Shaolin is a factory of pain. Kung fu students here live with constant aches, and I was no exception. It wasn’t Shi Mingwu’s fault. He went easy on his novice students. At dawn on the first morning, when the temple was magically quiet, he served us tea near the Buddhist altar in his room and gave us beaded prayer bracelets. Then he led us to the peaceful courtyard with a bamboo garden. The first three-hour session was devoted to stretching and kicking exercises, and it became clear that Mingwu was more than just a strongman. Standing on his left leg, he pulled his right leg up past his ear until the sole of his foot was flat against the sky. Then he settled down into the splits. Even with years of tennis and basketball under my belt, I knew I was in trouble. I couldn’t even make it halfway, but Mingwu pushed me farther than I had ever gone. Before the first punch was thrown, the pain started to pull on my legs.
More than two dozen other foreigners are training at various schools, and at lunchtime the ragtag group gravitates toward the noodle stalls outside the temple. The leader of the pack is Kristof Sannemuller, a ponytailed 18-year-old German student who insists on being called by his Chinese name, Shanli. With cell phone in hand, the two-year Shaolin veteran has become an indispensable assistant at one of the warrior monks’ schools. The quiet, bespectacled Frenchman at Shanli’s school is a 26-year-old free fighter (meaning no rules) whose favorite exercise is doing pushups on his head. The rich Singaporean kid is there only because his father promised to hand him the reins of the family company if he endured two years in Shaolin. Priscilla Schirmann, a 32-year-old martial-arts expert with purple hair and a black Iron Maiden T shirt, is training for three months before opening the first Shaolin kung fu school in her native Mexico City. But after just a few weeks, she confesses: “I cannot even move.”
Now I know what she means. In the days that followed, Mingwu taught us exercises for footwork and fighting. He led us through one form of taolu, a series of movements that require balance, strength and flexibility. At each step, he would push for perfection, testing our positions with his massive hands and forcing us to repeat and hold them over and over again. Even when the gates of the temple opened, and Chinese tourists gathered to gape at the awkward foreigners, Mingwu maintained his focus, demonstrating techniques for breathing and moving one’s qi, or life force. At the end of the week, Mingwu invited us to pray with him before we left (and paid him the $15 daily fee). He told us that, as a teenager, he had sneaked out of his village to come to Shaolin after seeing the movie “Shaolin Temple.” He plunged into the twin challenges of monkhood and kung fu. “When I pray to Buddha,” he says, “my heart is settled, my mind is focused and I feel no pain.” If only I could say the same.
