Despite having been ravaged in the past, Shaolin Temple still boasts a plethora of traditional Buddhist buildings that are guaranteed to awe Western martial artists.Despite having been ravaged in the past, Shaolin Temple still boasts a plethora of traditional Buddhist buildings that are guaranteed to awe Western martial artists.
	Martial arts training gives the Shaolin monks and their students the utmost in flexibility, strength and endurance.
	It is the dream of millions of Chinese youth to hone their martial arts skills at Shaolin Temple. Every year, several thousand are fortunate enough to actually train there.
	Dressed in a monk’s robe, Miao Hai demonstrates his aerial kung fu ability.
	One of the author’s instructors (center, rear) poses near his house with a group of young students.
	Antonio Graceffo (right) practices a sweep in an outdoor kung fu training area.
	Between bouts, the author (left) relaxes with one of his kickboxing coaches.

Upon entering the Shaolin shrine where Miao Hai and I were told by our sifu to train, we did our prostrations before the Buddha and lit our incense.

Since coming to the temple, I had shaved my head and attended Buddhist prayers, but strictly speaking, I was still a Catholic. I respected the Buddhist religion and studied it as a means of being closer to my training brothers, Miao Ping and Miao Hai, but it was an academic study only.

Miao Hai took a seat at the gong and ordered me to assume a horse stance. For the next two hours, I did nothing but the horse stance and bow stance, changing position every 15 minutes. Tourists would come in and try to get me to laugh or flinch, just like at Buckingham Palace. When they saw that I wouldn’t budge, they would compliment me on my discipline and Miao Hai on his tutelage. Then they would stand beside me, put their arm around me and have a photo taken.

Occasionally Miao Hai would stride over and hang on my arms or kick me to strengthen my stance. He even invited some tourists to push on my limbs to get me to break position. “Ta hen li hai!” they shouted. He is very strong.

*** Miao Hai was 20 years old and had been living in temples since he was 15.

There was a rumor that he had lived in another temple for years before coming to Shaolin. The reason he had to leave was vague, and when I asked him about it point-blank, he denied having lived there. But the rumor was so persistent I had to believe it had some validity. What he did disclose was that he’d been at Shaolin for three years, and during that time he hadn’t been home to see his parents. They hadn’t come to see him, either. Again, the reason was muddled.

Those mysteries didn’t seem to interfere with Miao Hai’s training, however, for he had the best kung fu of all the students I knew. He could jump the highest, do the best flips and, when we sparred, he was the only one who could give me a good fight.

When students start training at the temple, they learn forms and stances.

As soon as their sifu thinks they’re ready, they’re allowed to specialize in some aspect of kung fu. The majority of them don’t really have a specialty.

They just continue learning forms. But students who do specialize can learn chi kung, internal kung fu, meditation, san da (Chinese kickboxing), contortion or an animal style such as the monkey or tiger.

On my first day there, Miao Hai demonstrated his first specialization: drunken kung fu. It was popularized by Jackie Chan in his Drunken Master films. The form started with Miao Hai pretending to drink liquor from a large vessel. The weight of the imaginary bottle and his “intoxication” almost unbalanced him, and he fell over backward, catching himself only inches from the ground. Next, he was attacked by assailants on all sides. With a drunken man’s unsteady footing, he kicked, punched and stutter-stepped his way to victory.

As the story unfolded, there were even scenes in which he was knocked unconscious and woke up on the ground, where he was forced to fight from his back. Without a doubt, drunken kung fu is one of the most entertaining forms to watch, and one of the more difficult to do.

Later in Miao Hai’s development, his sifu directed him to specialize in chi kung. For the past several years, Miao Hai had been developing his chi (internal energy) and strengthening specific parts of his body. I’d seen him pound his head against cement slabs for a full hour. He also trained his neck and invited me to choke him with all my might to demonstrate that it had no effect. Eventually, a chi kung practitioner will train every part of his body, from his arms and legs to his hands and fingers, until they’re as hard as stone and as strong as iron.

Part of Miao Hai’s chi kung training involved practicing special breathing exercises, whereby for a hundredth of a second, he could summon up superhuman strength. And that is how our epic wrestling match began.

*** When there was a lull in the flow of tourists entering the shrine, Miao Hai did his breathing and I did my stance training. Then he interrupted me with an unexpected double palm strike, which shoved me across the room. For all their years of training, no one at Shaolin seemed to know anything about Brazilian jujutsu or no-holdsbarred fighting, so I immediately set out to introduce them. I came off the wall and lunged for Miao Hai’s head, hoping to hip-throw him. He fended me off with another push, but like a camera flash, he needed several seconds to recharge between pushes. After my next lunge, his push wasn’t as hard, and that enabled me to use a pushing-hands techniques to redirect his force.

