On Tuesday evenings, the fellowship hall of China Grove's First Baptist Church fills with the sound of sneakers squeaking on linoleum and Mandarin instructions shouted over a Wu-Tang Clan beat. Li Wei, 34, circles the room calling out counts while twenty-three students—aged seven to sixty-two—practice toprocks and six-steps. Six months ago, none of them had taken a breakdancing class. Now they show up early to stretch and stay late to puzzle through freezes together.
Li arrived in China Grove in 2019 to join a cousin's landscape business, leaving behind a decade with the Guangdong Provincial Dance Troupe. He found the town's arts offerings thin and its teenagers restless. "I saw kids with energy but nowhere to put it," he said. "In Guangzhou, we had hip-hop studios on every corner. Here, the closest thing was a line-dancing class at the senior center."
In March 2024, Li persuaded the church to rent him the fellowship hall for $40 per night. He posted flyers at the Piggly Wiggly and the high school. Twenty-one people came to the first session—mostly teenagers, plus three parents who stayed to watch. By week four, attendance had settled to a consistent core of twenty-something dancers. The church hall now books out six months in advance.
What "Fusion" Actually Looks Like
The workshops have attracted notice for Li's deliberate blending of his two backgrounds. During a recent class, he demonstrated how to transition from a Beijing opera yunshou—a cloud-like hand movement—directly into a baby freeze. Another sequence pairs water-sleeve arm flows with uprocks, the standing-footwork foundation of breaking.
In July, a clip of seventeen-year-old student Marcus Chen performing a windmill into a static Beijing opera pose went viral on TikTok, accumulating 2.4 million views and drawing comments from choreographers in Seoul and São Paulo. Chen, who had never taken a dance class before Li's workshop, now fields direct messages from dance account managers he had never heard of three months ago.
Li has also brought in two guest instructors: B-girl Jazmin Ortiz, a 2023 Red Bull BC One national finalist from Miami, and B-boy Taki, who runs a studio in Osaka. Neither had taught in a church fellowship hall before. "There's no mirrors, no sprung floor, no sound system worth mentioning," Ortiz said. "But the students are hungry in a way you don't always see in cities where classes are everywhere."
Real Impact, Measured Modestly
The workshops' effects on China Grove are visible but localized. Three students who had been suspended from China Grove High School for nonviolent disciplinary issues report improved attendance this semester—though school administrators caution they cannot isolate the workshops' influence from other factors. More concretely, a parent-organized carpool now transports students from three neighboring towns, and a group of students recently performed at the Rowan County Fair, their first public showcase.
Local business support has been incremental rather than transformational. China Grove Hardware donated plywood for a practice floor. The Main Street Diner provides discounted post-class meals. There is no formal sponsorship pipeline, and Li still covers most supply costs himself.
A town-backed dance festival remains speculative. Mayor Pro Tem Donna Loflin attended the Rowan County Fair performance and told the Salisbury Post she would "love to see something more formal," but no funding has been allocated and no dates set.
The Road Ahead
Li's immediate challenge is space. The fellowship hall works, but its Wednesday night bingo commitment and lack of air conditioning limit growth. He has toured a vacant grocery store on U.S. Route 29 and estimates he would need $35,000 to convert it into a basic studio. So far he has raised $4,200 through a GoFundMe and a car wash organized by students' parents.
The permanent studio plan—which Li sketches on a napkin during interviews—includes classes for multiple age brackets and a sliding-scale fee structure. Whether it happens depends on whether the viral attention translates into anything durable, and whether a town of 4,200 residents can sustain a dedicated breaking space.
For now, the Tuesday night classes continue. At 8:45 p.m. this past week, the final stragglers were still practicing in the parking lot, using the glow of a single streetlamp to review footwork they had stumbled through an hour earlier. Li watched from the hall doorway, calling out occasional corrections. The temperature had dropped to forty-seven degrees. Nobody seemed to notice.
