Shaolin - Home of Kong Fu

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Well, we have just spent the day visiting the home of Kong Fu and I am most impressed. We arrived in Shaolin from Luoyang after visiting the Longmen Caves which is one of China's few surviving masterpieces of Buddhist rock carvings. While in Luoyang we spent the day checking out the entire face of a mountain which has been carved into a thousand images of Buddha. The detail in the carvings made it a very impressive sight.

We got to Dengfeng on a local bus while dealing with the usual confused expressions, spitting and language barrier issues. The pointing, staring and occasional poke does not surprise me anymore, but I still can't get my head around their need to spit everywhere. Its disgusting, they spit on the bus, the train, the street and even the shop floors. But oh no, its not just a regular quiet/polite spit, it has to be prepared with a good minute or so of hacking up greenies. Its really sickening to see the prettiest girls doing it too. No wonder Asians see the feet as being dirty, you just have not got a clue what you have been walking in, and that's not taking into account the state of the toilets - I wont even start to rant about that!

We wondered around the city of Dengfeng before accidentally getting in the oldest Chinese tuk tuk in town for our trip into Shaolin. I didn't think the tuk tuk was going to make it over the hills, we actually came close to pushing it up hill on a few occasions. We were so tempted to get out and walk, but the driver was an old bloke who looked desperate to earn a living. We just bit our lip and enjoyed the long and painful trip into Shaolin while trying to pretend we were not afraid of the on coming traffic!

As we came over the mountains we instantly set sight on a large field with over 1000 monks warming up for a days martial arts training. At first it appeared to be similar to a military training camp, but without anyone ordering the monks what to do. There was weapons training including Swords, Staffs, Lung Checks, and Poi's. There was sparing and various forms of one on one combat. In some cases there was one on many combat. It was like watching a thousand Bruce Lees and Jackie Chans running around on one field. Occasionally they would stop, look, stare, and then shout the familiar words "ni hao" (Hello) at us. Absolutely awesome!

We sat for a couple of hours watching in amazement at the shear number of people training in Kong Fu. To actually see such a large number of people studying at the top martial arts academy in the world was very inspiring. When I realized they used Poi's (similar to my fire juggling chains) I just had to pay the monks for some real ones (poi weapons) and have a play! They watched in amazement when they realized a foreigner could us poi's. It made me chuckle to myself!

We watched a couple of demonstrations including one monks ability to throw a pin through a piece of glass (It was no illusion, he could throw it as fast as a bullet) while another would do multiple backflips and break through steal blocks. There were children as young as 6 who were training at the school while the women were elegantly impressive! I wouldn't like to cross any of them, especially on a bad day ... lol

We walked high into the mystical mountains of Shaolin and checked out some more dangerous passes and rope bridges 1500 meters above sea level. We wondered around Shaolin temple where Kong Fu has been taught for thousands of years while watching monks light incense sticks and pray to images of Buddha.

A fantastic day :-)

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