Miao Hai sailed past me, driven by his own momentum. I caught him in a guillotine choke and began to crank up the pressure. He immediately dropped to his knees, trying to knock me off-balance. And that was the exact moment Sifu chose to return to the shrine.

I knew Sifu was 42 years old—but only because Miao Ping had told me.

Looking at him, I would have believed he was an abused 35 or a well-preserved 63. He stood about 5 feet 6 inches tall and looked as though he weighed about 220 pounds. His face was weather-beaten, with skin that resembled a well-worn catcher’s mitt.

Wearing his heavy winter robe and a tall fur cap on his shaved head, he resembled a Mongolian prince— Genghis Khan returned to reclaim his throne.

He had a huge belly, like a reclining Buddha, but he was immensely strong. In front of his house lay a barbell marked 120 kilograms (264 pounds). The kids told me he curled the weight 10 times each morning.

Although he did hoist that barbell, I knew his strength came from doing forms every day, all day, for the 17 years he’d lived in the temple. Whenever he shoved me or hit me, which was often, I felt it. Against Miao Hai or any of the other students, I could rely on my pushing-hands technique to redirect their force, and even to take them offbalance.

Or I could use a flying guard and pull them to the ground, where they had virtually no skill. But with Sifu, I wouldn’t even have considered it. When he pushed, it was like the unstoppable force you hear about in physics class. He could go through me as easily as he could go through the air.

Upon entering the shrine, Sifu scolded us like naughty schoolchildren and sent us packing. He told us to go back to his house and train until dinner.

It was scary having this deadly little man angry at us, but once we were safely out of range, we burst into laughter. Although we were supposed to head straight to Sifu’s house, we stopped along the way so Miao Hai could say hello to his many friends and well-wishers. Monks challenged us, asking why we weren’t training, but Miao Hai would shoot them a grin and make up some excuse. Then the monks would laugh and wave us away.

At Sifu’s house, we worked on my form. Wu bu chuen, the five-step form, was the first Shaolin routine I’d learned. It was composed of only about nine movements, but we did them over and over for hours. There were days when from the time we got up until the time we slept, all we did was wu bu chuen. Sometimes, Miao Hai would have me hold each position for 15 minutes before transitioning to the next.

It was monotonous and grueling.

Mostly, it burned in my thighs, which were under constant strain the whole time I was there.

Luckily, on that day Miao Hai wanted a boxing lesson, so he interrupted my form after only two hours and asked me to help him with his jab.

Most of the guys at Shaolin possessed incredible form and flexibility. They could bend their bodies in ways I thought only long-term yoga practitioners could. They could do flips, summersaults and aerial cartwheels, and some could even do handstands on their fingertips. But none of them could box. Or fight.

When I would spar with them, I was amazed at how little they knew about fighting. They could kick higher and better than I could, but if I kicked them low and then punched them high, I would catch them every time.

If I baited them to throw the same kick twice so I could grab their leg and throw them, they always fell for it.

They knew nothing of ring movement or strategy.

Most of them also lacked competitive spirit. If they did fight, it seemed as though they didn’t care who won.

I found that the main technical aspects of combat that were missing at Shaolin were ground fighting, wrestling and boxing. Many of the kung fu practitioners could stare at an object— say, a sack filled with sand—for several minutes while practicing breathing and preparing their chi. When they were ready, the internal energy would flow, their hand would shoot out and they would strike with more force than I could ever generate with a single blow. But they could do that only a few times a day, and they needed several minutes to recover between blows.

Real fighting, however, is all about combinations. Some punches may have no power, but they’re still useful as diversions or distractions. Others are thrown as “money shots” and are designed to knock a man out. Still others, such as rib shots, are intended to wear down the opponent and cause him to capitulate.

The Shaolin guys, Miao Hai included, lacked all these skills, as well as the reasoning behind them. They were so convinced that Shaolin kung fu was the best martial art in the world that they thought they could step into a ring and throw the same punches they use in their demonstrations.

But real life doesn’t work like that. In three rounds of kickboxing, most of them couldn’t land even a single punch on me.

*** After we had boxed for a while, it started raining, so Miao Hai and I walked into Sifu’s house to watch TV.

Miao Hai rummaged through the cupboards until he found his private stash of candy. We ate sugar so infrequently at the temple that when we did get some, we couldn’t control ourselves. We didn’t stop eating until the whole box was gone. We felt the high of the sugar rush and were bouncing off the walls by the time Sifu sent word for us to return to the school for afternoon training.

