The birthplace of Kung Fu

Today we took a side trip to the original Shaolin temple. The temple was founded 1500 or so years ago and is one of the oldest Buddhist temples in China. It is the site of origin for Kung Fu. We got a taxi to drive us over an hour to the temple. The last 20 minutes was on a twisty narrow mountain road full of trucks. When you first arrive at the temple grounds you come to a modern building where kungfu is taught and where you can watch a kungfu show. The best part of the show was a monk who threw a needle through a pane of glass breaking a balloon. The whole area is packed with tourists and like most tourist places in China is also packed with noodle shops, souvenir shops and all sorts of little businesses designed to separate tourists from their money. You just have to accept that interesting places in China will be this way.

After leaving the kungfu school you walk almost a kilometer through a park like area. You then come to the actual Shaolin temple. The monks here are outnumbered 10 to 1 even on a cold winter day by tourists. They mostly just ignore the tourists and go on with their lives. We saw monks sitting in groups chatting, texting on their phones, preparing for rituals, and even practicing a tiny bit of kungfu. The buildings themselves are mostly modern recreations as the original temple has been destroyed multiple times, most recently in a war in 1928. Some buildings seemed older and at least one had very old paintings on the wall showing monks in battle. There was also a stone floor in one building which has many depressions in the floor supposedly created by centuries of monks stamping their feet while practicing kungfu. Similarly a huge ginko tree was riddled with holes caused by monks stabbing it with their fingers.

After leaving the temple you can walk another kilometer or so to the pagoda forest. This is a forest of burial pagodas. Each one containing the body of a monk. Some are over 1000 years old and in danger of  collapsing.  Many contain inscriptions describing the life of the monk inside. The most recent is also one of the grandest and includes sculptures of a laptop, VCR camera, bullet train, car, ship, and airplane. A very modern monk.

After leaving the Shaolin temple we started down the mountain but soon ran into a huge traffic jam composed mostly of huge trucks. Turns out that a huge bulldozer had hit an equally huge truck in the center of a narrow road already occupied by a village market nearly completely blocking the road. The Chinese practice in this case is for cars to just pull out into the oncoming lane and drive the wrong way down the road until they meet an oncoming car then they try to sneak back into the correct lane. The bravest and craziest drivers get the furthest. Our driver was one of those. The problem is that this increases the likelihood of accidents in the other lane thus completely tying up the whole road on both sides. Eventually we leap frogged down to the accident in the market but the mess went on for another mile after that. Some drivers had been stuck for up to 4 hours! When we finally got back to town we walked through a local park to the local megamall for dinner. On the way home we stumbled on one of those scenes that remind you that China really is different. Coming back through the park at night we found multiple groups of people who had set up music players and were holding ballroom dance classes. Each class seemed to have about 4 or 5 couples and a teacher. They were all dancing in sync in complete darkness to their recorded music. It was weird and magical at the same time.

Pagoda Forest

Dance Class