Association
Yun Hai Wu Tang Taiwan · Venezuela
International Certification
Official Member School
Parque del Este — Where the Tradition Lives
For more than thirty years, Yuri Jimenez has been transmitting the Wu Tan tradition in Venezuela — first as Grandmaster Dài's direct student, then increasingly as an independent master in his own right. He teaches at his school Yun Hai Wu Tan Venezuela, with classes at the iconic Parque del Este in Caracas — one of the city's most beloved public spaces, where generations of Venezuelans have practiced martial arts in the open air — and private classes in San Antonio de los Altos where he resides.
His teaching encompasses the complete Wu Tan curriculum: all six arts in which he holds black belt certification, along with the weapons systems, partner exercises, philosophical framework, and ceremonial traditions that make the Wu Tan system a living culture rather than merely a collection of techniques. His two groups of Bàishī disciples represent the continuation of the formal discipleship lineage in Venezuela — practitioners who have made the same lifetime commitment that Yuri made to Dài Shìzhé, and that Dài made to Liu Yun Qiao and Zhang Xiang San.
Parque del Este · Caracas
With Students · Venezuela
Master Yuri Jimenez's standing within the broader Wu Tan world is recognized not only by his credentials and his lineage, but by the quality and completeness of his knowledge. His great dedication and deep study make him one of the exponents with the greatest knowledge within the Wu Tan lineage under Grandmaster Dài Shìzhé outside of Taiwan — not only with the routines of the forms of all Wu Tan styles and their applications, but with the philosophy, ceremonies, and all aspects related to the lineage. He is a reference and body of consultation for everyone who currently practices in a traditional way within this transmission.
Master Yuri & His Senior Disciple
Through the formal Bàishī ceremony, Yuri Jimenez has built two generations of disciples who carry the Wu Tan tradition forward. His senior disciple, Luis Mendez — who trained under him in Venezuela and later traveled to Taiwan to study directly with Grandmaster Dài Shìzhé in 2006 and 2008 — now directs Wu Tan New England located in Virginia Beach, VA, bringing the complete lineage from Li Shu Wen through Liu Yun Qiao through Dai Shi Zhe through Yuri Jimenez to students in the United States.
The lineage chain is now complete across three continents: Taiwan → Venezuela → United States. Every technique Luis Mendez teaches at Wu Tan New England carries within it the transmission that passed through Yuri Jimenez's hands — the same transmission that Dài Shìzhé received from Liu Yun Qiao and Zhang Xiang San in 1972, and that Liu received from Li Shu Wen beginning in 1917. The chain is unbroken.