Afternoon sessions were an extremely regimented and disciplined affair. Once again, we had to line up with all the other students and count off. Then we practiced left-face, rightface and about-face before finally marching in formation to our training area in an abandoned rice field.

The workout always started with 45 minutes of running, followed by at least an hour of stretching. Flexibility was by far the most important attribute for success, for if you’re flexible, you can kick higher, faster and with less effort.

At Shaolin, strength wasn’t even on the top-10 list. Stamina was deemed important, but it was a different kind of stamina than we’re used to in the West. None of the guys could win a long-distance running contest, but they could do kung fu forms for eight straight hours when the average Westerner would collapse after five minutes.

In the beginning, I couldn’t hold a horse stance for more than 20 seconds.

After a few weeks, I could hold it for 15 minutes, then rest a minute and do 15 more.

The biggest lesson I learned from Shaolin was this: As high as you can lift your leg, with no effort, is as high as you should kick. You can use your power to swing your leg over your head, but you’ll be using your muscles to overcome your body’s natural limitations. Your muscles actually work against your tendons and ligaments. That’s why constant stretching is so important.

In the afternoon sessions, we would hold a split for a half hour on each side.

The instructor would walk around and stand on our thighs, forcing them down. If he thought we were resisting, he would hit us with a cane. Kids got caned all the time for breaking the rules. Some of the instructors were sadistic and beat kids unnecessarily.

They were the ones I liked to spar with.

When I fought with one of them, I tagged him on the bridge of the nose with a punch so hard I know it permanently reduced his self-confidence.

Studying at Shaolin meant I often had to walk a tightrope between what I felt was right and what I knew was the reality of 21st-century China.

It was important to respect their culture, but at the same time, as an intelligent, free adult, it was hard to stand by and watch people being abused. Once, when an instructor whacked a kid unnecessarily, I shoved him and asked if he wanted to try that on me. He just laughed and said, “But I can’t defeat you.” I was hoping to teach him a lesson about not picking on people who are smaller than he is. Instead, I taught him to never hit anyone unless he’s certain he can win.

Another time, a sifu ordered an instructor to beat one of my training friends, Mai Ming Ming, until the cane broke. Mai Ming Ming was a tough guy who had been hit a lot, yet he ended up crying like a baby and barely able to walk. Afterward, I asked Miao Ping to explain this insanity to me.

“Sifu wants them to be better fighters,” he said.

That was the standard answer, but such beatings didn’t teach students to be stronger. Instead, they taught them subjugation. The students were learning that when someone in authority wanted to beat them, they just had to take it.

“I’m a good fighter and no one ever beat me with a stick,” I said after a few minutes.

“But kung fu is different,” Miao Ping replied, as if that explained everything.

“Do you think Mike Tyson is a good fighter?” I asked. The kids at Shaolin always talked about their three big heroes: Bruce Lee, Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson.

“Of course, he’s a good fighter,” answered Miao Ping.

“Can you beat him in a fight?”

“No.”

“Could the san da instructor beat him in a fight?”

“No.”

“Well, no one ever beat him with a stick, yet he’s a good fighter,” I said. “So maybe it’s possible to teach people how to fight without hitting them with a stick.”

Miao Ping thought about it for a minute, then gave the standard answer: “OK, I’ll tell Sifu in the morning.”

*** After we completed our stretches, we stood in formation and walked onto the field, in lock step and practicing our kicks. The first several times we crossed it, we kicked straight up over our heads. The goal was to make the top of our foot face the top of our head—or, if possible, to make the foot actually move past our head until the top of it was facing the ground behind us. The other two kicks we did were basically the same, but one rose to the left and one to the right. The important thing was that our knees weren’t supposed to bend at all.

After additional drills composed of those three kicks and some punches, the session ended with two hours of forms.

Dinner was identical to breakfast and lunch: a big bowl of rice and vegetables with a side dish of dumplings.

There were no beverages at Shaolin Temple, apart from the one liter of water we were given each day. It wasn’t enough liquid for the amount of exertion we were subjected to, and I often felt the effects of dehydration. Nevertheless, I dropped 30 pounds over 10 weeks.

After dinner, I headed off to bed just like any other day. There, I wrote in my diary before drifting off to sleep.

At 9 o’clock, the sifu’s younger sister woke me up by blowing the whistle for lights-out. The next morning, it would start all over again.