Shaolin

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  Shaolin, China
Wednesday, July 13, 2005

A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away, was the setting for Star Wars. I just watched the pirated version of Episode III here, as almost everything in China that's American intellectual property is a copy.

Two and a half billion years ago, when the earth was still in its infancy, a small mountain range in central China jutted into the sky.

One thousand five hundred years ago, this mountain range became the birthplace of Kung-fu and Zen Buddhism.

The mountain is Song.

The temple is Shaolin.

01 Welcome to Shaolin

Song Mountain is the central mountain of the League of the Five Swords, one of the holy of Daoist Peaks.

The Shaolin Temple of Song is the central Shaolin Temple in China, the one that spread Shaolin Wushu Kung-fu to many parts of the world. Shaolin Wushu Kung Fu is the style of Grandmaster Pan, a.k.a. The Iron Fist; Jet Li, and Carolyn and Scott Gregg (not as well known in the Kung-fu world at this moment, but they are my sister and brother-in-law after all).

So, in their honor, I visited the Shaolin Temple.

Getting off the bus in Dengfung, I mangled some Chinese and got a cab to the only hotel near Shaolin, supposedly off-limits to foreigners. After a hard bargaining session, I had myself a buggy, sauna-like room with Smurf bedsheets, but I was just over a mile from Shaolin.

After dinner, I went outside under a setting, waxing crescent moon and watched Kung-fu students practicing their kicking and punching techniques under cover of darkness. Soon, the middle-aged burly hotel owner came out along with some of the Chinese-only guests. The shirt-less hotel owner, in a show of machismo, flashed a few quick jabs in the air, showing that he didn't know Kung-fu but knew some drunken boxing techniques.

As the sun rose, I began what would be a 40-hour journey to Shaolin, around sheer mountain cliffs, by bus, by train, by any means available

02 Your Move

. In the end, I would be over 1,000 miles south in a city called Tunxi. I walked alone through the early morning mist along the main road to Shaolin.

At Shaolin, I walked through the almost empty temple, incense burning, morning mists clearing. For hundreds of years since the monks at Shaolin were defenders of emperors and originally developed Kung-fu to protect their temple and to develop both internal and external strength needed as disciplined monks. The Shaolin monks are jedi, of sorts, except that instead of light sabers, they have swords, spears, their fists, and their feet. Like the jedi, they also have their minds.

The Zen (Chan) Buddhism that was born here when a monk from India, Bodhidharma, arrived, mixing Buddhism with Taoism and a little Confucianism to create a religion friendly to Chinese culture. Bodhidharma said:

Not relying on the words and letters,
Teachings are transmitted outside the Scriptures;
Pointing directly into one's mind,
One then can see into his own nature and attains Buddhahood.

He might have also said:

" "

Bodhidharma also said:

Every path has a beginning and an end

03 The Shaolin Monk

. While it is true that the end of the path may remain a mystery until it is reached, the beginning must be understood before the journey begins.

I think Bodhidharma might be a reincarnation of Yoda.

I left the temple and began my hike up and around Songshan, the Precambrian peak. Some 2,500,000,000 years ago the rock that comprises Songshan began to move upwards. A little later, 1.8 billion years ago, the old continental shelf sandstone was heated under pressure until it turned into quartz and was violently thrust into the air and inverted.

The trail was built into the white quartz cliffs of the mountains, which rose almost vertically out of the forested landscape below. For hours, I followed the cliffs around half the mountain, reaching the other side late in the afternoon. The sun baked my head and I was drenched in sweat the entire time.

On the other side of the mountain, I eventually made my way back to Zhengzhou, a large nearby city. Dusk fell. I ate some noodle soup for dinner, which didn't agree with my stomach. Then I missed the train to Hefei, but instead managed to figure out how to get a ticket to Nanjing further south. It was a hard seat leaving at 3 a.m., which meant from 3 a.m. until 1 p.m. I would likely stand in a crowded train cabin. In the hot train station waiting room, I tried to sleep a little bit, my head propped on my backpack. Then 3 a.m. struck.

I boarded the train cabin, finding that the train had been doubly overbooked

04 Grandmaster Pan a.k.a. The Iron Fist

. So much so that no one could move in the aisles, people were sleeping behind doors and underfoot in the aisles. Tempers were beginning to flare. Here was where people make the mad rush to upgrade their tickets to the sleeper cabins. With my big backpack strapped to me, I somehow managed to get to the ticket counter in the cabin, now moving towards Nanjing. I put up all my remaining kuai (money), but was 6 yuen short. Luckily the man next to me helped me out. Wherever you are, "thanks."

At 1 p.m., we arrived in Nanjing, where I found an ATM and headed to the Yellow Mountains, another 7 hours south. Finally, at 8 p.m., I reached the city of Tunxi, exhausted.

As I think back on this long 40 hours of travel, the journey was long and tiring, but exhilarating at the same time. It's good to be lazing back at the Far East Hostel watching Star Wars, though.

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

05 Shaolin Temple	06 The Shaolin Pagoda Forest	07 Songshan: The Mountain Called Song	From The Suspended Trail: The View Straight Down
Spinning the Top in Zhengzhou	Zhengzhou Scene

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